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Re: [Phys-L] rounding



Not a bad suggestion, but it raises (and mixes in) other issues.

Our IHEs claim they tend to be "broader" than their European equivalents. Is it good the they effectively narrow down the requirements only to discipline-related content? I have no clear feeling on that, but that's certainly a legit discussion point.

One of the tougher issues in academia is the prestige of various departments. By essentially discounting some departments' courses and assigning more importance to others' they are bound to run into departmental turf war. While it sounds petty, it is often a major issue in academic life. Not "discounting" certain courses seems beneficial to academic "tranquility."

What states require is driven by politics. If the state pays for something, it insists on a say in how its money is spent. It is only natural, and expecting state funding with no constraints and regulations is foolish and naive. Many of us do expect such accountability and regulation on state and federal level for almost everything already -- why should IHEs be any different?
The requirement themselves may be wise or not, and that is a legitimate area of public discussion, but having the rules be fuzzy to begin with is a prescription for cronyism and biased application of the rules.

I disagree that GPA is a science & math related issue. It has absolutely nothing to do with understanding variability. It has everything to do with understanding policy. A cop can cite you for driving 66 in 65 zone. You fail or pass a test. What a friendly system has is an alternate path, an escape hatch of sorts, that those who fail on the regular path may try to take an argue their case anyway. A trial process if you don't like the traffic ticket, if you will.

Finally, this was about GPA for teacher certification. Like others already said, 3.0 and above, with no rounding allowed, seems like quite a low requirement already.

Ze'ev

On 8/25/2012 7:42 AM, John Clement wrote:
Why not have a GPA requirement for only the classes that contribute to the
subjects to be taught. And then make it low enough to admit all reasonable
candidates. Once students realize that they might not make the GPA
requirement they could take more gym courses, which will eventually render
it moot. Also the GPA should be on a sliding scale so that older candidates
who graduated before some of the current grade inflation should have a
reasonable requirement.

The states have some really silly requirements. How about granting an
exemption from the GPA for someone who gets an advanced degree in the field
they will teach? TX requires all candidates to pass their simplistic
graduation test, but only if the candidate for state certification goes to a
state school. Even candidates who have advanced degrees must pass this
test. Private colleges have many exemptions. Then of course private
pre-college schools have not certification requirements for their teachers.
They can literally hire people off the street to teach any course. Then
there is the requirement to take a US and TX history course for all
teachers. At one time they were saying that Nobel laureates who teach at TX
state colleges would have take a useless TX history course. One thing you
learn in the course is about some of the ludicrous loony TX governors. That
alone might make the Nobelists apply for a job somewhere else.

Actually the GPA requirement is a science/math related issue because the
people who make these decisions do not understand random variability. We
have failed to educate them properly. This requirement essentially cuts out
a number of the best candidates from prestigious schools that do not have
grade inflation, and encourages more GPA inflation. The educational system
has failed to get students to understand statistical reasoning. And only
about 1% of graduating HS seniors do understand it. Add that to the 75% who
don't understand proportional reasoning. So why not require all teacher
candidates to pass a stiff test which measures scientific thinking skills
such as conservation, proportional, statistical... reasoning? But to
implement that the schools would have to pay salaries similar to engineers
or MDs to be able to attract students with the necessary reasoning skills.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

Accepting for a moment that GPA is nonsense, how would you
suggest that
a department should go about setting qualifications for
acceptance that
are clear, effective in selecting qualified candidates,
inexpensive, and
do not cause multiple endless appeal processes?


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