Word: grading
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Cheatham said that the mini-schools would be part of an educational sequence beginning in kindergarten. By the sixth grade, students would begin an "intensive exploratory" period, including some time spent in mini-schools during summers and the regular school year. Students would begin to make their occupational choices during this exploratory period...
Sanday's report, financed by a $61,576 grant from the U.S. Office of Education, is based on her 1971 examination of the records of more than 2,000 children (45% black, 55% white) who had just completed the ninth grade in Pittsburgh public schools. After plotting the changes in the students' IQ scores from 1962-70 as they moved through the largely segregated schools, she noted a significant trend. The scores of blacks in schools with mostly black pupils worsened steadily between kindergarten and eighth grade; the scores of whites in predominantly white schools, in addition...
...handful of blacks attending middle-class schools improved, while the scores of whites in lower-class schools declined. For example: scores for whites in schools where most pupils were from middle-class families rose from a mean of 105.5 in kindergarten to a mean of 108.7 in sixth grade; scores for blacks in similar schools went from a mean of 95 in kindergarten to 98.2 in sixth grade. But in schools where most students were in the lowest of the six socioeconomic classes defined in the study, white scores dropped from 91.2 in kindergarten to 89.3 in sixth grade...
...their pell-mell and sometimes unseemly rush to ensure harmony on campus, many college administrators agreed to institute some form of pass/fail grading. By 1971 an estimated three-quarters of the nation's colleges and universities were offering alternatives to traditional marking systems. Eager to ride the professional bandwagon, a number of high schools and grade schools were quick to follow...
Despite its drawbacks, pass/fail is by no means dead. "It should be used, for example, when a scientist wants to take an art course," says Northwestern's Baker, who thinks a student should be able to broaden his horizons without risking poor grades in subjects in which he has interest but perhaps little aptitude. In New York, City University Professor Philip Baumel goes even farther. "Most students usually opt for pass/fail for the right reasons," he insists. But Baumel, too, has noted a trend away from the new system: "There's a move...