By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
My daughter and I have chuckled off and on over the years about the grading system used in my grandchildren’s public elementary school. Instead of As and Bs and Cs, the students are given an I, for “works independently,” a P, for “progressing,” a T, for “trying and needs help.” Once the children reach middle school this system is dropped and the traditional letter grades are used to differentiate between student achievement.
The logic behind this arrangement is that children at an early age should not have their confidence damaged by comparisons between themselves and students who are doing better than they are; that school systems should hold off until middle school and high school before making students aware that there are superior students and some not so superior, when young people will be mature enough to face that fact of life.
Why do my daughter and I chuckle over this system? Because everyone — parents and children alike — understands that the I grade was the equivalent of an A; the P, the equivalent of a B, etc. Everyone knew who the “smart kids” were in the school. Oh, well, the best-laid plans of mice and men. Even parents who thought the attempt to camouflage the different levels of ability unwise didn’t protest to any significant degree, from what my daughter could tell. The As and Bs and Cs would be in place by middle school, where ability and hard work would be recognized by the time the students began to apply to prestigious private high schools and colleges.
Well, a monkey wrench has been thrown into the mix. It turns out that certain colleges around the country are pondering whether it would be wise to adopt the system once thought to be reserved for elementary schools. Katherine Timpf reports in the online edition of National Review on September 10 that Princeton University is considering putting pass-fail grades on freshmen transcripts, because, in Timpf’s words, “putting the actual grades” on the students’ permanent records, “is unfair to those who get bad ones. Apparently, the fine Ivy League institution doesn’t want the best and the brightest to have to endure feeling bad about themselves during their first year.”
Timpf is being a sarcastic, of course. But sarcasm can be effective only when it has a basis in fact. Here’s the actual proposal by the university’s “undergraduate socioeconomic diversity working group,” headed by Valerie Smith, dean of the college: “Consider alternate systems for measuring academic performance in the freshman year…by ‘covering’ first-year grades, i.e., providing students with grades but reporting on their transcripts only whether they passed or failed the course.”
What is the objective? To “reduce curricular obstacles to academic success” as part of the university’s plan to create a more “inclusive campus environment.” Other parts of the plan included “socioeconomic-diversity training for all faculty, staff, and incoming students, as well as a campus-wide socioeconomic-diversity-awareness program.” It is another way of dealing with the consequences of students being admitted to these prestigious schools without the academic achievement required to succeed. Remedial courses and mentors for freshmen are some of the other methods employed.
These programs may be well-meaning, but one cannot help but wonder if a line must be drawn somewhere. What if a pass-fail grading system in freshman year does not do the trick? Would it be far-fetched to think that the day will come it will be extended to all four years of undergraduate work? And would it end there? Will the day come when there are serious demands to take into account the lack of “socioeconomic-diversity” that can be seen in the results of bar examinations and the tests administered to become CPAs? Never say never.
On a related topic: We continue to get correspondence on recent columns documenting the proposal by Mayor Bill de Blasio to change the entrance requirements used to determine admission to New York City’s elite public high schools: Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science, and Brooklyn Tech, especially. The percentage of black and Hispanic students admitted to these schools is under 10 percent, even though blacks and Hispanics now make up the majority of the population in the city’s schools. De Blasio’s goal is to promote greater diversity by placing less emphasis on the competitive entrance examination that currently determines admission, and more on class rankings in schools with large minority populations.
P. P. of McAllen, Texas, writes to offer his perspective on de Blasio’s motives. P.P. contends that de Blasio’s opposition to charter elementary schools is related to his views on the city’s elite schools. P.P. is convinced that if “charter schools become more established, their K-8 graduates will start getting into the elite schools and become a direct challenge to de Blasio’s hegemony over the public schools. This will mean that minorities — as they succeed academically and economically and become part of the mainstream — might start leaving the Democratic Party for the Republican, and become champions of school choice, including charter schools and Catholic schools.”
This scenario, P.P. continues, may also “open the minorities’ eyes to the fact that liberals/progressives/Democrats/RINOs want to create dependency, not flourishing individuals! The Democrats have been practicing this since the 1850s when they greeted the first refugees of the Irish Potato Famine off the boat with a decent meal, a place to stay, and a low-paying job for the head of the household. In return? Unquestioning support of the Democratic machine.”
The process did not end with the Irish, writes P.P. “The Democrats did this with each succeeding immigrant group, including blacks (from the New Deal on) and Hispanics (i.e., Vito Marcantonio bringing Puerto Ricans to New York after World War II to support him).” It is a process that worked. These immigrant groups became part of the Democratic base. And, we would add, the process continues in the Democratic Party’s current push for amnesty for the illegal immigrants from Latin America.
P.P. hopes that these groups pandered to by the Democrats for their votes “will come to realize that they are being exploited.” And that Republicans will welcome these “non-WASPs” once they break loose from the dependency status thrust upon them by liberal Democrats. At which point, writes P.P., “the race card will lose its meaning” in our politics.
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford CT 06492.
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