As the school year opened, our principal asked us to consider a hypothetical kid who bungled her way through a composition class only to ace the final exam – an essay final which assessed every skill from the year. He asked us to indicate what grade we’d give her with a show of hands.

Mine was the only hand for “A,” which, whatever, I suppose I should admit my biases more often. One teacher indicated an “F” and the rest spread themselves out pretty uniformly across the other passing grades. My philosophy is that it doesn’t matter how hard you try, it matters what you can doIt is also my duty to establish a class where how hard you try correlates directly to what you can do. and it doesn’t matter when in the semester you prove what you can do.

I can accept conflicting opinions on this to an extent, especially when the consequences only involve my principal’s hypothetical unicorn-student, but I get really, really bothered when you assign real, flesh-and-blood students to my remedial algebra class who, by all anecdotal accounts, know algebra backward, forward, left, and right, who scored proficient or higher on their state assessments, but who didn’t feel like completing your tear-out cookie-cutter homework assignments.

For which you failed them and assigned them to my remedial class, where they are now bored, unchallenged, and where – believe me – they really resent you.

What is your homework worth?