107!

I would've loved to have sat in the middle for that class. I think it's interesting that the debate over 107 went from a debate on ethics to that of teacher empowerment. But, I'll begin with the ethics part of it and then get to teacher empowerment.

Firstly, I don't think there was much merit to discussing the value of winning class valedictorian, personally, it was never something I strove for in high school (not that I was one to strive in high school at all, but hey, I did okay). But, who's to say what's important to who, whether it be scholarships, competitive nature, parental pressure, or whatever I think a part of us all know that valedictorian is a little bit more than just a title. True, the importance of the award does impact the pressure on the teacher, but being that it is of a considerable amount of importance, I understand the stress involved.

The ethical problem I had with fudging changing the grade I can now tell you having thought about it more carefully was not that the grade wasn't deserved, or that grades are subjective, but rather the teacher put the decision into their own hands. In a competition such as this one, there are a considerable amount of factors that go into valedictorian, like I said in class, a high school student takes about 28 classes. That is 28 classes worth of data, and it is illogical to weight the importance of one class over ones taken earlier (*note that this is already considering the weight of it being an AP class). Grades are essentially a data set, the more you have, theoretically the more accurate their representation of you will be. If Mary's first teacher wouldn't give her a better grade freshman year because she thought she might be valedictorian, why should a teacher senior year have that power? The power to achieve valedictorian is competition reserved to a student's data set (regardless of how accurate we feel this presentation can be). They control their data set as much as possible, it should be up to them.

Now, if you point to the knowledge of the fact that the other student had the "easier" teacher, then suddenly you come into a bit of a gray area. This starts to point more towards the area of teacher empowerment, but I will refer back to the data set argument. You can take into account that one singular class, but you have to keep in mind the other (roughly) 27 taken. Not having knowledge of the other student forced you to base your knowledge on the fact that the other teacher was an easy grader, this doesn't account for whether or not she deserved a high grade regardless of that fact, whether she would've gotten the same grade in your class no matter how impossible you deemed it to be, and whether or not at some point in the past Mary was given the same or similar advantage(s) that the other student now had. The decision was put in an individual's hands against everything that had come before. A very subjective judgement.

The most valid counterpoint to my argument is the fact that a teacher should be able to decide what a student deserves, and to this I don't disagree. However, this advantage was given to one student. I get that it was senior year and circumstances encouraged the grade change, but how about all the other students that may not have gotten into the college of their choice yet? What about the ones on the wait lists at schools, or those planning on transferring after their first year to a better school? Their senior year grades are almost equally as important to them as they are to the girl already on her way to Harvard chasing valedictorian. Now, I understand why the grade was changed, and I literally would not have a problem with this if something were written into the class syllabus that said you could! How about, the teacher reserves the right to add up to a 5 point bonus on final grades for considered hard work, extra effort, and participation. Of course in order to apply this it would've had to have been done at the beginning of the year, but it would help in future situations. It removes the singularity, gives you the empowerment you need, and I doubt many people would take issue with a point bonus at the teacher's discretion, especially a capped one.

Sorry sorry sorry!

Hey, quality over quantity, right? right? right?

Maybe not, I fell behind, but here's the standards blog you've probably been waiting ever so patiently for.

Being a philosophy major has taught me at least one thing (maybe only one thing), and that is in order to must effectively create a philosophy, you must start at the beginning; you cannot leave any considerations out and you have to explain every point you make.

That's why I think most people on both sides of the issue are so often tricked by standards.

On one side of the argument there's a group that doesn't think there should be any standards. They point to things like teacher independence, private school success, charter school success, teaching to tests, when truth be told, none of these things have much to do with why standards are necessary. Then there's those in favor. They start telling you, how do we know teachers are doing a good job? How can all the students get a fair education without standards? And how do we effectively pick the best if it's not all the same across the board? And those things have more to do with a standardized curriculum than standards (which I'll get to towards the end).

But why are standards necessary, if at all?

Glad you asked. Standards aren't necessary to monitor teachers, they're not necessary because you need to compare students to one another, they're necessary because you need to be certain that public schools are providing an education of any sort. And honestly, they should be minimal. They shouldn't interfere with teacher independence, they shouldn't require teachers to teach to tests, and they shouldn't overwhelm students. What they should do is minimally ensure that schools are doing a job. They should make sure that by fourth grade a student knows who Abraham Lincoln is and maybe some knowledge about him. Point being, there has to be a barometer for parents and students to feel that their education is worth something.

But Chris, private schools and charter schools don't have standards!

Yeah, they do. Their just independently set and not always clear. Private schools promise an elite education, and point to their results. We send x number of kids to Ivy League schools, y number of kids become lawyers, etc. Their standards are their own guarantees to  their paying customers that their child is in good hands. As for charter schools the same rules apply. And all they have to say is we're going to be better than a public school!

And because of the nature of public schools and how they're funded. The standards set for them has to be at an educational level, because public schools can't promise Ivy League, they have to promise the opportunity for students to attain the education that will allow them to get in an Ivy League school.

The fact still remains that this should be done minimally! Their should be a ton of room for teacher independence, student choice and local learning.

Now, I'm about to offer a simple solution to a complex problem, but the reason I'm offering it well aware of that fact is because I would leave curriculum assigned to each standard to those who are more knowledgeable than myself.

At Smithtown High School West, we started school at 7:20am and the day ended at 1:55. That's six 1/2 hours, if you take away lunch and period breaks you're left with about 5 1/2 hours in a school day where a student is in class and learning. Now imagine this, in that 5 1/2 hours, you get 2 and 1/2 hours of national curriculum, 1 and 1/2 of state/county decided curriculum, and an hours of student choice. This isn't to say each individual class would fall under one, it could fall under all three. Take social studies for example, the teacher could start of the day with a lesson on the American Revolution (federal) move towards the impact it's had locally (state/county), and then assign a student to find one fact about the Revolution that they find interesting (choice). Or they could split it up through out the week or even the year. this way teachers could run their classrooms how they want, teaching the subjects they're supposed to while giving students the opportunity to learn independently.

But how would we know the students would be being taught each thing for sure, without having someone in the classroom? How would we know the standards are always being accomplished?

First, the whole "self answering questions thing" is really overplayed so I'm gonna go ahead and make that my last one. But, for now I'll consider those questions to be of the "teacher evaluation variety" and put them off until a later date.