"Low bar" - new grading scale in one CA school

[healthy11]

dailycaller.com/2015/10/27/students-in-california-school-district-now-guaranteed-c-grades-for-doing-nothing/

While many of us who have kids with LDs often complain about unreasonably high expectations by some teachers, if the above article is true, parents off all children should be upset when students get passing grades for doing nothing.

[eoffg]

But if low achieving students aren't given low grades?
Then they might not realize that they are failures?
If they don't know that they are failures, then they might just continue learning at their own pace?

The model in Calgary schools is interesting:
"And up in Calgary, Alberta, letter grades have been slated to disappear altogether in favor of a new grading scheme which uses the terms “exemplary,” “evident,” “emerging” and “support required.” School officials said the new evaluation system is intended to provide a level of precision that a numeric percentage, say, or an A or a C totally cannot."
dailycaller.com/2013/06/16/calgary-schools-plan-to-drop-letter-grades-in-2014/

[healthy11]

Eoffg, my son's public school used that kind of grading system when he was in kindergarten & 1st grade, and I would NOT describe it as providing any "level of precision." Except for "exemplary," there was more confusion about all grades received. For example, if a child is learning addition, and always answers problems correctly when they add 1, (ie, 2+1=3, 3+1=4, 4+1=5) yet they are inconsistent when adding other numbers (ie, 2+3 or 4+4) how should that be graded? It seems like the ability might be evident or emerging, but clearly support is still required.
Furthermore, the interpretation seemed to vary from teacher to teacher, and it made things more difficult for a parent to even judge where their child was relative to peers. If a student was judged as "evident," it sounded like they were doing okay, but not great, and one wondered how much more they'd have to be taught (support required) before they'd exhibit exemplary skills. It was a confusing system. (And for older elementary students, trying to translate the terminology into a numeric GPA was virtually impossible, yet most high schools still use GPAs, so it was a "shock" to deal with A-B-C-D-F again.)

[kewpie]

I agree healthy. Its sucked that in K-5 in my district that they used terms like "demonstrates" this skill or "does not demonstrate". Any slot machine hits a jackpot once in a while, does it mean it will hit a jackpot on a constant basis? No. If a child demonstrates a skill once or twice, is that good enough to pass? who knows? It will all be subjective.

Kids who are failing to learn cannot be vetted by this joke of grading. Why does a child and parent have to wait until middle school to find out they have failed all of elementary school? How would anyone know when to intervene? Early intervention goes out the window as its only the parents who witness the fact that the child cannot complete their homework.