Blaming kids is rampant amongst teachers was my opinion. (I have been out of teaching for almost 20 years now, so . . .). I changed schools after 17 years of teaching and got a fresh look at what we were doping as an "outsider" and what I finally realized was that I had come from a some what magical job into a more mundane one, one in which it was common to assume that if poor grades were given, it was the student's fault, 100%. (I was more of a 50:50 guy.)
There was one occasion in which I saw an actual problem with "the students." One of my new colleague's wife was a teacher of the eighth grade. (We were teaching college freshmen and sophomores.) She told me and others that we would see a sea change in the students in our classrooms in x years. I forgot about it until x years later, I saw a major shift in the grades being earned in my class. I had had a rock steady 13-14% of my students achieve an A in my course (Chemistry 1A). That number slid down, down, and finally got to 0% two out of three semesters. Nothing I did seemed to stem the tide, so I figured, since I was so ineffective with "modern students" I should retire and I did.
The "cause" (or suspected cause) of the decline. According to my eighth grade colleague, it was due to grade inflation kicking in greatly. Students who received high marks for mediocre work never feel the challenge of doing better and so do not. (Of course, I have no research to back that conclusion up, other than the diminishment in As and increases in Ds and Fs over five years. (I had quality controls in place, but who knows how robust they were?)
Blaming kids is rampant amongst teachers was my opinion. (I have been out of teaching for almost 20 years now, so . . .). I changed schools after 17 years of teaching and got a fresh look at what we were doping as an "outsider" and what I finally realized was that I had come from a some what magical job into a more mundane one, one in which it was common to assume that if poor grades were given, it was the student's fault, 100%. (I was more of a 50:50 guy.)
There was one occasion in which I saw an actual problem with "the students." One of my new colleague's wife was a teacher of the eighth grade. (We were teaching college freshmen and sophomores.) She told me and others that we would see a sea change in the students in our classrooms in x years. I forgot about it until x years later, I saw a major shift in the grades being earned in my class. I had had a rock steady 13-14% of my students achieve an A in my course (Chemistry 1A). That number slid down, down, and finally got to 0% two out of three semesters. Nothing I did seemed to stem the tide, so I figured, since I was so ineffective with "modern students" I should retire and I did.
The "cause" (or suspected cause) of the decline. According to my eighth grade colleague, it was due to grade inflation kicking in greatly. Students who received high marks for mediocre work never feel the challenge of doing better and so do not. (Of course, I have no research to back that conclusion up, other than the diminishment in As and increases in Ds and Fs over five years. (I had quality controls in place, but who knows how robust they were?)