A report currently excerpted on Doonesbury in the “say what” (a kinda WTF quote of the day) states:
The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 47% of adults (more than 200,000 individuals) in the City of Detroit are functionally illiterate, referring to the inability of an individual to use reading, speaking, writing, and computational skills in everyday life situations. We also know that of the 200,000… approximately half have a high school diploma or GED…
Some people, particularly students, sing the praises of the social pass – giving a low passing grade to students who have a score in the high 50%’s, but manage to show up the minimal number of times. I suspect this happens more with students who take the pass fail option – because they shoot for a 60% and we all know that the lower our expectations, the lower our performance.
A boss at a former school I taught at explicitly discouraged giving D’s. This partly because novice teachers tend to worry about thier students’ grades more than the students do. When a new teacher, a GTA or someone insecure in their job gives a D it often means the student earned an F but the teacher lacked the confidence to enter that grade.
I don’t think too many students expect the social D, but the few who do cause most of a teacher’s problems.
