Teacher suspended for giving zeros - Page 9

On June 03 2012 03:15 micronesia wrote:
There are a few issues here.

The first is that the teacher was insubordinate. The school's decision that teachers shouldn't given zeroes might be good, or it might be the dumbest idea ever. They made their decision, either way. They told the teacher not to give zeroes. He gave zeroes. That's insubordination.

The sad thing is how often this seems to happen in public schools. The board of education or administration comes up with rules and mandates for the teacher to follow that completely undermine instruction and are horribly counter productive, and the teachers are powerless to do anything about it. Sometimes teacher tenure helps to alleviating some of this, but the teacher in the OP has been teaching for over 30 years so seniority isn't necessarily enough to combat this issue.

The second issue is the policy to not give zeroes. As Trezeguet pointed out, giving zeroes is not always the right thing to do. It's not about giving kids free points. The first thing to consider is how arbitrary our 100 point scale is, as well as the cutoffs for mastery, passing, failing, etc.. The second thing to consider is that some grading systems have been found (through significant amounts of research) to have more of an overall positive effect on student learning than others. Giving a kid who doesn't complete some work early in the year zeroes with no chance to earn back some of the credit maybe be perfectly fair, but it could also guarantee that the kid will fail the class for the rest of the year. Not only will he be less likely to get his act together and try to bring his average up from <40% to >70% (versus <60% on a less brutal grading scheme), but he will be more likely to be a disruption in class which will negatively impact other learners since he's not learning himself. Grading schemes that punish students to teach them a lesson don't necessarily teach students a lesson.



This type of attitude as an educator results in a less educated general public.

Putting 'period' at the end of a post on tl seems to correlate strongly with someone who is very firm in their beliefs without any evidence to back them up.

On June 03 2012 03:58 PrimeTimey wrote:
You do an assignment perfectly, you get 100% you understand 100% of the material.

You do an assignment quickly, you rush it and get a 50% because you understood 50% of the material.

You don't do an assignment, you don't hand anything, you SHOULDN'T get a 0% because you haven't shown anything.

A zero represents you were wrong, you don't understand the content from the course, you don't know that 2+2 = 4. That is different than not handing in an assignment.

That is why the school board (here) says that if you don't hand something in, or fail to show up for a class you get an NA. "Not Available". You haven't proven if you can, or can not, do the content. That is much different than a 0%.

Please do not derail this topic into other inflammatory discussions. The discussion should be focused on whether zeros should be given out if students fail to hand in work.

On June 03 2012 03:52 FuzzyJAM wrote:

Well (c) is rather the point, isn't it?

What if you don't need anything reinforced?

On June 03 2012 03:55 Zeke50100 wrote:
I remember the final project in my AP Psych class was to create a social psychology experiment, carry it out, and turn in a report with the findings in a group.

My group didn't do anything, but I knew it was important to do because it was 10% of the grade in the class. 10. Percent. So, naturally, I waited until 2AM the day it was due, and fabricated ALL of the data and made up crap for the report (my group didn't do anything, so I was essentially doing it for myself; another topic entirely). It was incredibly easy to do because the analysis didn't even require actual statistical analysis - just a bunch of assumptions and vague assertions. I managed to turn in it on time, and got 100% on the assignment (which meant I would have an A in the class).

Why did I do the assignment? To get an A in the class. Did I learn anything? No. Did doing the assignment teach me anything? Well, other than that I have the ability to make up a project the night before its due, nope. What purpose did the assignment serve in my high school career? The purpose was essentially just to make me do it.

It taught absolutely nothing. If you think doing homework teaches responsibility, then you might be right to some degree. However, when an assignment clearly exists to exist, that line of thought is no longer valid. Letting an assignment slide until the absolute last moment just because you feel like getting a better grade doesn't actually teach you responsibility. I know I didn't build my work ethic by doing that.

Get rid of stupid, meaningless, tedious assignments. Getting 97% on the final test should be sufficient to say that a student knows their stuff. If you want to grade students on responsibility, find some other way to do it. A student who turns in all of their assignments isn't necessarily more responsible than a student who never did any work.

On June 03 2012 04:00 1Eris1 wrote:


Read the thread. The students were all given multiple chances to show that they understood the the content. They did not, or continually choose not to attempt to do so. I fail to see how someone does not deserve a 0 after they've puposely skipped doing something MULTIPLE times.

On June 03 2012 04:03 PrimeTimey wrote:


As I said, a zero represents you have zero knowledge of the subject. You don't understand the content that was being tested. The problem here is that the content has never been tested, the students have not shown any work. How is it the teachers responsibility to give a 0 when he does or does not know exactly how much information these students know?

That is where they NA, or Not Available comes into play. The teacher doesn't know exactly how much information they know, he has no ground to grade the student.

On June 03 2012 04:05 sluggaslamoo wrote:


In the end the student needs an assessment, what are you supposed to give him?

On June 03 2012 04:03 PrimeTimey wrote:


As I said, a zero represents you have zero knowledge of the subject. You don't understand the content that was being tested. The problem here is that the content has never been tested, the students have not shown any work. How is it the teachers responsibility to give a 0 when he does or does not know exactly how much information these students know?

That is where they NA, or Not Available comes into play. The teacher doesn't know exactly how much information they know, he has no ground to grade the student.

On June 03 2012 04:05 sluggaslamoo wrote:


In the end the student needs an assessment, what are you supposed to give him?

On June 03 2012 04:00 Insomni7 wrote:

This debate has nothing to do with giving zeros, this debate is about the freedom of teachers to make decisions in their classroom independent of the school. By the way, I absolutely support teachers in this but this is about school policy vs. teaching practice and has nothing to do with zeros. Don't try to turn this into a debate about more than what it is.

On June 03 2012 04:06 1Eris1 wrote:


School should not be about just knowing shit. It should be about preparing you for the next part of your life and teaching you valuable skills. If someone doesn't want to learn that stuff, then fine, but they should expect a punishment for it.
This whole NA thing is just a school board trying to inflate its scores so that it gets more funding, don't play it out as something that's "helping" people.

On June 03 2012 04:13 PrimeTimey wrote:


I don't believe school board funding here is done by grades of students.

On June 03 2012 04:03 PrimeTimey wrote:


As I said, a zero represents you have zero knowledge of the subject. You don't understand the content that was being tested. The problem here is that the content has never been tested, the students have not shown any work. How is it the teachers responsibility to give a 0 when he does or does not know exactly how much information these students know?

That is where they NA, or Not Available comes into play. The teacher doesn't know exactly how much information they know, he has no ground to grade the student.