I'm blown away that you and this teacher are discussing the psychology of grading in this class. Why isn't grading an objective measure?
I also don't really understand why she has to get 98 percent to get an A. Did she do poorly on some assignments? Were they objectively graded?
I guess it just creeps me out that the goal is to manipulate the grading so that perfectionism doesn't interfere. I'd be looking for her to learn about her perfectionism through this experience. Getting a B has to be a viable possibility that she can live through, even if it affects her college prospects.
Probably not what you want to hear, just my gut reaction. Feel free to throw it away.
Hey-- it creeps ME out, too. But he's the one who went there, with the notion that he's grading HER the way he is because of her "unmet potential" or some such thing.
I'd be happy to leave it alone if I felt that there WAS something to be learned from the experience.
It's just that the lesson that the teacher is trying to impart (by manipulating the grading-- as noted above-- and he admitted this to me) is NOT one that he is going to succeed in imparting to a perfectionistic PG student in this manner. He missed the target here, BIG time.
Did she do poorly on some assignments? Were they objectively graded?
This is the issue-- the answer is YES, just one, and no, it wasn't. Because the teacher wanted to use it FORMATIVELY... which is great, and I'm all for.... but you can't
also then use it SUMMATIVELY, since such grading doesn't accurately reflect the student's mastery of the material.
Her college prospects aren't what is at stake. She could
easily afford to squeak by with a C in this class and not have it impact her future that much.
What's at stake
is her underlying well-being. She has B's on her transcripts. Those are not where she's had problems emotionally. The problems are when she has a teacher like this that wants to "teach her a lesson" about something larger than the course material (character development, presumably), and while I support that GOAL... the method leaves a LOT to be desired. It's not really possible to teach this particular lesson (that effort is proportional to results) with material that isn't in the student's proximal zone. KWIM?
There are additional problems in this system: a) the teachers have LITTLE contact with students, so they don't get the normal 'feedback' loop to adjust for individual temperment/needs very well (which is where parents like me come in), and b) the teachers also don't write any of the (frequently crappy) assessments.
That's why using the major assessments formatively is a very dangerous thing-- they are NOT intended that way. The teacher is being a bit of a vigilante here, IMO, and he's not well-positioned to do this with my daughter in particular given their past history. She has NO rapport or trust with him.
