why "grade" the initial rough draft to begin with??
It makes no sense to me to even call that initial submission "finished/final" if it can be regraded after revision.
While I don't teach writing at the elementary school level, I do teach writing. I allow revisions on all essays. Even though I teach at the college level, many of my students do not understand the necessity of revision. In addition, they often have serious writing deficiencies that aren't addressed by just turning in a final paper or even by turning in a rough draft and a final. Some students need more revisions than others. My goal is to teach my students how to write well. That's pretty much all I care about.
If students take me up on my revisions offer and come to my office hours and rewrite their papers until they learn how to write well, I'm all for that. If they need the carrot of a grade to get them to put in the extra effort, I'm cool with it--as long as the outcome is better writing.
Does that mean that some kids turn in crap because they didn't start on time and essentially get extra time to finish? Yes, but I find students actually learn more when they continue to rewrite. I give feedback on every draft. It takes an insane amount of time. I'm okay with that. I haven't always offered unlimited rewrites. Over time, I have found that the students who get them become better writers than those who don't.
I don't know about the school in question, but perhaps the teachers are finding it really difficult to see what their students can actually do? I'd talk to the teacher about what "helping" entails. No proofreading at all? No giving ideas or editing sentences?
I believe people learn most through their mistakes. As a parent, I think it can be difficult for parents to allow young children to make them. It hurts to see them make grades lower than they are capable of.
I also hate the idea that projects are graded on whether or not the student is good with a glue gun. I wrote in a couple of weeks ago about a project my daughter spent a month on. She ended up making 89 on it, which (outside of spelling tests) is the lowest grade she's made this year. She got points off for speaking too quickly and not appearing to listen well enough during other people's presentations. At first I was irritated by the grade because I do want working hard to matter. Why should she make 100s in reading where she doesn't work at all and then make a B on a project she spent a full month on? What does say? But then my husband reminded me that this IS what we want. We don't want her making perfect grades. We want her to realize she needs to speak slower, and if she received full credit, that wouldn't hit home.
So yeah, it sucks. But I think it is ultimately better for the kids to learn this stuff now than to be propped up by the adults now and start failing when grades matter more.
Anyway, just my take...
