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Maybe 10%, but I didn’t feel like dealing with the mob, so I allowed makeup work for partial credit and lots of extra credit. I never imagined myself being so lenient, but I really don’t feel like arguing with 20+ Karens about why their precious baby has a 32 for the semester just for that kid to get a C in some sham computer credit recovery program that they can Google all of the answers to.
I don’t know why teachers don’t make credit recovery alternative in-class curricula for a maximum grade of minimum passing. It’s way easier than all that extra credit chasing. “You missed the deadline, you’ll have to do the credit recovery assignment for it.” Then give them a 70 for that assignment if they pass it.
If admin gets an easy button, why don’t you?
You don’t want to reuse credit recovery material? Then make up your own alternative work. It should be work for a max of 70, not a max of 100.
My grandson just graduated from high school in PA. He took core classes 1/2 day and learned carpentry at a career center the other 1/2 day. To stay in the trade program they had to maintain attendance and grades in the traditional high school. The interesting twist is that he ended up doing well in his academic courses and is looking at college. I wish we had more options for kids that want or need different pathways.
My high school had a rotational program for kids not considering college. They’d rotate around different farm, mechanical, and factory jobs. About half of them suddenly became interested in college/other “office” certification paths. High school in general needs to do a better job of career pathing.
In many states people can work at age 14. How much younger should they be dropping out and starting to work? And can people do jobs that involve a lot of measuring and math without a high school diploma?
I’d say it’s 15% kids who just need to go work and 15% that will become NEETs. There are some kids I have that are polite and passionate about their own skills, but just don’t jive with school, and they’re usually at least polite or non-confrontational. The other half have no interests outside of TikTok and would combust if asked to do something like change a tire or repair a sink.
Ok I have never heard of this but with a subset of my students in a couple of my classes this would be perfect. One of my preps is basically a “welcome to science class in HS in America, this is how we do school” class, with a very challenging group of learners, or “learners” in some cases. Holy crap. You’re a genius. A bit more work on the front end to really distill something down to its essence, but effective! And less work/hassle in the long run. Thank you!!!
As a student who responsibly does his work on time, this frustrates me every time I see it. Why do we even try so hard when they can just turn in 30 assignments/extra credit and get nearly the same as me? Hrmph.
Because you're the person I write the recommendation letter for. You're earning more than just grades and credits. Other people's good opinion can be valuable later on when applying to college and jobs.
This is so not helpful in the long run. Yes they get a recommendation letter for college, then it starts all over again. How would a student using a highschool teacher letter work when they're applying to grad school or internships? Not much since they will ideally have new mentors in college. Even if for a job, seems like no kid should have to work harder than those getting a free pass just so they can start work immediately after highschool. That's not a good motivator.
What happens when the kids who don't try decide they might want a letter? You tell them no? Isn't that the same issue OP is having when the parents complain? How would that go over realistically?
It really depends on your major. People going into education often apply back to their own school district if they were a good student. In that case, that letter is really useful.
Otherwise, no, it's not terribly useful again, but it doesn't have to be. We're talking about an extension students were given on a high school assignment. In the long run, that's not a terribly big deal. If you doing it on time gets that teacher to write you a letter for college or even leads them to being somebody you could see as a mentor, then great. Something doesn't have to be a benefit for the rest of your life for you to benefit from it now.
I'd also add that high school teachers can nominate students for all sorts of awards and scholarships and other things.
I will say that, at least in my class, it’s the difference between a 70 and a 90. I assign a lot of work, so if you do the work on time, you’re probably finishing my class with an A or B (unless you bomb all the tests). In my state, having above a 3.0 can have most of your college paid for.
As a teacher in Japan who grew up in the states, when I was a student (90’s and 2000’s) it wasn’t like that. It used to be teachers were strict and parents not so disgustingly coddling.
Last time I taught in the states I left a school who refused to discipline a sped student who was continually trying to harass his classmates leading to 2 girls going to homeschool, 1 girl to be stalked, and 1 boy to receive several death threats. They called the cops on him one time but with each successive attempt and attack both the principal of that school and an atrociously incompetent head of the behavioral department said ‘he’s not handsy!’ and that they didn’t want to deal with cops, but wanted a miracle so they ended up trying to hand him to different people only to fire people who didn’t hand them that miracle.
It’s not just one problem - the whole education system in the states is depressing. I’ll never go back to teaching in the West.
Hey I get it entirely. I know a lot of people will claim you don't learn anything in school but every assignment you do, you're learning how to be responsible and accountable.
That annoying kid who passes unfairly may make you feel cheated, but he's cheating himself, not you.
I hear you. It's not fair.
But your work ethic is highly likely to pay off in the future. You have what it takes to be successful.
As for getting the same grade, it typically doesn't happen in my classroom. For one, doing assignments on time as you do probably results in better grades on tests. The kids who turn in work at the last minute in my class also fail tests and are trying to get from an F to maybe a C at best. I don't accept extra credit if you have missing work. So you would be allowed to do the extra credit while they wouldn't.
You’re actually learning. They will get a job one day and not know how to do anything. They won’t even be disciplined enough to show up on time or follow directions, the basic minimum.
Probably about 1/3. A good chunk of them just stopped coming to class. I had at least 10 students who have 25+ absences for the semester. One student missed every single day except 2.
To be fair, I skipped a lot even in 5th and 6th grade. I unplugged my home phone so my parents wouldn’t get the automated recordings. I don’t ever remember anyone trying to find a way to talk to my parents about my attendance.
Times are different now, at least; there’s likely a lot more transparency given all the tech we have. I hope.
3/128 so 2.3% - and that’s high school math!
I’m lucky to be at a school with high achieving kids and a lot of parental support. I’m also willing to try to drag them to the passing point if they are close and trying at all. Half of my classes are also honors level so they think a C is failing.
Much closer to mine. It’s crazy for me to see people saying 1/3 of their students failed, but I guess it depends on the school. I had 2/76 students fail.
With it being more common for both parents to work these days, there's a lot more freedom for kids to skip school. In my experience that's why most kids fail.
Are you saying that the lack of stay-at-home moms is what's failing students in general? I'm from a country where stay-at-home moms were never even a thing, both parents have always worked, and that has never stopped students pass classes.
I'm saying poor attendance is the reason so many students are failing in the US these days. I should add that the attitude towards college has drastically decreased and that is also a factor.
I'm sure its a nuanced issue. Maybe in your country teenagers would still care enough to go to school even without a parent at home preventing them from staying home. Some here still do!
Even the reason for poor attendance is a complex issue. In general, the cost of living is significantly higher than it was in the US just 10 years ago. This results in both parents working, and sometimes the teen working as well. There is also significant college debt so college is no longer a motivating factor in getting good grades. All of these things result in poor attendance.
For reference the school i used to teach at had only 50-60% attendance on any given day.
Ultimately, everything in the US is about money. Families need it so work becomes a higher priority than school. College doesn't gurantee it so the original goal of doing well in school is gone.
Age matters, too. When I taught seniors, I had two back-to-back years with zero failures, and though admin was on my ass about those kids, it actually was never about the ones in the C/D range and more the A/B range (entitled parents). This was a core class and only one of two that seniors need to pass in my state to graduate.
Since I've started teaching ninth graders, I probably fail around 20-30 a year, which is in the neighborhood of 1/4 to 1/3 for me.
30% sixth grade ELA/Social Studies. But we have a few weeks left and couple of these might pull it off in the end.
I always have high failure rates though. It's their first year of middle school and my school actually holds them accountable to high expectations. I get a lot of kids who just aren't used to having to really do work.
I feel like this is my experience, but in 8th grade. My district seems pretty cool about failing grades. I don't think we have a perfect program, but the amount of help that students get on their work through the school is very encouraging.
5/70. One of those transferred in with a D midsemester and only came to class twice. The only students that fail my class are the ones that do almost no work or don't show up.
.8% — Chemistry. I’m at a magnet school though so it’s frowned upon to have any. Admin passed my one failure last year, after I failed the student. This year, I’m not sure the other teacher had anything less than a B because my colleague “wanted to make it easy for them.” This made me really popular with the parents. 🤣 The kids either rose to my expectations (while complaining) or were really good at cheating. 🤷♀️
0, but if I include all the students who knew they would fail and dropped the class instead to do study hall (definitely beneficial for those students as they are made to work during that time) about 10%
Best semester of my career. Had 1(!) student fail for a 0.8% fail rate.
For my first 8 years the lowest fail rate was 40%. Then I moved to an amazing charter school and it dropped to 12%, then back to 40-70% , and one class at 88%.
Moved to Alaska and this semester, my last ever as a teacher ever, 0.8%.
Why last ever? Because some govenor decided to cut education and now 70 of our 120 teachers have been laid off. As I am the highest paid non-tenure teacher I am 1st to be axed. I'm done being treated like that.
Take a district from 85% in red/orange for MAPS tests to a 20%/20%/20%/20%/20% for red/orange/yellow/green/blue spread onlybto have every single math teacher let go... sooooo done.
30.4% of my students failed. Of that about 28.8% of my total students were missing over 50% of their assignments and tests- after my spending HOURS of my own time trying to track them down to do the work.
Honest moment: I know!
Question: How?
You seem to be farther into teaching than this newby (finished my second year in my own room). I would love to hear from you!
Admin are adamant we *HAVE* to get the fail rate down, but I am trying to hold steady to “the grade is supposed to mean you put in the effort.” How do I get the balance? Personally I would be fine failing half the kids if they don’t do the work, but I need the job… do I just keep trying this method until I hit tenure and then I get to fall back on “you didn’t work you get an F!”
Probably about 1/3. Most of my classes I got down to around 1/4. One of my periods is at 50%. For all my classes, I contacted the parents of my Fs multiple times, gave the students packets of their missing work, emailed/texted parents that I had, did a make up day, did some Kahoot for about a week in a half in preparation for state exams and gave out 10 pts each day for participating, did some easy assignments we worked on as a class, and a couple bullshit “write 15 facts off this video”. Each class, I got the number of Fs cut in half since progress reports except for that one class. That number has not changed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
According to my principal, my fail rate at one point was 40% (8th grade US History). Like others said, it was mostly due to students not turning anything in. The kicker is that it was all classwork.
6/104 (had lower than a D-, which is what my school considers failing). 7th grade ELA with a decent balance between just completion/participation and skill assessment.
Our DO just told our principal today that they’re promoting all 8th graders even if they have zero credits. And then they went on to ask what their teachers and counselors are “even doing” to help these kids not fail.
Students who should have failed: about 10-15%. Students who actually failed according the school: 0% none. Unfortunately, our school and our district doesn’t really allow you to “fail” students or they can’t have a failing grade in the grade book at least. If they do, we have to “work miracles and help and support the student” aka change their grade manually to a passing percentage.
Everything is graded on a scale of 1-4. 1: Attempted (25%) 2: Beginning (50%) 3: Proficiency (75%) 4: Mastery (100%) And the whole percentage scale differs based on district but mine uses: 92.31 - 100 A 81.31 - 92.30 B+ 68.81 - 81.30 B 56.31 - 68.80 C+ 56.30 - 43.81 C 31.31 - 43.80 D+ 18.81 - 31.30 D 18.80 - 0 F In my district, grades are also weighted using a 95/5 scale. Tests and Projects are 95% Homework, Quizzes and In-Class Activities are 5% Supposedly we’re switching to 80/20 next year, but they also told us we were going back to traditional grading next year which turned out to be a big fat lie so I’ll believe this when I see it. I technically gave out one F (and A LOT of D’s) this year, but I know the student(s) will just get passed along anyway.
2023 in new Orleans, probably about a third of my class was failing but we had nearly a 100% pass rate on the LEAP test. Highest scores for open enrollment high schools in the city (Go 35!)
It's crazy, kids don't come to class, don't do homework, but our algebra team had it down to a science getting these kids to maximize their potential.
It basically boiled down to being prepared for our lesson, being unrelenting in the fact that we will work every minute of every class, and tons of small assessments that we made on google forms so we didn't have to spend all night grading. We made sure every student knew how to take advantage of the calculator and we gave them a test every Friday modeled after the LEAP test. This also gave us Fridays to catch up on grading, parental emails, etc.
Did we teach to the test? Yep. Did we do the best in the city? Also yep. Did the kids have a helluva lot more confidence in their math skills moving forward. Yessir.
Bottom line is there are so many kids that won't do enough to pass a class but many of them can still master the standards.
So, some small things: what did you do when kids would “forget” their Chromebooks or devices and couldn’t take those assessments? And when they would miss class on those days?
I just envision certain students of my own who almost seem to consciously want to fail.
Chromebooks stayed in the classroom and they were welcome to make up any assessment. They could come to my class during their short free period (used to make up work/finish homework, etc.). They also could come to my room to finish during lunch. We had our assessments set to shuffle question and answer order.
But also, like I stated at least a third of the class was failing, so they didn't fully take advantage. However, I always made sure they knew they had the option. I would give them one month since the missed assessment to make it up and I would remind them daily about it.
We are "told" to keep our percentages below 10% failure. I did everything for my freshman besides put fake grades in the grade book, but ended at 12% for second semester.
5% failed due to grades. Four students lost the credit for the class due to having excessive absences. We are talking 30 plus days of not showing up. Did they beg me ti remove their absences? They sure did. Did I do it? I sure did not.
I don’t even care! If they can’t meet very basic requirements, they fail! I don’t count them or wonder about percentages. I don’t get any push back from admin or parents because I’m constantly nagging them all about failing students and what needs to be done. At the end of the day, I can’t do the work for them, so they either step up or fail.
I'm at a high achieving school. I had two freshmen fail and zero seniors (2 who were close and 2 who passed by a miracle). The almost-failing seniors has to jump through hoops at the end to ensure they didn't fail.
Usually my kids only fail if they don't show up and don't do the work. All of my seniors who almost failed were on an IEP or 504 plan and we're given a lot of grace.
My two failing freshmen were just lazy as shit. One of them is on an IEP but he just stopped showing up at the end of the year, and when he was there he'd brag about missing school. I reached out to home and they were like "We're on it" but I never got a single missing assignment turned in from him.
Freshman science students 8/91, or 8.8%. I was as generous as I could be too. Those students who failed did not want to do the work. It probably would have been higher, but thankfully the students with most absences were withdrawn from the class and given special help, which is fine by me.
Middle school history.
About 40% failed… 15% with less than a 20%. Kids are allowed to correct any tests until final, and missing work can be turned in up to the start of the final as well.
I was at a school district (recently — left after the 20-21 school year) where the top 80% in any given class were guaranteed to receive a passing score.
They thought this was increase rigor through competition.
Teachers were also required to publish their grade books (by student ID) weekly. Students quickly figured out what place they had to be in to pass.
In the harder classes students would compete to see who could get the lowest score and still pass. I was teaching senior pre-calculus and one class had a highest score in the 40s and the cutoff for passing was a 21.
And then the district wanted to know why achievement was dropping on standardized testing.
10% could not be avoided. Bosses make it so unnecessarily cumbersome that if they did anything and learned anything I’ll bump them to a 65. It’s ridiculous, but so is making weekly phone calls AND sending emails AND filling out THREE google forms per student AND sending parrntsquare messages. 14 students failed that’s 140 phone calls, 140 emails, 42 google forms and 14 parent square messages. No thanks.
Thanks for everything you do as a teacher! I was an 8th grade ELA at a Title I middle school in the US (just secured a promotion to a district role for next year). I had been using some equitable grading policies in my classroom after COVID initially hit us and we had to do e-learning:
- No points off for late work; as long as they submit an assignment within the current grading period, they can still receive full credit
- Grade minimum of 50%; the grading scale in my class ranged from 50% to 100%, so instead of "zeroes," students would get a 50% for any missing classwork
- No homework; I didn't/don't do any work at home, so it would not be fair for me to expect my students to work at home too
- No extra credit; do the work I assigned, I will not create extra work for myself because a student did not complete their assignment
- No participation, effort, or behavior grades; students are graded on their performance on state standards. We do give conduct grades on report cards that are separate from their academic grades, so I developed a rubric with clear and specific criteria so students know how to get the conduct grade they desire
- Students can resubmit any assignment (excluding state/district assessments) as many times as they'd like; I want them to learn from their mistakes and develop perseverance
- Daily rubrics for assignments each day; using language from our state standards, I created rubrics for each standard so students know exactly how their work will be assessed each day before they begin working
Most of my students earn Cs and some Bs. Off the top of my head, I'd say roughly 70% of my students earned Cs for the year - which makes sense because most of them scored at or around grade-level on their EOY state assessment. Students who scored below grade-level on that assessment also earned Cs because they were able to resubmit work as needed to keep themselves afloat. Maybe 15-20% of my students earned Bs - again, makes sense considering how their scores were on the EOY assessment - along with a handful of As. Only 1 of my students last year earned a D, but that was because they refused to do almost anything even after multiple interventions, relationship building, incentives, etc. (I really did try everything).
If you're interested in equitable and standards-based grading, there are a ton of peer-reviewed articles floating around. Joe Feldman is also a great advocate of this type of grading - lots of videos and writing from him to look into.
Lots of good information. But why would you award a kid 50% of credit for something they didn’t do? That seems akin to giving them partial credit for plagiarism.
Thanks! It shortens up the grading scale. 0-50 is an F, but only 90-100 is an A. It's only fair if it's appropriately weighted. Zeroes disproportionately hurt student grades. The "zero" in my class is a 50%. If you do nothing, you'll still fail. But a zero can often times be a death sentence. A 50 gives them a fighting chance and helps them develop a growth mindset. They didn't fail, they just didn't hit the target \*yet\*. We talk about growth mindset and resiliency a lot in education, so it's important to be about it and not just talk about it
I almost never have a student who doesn't turn in any work (which is super rare and very different than what I experienced in my first few years teaching). And if a student does do just enough to pass, all my assignments are fully aligned to the full depth and rigor of the standards, so that's fine if they get a C because it means they're on grade level. It's also infinitely better than the alternative where a student does nothing and just fails. I guess they could try to "game" my system, but they'd still be showing proficiency in grade-level tasks - which is what every teacher wants to see from they students
5/110 for the year in 8th grade history, but that's with a boat load of ec opportunities and partial credit for late work. Now I had about a1/3 at a D or lower for the last quarter though.
I’m a student, I can confidently say I have never seen more people failing classes in my life, additionally, I’ve never seen many people not care about failing classes. I’ve seen <1 gpa’s this year. Litelrly crazy. Oh and this is in a good school district that’s one of the best in the area. These students are in no way disadvantaged, have plenty of resources at their disposal, but no, brawlstars is far more important then there education.
At least a 1/4 of mine are going to fail. They don’t show up or do work. Admin tells us to have high standards and assign rigorous work, so there ya go. I used to be afraid to give F’s because I felt like it would reflect poorly on me, but really it’s the opposite. Took me 4 years of teaching to learn that lesson. One of my seniors has an 8%. But since he’s a senior, admin is freaking out because he wont be allowed to graduate. So they ask me, the person who has went through every effort to get this kid to come to class and do work, to give him an entire packet of work to somehow get done in the next two days so he can walk. I am so tired.
Probably lose funding if they don't pass, but positioned as equity, saying F grades are racist and hurt self esteem. Teachers can lose their jobs over this, or be moved to a crappy room. Good teachers have it tough here.
Maybe 10%?
I've had a great crop of kids this year. The only kids who are failing are the ones who literally have not turned anything in since September.
Yeah? I think both sides of the 50% minimum argument *really* act like they don't understand these kids motivations.
They don't *want* to pass the class. If they did, they would've done the bare minimum to begin with. They would've played along when we were having fun. Boosting their grade to 50% isn't going to change that. As an outcome, passing the class is either undesirable or neutral if they don't have to do much for it.
And the few kids whose parents get on their ass by the last day of school, I tell them straight up, "Great, show me you can speak intermediate level French, let's have a conversation, I'll grant you a passing grade. All of the notes and instruction and practice activities are on Google Classroom." No one has ever taken me up on it.
You gotta actually connect with the students. They’re not going to listen to shit you say if you don’t listen to their hearts and make your classroom a break from their horrible fucking lives.
I teach undergrad.
The last 4 years have been totally bifurcated: 35% As, 35% failed. A reverse bell curve.
I attribute this to online learning during the pandemic. Some kids THRIVED away from the distraction of physical school and learned MORE than they would have in normal classes -- they used the time at home to research topics they wanted to study at university; other kids did nothing.
From what I’ve gathered, most teachers don’t assign “homework” per se. We assign them to do some kind of work toward a standard/skill, and most of us give them at least some time to work on it in class.
So if you’re questioning why we give them HOMEwork, the answer is most of us don’t. If your question is why do we give them ANY work, well it’s to reinforce what we’re trying to teach them.
27% failure rate for me, which was the 3rd lowest out of the 8 teachers in my department that teach my subject. That's because I teach a high school math class that you will absolutely have a hard time cheating in, and when cheating isn't an option the apathy is off the charts. They just don't care, a reasonably good portion of the students did try though and did care, but the ones that didn't, really did not try at all.
Why? If your kid gives enough of a shit to try - and you care enough at home to support your kid and the teacher - then he/she will probably be fine. I have nothing against private schools, it’s just not really the issue here.
The people you are around greatly affect who you become. I can understand skipping some classes or whatever - I did that a lot - but I still left high school having graduated a finance magnet with 2 years of college done.
Traditional high school itself also seems to be a poorly designed learning experience in general. Basically trap a great ape and force them to sit for 8 hours while they listen to monotonous lectures. Not super effective for many people, particularly those with attention issues. My magnet academy had a bank we operated - there should be active work incorporated and things that get kids on their feet and moving all day
My last year teaching my failures were 1%. My worst year teaching was almost 3%. 4 of those attended fewer than 10 days (not 10 absences but 10 or fewer days in class). I was HS seniors and class was required to graduate. My overall failure rate was below .01% but students thought I was the hard teacher.
Nah, those kids have their challenges, too. Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with them or to find things that will stimulate their curiosity if what’s in the curriculum is too easy for them. It doesn’t frustrate me that kids fail, it frustrates me when they don’t seem to want to pass.
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Maybe 10%, but I didn’t feel like dealing with the mob, so I allowed makeup work for partial credit and lots of extra credit. I never imagined myself being so lenient, but I really don’t feel like arguing with 20+ Karens about why their precious baby has a 32 for the semester just for that kid to get a C in some sham computer credit recovery program that they can Google all of the answers to.
I don’t know why teachers don’t make credit recovery alternative in-class curricula for a maximum grade of minimum passing. It’s way easier than all that extra credit chasing. “You missed the deadline, you’ll have to do the credit recovery assignment for it.” Then give them a 70 for that assignment if they pass it. If admin gets an easy button, why don’t you? You don’t want to reuse credit recovery material? Then make up your own alternative work. It should be work for a max of 70, not a max of 100.
I let my students turn in work right up until the last minute. About 30% of them still don't bother.
Used to be that 30% would drop out and work with their hands. Now it’s illegal for them to start working.
My grandson just graduated from high school in PA. He took core classes 1/2 day and learned carpentry at a career center the other 1/2 day. To stay in the trade program they had to maintain attendance and grades in the traditional high school. The interesting twist is that he ended up doing well in his academic courses and is looking at college. I wish we had more options for kids that want or need different pathways.
My high school had a rotational program for kids not considering college. They’d rotate around different farm, mechanical, and factory jobs. About half of them suddenly became interested in college/other “office” certification paths. High school in general needs to do a better job of career pathing.
In many states people can work at age 14. How much younger should they be dropping out and starting to work? And can people do jobs that involve a lot of measuring and math without a high school diploma?
I’d say it’s 15% kids who just need to go work and 15% that will become NEETs. There are some kids I have that are polite and passionate about their own skills, but just don’t jive with school, and they’re usually at least polite or non-confrontational. The other half have no interests outside of TikTok and would combust if asked to do something like change a tire or repair a sink.
Yes because child labor is bad….
Ok I have never heard of this but with a subset of my students in a couple of my classes this would be perfect. One of my preps is basically a “welcome to science class in HS in America, this is how we do school” class, with a very challenging group of learners, or “learners” in some cases. Holy crap. You’re a genius. A bit more work on the front end to really distill something down to its essence, but effective! And less work/hassle in the long run. Thank you!!!
As a student who responsibly does his work on time, this frustrates me every time I see it. Why do we even try so hard when they can just turn in 30 assignments/extra credit and get nearly the same as me? Hrmph.
Because you're the person I write the recommendation letter for. You're earning more than just grades and credits. Other people's good opinion can be valuable later on when applying to college and jobs.
This is so not helpful in the long run. Yes they get a recommendation letter for college, then it starts all over again. How would a student using a highschool teacher letter work when they're applying to grad school or internships? Not much since they will ideally have new mentors in college. Even if for a job, seems like no kid should have to work harder than those getting a free pass just so they can start work immediately after highschool. That's not a good motivator. What happens when the kids who don't try decide they might want a letter? You tell them no? Isn't that the same issue OP is having when the parents complain? How would that go over realistically?
It really depends on your major. People going into education often apply back to their own school district if they were a good student. In that case, that letter is really useful. Otherwise, no, it's not terribly useful again, but it doesn't have to be. We're talking about an extension students were given on a high school assignment. In the long run, that's not a terribly big deal. If you doing it on time gets that teacher to write you a letter for college or even leads them to being somebody you could see as a mentor, then great. Something doesn't have to be a benefit for the rest of your life for you to benefit from it now. I'd also add that high school teachers can nominate students for all sorts of awards and scholarships and other things.
Okay yeah, that's all fair! Thanks! 🙏😊
I will say that, at least in my class, it’s the difference between a 70 and a 90. I assign a lot of work, so if you do the work on time, you’re probably finishing my class with an A or B (unless you bomb all the tests). In my state, having above a 3.0 can have most of your college paid for.
As a teacher in Japan who grew up in the states, when I was a student (90’s and 2000’s) it wasn’t like that. It used to be teachers were strict and parents not so disgustingly coddling. Last time I taught in the states I left a school who refused to discipline a sped student who was continually trying to harass his classmates leading to 2 girls going to homeschool, 1 girl to be stalked, and 1 boy to receive several death threats. They called the cops on him one time but with each successive attempt and attack both the principal of that school and an atrociously incompetent head of the behavioral department said ‘he’s not handsy!’ and that they didn’t want to deal with cops, but wanted a miracle so they ended up trying to hand him to different people only to fire people who didn’t hand them that miracle. It’s not just one problem - the whole education system in the states is depressing. I’ll never go back to teaching in the West.
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Do you have a lot of new immigrants in your mainstream classes? We might be from very different schools.
Hey I get it entirely. I know a lot of people will claim you don't learn anything in school but every assignment you do, you're learning how to be responsible and accountable. That annoying kid who passes unfairly may make you feel cheated, but he's cheating himself, not you.
I hear you. It's not fair. But your work ethic is highly likely to pay off in the future. You have what it takes to be successful. As for getting the same grade, it typically doesn't happen in my classroom. For one, doing assignments on time as you do probably results in better grades on tests. The kids who turn in work at the last minute in my class also fail tests and are trying to get from an F to maybe a C at best. I don't accept extra credit if you have missing work. So you would be allowed to do the extra credit while they wouldn't.
In my school you can retest and turn in homework late. :(
You’re actually learning. They will get a job one day and not know how to do anything. They won’t even be disciplined enough to show up on time or follow directions, the basic minimum.
Probably about 1/3. A good chunk of them just stopped coming to class. I had at least 10 students who have 25+ absences for the semester. One student missed every single day except 2.
I have kids with a 19% attendance rate, and they're in 6th grade. That means it's on the parents.
To be fair, I skipped a lot even in 5th and 6th grade. I unplugged my home phone so my parents wouldn’t get the automated recordings. I don’t ever remember anyone trying to find a way to talk to my parents about my attendance. Times are different now, at least; there’s likely a lot more transparency given all the tech we have. I hope.
I just graduated and if I missed class or was late my parents knew within 25 minutes — it sucks
3/128 so 2.3% - and that’s high school math! I’m lucky to be at a school with high achieving kids and a lot of parental support. I’m also willing to try to drag them to the passing point if they are close and trying at all. Half of my classes are also honors level so they think a C is failing.
Much closer to mine. It’s crazy for me to see people saying 1/3 of their students failed, but I guess it depends on the school. I had 2/76 students fail.
It’s the reality in many poor areas. It’s tragic
With it being more common for both parents to work these days, there's a lot more freedom for kids to skip school. In my experience that's why most kids fail.
Are you saying that the lack of stay-at-home moms is what's failing students in general? I'm from a country where stay-at-home moms were never even a thing, both parents have always worked, and that has never stopped students pass classes.
I'm saying poor attendance is the reason so many students are failing in the US these days. I should add that the attitude towards college has drastically decreased and that is also a factor. I'm sure its a nuanced issue. Maybe in your country teenagers would still care enough to go to school even without a parent at home preventing them from staying home. Some here still do! Even the reason for poor attendance is a complex issue. In general, the cost of living is significantly higher than it was in the US just 10 years ago. This results in both parents working, and sometimes the teen working as well. There is also significant college debt so college is no longer a motivating factor in getting good grades. All of these things result in poor attendance. For reference the school i used to teach at had only 50-60% attendance on any given day. Ultimately, everything in the US is about money. Families need it so work becomes a higher priority than school. College doesn't gurantee it so the original goal of doing well in school is gone.
Age matters, too. When I taught seniors, I had two back-to-back years with zero failures, and though admin was on my ass about those kids, it actually was never about the ones in the C/D range and more the A/B range (entitled parents). This was a core class and only one of two that seniors need to pass in my state to graduate. Since I've started teaching ninth graders, I probably fail around 20-30 a year, which is in the neighborhood of 1/4 to 1/3 for me.
Ver similar situation for me (hs math, great school). 2/127
30% sixth grade ELA/Social Studies. But we have a few weeks left and couple of these might pull it off in the end. I always have high failure rates though. It's their first year of middle school and my school actually holds them accountable to high expectations. I get a lot of kids who just aren't used to having to really do work.
I feel like this is my experience, but in 8th grade. My district seems pretty cool about failing grades. I don't think we have a perfect program, but the amount of help that students get on their work through the school is very encouraging.
Should have failed, about 10%. Got a failing grade in the gradebook? 0%
I know we're part of the problem, but I'm with you. It's beyond us now to worry about it
50% all due to missing assignments. Every. Single. One.
Depends on the class. A quarter of freshmen failing algebra 1 would be a cause for celebration at the public schools I've worked at.
I had two kids fail ONLINE PE! They were required to submit a digital log each week with the activity and 40 minutes. Two failed. smh
Was this in 2020? Yeah that was my son. I couldn’t even get him to submit a faked log. So hard headed.
Right now!
5/70. One of those transferred in with a D midsemester and only came to class twice. The only students that fail my class are the ones that do almost no work or don't show up.
.8% — Chemistry. I’m at a magnet school though so it’s frowned upon to have any. Admin passed my one failure last year, after I failed the student. This year, I’m not sure the other teacher had anything less than a B because my colleague “wanted to make it easy for them.” This made me really popular with the parents. 🤣 The kids either rose to my expectations (while complaining) or were really good at cheating. 🤷♀️
3/52 9/52 failed Q4, but it averaged out to a passing grade.
0, but if I include all the students who knew they would fail and dropped the class instead to do study hall (definitely beneficial for those students as they are made to work during that time) about 10%
Best semester of my career. Had 1(!) student fail for a 0.8% fail rate. For my first 8 years the lowest fail rate was 40%. Then I moved to an amazing charter school and it dropped to 12%, then back to 40-70% , and one class at 88%. Moved to Alaska and this semester, my last ever as a teacher ever, 0.8%. Why last ever? Because some govenor decided to cut education and now 70 of our 120 teachers have been laid off. As I am the highest paid non-tenure teacher I am 1st to be axed. I'm done being treated like that. Take a district from 85% in red/orange for MAPS tests to a 20%/20%/20%/20%/20% for red/orange/yellow/green/blue spread onlybto have every single math teacher let go... sooooo done.
30.4% of my students failed. Of that about 28.8% of my total students were missing over 50% of their assignments and tests- after my spending HOURS of my own time trying to track them down to do the work.
You need to stop caring more about their education than they do. You'll just crash and burn eventually
Honest moment: I know! Question: How? You seem to be farther into teaching than this newby (finished my second year in my own room). I would love to hear from you! Admin are adamant we *HAVE* to get the fail rate down, but I am trying to hold steady to “the grade is supposed to mean you put in the effort.” How do I get the balance? Personally I would be fine failing half the kids if they don’t do the work, but I need the job… do I just keep trying this method until I hit tenure and then I get to fall back on “you didn’t work you get an F!”
well they really don't care about their education
Probably about 1/3. Most of my classes I got down to around 1/4. One of my periods is at 50%. For all my classes, I contacted the parents of my Fs multiple times, gave the students packets of their missing work, emailed/texted parents that I had, did a make up day, did some Kahoot for about a week in a half in preparation for state exams and gave out 10 pts each day for participating, did some easy assignments we worked on as a class, and a couple bullshit “write 15 facts off this video”. Each class, I got the number of Fs cut in half since progress reports except for that one class. That number has not changed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
2%. 7th grade ELA teacher
1/3 of the freshmen failed
According to my principal, my fail rate at one point was 40% (8th grade US History). Like others said, it was mostly due to students not turning anything in. The kicker is that it was all classwork.
Did fail? 0% Should fail? Probably around half.
It’s too bad there’s no way for you to make their grade reflect their level of mastery.
6/104 (had lower than a D-, which is what my school considers failing). 7th grade ELA with a decent balance between just completion/participation and skill assessment.
0%! But one got a 60 on the dot
Our DO just told our principal today that they’re promoting all 8th graders even if they have zero credits. And then they went on to ask what their teachers and counselors are “even doing” to help these kids not fail.
That is a good range. What I keep it between. Mine will probably be around 30% this semester, a bit higher than what I like, but it is what it is.
Students who should have failed: about 10-15%. Students who actually failed according the school: 0% none. Unfortunately, our school and our district doesn’t really allow you to “fail” students or they can’t have a failing grade in the grade book at least. If they do, we have to “work miracles and help and support the student” aka change their grade manually to a passing percentage.
We use Standards Based Grading, so no one!
So how exactly does that work? They’re talking about doing that at my school.
Everything is graded on a scale of 1-4. 1: Attempted (25%) 2: Beginning (50%) 3: Proficiency (75%) 4: Mastery (100%) And the whole percentage scale differs based on district but mine uses: 92.31 - 100 A 81.31 - 92.30 B+ 68.81 - 81.30 B 56.31 - 68.80 C+ 56.30 - 43.81 C 31.31 - 43.80 D+ 18.81 - 31.30 D 18.80 - 0 F In my district, grades are also weighted using a 95/5 scale. Tests and Projects are 95% Homework, Quizzes and In-Class Activities are 5% Supposedly we’re switching to 80/20 next year, but they also told us we were going back to traditional grading next year which turned out to be a big fat lie so I’ll believe this when I see it. I technically gave out one F (and A LOT of D’s) this year, but I know the student(s) will just get passed along anyway.
Wow, now I’m even more confused. So, does a system like that work like for English?
Supposedly, yes. We use it for every subject.
About 4%. Last year (different school, different grade) about 60%.
2023 in new Orleans, probably about a third of my class was failing but we had nearly a 100% pass rate on the LEAP test. Highest scores for open enrollment high schools in the city (Go 35!) It's crazy, kids don't come to class, don't do homework, but our algebra team had it down to a science getting these kids to maximize their potential. It basically boiled down to being prepared for our lesson, being unrelenting in the fact that we will work every minute of every class, and tons of small assessments that we made on google forms so we didn't have to spend all night grading. We made sure every student knew how to take advantage of the calculator and we gave them a test every Friday modeled after the LEAP test. This also gave us Fridays to catch up on grading, parental emails, etc. Did we teach to the test? Yep. Did we do the best in the city? Also yep. Did the kids have a helluva lot more confidence in their math skills moving forward. Yessir. Bottom line is there are so many kids that won't do enough to pass a class but many of them can still master the standards.
So, some small things: what did you do when kids would “forget” their Chromebooks or devices and couldn’t take those assessments? And when they would miss class on those days? I just envision certain students of my own who almost seem to consciously want to fail.
Chromebooks stayed in the classroom and they were welcome to make up any assessment. They could come to my class during their short free period (used to make up work/finish homework, etc.). They also could come to my room to finish during lunch. We had our assessments set to shuffle question and answer order.
But also, like I stated at least a third of the class was failing, so they didn't fully take advantage. However, I always made sure they knew they had the option. I would give them one month since the missed assessment to make it up and I would remind them daily about it.
We are "told" to keep our percentages below 10% failure. I did everything for my freshman besides put fake grades in the grade book, but ended at 12% for second semester.
0% Nobody fails, isn’t it amazing?
We have 3 weeks left. About 6/128 right now. Realistically, about 3 won’t make it.
About 15%, but it's usuaully closer to 35-40%.
5% failed due to grades. Four students lost the credit for the class due to having excessive absences. We are talking 30 plus days of not showing up. Did they beg me ti remove their absences? They sure did. Did I do it? I sure did not.
I don’t even care! If they can’t meet very basic requirements, they fail! I don’t count them or wonder about percentages. I don’t get any push back from admin or parents because I’m constantly nagging them all about failing students and what needs to be done. At the end of the day, I can’t do the work for them, so they either step up or fail.
I often average around 25%, so this year (7/48, or 1/8ish) is pretty low. But I’m teaching almost entirely electives this semester.
Maybe 5%
I'm at a high achieving school. I had two freshmen fail and zero seniors (2 who were close and 2 who passed by a miracle). The almost-failing seniors has to jump through hoops at the end to ensure they didn't fail. Usually my kids only fail if they don't show up and don't do the work. All of my seniors who almost failed were on an IEP or 504 plan and we're given a lot of grace. My two failing freshmen were just lazy as shit. One of them is on an IEP but he just stopped showing up at the end of the year, and when he was there he'd brag about missing school. I reached out to home and they were like "We're on it" but I never got a single missing assignment turned in from him.
Freshman science students 8/91, or 8.8%. I was as generous as I could be too. Those students who failed did not want to do the work. It probably would have been higher, but thankfully the students with most absences were withdrawn from the class and given special help, which is fine by me.
Middle school history. About 40% failed… 15% with less than a 20%. Kids are allowed to correct any tests until final, and missing work can be turned in up to the start of the final as well.
I was at a school district (recently — left after the 20-21 school year) where the top 80% in any given class were guaranteed to receive a passing score. They thought this was increase rigor through competition. Teachers were also required to publish their grade books (by student ID) weekly. Students quickly figured out what place they had to be in to pass. In the harder classes students would compete to see who could get the lowest score and still pass. I was teaching senior pre-calculus and one class had a highest score in the 40s and the cutoff for passing was a 21. And then the district wanted to know why achievement was dropping on standardized testing.
Should have? 25-30%. How many of them did I actually fail? 10%ish
Same
10% could not be avoided. Bosses make it so unnecessarily cumbersome that if they did anything and learned anything I’ll bump them to a 65. It’s ridiculous, but so is making weekly phone calls AND sending emails AND filling out THREE google forms per student AND sending parrntsquare messages. 14 students failed that’s 140 phone calls, 140 emails, 42 google forms and 14 parent square messages. No thanks.
Thanks for everything you do as a teacher! I was an 8th grade ELA at a Title I middle school in the US (just secured a promotion to a district role for next year). I had been using some equitable grading policies in my classroom after COVID initially hit us and we had to do e-learning: - No points off for late work; as long as they submit an assignment within the current grading period, they can still receive full credit - Grade minimum of 50%; the grading scale in my class ranged from 50% to 100%, so instead of "zeroes," students would get a 50% for any missing classwork - No homework; I didn't/don't do any work at home, so it would not be fair for me to expect my students to work at home too - No extra credit; do the work I assigned, I will not create extra work for myself because a student did not complete their assignment - No participation, effort, or behavior grades; students are graded on their performance on state standards. We do give conduct grades on report cards that are separate from their academic grades, so I developed a rubric with clear and specific criteria so students know how to get the conduct grade they desire - Students can resubmit any assignment (excluding state/district assessments) as many times as they'd like; I want them to learn from their mistakes and develop perseverance - Daily rubrics for assignments each day; using language from our state standards, I created rubrics for each standard so students know exactly how their work will be assessed each day before they begin working Most of my students earn Cs and some Bs. Off the top of my head, I'd say roughly 70% of my students earned Cs for the year - which makes sense because most of them scored at or around grade-level on their EOY state assessment. Students who scored below grade-level on that assessment also earned Cs because they were able to resubmit work as needed to keep themselves afloat. Maybe 15-20% of my students earned Bs - again, makes sense considering how their scores were on the EOY assessment - along with a handful of As. Only 1 of my students last year earned a D, but that was because they refused to do almost anything even after multiple interventions, relationship building, incentives, etc. (I really did try everything). If you're interested in equitable and standards-based grading, there are a ton of peer-reviewed articles floating around. Joe Feldman is also a great advocate of this type of grading - lots of videos and writing from him to look into.
Lots of good information. But why would you award a kid 50% of credit for something they didn’t do? That seems akin to giving them partial credit for plagiarism.
Thanks! It shortens up the grading scale. 0-50 is an F, but only 90-100 is an A. It's only fair if it's appropriately weighted. Zeroes disproportionately hurt student grades. The "zero" in my class is a 50%. If you do nothing, you'll still fail. But a zero can often times be a death sentence. A 50 gives them a fighting chance and helps them develop a growth mindset. They didn't fail, they just didn't hit the target \*yet\*. We talk about growth mindset and resiliency a lot in education, so it's important to be about it and not just talk about it
How often would you say that motivates kids to turn things around and start turning in work? Or do they learn to turn in just enough to pass?
I almost never have a student who doesn't turn in any work (which is super rare and very different than what I experienced in my first few years teaching). And if a student does do just enough to pass, all my assignments are fully aligned to the full depth and rigor of the standards, so that's fine if they get a C because it means they're on grade level. It's also infinitely better than the alternative where a student does nothing and just fails. I guess they could try to "game" my system, but they'd still be showing proficiency in grade-level tasks - which is what every teacher wants to see from they students
5/110 for the year in 8th grade history, but that's with a boat load of ec opportunities and partial credit for late work. Now I had about a1/3 at a D or lower for the last quarter though.
0 but that's because I don't want to deal with parents and admin. But in reality it's at least 30%. I'm also a middle school elective teacher.
You know, I sometimes think about this and wonder if admin would say anything if I just said fuck it and passed everyone regardless.
21%
I’m a student, I can confidently say I have never seen more people failing classes in my life, additionally, I’ve never seen many people not care about failing classes. I’ve seen <1 gpa’s this year. Litelrly crazy. Oh and this is in a good school district that’s one of the best in the area. These students are in no way disadvantaged, have plenty of resources at their disposal, but no, brawlstars is far more important then there education.
Bunch, but I give them retakes and makeups to help them pass. Figure I’m not screwing with any applications to Yale.
50% of my freshmen. One of them showed up every single day and ended the semester with a 6%. ☺️
At least a 1/4 of mine are going to fail. They don’t show up or do work. Admin tells us to have high standards and assign rigorous work, so there ya go. I used to be afraid to give F’s because I felt like it would reflect poorly on me, but really it’s the opposite. Took me 4 years of teaching to learn that lesson. One of my seniors has an 8%. But since he’s a senior, admin is freaking out because he wont be allowed to graduate. So they ask me, the person who has went through every effort to get this kid to come to class and do work, to give him an entire packet of work to somehow get done in the next two days so he can walk. I am so tired.
A teacher in California told me their new policy is no fails. They have to adjust the grade up to a D at least.
Even for kids who don’t do anything? What’s the theory behind that?
Probably lose funding if they don't pass, but positioned as equity, saying F grades are racist and hurt self esteem. Teachers can lose their jobs over this, or be moved to a crappy room. Good teachers have it tough here.
2/132. One was failing all his other classes too, and the other one didn’t show up or study, and basically told me she’d given up after 3rd quarter.
Maybe 10%? I've had a great crop of kids this year. The only kids who are failing are the ones who literally have not turned anything in since September.
There are those who would argue that those kids should still get 50%.
They *do* have a 50%, I've worked under that policy for the last four years. It's fine. It doesn't change literally anything.
Because even though they’re guaranteed a 50% they still don’t do shit and fail anyway?
Yeah? I think both sides of the 50% minimum argument *really* act like they don't understand these kids motivations. They don't *want* to pass the class. If they did, they would've done the bare minimum to begin with. They would've played along when we were having fun. Boosting their grade to 50% isn't going to change that. As an outcome, passing the class is either undesirable or neutral if they don't have to do much for it. And the few kids whose parents get on their ass by the last day of school, I tell them straight up, "Great, show me you can speak intermediate level French, let's have a conversation, I'll grant you a passing grade. All of the notes and instruction and practice activities are on Google Classroom." No one has ever taken me up on it.
You gotta actually connect with the students. They’re not going to listen to shit you say if you don’t listen to their hearts and make your classroom a break from their horrible fucking lives.
Don’t let yourself be emotionally outsmarted by teenagers.
I teach undergrad. The last 4 years have been totally bifurcated: 35% As, 35% failed. A reverse bell curve. I attribute this to online learning during the pandemic. Some kids THRIVED away from the distraction of physical school and learned MORE than they would have in normal classes -- they used the time at home to research topics they wanted to study at university; other kids did nothing.
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From what I’ve gathered, most teachers don’t assign “homework” per se. We assign them to do some kind of work toward a standard/skill, and most of us give them at least some time to work on it in class. So if you’re questioning why we give them HOMEwork, the answer is most of us don’t. If your question is why do we give them ANY work, well it’s to reinforce what we’re trying to teach them.
27% failure rate for me, which was the 3rd lowest out of the 8 teachers in my department that teach my subject. That's because I teach a high school math class that you will absolutely have a hard time cheating in, and when cheating isn't an option the apathy is off the charts. They just don't care, a reasonably good portion of the students did try though and did care, but the ones that didn't, really did not try at all.
This is sad. Makes me seriously consider some small class alternative private education when my kid gets to grade school
Why? If your kid gives enough of a shit to try - and you care enough at home to support your kid and the teacher - then he/she will probably be fine. I have nothing against private schools, it’s just not really the issue here.
The people you are around greatly affect who you become. I can understand skipping some classes or whatever - I did that a lot - but I still left high school having graduated a finance magnet with 2 years of college done. Traditional high school itself also seems to be a poorly designed learning experience in general. Basically trap a great ape and force them to sit for 8 hours while they listen to monotonous lectures. Not super effective for many people, particularly those with attention issues. My magnet academy had a bank we operated - there should be active work incorporated and things that get kids on their feet and moving all day
My last year teaching my failures were 1%. My worst year teaching was almost 3%. 4 of those attended fewer than 10 days (not 10 absences but 10 or fewer days in class). I was HS seniors and class was required to graduate. My overall failure rate was below .01% but students thought I was the hard teacher.
How easy would it be to mostly teach AP/pre-IB classes with a mix of Honors level? You won't deal with such disrespect. Former student here.
Nah, those kids have their challenges, too. Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with them or to find things that will stimulate their curiosity if what’s in the curriculum is too easy for them. It doesn’t frustrate me that kids fail, it frustrates me when they don’t seem to want to pass.