HateRed said:
Like I said, I'd love to see a writing sample.
Old man yells at cloud. You can insult our kids all you want. My kid goes to a top high school and has actually had their writing awarded in extracurricular writing programs. My other kid is on track to graduate with honors from an elite university. They both took way more AP classes than UC's credit, as did all their friends, and that is a set curriculum so you can't claim they are too easy. (And the 5's on AP tests would contradict any such claim as well. Their education was fine. You seem to be confusing harder grading with good teaching, which are totally unrelated. There are many ways to learn and provide feedback and motivation beyond a letter grade. For instance, a lot of teachers grade tests and papers at a reasonable difficulty and then give a lot of easy homework that you basically get 100% on for turning in. or a lot of easy to achieve extra credit points. Like say a biology class giving extra credit for taking pictures of local plants or an art class giving credit for visiting a museum. They can basically raise their grade 5% - 15% over their tests with homework and extra credit. So they get the feedback but as long as they are trying they get a decent overall grade. A lot of Math classes allow kids to retake tests to demonstrate proficiency. You just need to be willing to go over your test and learn what you did wrong.
So think of a typical class grade breakdown like this. 40% of the grade may be homework. 10% is class participation. So turn in all your homework and speak in class once in a while, and you get 50 points. Then say 50% of the grade is tests, papers and projects. 60% on those gets you to 80% for your total grade - congrats, you got a B. Didn't quite make it to 80%, well, maybe the teacher had a free 5% you could get by doing extra credit work. Student still got the 60% feedback but they got a B. And as I said, statistically more than half the grades given in high schools are A's. It isn't just my personal experience. Colleges know this and have adjusted accordingly. And, by the way are all grading much easier as well. Grade inflation is just as rampant in college.
My experience is that kids are plenty motivated without the threat of a lower grade. It's a different way of teaching. It isn't worse just because that isn't what you are used to.
But I stand by my statements. Do your homework. Do extra credit if you have to. Then it is almost impossible not to pull a B. Basically a C gets pulled up to a B by just doing your work. Of course a lot of C students are C students because they don't do their work so they don't benefit. But if they can't be bothered to do that, then they don't belong.
I'd also say that if you really thought about it, even under your system, you probably had very few students who did all their work and didn't pull B's, because most kids who do all their work naturally pull at least a B on their tests because they actually learn the material.