Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Virginia Parents Fight for Easier Grading Standards

By Laura Fitzpatrick

To the grade-grubbers go the spoils. And the grade-grubbers in this case are rabble-rousing parents in Virginia's Fairfax County. Residents of the high-powered Washington suburb have been battling the district's tough grading practices; chief among their complaints is that scoring a 93 gets recorded as a lowly B+. After forming an official protest group last year called Fairgrade and goading the school board into voting on whether to ease the standards, parents marshaled 10,000 signatures online and nearly 500 in-person supporters to help plead their case on Jan. 22. After two hours of debate, the resolution passed, a move critics consider a defeat in the war on grade inflation. [Time]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Those my-child-is-an-honor-student-bumpersticker-parents are a sad lot. It's all about image over there because basically they were just fighting for image not intelligence or higher standards. Think about it. Those parents were fighting for lower standards. The real losers are their children. I think that superintendent should be commended for his desire to keep standards high. What can we do to woo him over here and get rid of the overpaid administrators that have cluttered the halls of Starkey far too long?