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...
This article is available to subscribers only.
To keep reading this article and more, subscribe now or purchase this article.
Subscribe to Education Week and Save
Get a full year and save up to 45%!
Viewed
Emailed
Recommended
Commented
- Superintendent
- Pinellas County Schools, Pinellas County, FL
- Middle School Language Arts Teacher
- TEAM Schools, Newark, NJ
- Program Coordinator
- Institute for Educational Advancement, South Pasadena, CA
- Elementary School Teacher
- Success Academy Charter Schools, New York, NY
- Project Manager- (Hawaii)
- Pearson Education, HI
