Stephen is using economic thinking to tackle a problem, but then there would be an economic incentive for the teacher to purposely lower their guesses of student outcomes.

We know that black, Latino, and Native American kids score lower than others. We know that boys have lower grades than girls. We know that kids from low socio-economic status do worse than others. If teachers can overcome any of these attributes to get scores up to where we would like them to be, they should be heavily compensated (and copied).

Yes, predicting grades out a quarter in advance is immoral if you really believe your expectations. However, I have no idea a few days later who I had high expectations for and who I had low expectations for because I “graded” 160 kids after seeing them for two days. After all, I had a assigned seating chart, and at the end of the second day of class, I made a note of who seemed to be answering the first day’s set of homework questions, who was asking questions, who seemed to be daydreaming, etc. I always do this because I need to know who are the few kids that I will need to keep a careful eye on as the class progresses. After my first quiz, I know what kids that I need to go to first when they are working on their classwork. After the second quiz, I have more information, and can adjust the list of “underperformers”. This list gets more representative of who needs help as the quarter progresses. To think that I have this down after two days is silly….I know that, and I certainly don’t put any faith in this list.

I’m absolutely convinced that it is very important to come into a new group of students with no prior knowledge about their past experience with school. For instance, I never talk to other teachers about the kids on my roster at the beginning of the school year. Only once I realize I’m having problems with a kid do I go to their previous math teacher and talk about what happened in their class and what, if anything, can be done about the kid in my classroom. Will a call home result in him getting his homework done more often? Will I get more attention when presenting a lesson by sitting him in the front of the room? Will a referral to the principal’s office help with behavior concerns or will it make it worse?

In a sentence, don’t assume that a kid cannot do something, but when you find he can’t, then help him get there. Except with the surface area of a cone…then you’re wasting your time!

With all that in mind, I did just post my predicted grades and their final quarter 1 grades on my blog.

Perhaps it’s purely semantics but I cringe a bit when Hal says, “… what does it mean that we write a test knowing that some people will probably fail it?” I hope it doesn’t mean we should make our tests less rigorous.

The point of this game, from my perspective, is to maximize the value of assessment. Hal and I both overestimated our student’s … well … from Hal’s vantage point, he overestimated how well his students take tests. Personally, I overestimated how much my students know, particularly regarding cone surface area.

This is valuable.

We may dispute just how valuable, but with finite review time, with finite opener space, it’s valuable that I know the greatest disconnnect between my students, their teacher, and our content right now is with cone surface area. That sort of data makes me feel like Rambo with innumeracy standing in for the smarmy small-town sheriff.

The issue of expectations is a monster, particularly when you predict a failing grade. I’m convinced that predicting an F only one week in advance of the assessment is benign, expectations-wise. It does the raise the question, though: what are you doing about it? How are you remediating, soldier?

Is the student frequently absent or tardy? Then have you called the parents or contacted administration?

Is the student clueless to the finer points of probability? Then have you at least invited her in for tutoring, if not coerced her into it with an academic referral?

Predicting failiure, as the esteemed members of this conversation have pointed out, is where the game gets serious. Now what’s your play?

Deeper questions here: How should we understand the effects that our expectations, even unspoken, have on students? What are tests really measuring? And, casting its shadow over all of this, always: What should we do about the students who aren’t getting it, who we know aren’t getting it, and who we can even predict won’t get it?