DISD Supt. Michael Hinojosa, at least as of Saturday in a DMN story, was still standing behind the new policy that prevents teachers throughout the district from deducting points when an assignments is turned in late and requires teachers to give retests to students who fail — despite a lot of comments against the policy here on Back Talk last week.
I understand Hinojosa’s rationale: DISD is attempting to put more students on track to master class content rather than just rack up kids who fail or allow them to dig a hole so deep they can’t get out, even if they are trying to do better. And Hinojosa pointed out that the policy is geared particularly to stemming the horrendous 9th/10th grade dropout rate — according to the DMN story, roughly 20% of DISD’s 9th graders don’t make it to 10th grade the following year. Speaking from experience at Woodrow, it seems as if the number of 9th graders who don’t move on is even higher than 20% (but that’s just an observation, not a fact).
If the ultimate goal of the policy, however, is to target 9th graders, it would make more sense to test the policy on 9th grade ONLY this year rather than applying it uniformly throughout all grades.
It’s possible that the policy could work, that teachers might like it and that more students will actually learn more — that’s a goal we all agree upon anyway. But there’s also a pretty good chance the policy will be a total failure, angering teachers and causing marginal students to backslide simply because the new policy allows students to slack off for awhile without penalty. And given that this policy is controversial and hasn’t been proven effective here, or anywhere else that I know of, why not just test it on 9th grade this year if Hinojosa really believes it will work?
I don’t see any harm in trying it on 9th graders — nothing else has worked there so far. But why play with fire with the rest of the district if we don’t have to?
One more thing: A lot of comments I’ve seen are using this policy to say that DISD just isn’t improving and that dopey ideas like this prove it. I disagree. I believe the timing is horrible for this policy (announcing it just before the school year starts), and it appears that more vetting of the policy should have taken place (if this many teachers are willing to step forward and complain, it just seems like this could have been handled more effectively).
But there’s nothing wrong with coming up with new ideas to combat serious problems, and Hinojosa is proving that he’s willing to take extraordinary steps to educate as many students as possible by considering policies that put him on the firing line. I don’t agree with this one, and I hope Hinojosa reconsiders it, but it’s not shaking my faith in DISD. The district is on the right path now, has the right leadership, and things are getting better — and I base this not on statistics, not on cocktail party talk, not on media reports. I base it on my personal experience as a DISD parent for the past 11 years.
