[etni] [FWD: giving school ("magen" grades)
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- Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 02:33:28 -0700
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From: "laurie sapir" <lfs22@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: giving school ("magen" grades)
School Grades ("Magen")
Just like Aviva Shapiro has written, we had a situation 3 years
ago (?) (the second to the last year of the 'old' bagrut test) where
many of the 12th grade 4 point students (spread over 2 classes)
were convinced they didn't have to bother with book reports,
literature, homework, or even acceptable behavior in the classroom.
It was just one of those years, where the dominant tone of the class
was set by those who don't study rather than those who do.
For a few it became ideological - why put in extra effort into anything
besides practice tests, which is what our grades should reflect?
Try to convice students like this that what is not on the bagrut but
required by the Ministry as part of their final class grade is
important.
(This is a huge problem for us, in general, the fact that there are all
these requirements for their school grade which are unrelated to what
they are tested on for the bagrut).
In short, because of the discrepancies between class grades and
bagrut scores, the students who didn't fulfill bagrut requirements and
didn't study much that year were the big winners. 90% was their
bagrut score and 10% was their class grade. The message to me was
to inflate grades. This infuriates me, lowers standards and sends the
message to students that they will get what they don't deserve in the
end anyway. The reply from the Ministry was that there must be
something wrong with the way we taught. I think there is something
wrong with being expected to teach one set of things and being
tested on another.
I subsequently began to pay more attention to this probem, of course.
I have heard how other schools 'encourage" their teachers to make
students grades fit their prospected bagrut scores. At English
conferences I detected from teachers' remarks, that the non - bagrut
related requirements were not always being taken seriously or even
taught. Every year since then, I secretly hope that only a small
percentage of students will have this gap between class grade and
bagrut score, so that I don't have to face this moral dilemna over
again.
Laurie Sapir
Amakim-Tavor
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