Thursday letters: Make report cards more accurate

As part of the dumbing-down of America, student academic grades are often inflated and bear little witness to actual student scholastic progress.

Some teachers are required to award no numerical test score lower than 50 percent, even if a students scores zero and puts forth no effort in class other than to serve as a disruption to the learning environment.

Many parents see inflated grades on report cards and take pride in student achievement, not realizing that an “A” in reading and math does not negate the fact that their 10th-grade child reads on the second-grade level, and computes on the third-grade level.

Rather than cheating students and fooling parents with false grades, report cards should be an honest assessment of student academic status. For example, a grade of 10-2-3 could indicate that a student is enrolled in the 10th grade but reads on a second-grade and computes on a third-grade level.

Parents would storm the school principal’s office if this happened, but all of us, especially our children, would be better off for it.

Columbia

This story was originally published June 10, 2015 at 7:48 PM with the headline "Thursday letters: Make report cards more accurate."