In Defense of Failure

When it comes to my understanding of the Madison school district’s new grading system put me down as “emerging.”

MMSD will expand its “standards-based” system to all of its regular high schools next year after a trial period at East. Instead of letter grades, students will receive words: advanced, proficient, developing and emerging.

Here’s a question I should be able to answer by now, but can’t: why? Is it to spare the feelings of kids who are failing? Has it got something to do with social or racial justice?

And, slow learner (sorry, emerging learner) that I am, I especially don’t get it when the words will be converted to traditional letter grades three times during a semester anyway. Actually, that’s not quite true. Nobody gets an “F” anymore. Instead they get an “I” for incomplete.

So now, failure is not an option at MMSD. Instead, a student just didn’t get his work in on time, I guess. An entire common aspect of human experience will be ignored. A person can no longer just fail as they can in the rest of life outside of MMSD.

There are many reasons for failure. Maybe the kid just didn’t show up in class — the district has a terrible truancy problem. Maybe the kid showed up but didn’t pay attention. Maybe he’s bright enough, but just didn’t work at it. And maybe the kid just isn’t very smart.

There’s a fundamental dishonesty to all this. If you get a “D” you’re not “emerging.” Emerging implies improvement. But there’s a good chance you’re treading water at best. In any event, you’re falling behind, not meeting standards. You need to be told so. Honestly. In clear language. You need to hear that you need to shape up. Because when a kid emerges from the warm embrace of MMSD, he’ll find himself in a world that does evaluate him, does pass judgement on his performance and sometimes does so in harsh terms that don’t spare his feelings.

How we deal with failure is probably the best test we can have. Do we allow it to ruin us? Do we accept the evaluation, figure out how we need to improve and get going? Or do we blame the system?

My real concern about all this is that at MMSD it’s about that last point. Nobody fails, but those whose work is incomplete are the victims of a system, not subject to their own shortcomings.

Failure can be a valuable thing. God knows I’ve had enough of it in my life — including in my early years in elementary school. Avoiding that experience — feeling bad about yourself, about how you’ve performed, but taking responsibility for your own shortcomings and resolving to do better — is robbing kids of something valuable. It looks to me like MMSD’s understanding of that material isn’t even developing.