California Schools Experiment With Deletion of D's
English teachers at a California high school have deleted the letter D from their grade books.
The English department at El Cajon Valley High School outside San Diego say they noticed that D students were scoring poorly on state tests. They decided to start failing students whose averages fell between 60 and 69.5—the range which, until recently, resulted in a D.
Although only one grading period old, the experiment has yielded positive results, according to Laura E. Whitaker, the literacy coordinator at the 2,300-student school in the Grossmont Union High School District. After the English department did away with D's in the third quarter, about 50 of the students who earned that grade in the previous quarter raised their averages to C's, she said. But about 100 of the former D students dropped...
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