A few weeks ago, I talked to a group of high-achieving teens about school policies they felt undermined instruction. A frustration they all relayed: The reluctance of schools to hold students accountable for deadlines.
The teens describe multiple instances of a teacher announcing a strict deadline for a paper or project to be completed, a deadline they strive to meet. They put hours into the paper, stay up late to perfect it and deliver it on time.
A quarter of the class doesn’t. All the teacher tells those students is, “Have it to me by tomorrow.” Students said many teachers now accept late projects, reducing deadlines to suggestions.
Don’t teachers detract points from late submissions?
Seldom, said the students. Even more annoying to them, no extra points are awarded for turning in every assignment on time.
When I raised the question with teachers on my AJC Get Schooled blog, I found many of them are also frustrated with laxity on deadlines. As one said, “Teachers are forced to accept late work, and that directive is written into school board policies because superintendents don’t want to deal with parents who think their offspring are special.
“High school principals also provide endless opportunities for student slackers to earn credit for late or missing work with creative programs, with catchy titles such as ‘Boost’ or ‘Target.’ All of this bending over backwards is done to stay off the dreaded failing school list and to up the graduation rate.”
In the book, “The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way,” foreign high school students spending a year in U.S. schools were surprised American students weren’t held to deadlines by teachers and suffered no consequences for late work. As a result, these visiting teens concluded no one took deadlines seriously, neither teachers nor students.
Over the summer, I met a veteran literature professor from a top northeastern college and asked if students today were really that different from earlier generations.
Yes, he said; they’re better prepared. Many have traveled out of the country with their families or youth groups. They’re interested in the larger world and want to live or work abroad someday.
But the professor also said today’s students expect more accommodations. They believe they ought to be exempted from an assignment or from turning in a paper on deadline because “I had to go home for a family wedding,” or “My parents were visiting from Ohio, and I just didn’t have time.”
He blamed high schools for allowing students to shirk deadlines. As an example, he cited the “farce of high school summer reading.” He said most students don’t complete the reading or scan a few chapters of the book the night before classes resume.
When the college professor asks high school teachers why they don’t hold students responsible for summer reading, they say it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
The teachers don’t want to devote their first classes to scolding students for failing to read over the summer. And some teachers aren’t involved in creating the reading list, so the book may not be a priority for their class. If the book is integral, teachers realize a lot of their students will only open it once class begins.
The professor said he quickly rids college freshmen of the assumption that deadlines are flexible with a few “dramatic failures” for even being an hour late emailing a required paper.
I understand the rationale behind accepting late work. Along with increasing passage and graduation rates, flexible deadlines reflect a standards-based approach that focuses more on whether students mastered the content rather than when they did.
The problem is, lax deadlines send a wrong message to both the students who respect them and those who ignore them. And neither message will help them in the workplace.
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