School foolishness again

[unixronin]

Once again, I find myself having to bitchslap gently remonstrate with the school system.  The Silly Goose has managed to get behind on her schoolwork already, barely over a month into the quarter, and the assignment which was sent home with her to complete over this coming weekend for partial credit is described on the accompanying instruction sheet as "making a rubric".

Needless to say, the assignment does not, in any way, shape or form, constitute anything consistent (without taking great liberties and stretching the definition almost beyond recognition) with any dictionary definition of the word 'rubric' with which I am familiar.  What appears, according to the assignment instruction sheet, to be meant by a 'rubric' in the assignment is a drawing which is successively refined in a series of numbered frames from the most basic, bare-bones sketch to a complete, detailed drawing.

In my note back to the teacher, I stopped short of saying "You picked a word you liked and invented a meaning for it out of whole cloth."  But I didn't stop far short.

Comments

[meglimir.livejournal.com]

You are so *nice*!

I would'a' printed out dictionary.com's rubric page, and possibly copied the entry from a bound version of Webster's, for good measure, and sent it to the teacher with a question about what sort of 'rubric' hse meant the child to devise ...

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

One of the more important lessons from my elementary school years was the manner of dealing with people who are stupid. Usually, that meant teachers. I am learning those lessons all over again with my children in school. While it is more personally satisfying to bite, hard, I find that it is much more effective to let the school know that I have teeth, and let them imagine how hard I bite.

[elegantelbow.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I was just having dinner with a first grade teacher yesterday, and she told me that the future of public school education in the U.S. will involve not grades for elementary school, but hundreds of rubrics -- and that the students are supposed to be involved in setting the rubrics.

And by "rubric" I mean "a standard method of assessing a student's knowledge of a specific subject".

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That sounds suspiciously like a trainwreck in the making.

[elegantelbow.livejournal.com]

I completely agree.

[bfudlmint.livejournal.com]

Rubric seems to be the keyword for a new teaching method.

What is a Rubric?
Heidi Goodrich, a rubrics expert, defines a rubric as "a scoring tool that lists the criteria for a piece of work or 'what counts.'" So a rubric for a multimedia project will list the things the student must have included to receive a certain score or rating. Rubrics help the student figure out how their project will be evaluated. Goodrich quotes a student who said he didn't much care for rubrics because "if you get something wrong, your teacher can prove you knew what you were supposed to do."

Generally rubrics specify the level of performance expected for several levels of quality. These levels of quality may be written as different ratings (e.g., Excellent, Good, Needs Improvement) or as numerical scores (e.g., 4, 3, 2, 1) which are then added up to form a total score which then is associated with a grade (e.g., A, B, C, etc).

Many rubrics also specify the level of assistance (e.g., Independently, With Minimal Adult Help; With Extensive Adult Help) for each quality rating.

Rubrics can help students and teachers define "quality". Rubrics can also help students judge and revise their own work before handing in their assignments.

from http://rubistar.4teachers.org

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Right. Now that's consistent with, and within the scope of, the dictionary definitions.

The usage from Goose's schoolteacher, to put it politely, isn't.

[bfudlmint.livejournal.com]

You are failing to understand how this Holistic method changes school work. It is a complete paradigm shift from the approaches that were used when you and I were in school. where did I put that dilbert management phrase generator?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I understand that all too well....

[attutle.livejournal.com]

I suggest all the "rubric"s be filled out in red crayon.

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Goose could likely use less help on this front. The year my mom called my English teacher 'stupid' was not so pleasant for me. The fact that she was stupid didn't really enter into it. Mom was complaining about the grade I'd gotten on a truly half-assed, slapdash essay that I'd written. She was livid that it wasn't a D or an F for the shoddy work that I'd done. IIRC, I got a B on it. Somehow I passed the class. I suspect it was mostly because the teacher didn't want to see me again the next year.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think what Goose could most use is a fire lit under her to get her schoolwork done on time. I was really dismayed that five weeks into the school year, she already had assignments she was almost a week behind on.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

homeschooling?