Partial Credit

In the article Should Partial Credit Be Awarded on Math Tests, the author Lynne speaks about the debate between students getting partial credit on tests or not at all. In math, like any subject, some teachers may give partial credit. Partial credit should be reward because it helps us know that the teacher knows that we know what we are doing. To any student, partial credit helps understanding what they are doing right and wrong. But to teachers, it is either you give partial credit or you do not. Now this is the debate: should partial credit be awarded on math tests? Should partial credit be given to everyone? Should partial credit be given on everything?

Although these assessments may teach kids to be better test takers, every child has a different strategy when taking a test, and for most adolescents one test defines how smart they are. In one test a myriad of issues could go on that could cause someone to be labeled as not smart enough or even too smart for the rest of their lives. Based on a test, someone is put into different classes, and classes build on top of each other, and by the time it is too late that person would have lost months if not a year of knowledge and comprehension. Then, there are those students who do not care. They feel the tests are worthless without incentive, so why should they do their best. These students’ lack of effort could result in ruined reputation for the whole school and themselves. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing stated, “a test is completely reliable if you would get exactly the same results the second time you administered it. All tests have ‘measurement error’." This means an individual's score may vary significantly from day to day due to testing conditions or the test-taker's mental or emotional state. Scores of young children and scores on subsections of tests are particularly

Much like other employees in varying fields, teachers will do anything within their power to keep their jobs. This is a part of human nature. Since the beginning of time employees try to please their bosses so they can keep their job or get a raise. Departments will give A’s to the students who usually would not deserve it just so that they can continue to keep that course in following semester. A large percentage of college courses are taught by part time teachers. Often students and sometimes even will demand that the grade be raised or otherwise they will complain to an administrator or a dean. These teachers will have to cater to the students demands out of fear of losing their jobs. Nowadays, students feel entitled to an A just because they pay an incredible amount of money for tuition. Teachers also have to listen to the administrators who tell the teachers to bump up grades so their department looks like it is doing better than it really

She also talks about these mistakes when she's modeling the content. They also spend time interpreting students work on the board, and they talk about other methods and places where someone might have gone wrong. The teacher also asks questions that forces students to explain why their answer is what it is. This practice is one that I’ve been able to work on a lot throughout my college career. I teach math labs for college algebra on campus, and the whole point of lab is to talk about different methods and pose questions to the students in order to enhance their comprehension of the

Teachers strive for their students to score well because the score also reflects on their teaching. Teachers seem to no longer teach for students to learn material and retain knowledge but to “ace” tests. Some learn to teach according to the test. Students learn the information that is going to be on the test but do not necessarily fully understand the material they are learning. There are certain standards that have to be met with each test. In most states part of the scores reflect the

In his essay, he states, “the reality is that teacher grading practices can be wildly uneven across schools—and even within them. For instance, one math teacher might be an extraordinarily lenient grader, while another might be brutally hard: Getting an A means something very different” (Churchill). While he has a point in that teachers grade different, why should there be any reason to punish the student for this? These tests do affect a student’s grades tremendously and sometimes determine whether a student graduates or not. For example, at my school, district-issued semester exams count for twenty percent of our grade. It seems irrational to hold a student accountable for an instructor’s inadequate teaching or grading practices, things that student has no control

Hanging chads are different in my opinion. They should be counted as they show the person punched through, but the chad just didn’t fall off for any number of reasons. If a voter did vote incorrectly, the voter should’ve requested a new ballot, and I think almost every single voter would’ve noticed the hole they’ve punched.

It comes to a point where the A is more important than how they achieve it. Unfortunately, this is the reality of the grading system. In some cases, students feel the need to cheat to get that A. “Researchers have found that the more students are led to focus on getting good grades, the more likely they are to cheat, even if they themselves regard cheating as wrong” (Kohn, 169). Though, a letter grade means nothing, it cannot tell you what a student can do, what they understand, or what they need help with. Grades are completely invalid. Tests tend to be more focused around what the teacher feels important. “Any given assignment may well be given two different grades by two equally qualified teachers. It may even be given two different grades by a single teacher who reads it at two different times” (Kohn, 168). At times, grades may even be pass or fail, which says nothing about the student’s abilities. This can cause unnecessary stress for said students, which can lead to

A teacher taught their students' prodigious material all year and expected them to apply it all in one test. Some students did not perform on the test, and it resulted in the teacher receiving a lower salary than expected. When the topic of teachers getting paid by students’ test scores it bring countless topics to discuss. Teachers pay should not be based off their students standardized testing scores.

The current academic grading system is helpful in student performance. The main reason the opposition disagrees with my point of view is simply that they believe the system has unfair limits and is not easily understood by everyone. The opposition argues that,“the grading scale is easy to manipulate because it is often subjective in nature.” (Meador) They argue this because, every teacher has a different teaching style and ways of grading. For example, during high school chemistry, my teacher required that we explain our solving process on each

Another situation to factor in is a student who has come from a bad teaching environment and has little education. There is a teaching method called TPR that teaches the students using a system that does not test, but does. This method will have students physically do exercises that involve math problems, Spanish words, etc as a method of learning. This teaching is very effective for those who have learning difficulties, yet how can students who learn in this manner be expected to take the same test as those without these learning disabilities (Nelson). A teacher may help this student in many ways, however the student may have lower scores due to the deficiency of knowledge they possess. The teacher will then be punished for having this student score poorly when in fact they have done nothing but help this student.

I always expected the teachers passed me even though I had a very bad grade in their classes. Once I got an F in algebra, but the teacher still passed me. I was very happy in that time, and I still didn’t put more attention on schoolwork. However, it caused me to have a big trouble about math. When I was 10th grade, I had to take advanced algebra. I didn’t understand what the teacher covered in the class due to my poor basic concepts of algebra. Everyday I had to stay after class to catch up on algebra. I must have spent double time to work on my math homework, so I really regretted what I had done in 8th grade. That was my consequence of cheating on our educational system. Now I believe that if my algebra teacher failed me at that time, I might not have needed to work that hard in my 10th grade. Therefore, I strongly agree with Mary Sherry to prevent students from getting worse by passing them

Furthermore, students being required to show their work in math allows them to go back and double check their work allowing answers to be more reasonable. Double checking work allows students to find mistakes and learn from them. Without work, teachers will not know how to help them because there is no written evidence of the steps they may have done wrong. When students show their work, the teacher can always tell what they did wrong, regardless of whether or not the student remembers what they did. It also affects the student when they are doing math. Double checking in math is a very valuable resource and without work and steps, it makes it harder to find mistakes and the most reasonable answer. My opponent would counter that as long as

They should take the time to actually work with the student and try to improve their work, and if they still can’t get it right, try to help them by effort. If the student’s really working hard and trying to prove to you that they are getting on track and that they are working hard I feel that they deserve a few points. From personal experience and opinion, I think that I will prefer a teacher that will help me and give me effort points instead of just moving me on not caring about my education. I have seen incidents in that matter and all it did was set the student up for failure. Experiences from high school, when I was attending the principal gave the teachers a rule that if the students were failing below a 60% in the class the teacher could not put that grade on the report card. So what they will do is give the student a 60% for that grading period as a final grade and students used this as a way to play around and not take it seriously because they knew that they were gonna get a 60%.(lowe) Michael Zuckerman used this as an example in his article about the students attending Harvard University. Harvard students were getting by fairly easy and the graduating class was not prepared for the real world. They did not take it seriously, and to think that it is “Harvard” doing this is mind blowing.(Zuckerman)This issue didn’t do anything but make the students not care about information in my opinion. They are not caring and they are giving up, that’s why there are more dropouts. So with that said, why is grade inflation the problem? Is it because of the students or the

The first reason why I think we should get partial credit because we show our work on everything we do. When we show our work we are showing that we understand what we were learned. Sometimes we end up making the mistakes and forgot to add or subtract something but that doesn't mean we shouldn’t get the question wrong for one mistake.