Extra Credit for Kleenex
STUDENTS CONTRIBUTE IN BUDGET CRUNCH
By Nicole C. Wong / San
Jose Mercury News found via Joanne
Jacobs
Originally posted March
9, 2004
Another
brilliant idea from the professionals who invent education.
Palo Alto High’s budget is so tight that Sonia Ferrandiz-Bodoff’s German teacher
offers three extra credit points to any student who brings a box of tissues to
class. In Cupertino, science teacher Katheryn McElwee gives her Monta Vista High
students five points for a roll of paper towels.
Even English teachers at Harker, a private school in San Jose that charges up to
$21,000 a year tuition, have resorted to awarding extra points for school
supplies.
“The teachers are pretty desperate, and so are we,” said Sonia, a freshman.
With school budgets shriveling across the state, teachers are enticing students
to help stock the supply shelves in exchange for extra credit. In some cases,
the tissue-box bonus can bump a B-plus to an A-minus, but other teachers say it
has almost no impact on a student’s final grade. Either way, some education
leaders say any credit for Kleenex undermines the grading system.
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“It’s absurd,” said Buzz Bartlett, president of the Council for Basic
Education, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit group that advocates for high
academic standards in public schools. It sends the message that “grades are not
a reflection of the quality of your schoolwork.”
The California Department of Education does not provide guidelines on awarding
extra credit. And principals often don’t know what teachers are rewarding
with bonus points.
Some teachers add a point to a student’s participation grade for bringing
supplies. Others tack on five points to the final exam score. Many set limits on
how much extra credit a student can earn. Teachers offer different explanations
on how the extra credit can impact a student’s final grade.
“If they are on the border, it might help them out,” said Elizabeth Brimhall,
a Palo Alto High science teacher who awards a maximum of five points extra
credit for one box of tissue.
But Palo Alto High math teacher Ellie Slack said the five points she offers for
tissue — equivalent to one homework assignment in a class that rolls out about
90 assignments each semester — is less than 0.5 percent of a student’s grade.
“Basically,” she said, “you count it as zero.”
So,
how ethical is it to entice students to give supplies to schools for something
that appears to be something but is really nothing? If it really is nothing,
then why offer it? If it is really something, then how ethical is it to increase
grades for something having nothing to do with academic performance?
Teachers who offer the incentive say it’s the easiest way to stock up on often
overlooked school necessities — items that teachers regularly whip out their
own wallets to buy. One South Bay teacher says colleagues who don’t offer
extra points for supplies sometimes swipe tissue boxes from those who do.
Justice,
at last! Those who refuse to manipulate students steal from those who do.
Having a steady supply of tissue on hand for students — especially during the
allergy and cold seasons — is smart from an academic standpoint, teachers say.
“Then you don’t have to excuse them from the room to get toilet paper from the
bathroom,” which could mean missing 10 minutes of class, said Slack, whose
classes empty two tissue boxes a week.
Tissue has become so coveted at Palo Alto High that several teachers stash their
stockpiles in locked cabinets. Students are just as protective. The side of each
box displays the name and class period of the tissue-box donor — written in
large letters so the teacher remembers who deserves credit.
Tissue isn’t the only item in short supply. But it often gets short shrift when
a science department, for example, puts lab supplies at the top of its shopping
list.
This year, Harker English teacher Mark Mitchell went with the extra-credit
option for tissue. Before that, he resorted to another creative tactic.
“I used to steal them from the office,” Mitchell admitted, thinking back a few
years to when he taught at The King’s Academy, a Sunnyvale private school.
Students often clamor for extra credit, so offering points for ponying up a
box of Kleenex or Puffs is a simple way to quiet them down.
“In the honors classes, they fly in” because those students chase after every
single point, Palo Alto’s Slack said.
And
nobody thinks this is a problem, right?
I think I’ve just discovered the answer to NCLB. Low performing students just
have to donate 100 boxes of tissues, more or less, and then all our public
schools will shine! Every child will then have the test scores to prove s/he has
not been left behind.
Honors student Kristy Iyama, a senior at Campbell’s Westmont High School, jumps
at every chance to bump her grades up a bit by bringing in tissue boxes.
“When you get the opportunity,” said Kristy, 18, “you definitely go for it.”
Kristy realized this arrangement can put poorer students at a disadvantage
– especially when teachers award more extra credit for expensive items, like
markers for overhead projectors and dry-erase boards.
No
problem. We’ll just have the government create a food-stamp-like program for
parents to purchase supplies for government schools. It makes perfect sense.
Monta Vista teacher McElwee, who often needs additional supplies for animal
dissections in her biology and physiology classes, awards five extra-credit
points for tissue and up to 15 extra-credit points for a box of latex gloves,
which costs more.
But she also invites students to earn extra credit by writing two paragraphs on
the importance of safety during a science experiment, “in case there are kids
who want the extra credit but don’t have the money,” she said.
“In six years of teaching, I’ve got to tell you I think I’ve read two to three
of those papers — total,” McElwee said. It’s probably easier for students to
“just raid their mom’s pantry.”
Duh!
You think? A major problem with public schools is that teachers have been
working overtime thinking of ways to make it easier for students to do well.
See, e.g., To
Read or Not To Read: New Shakespeare translations are the question.