Grade Bailout
November 17th, 2008

Grade Bailout

^ 11 Comments...

  1. MacheteJack

    THANK YOU! THIS is the problem. Entitlement.

  2. JayWoz

    Great comic man, thumbs up!

  3. brianna

    don’t we already have this? I believe it’s called grading on a curve?

    (you know, “everyone bombed the test? OK! the top 5 people who failed now get an A!”)

  4. askj113

    Great Comic. Haha

    @Brianna: Grading on a curve is absolutely not a bailout. The vast majority of the time if the low grades were unexpected is because the teacher failed to teach the subject correctly. A good teacher does not have their entire class fail on a subject she taught well. The other thing that happens is that many teachers will fill a test with hard questions and then curve the grades upward to get a better picture of the class. Tests are more accurate when they’re not forced to conform to the ridiculous only >90% is an A. That forces the test to be filled with at least a fair portion of give-away questions to reach anything close to that percentage

  5. Sue Hubbard

    have you been a student for-freaking-ever or what? why don’t you hurry up and graduate and get a job you useless cad. and by the way. i love that poem. i hate your blog

  6. hamous

    Here at US, the collegeboard encourages ALL high school students to take Advanced Placement, college-level, classes. My AP physics passing rate has dropped from 90 % to 20% since the open enrollment. Yet, blinded by false self-esteem, students become upset, and parents start hovering around using all channels to try to get better grades.
    Half of my pre-AP students struggle to solve equations with one variable….. Half of my AP students are failing. Those who are failing cannot even remember which one is Newton’s first law, let along analyze anything.
    I do not curve to give them delusion….
    What is wrong is the concept of equal ability in US. Equal opportunity is great; equal right is wonderful, equal IQ is just dumb. No Child Left Behind policy is not realistic……
    What is wrong is US high schools are full of education major teachers, who cannot get the subjects in depth. I’ve been enough conferences and meeting, and no longer surprised by science teachers’ incompetency.

    The emphasized focus on the lower 25% low performance students has cost the education a big toll. Ignoring the high level students and leave them with no challenge is not going to help the US future…..

  7. el chupachupsacabre

    “No Child Left Behind policy is not realistic……”-Thank you, exactly what I was thinking

  8. Charismatic Enigma

    “No Child Left Behind”, as written, further entrenches what is already known about the American public education system — it will stagnate, simply to incorporate a larger volume of warm bodies. The Icelandic, Norwegian, German, and Hungarian educational systems are WONDERFUL. The American system is “incorporate as many children as possible”, not “incorporate as many children as possible, according to ability and desire to learn”. There are AP classes for a reason — children learn at different rates, and with vastly differing eagerness. Trade schools in Germany have historically yielded the greatest engineers in the world. Maybe we should follow the models of our fellow democracies?

  9. The One Guy

    I agree with all the statements on the No Child Left Behind Act, but the “grading on a curve” thing is iffy. On one hand, if the test is genuinely too hard, than grading on a curve is a perfectly logical action to take. On the other hand, if the students are just idiots, it’s most certainly not the right thing to do. Unfortunately, it’s often hard to determine which situation is which and it’s often a combination of the two.

  10. Economic Crisis

    I think you guys got over excited about the ‘no child left behind’ and ‘good teacher, bad teacher’ nonsense, and kinda missed the whole point of this comic. It could just as well have been a murderer asking to be set free, instead of being punished…

    Good luck America btw -our country is waiting to be struck by the aftershock of your economic crisis.

  11. D.R. Sanchez

    Bailout 2008, a poem by David Jeffrey

    Like a bloodied warrior,
    laying broken and torn.

    Like a dying soldier, hopeless and forlorn.

    But the blood, it be green,
    the color of money.

    And the soldier is an economy,
    and it is anything but funny.

    Broken are it’s people and shattered are their dreams.

    Thanks to the ultra rich and their full proof schemes.

    It is a tragedy with more pain to come.

    Finance will be Hell, and their wills will be done.

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