Schools in Arlington County, VA Considering Banning Grades, Extra Credit; Unlimited Retakes on Assignments

Arlington county schools are thinking about eliminating… *checks notes*… school?

According to the Daily Wire:

Arlington County, Virginia, recently introduced a proposal for a new grading system, based on the idea of equity, that would allow an unlimited number of retakes on assignments, ban extra credit, and would block grading on homework assignments, Fox News reported on Thursday. In response, numerous teachers from Arlington slammed the proposal, saying that it would essentially give children a free pass and dramatically reduce the quality of education in the county.

Proponents of the new system claim that having certain standards — like having late penalties in education — often harms poorer children who may not have access to resources necessary to complete assignments on time.

“Additionally, it has been suggested that students should not be graded on homework assignments because the fear of making mistakes will have a negative impact on their learning process,” Fox News added.

But not everybody in Arlington Public Schools supports the idea. Teachers at Wakefield High submitted a lengthy letter of opposition.

“As educators with decades of experience in APS, we are extremely concerned with several changes proposed in the new grading and homework policy,” the teachers wrote.

“Students who come from families which are not as ‘savvy’ or ‘aware,’ will be subject to further disadvantage because they will not be held accountable for not completing their homework assignments and/or formative assessments according to the deadlines set by their teachers.”

“Such results are anything but equitable–conversely, they offer our most needy students reduced probability of preparing for and realizing post-secondary opportunities,” they added.

A spokesperson for Arlington Public Schools told Fox News that its policies are still under evaluation.

I know this article is a few days old now, but I needed a little time to gather my thoughts on this.

The best I can come up with is… “what in the actual hell would this do to help anyone?”

So much for “no such thing as a bad idea.”

This is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard in a really long time.

The school board hasn’t decided on anything yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised at this point if they decided to go through with it because it makes zero sense. The aptitude for stupidity that our leaders have is actually quite impressive.

Do children learn at different paces? Absolutely. That’s a given, but we can’t expect educators to be able to juggle that many things at once. It’s hard enough to teach one class full of kids, but can you imagine if all the kids were working at completely different paces simultaneously? My head would explode.

There needs to be a standard of some kind. The expectations are already at a bare minimum, and the lowering of expectations that we’ve seen in the last decade or so has benefitted absolutely no one. Any college campus in America is a great place to look at what these kinds of allowances have done. Nobody wants to be there, they don’t want to put in any effort, and they still expect to be successful.

School is now teaching young people that they shouldn’t have to feel responsible for anything. Not for their homework, or their grades, or their failures. In this clown world of our own creation, failure doesn’t even exist! With an unlimited number of retakes on homework with no grades, everybody’s a winner in their own mind, but what about in reality? Who’s really winning? It’s not the kids, that’s for damn sure.

The education system is killing the future of this country. We’re not going to have anybody with values, morals, or two brain cells to run anything unless we teach them how to function as adults. Instead, we’re teaching them to be victims that need to have the rules changed for them to succeed, and it’s really sad to watch.

We’re so afraid of hurting people’s feelings that we end up ruining their lives instead. We cannot allow emotions to rule every aspect of our lives. They have their time and place, but we cannot allow them to trump facts, logic, and reason. It’s hurting our youth and will continue to do so until we actually do something about it.