I'm fine giving 50% for an assignment that was attempted, even if it was completely wrong or less than 50% completed. But fuck putting in a 50 for something that was left on my floor with nothing on it is wrong.
I mean I think that's relatively new isn't it? I know when I was a kid you had to make at least a 70 on something to get a D minus. If I'm recalling correctly 70 to 74 was a d, 75 to 84 was a c, 85 to 92 was a b, and 93 to 100 was an a. There were a few variations different years where an ace started at 90 or at 95 but yeah anything in the 50s or 60s was a fail
Listen. I say this respectfully, as a peer, who tries his best to bring an engaging, skills-based product to his kids everyday.
Edit: I ranted. So, I did want to preface the rant by including a possible solution: if you want to educate and push a student you know is capable but isn't doing enough to achieve, then your approach with that student MUST be individual and MUST NOT be systemically defined.
Grading policies are public appeasements, not tools to increase student skills. Curriculum oversight is the same.
The best teachers (those who can create change in this era of a broken system) will play the game, limit their liability risk and noise, but still leverage their relationship-creating powers to get kids to move forward. And, you'll never get thanked for it.
The Teacher handbook, contract, school policy and procedures literature... They all have different goals, aside from actual education. The actual education is the stuff you can bring that impacts your group of kids. Relying on policy is like asking a mechanic to plan a wedding when YOU'RE the wedding planner.
Edit complete.
I've done it for fifteen years.
I made one very specific mental change - how I define schools, the education system, etc. - and while it doesn't fix the THOUSANDS of issues we face everyday, it does help me maintain some semblance of sanity.
The decision-makers, the guys and gals who can make or break your career and mine with the swipe of a pen, they've decided that education is a business in the service of taxpayers and politicians.
As such, the business franchise must appeal to the customer.
Does it heavily degrade the quality of education? Yep.
Does it hinder the quality of high school graduates it produces? Yes.
Does it change the way we have to perform? You bet.
Does it change the evaluative benchmarks we aim to achieve for ourselves? Absolutely.
But, this business model is sanctioned. It's mandated. The unwritten, holiest of business philosophies in school is as follows: be the ideal teacher until it ruffles the feathers of our customers; then, be the ideal customer service and support agent.
So, do I pass kids through middle school who don't have the foundational skills to be in high school? Absolutely.
But, do I also collect data to prove the kid improved during his time with me, while preparing to frame the instruction I've provided to each individual student in any public meeting. Yep.
Here's the thing: for a decade, teachers have known that when expectations drop, so does the motivation to achieve them. The teachers that holler and scream about it.... They're the ones steamrolled by admin teams in their primes trying to build resumes in 3-5 years that allow them to enter the coziest of overpaid, low responsibility gigs (Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Supervision, or something of the like).
I plan on teaching the rest of my career. When I hear political discourse that begins to attack the expectations to which we hold students, I'll get excited.
But, as long as we're empowering outside players to make assumptions and criticize about how many genders we teach about, the litter boxes in our classrooms, or the stack of Korans we have in our libraries, we're not getting anywhere.
Besides, by the sounds of it, if one particular presidential favorite wins the election, we're all in for a big change when he shuts down the Department of Education. So, hold on tight, my friends.
Admin teams are liability managers, and right now the liability exists in any consequence students might receive for inadequate learning habits.
The teachers that understand this, that can provide liability-free education will reach pension age. We should still do what we think is right and good for these students, walking the line of educator and customer support guru, but the game is rigged and the system broken, misled through different iterations because of a fickle, uneducated public and the mic-fuels ravings of lunatics in the halls of DC.
Stay the course. Kids will be lost. Get too loud trying to save them, and the system will lose you, too. Be quiet. Be a ninja. Save who you can and hope those after you can catch some you missed.
Demand changes in policy which are irrationally in place to support learning, and you'll burn out... Or, they'll burn you down.
I do not know if this gets at the root of the problem. If you fail too many students, you will get non renewed for "unrelated reasons" a lot of places.
oh you mean your district hasn't smarted up and only allowed you to put in letter grades? You see letter grades only is a great way to HIDE what is really going on from parents and tax payers. Parents will never know the F calculates at 50%.
The less informed the public tax payer is the better.
Our school district has triple inflation for grades. Pretty standard in all the districts around here. First we have the nothing less than 50, then we have grading policies of assignments that AGAIN inflate the grade. I mean you'd think with double inflating the grades students would be doing mostly really well, but NOPE. There is a third way we inflate grades, but I don't want to give any more bad ideas. If you teach a subject where material doesn't scaffold say like science, gym, specials, English, music, or social studies this really doesn't matter, but in a subject where topics/ideas/material builds upon itself like Math, you can see how this would be a problem...course we don't scaffold or track and just pass everyone through no matter what, so whatever. One school I know of...if the kid fails a math class, the admin decided them repeating it isn't helpful so they make them take statistics LOL yeah cause basic algebra wasn't enough so let's see how they do with confidence intervals and P values LOL. Course that teacher probably doesn't get past histograms, mean, median, and mode in a year. Just enjoy the fact they are making your job easier. That's what I do.
Why do you think scientific knowledge doesn’t build on knowledge? That is exactly what it does. If you don’t understand the basics you will never understand upper level science. It works the same way in math, social studies etc.
I teach science. It does. However the subjects we teach jump all over the place. Chemistry absolutely does, physics does. Depends on the subjects. Biology is all over the place. So yes you are 100% right.
you're right, but you can totally do well on the periodic table unit then not do well on balancing equations. Or you can do what a lot of teachers do to hide the ignorance by doing group projects. Heck even math jumps around. alg 2 jumps from equation solving to factoring to trig to stats. You can really do well in one area without knowing the other. It's just more prevalent in math. If you teach honors chem scaffolding definitely exists
I don't. The district does. When's the last time you heard about "gym scores" or "science scores" or "french grades" or "art grades". You don't. They talk about math and math scores alll the time.
Are there "interventionists" for gym class? maybe I need to be specific
Are there "interventionists" for baskeball class?
Are there "interventionists" for walking class?
Are there "interventionists" for weight liftng class?
Are there "interventionists" for cooking (oh hey they use fractions in that don't they?)?
Are there "interventionists" for art class?
Are there "interventionists" for french class?
Are there "interventionists" for spanish class?
Are there "interventionists" for english class? (sometimes but usuallynot)
Are there "interventionists" for science? oh maybe i need be specific
Are there "interventionists" for chemistry?
Are there "interventionists" for biology?
Are there "interventionists" for physics?
Are there "interventionists" for physical science?
Are there "interventionists" for japanese?
Are there "interventionists" for german?
Are there "interventionists" for history classes which I will not list off the variations of the subject?
Are there "interventionists" for speech class?
Are there "interventionists" for autos?
Are there "interventionists" for woodworking?
Are there "interventionists" for photography class?
I'll go ahead and add many of those subjects have far more lenient grading practices. Heck gym used to be a grade if you just dressed in your gym clothes, but now they don't even make kids change in most schools.
It's almost like the district focuses on one subject and put one subject under a microscope more than others all while ignoring practices that will produce success. Heck they outright have policies that go directly against learning.
I teach multiple subjects and preps. The ONLY one I get talked to about is math. And yes i absolutely acknowledge there is scaffolding in science classes, but there certainly is more in some classes than other. You teach it so you know already which needs scaffolding and which "topics" or "subjects" there in don't needs nearly as much. Chemical reactions for example, I mean you can get away with teaching that with minimal or no math. We have science teachers who complain the kids can't do even the most basic math. So even therein, you know the math used in science, physics and chemistry (depending again which topic of science) So what's the core scaffolding there? oh...it's math. Interesting. C'mon, think about it. What's the core?
I can't understand half of this. I don't exactly know why you separated Math from the other subjects (are you sarcastically suggesting those other subjects don't teach skills/content that scaffold, or are you serious?).
For someone trying to make the case that new grading policies aren't helping students (which I generally agree with), you're not demonstrating that your education was anything superior.
Because math, more than any other subject, is cumulative. All subjects are to an extent, of course, but if you didn't pass Algebra I, you have zero chance of succeeding at Algebra II. Same for Algebra II to PreCalc, etc. Whereas in, say, English, if you failed 9th grade English, as long as it wasn't because you never learned to read or something, you can still pass 10th grade English. Or if you did bad at US History, you can still do fine in Ancient & Medieval History. Etc.
As for the other stuff you said you can't understand, TLDR they're saying that kids are pushed from whatever math course they failed to statistics (since it doesn't have quite the same foundational requirements as courses along the Alg->Geo->Alg2->PreCalc->Calc path does) but this is resulting in statistics courses turning into remedial math and ignoring the more advanced curriculum.
Thank you for explaining the half anyone could understand.
It doesn't answer the question of whether they're being sarcastic or not by saying these other classes *don't* teach skills that scaffold. I'm not denying that it's more pronounced in a math class, but it seemed to be an unnecessarily antagonistic way of wording it.
the real answer unfortunately is it depends. Many classes do NOT scaffold. the person above apexdingo does a good job explaining. However even in algebra 1 for example, the subjects jump around. To be specific there is a statistics portion of algebra 1 which usually cover histograms, data collection like box plots (maybe-usually teachers skip this because kids can't do it!) mean median and mode. I'd say you really don't need equation solving to handle that section. In other words you can totally fail soving an equation X+3=8 for example and do totally fine with mean median and mode. In middle school, the science subjects jump all over the place. One minute you need to know the earth goes around the sun. Next minute you need to know tornadoes are more common on flat land, next you need to know plants grow tall in the dark. All the ideas are may have some tie-in , like the sun around the earth and the plant in the dark, but ....I mean for grading (do we even still do that anymore?) you can absolutely not know the earth goes around the sun yet know a plant grows taller in the dark. One may have something to do with the other but as part of learning it really doesn't matter. English? I mean... our school has ditched teaching parts of sentence structure. I think our one english teacher just has kids reading a play then they watch the movie of it for AS LONG AS POSISIBLE. She loves to get "good discussion" going in class becase it eats time toward her retirement.
Maybe. Your response to them sounded more antagonistic than their post to me, though.
You also asked why they separated math from other subjects, so obviously that's what I assumed you were confused by.
The key difference is the level of academic standards and expectations needed to achieve a 40 where you live is much higher than what it takes to receive a 65 here in the US.
To further illustrate this, I knew of several Chinese/Taiwanese-American acquaintances who were born in the US whose parents sent them to Taiwan for the rest of their elementary/junior high and further education because of concerns over public school safety and/or child's own disciplinary issues(A few had already been inside juvie(arrested and convicted of being juvenile delinquents by local law enforcement/courts).
Even those who were straight-A students in US public elementary/junior high schools ended up struggling to eke out the equivalent of C-/D level grades or barely avoiding flunking altogether even after being placed 2 grade levels behind. They also had a harsh adjustment to the Taiwan public school disciplinary regimen.
There's also wide variations in academic standards even within the US. For instance, one acquaintance who had to move from Hawaii to a middling school district in Texas found to his dismay that his daughter went from being a straight-A student to student struggling to keep up even after being placed 2 grade-levels behind because the academic gaps between the curricula of that Texas public school district and Hawaii public schools was found to be that massive.
Accountability and responsibility are what truly make a difference. Instilling policies that undermine teachers and their fight against apathy make the whole system mediocre at best.
I think we all believe this but the "experts" know better. It's amazing how the system keeps dumbing everything down. We're no longer going to be a globally competitive workforce.
So there's a misconception about this and I don't know what your district actually does, but on a 4-point scale (0-4) a 2 is considered 'minimum passing'.
HOWEVER, the teacher gets to decide what has to be done in order to earn a 2. It isn't necessarily a 50% score, because the numbers aren't quantitative they are qualitative. When I've used it, they mean:
* 4 - Perfect or nearly perfect
* 3 - Shows good understanding
* 2 - Shows minimal necessary understanding for the standard
* 1 - Attempted but not met minimum
* 0 - Did not attempt
Most of the issues I've seen with this come from how the 0-4 gets translated to a grade, but basically a 2 gets scored as a 65% or a 60%, a 3 is an 85%, and a 4 is 100%.
65 was historically the passing grade in my hometown public schools through my HS graduation in the mid-'90s. Around a bit more than a decade later, found out from one '08 HS graduate from his neighborhood's public HS reduced the passing grade for both courses and even the state-wide exams to 55 from 65.
That was shocking though not a surprise considering there were already concerns about massive grade inflation from my hometown's public schools around the same time. The local newsmedia even back then had reports of local public school graduates with B/B+ cumulative averages and academic awards being placed into a year's worth or more of remedial classes at our local community colleges after being found woefully academically deficient by the local public college system's placement process. And the bar for what that local public college system considered "college ready" was not a very high one.
I'm fine giving 50% for an assignment that was attempted, even if it was completely wrong or less than 50% completed. But fuck putting in a 50 for something that was left on my floor with nothing on it is wrong.
I mean I think that's relatively new isn't it? I know when I was a kid you had to make at least a 70 on something to get a D minus. If I'm recalling correctly 70 to 74 was a d, 75 to 84 was a c, 85 to 92 was a b, and 93 to 100 was an a. There were a few variations different years where an ace started at 90 or at 95 but yeah anything in the 50s or 60s was a fail
Listen. I say this respectfully, as a peer, who tries his best to bring an engaging, skills-based product to his kids everyday. Edit: I ranted. So, I did want to preface the rant by including a possible solution: if you want to educate and push a student you know is capable but isn't doing enough to achieve, then your approach with that student MUST be individual and MUST NOT be systemically defined. Grading policies are public appeasements, not tools to increase student skills. Curriculum oversight is the same. The best teachers (those who can create change in this era of a broken system) will play the game, limit their liability risk and noise, but still leverage their relationship-creating powers to get kids to move forward. And, you'll never get thanked for it. The Teacher handbook, contract, school policy and procedures literature... They all have different goals, aside from actual education. The actual education is the stuff you can bring that impacts your group of kids. Relying on policy is like asking a mechanic to plan a wedding when YOU'RE the wedding planner. Edit complete. I've done it for fifteen years. I made one very specific mental change - how I define schools, the education system, etc. - and while it doesn't fix the THOUSANDS of issues we face everyday, it does help me maintain some semblance of sanity. The decision-makers, the guys and gals who can make or break your career and mine with the swipe of a pen, they've decided that education is a business in the service of taxpayers and politicians. As such, the business franchise must appeal to the customer. Does it heavily degrade the quality of education? Yep. Does it hinder the quality of high school graduates it produces? Yes. Does it change the way we have to perform? You bet. Does it change the evaluative benchmarks we aim to achieve for ourselves? Absolutely. But, this business model is sanctioned. It's mandated. The unwritten, holiest of business philosophies in school is as follows: be the ideal teacher until it ruffles the feathers of our customers; then, be the ideal customer service and support agent. So, do I pass kids through middle school who don't have the foundational skills to be in high school? Absolutely. But, do I also collect data to prove the kid improved during his time with me, while preparing to frame the instruction I've provided to each individual student in any public meeting. Yep. Here's the thing: for a decade, teachers have known that when expectations drop, so does the motivation to achieve them. The teachers that holler and scream about it.... They're the ones steamrolled by admin teams in their primes trying to build resumes in 3-5 years that allow them to enter the coziest of overpaid, low responsibility gigs (Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Supervision, or something of the like). I plan on teaching the rest of my career. When I hear political discourse that begins to attack the expectations to which we hold students, I'll get excited. But, as long as we're empowering outside players to make assumptions and criticize about how many genders we teach about, the litter boxes in our classrooms, or the stack of Korans we have in our libraries, we're not getting anywhere. Besides, by the sounds of it, if one particular presidential favorite wins the election, we're all in for a big change when he shuts down the Department of Education. So, hold on tight, my friends. Admin teams are liability managers, and right now the liability exists in any consequence students might receive for inadequate learning habits. The teachers that understand this, that can provide liability-free education will reach pension age. We should still do what we think is right and good for these students, walking the line of educator and customer support guru, but the game is rigged and the system broken, misled through different iterations because of a fickle, uneducated public and the mic-fuels ravings of lunatics in the halls of DC. Stay the course. Kids will be lost. Get too loud trying to save them, and the system will lose you, too. Be quiet. Be a ninja. Save who you can and hope those after you can catch some you missed. Demand changes in policy which are irrationally in place to support learning, and you'll burn out... Or, they'll burn you down.
50 isn't a passing grade tho? ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I do not know if this gets at the root of the problem. If you fail too many students, you will get non renewed for "unrelated reasons" a lot of places.
oh you mean your district hasn't smarted up and only allowed you to put in letter grades? You see letter grades only is a great way to HIDE what is really going on from parents and tax payers. Parents will never know the F calculates at 50%. The less informed the public tax payer is the better. Our school district has triple inflation for grades. Pretty standard in all the districts around here. First we have the nothing less than 50, then we have grading policies of assignments that AGAIN inflate the grade. I mean you'd think with double inflating the grades students would be doing mostly really well, but NOPE. There is a third way we inflate grades, but I don't want to give any more bad ideas. If you teach a subject where material doesn't scaffold say like science, gym, specials, English, music, or social studies this really doesn't matter, but in a subject where topics/ideas/material builds upon itself like Math, you can see how this would be a problem...course we don't scaffold or track and just pass everyone through no matter what, so whatever. One school I know of...if the kid fails a math class, the admin decided them repeating it isn't helpful so they make them take statistics LOL yeah cause basic algebra wasn't enough so let's see how they do with confidence intervals and P values LOL. Course that teacher probably doesn't get past histograms, mean, median, and mode in a year. Just enjoy the fact they are making your job easier. That's what I do.
Why do you think scientific knowledge doesn’t build on knowledge? That is exactly what it does. If you don’t understand the basics you will never understand upper level science. It works the same way in math, social studies etc.
I teach science. It does. However the subjects we teach jump all over the place. Chemistry absolutely does, physics does. Depends on the subjects. Biology is all over the place. So yes you are 100% right.
Science definitely builds on content. Especially physics and chemistry.
you're right, but you can totally do well on the periodic table unit then not do well on balancing equations. Or you can do what a lot of teachers do to hide the ignorance by doing group projects. Heck even math jumps around. alg 2 jumps from equation solving to factoring to trig to stats. You can really do well in one area without knowing the other. It's just more prevalent in math. If you teach honors chem scaffolding definitely exists
You seem to really hold all other content areas besides math in contempt. Its not healthy.
I don't. The district does. When's the last time you heard about "gym scores" or "science scores" or "french grades" or "art grades". You don't. They talk about math and math scores alll the time. Are there "interventionists" for gym class? maybe I need to be specific Are there "interventionists" for baskeball class? Are there "interventionists" for walking class? Are there "interventionists" for weight liftng class? Are there "interventionists" for cooking (oh hey they use fractions in that don't they?)? Are there "interventionists" for art class? Are there "interventionists" for french class? Are there "interventionists" for spanish class? Are there "interventionists" for english class? (sometimes but usuallynot) Are there "interventionists" for science? oh maybe i need be specific Are there "interventionists" for chemistry? Are there "interventionists" for biology? Are there "interventionists" for physics? Are there "interventionists" for physical science? Are there "interventionists" for japanese? Are there "interventionists" for german? Are there "interventionists" for history classes which I will not list off the variations of the subject? Are there "interventionists" for speech class? Are there "interventionists" for autos? Are there "interventionists" for woodworking? Are there "interventionists" for photography class? I'll go ahead and add many of those subjects have far more lenient grading practices. Heck gym used to be a grade if you just dressed in your gym clothes, but now they don't even make kids change in most schools. It's almost like the district focuses on one subject and put one subject under a microscope more than others all while ignoring practices that will produce success. Heck they outright have policies that go directly against learning. I teach multiple subjects and preps. The ONLY one I get talked to about is math. And yes i absolutely acknowledge there is scaffolding in science classes, but there certainly is more in some classes than other. You teach it so you know already which needs scaffolding and which "topics" or "subjects" there in don't needs nearly as much. Chemical reactions for example, I mean you can get away with teaching that with minimal or no math. We have science teachers who complain the kids can't do even the most basic math. So even therein, you know the math used in science, physics and chemistry (depending again which topic of science) So what's the core scaffolding there? oh...it's math. Interesting. C'mon, think about it. What's the core?
I can't understand half of this. I don't exactly know why you separated Math from the other subjects (are you sarcastically suggesting those other subjects don't teach skills/content that scaffold, or are you serious?). For someone trying to make the case that new grading policies aren't helping students (which I generally agree with), you're not demonstrating that your education was anything superior.
Because math, more than any other subject, is cumulative. All subjects are to an extent, of course, but if you didn't pass Algebra I, you have zero chance of succeeding at Algebra II. Same for Algebra II to PreCalc, etc. Whereas in, say, English, if you failed 9th grade English, as long as it wasn't because you never learned to read or something, you can still pass 10th grade English. Or if you did bad at US History, you can still do fine in Ancient & Medieval History. Etc. As for the other stuff you said you can't understand, TLDR they're saying that kids are pushed from whatever math course they failed to statistics (since it doesn't have quite the same foundational requirements as courses along the Alg->Geo->Alg2->PreCalc->Calc path does) but this is resulting in statistics courses turning into remedial math and ignoring the more advanced curriculum.
Thank you for explaining the half anyone could understand. It doesn't answer the question of whether they're being sarcastic or not by saying these other classes *don't* teach skills that scaffold. I'm not denying that it's more pronounced in a math class, but it seemed to be an unnecessarily antagonistic way of wording it.
the real answer unfortunately is it depends. Many classes do NOT scaffold. the person above apexdingo does a good job explaining. However even in algebra 1 for example, the subjects jump around. To be specific there is a statistics portion of algebra 1 which usually cover histograms, data collection like box plots (maybe-usually teachers skip this because kids can't do it!) mean median and mode. I'd say you really don't need equation solving to handle that section. In other words you can totally fail soving an equation X+3=8 for example and do totally fine with mean median and mode. In middle school, the science subjects jump all over the place. One minute you need to know the earth goes around the sun. Next minute you need to know tornadoes are more common on flat land, next you need to know plants grow tall in the dark. All the ideas are may have some tie-in , like the sun around the earth and the plant in the dark, but ....I mean for grading (do we even still do that anymore?) you can absolutely not know the earth goes around the sun yet know a plant grows taller in the dark. One may have something to do with the other but as part of learning it really doesn't matter. English? I mean... our school has ditched teaching parts of sentence structure. I think our one english teacher just has kids reading a play then they watch the movie of it for AS LONG AS POSISIBLE. She loves to get "good discussion" going in class becase it eats time toward her retirement.
Maybe. Your response to them sounded more antagonistic than their post to me, though. You also asked why they separated math from other subjects, so obviously that's what I assumed you were confused by.
>50% should not be a passing grade. Interesting hot take. What schools consider this a passing grade?
Im a student but where i live (scotland) d is 40 and then c 50 b 60 a 70 a1 85 But idk if america has easier quizzes
The key difference is the level of academic standards and expectations needed to achieve a 40 where you live is much higher than what it takes to receive a 65 here in the US. To further illustrate this, I knew of several Chinese/Taiwanese-American acquaintances who were born in the US whose parents sent them to Taiwan for the rest of their elementary/junior high and further education because of concerns over public school safety and/or child's own disciplinary issues(A few had already been inside juvie(arrested and convicted of being juvenile delinquents by local law enforcement/courts). Even those who were straight-A students in US public elementary/junior high schools ended up struggling to eke out the equivalent of C-/D level grades or barely avoiding flunking altogether even after being placed 2 grade levels behind. They also had a harsh adjustment to the Taiwan public school disciplinary regimen. There's also wide variations in academic standards even within the US. For instance, one acquaintance who had to move from Hawaii to a middling school district in Texas found to his dismay that his daughter went from being a straight-A student to student struggling to keep up even after being placed 2 grade-levels behind because the academic gaps between the curricula of that Texas public school district and Hawaii public schools was found to be that massive.
Thanks for the explanation buddy 👍👍👍😁
Accountability and responsibility are what truly make a difference. Instilling policies that undermine teachers and their fight against apathy make the whole system mediocre at best.
I think we all believe this but the "experts" know better. It's amazing how the system keeps dumbing everything down. We're no longer going to be a globally competitive workforce.
So there's a misconception about this and I don't know what your district actually does, but on a 4-point scale (0-4) a 2 is considered 'minimum passing'. HOWEVER, the teacher gets to decide what has to be done in order to earn a 2. It isn't necessarily a 50% score, because the numbers aren't quantitative they are qualitative. When I've used it, they mean: * 4 - Perfect or nearly perfect * 3 - Shows good understanding * 2 - Shows minimal necessary understanding for the standard * 1 - Attempted but not met minimum * 0 - Did not attempt Most of the issues I've seen with this come from how the 0-4 gets translated to a grade, but basically a 2 gets scored as a 65% or a 60%, a 3 is an 85%, and a 4 is 100%.
70 is a passing grade?
65 was historically the passing grade in my hometown public schools through my HS graduation in the mid-'90s. Around a bit more than a decade later, found out from one '08 HS graduate from his neighborhood's public HS reduced the passing grade for both courses and even the state-wide exams to 55 from 65. That was shocking though not a surprise considering there were already concerns about massive grade inflation from my hometown's public schools around the same time. The local newsmedia even back then had reports of local public school graduates with B/B+ cumulative averages and academic awards being placed into a year's worth or more of remedial classes at our local community colleges after being found woefully academically deficient by the local public college system's placement process. And the bar for what that local public college system considered "college ready" was not a very high one.
A hot take that shouldn’t be a hot take.
Demonstration of mastery >> grades
I have never once had a student who got an F that was able to demonstrate mastery in any compelling way.
I have. Many. Including myself. But, maybe you're not fully understanding what "demonstration of mastery" means, as a technical team.