No literally it is according to Students at West Potomac High School in Alexandria, Va. The school has adopted a new system where failing students will no longer get an F. Instead they will get an I for incomplete. They will have the rest of the year to master the material and catch up to there peers. West Potomac High is not the first school to do this kind of grading system. There are plenty other school systems such as Yale for example that have adopted this grading system. The Idea that we have to win every war and everything Americans do is in terms of winning or loosing is an old idea. We need to move forward and past the stone-age thinking that what we do is a sprint. The world is more of a marathon and it doesn't matter how you start it is all about how you finish the race that matters.
Schools like Yale University and Standford University that have implemented this type of grading system have seen improvement in their standardized achievement scores. Students no longer think in terms of failing besides what do we learn from failing. We only feel worse once we realize that we cannot master the material in that amount of time and we can't go back to try and learn it. I really like this idea of thinking. We should move away from punishing those that cannot learn a certain subject as fast as the rest of the class. We are not failures, we are not stupid, we just need a little more time.
I completly agree with this system. I think that the student drop out rate may lower because of this. When a student fails we get discouraged and want to quit, but if everyone were to adopt this system many student who have a harder time won't feel discouraged.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting, I also feel that this is a good idea. Especially for math classes because so many people learn math in different ways. I will say for myself this type of grading would greatly help me improve my grades.
ReplyDeleteWow, I really am intrigued by this new system. At first I thought it was just a way to avoid student complaints but after reading the article it does make complete sense. Most college students have many classes to study for with work and family on top of that so this method eases the stress. I think since high scale colleges like Yale and Stanford have adopted this, others will begin to too. I can honestly say this would definitely help me !
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