I know that, but I focused my work ethic on things that I considered more important like music and teaching my self by going beyond what they teach in class. I felt that if I already understood a concept that was taught in class then it was a waste of my time to continue working on it just to get a good grade. I was also under the misconception that I would be able to afford to go to Berklee school of music and not need to worry about academic grades.

a definition like that is overly simplistic. the gpa is also indicitve of a particular teachers teaching style, and how well that style meshes with each students learning style. i also dont see any difference in the marks you see in sats and other standardized tests and the marks seen in regular classes. both are teaching to specified pre-determined criteria, and within a teaching curriculum both need knowledge tested in the form of an exam that is standardized to pre-determined levels.

i'm a high school dropout.
attended zero classes by the end of my sophomore year.
don't even think i managed a gpa and i am one hard working motherfucker.

oh, and tell me how you measure success.
sorry about your ass.

The GPA comment is in regards to the GPA vs. Standardized Test Score...

Regardless of whether you're in public school, private school, higher learning, or just out in the work force, every single one of those situations should be approached with a work ethic. You have a job, you either do it well, skate by, or take a dive.

You can call it overly simplistic if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that that is the common thread.

If you have a class, you know what you need to do to get the grade you want reflected in your GPA, and that long term measure of your work is more indicative than your score on a multiple choice test.

but the test is usually more indicative of how much knowledge one has. Sure a good work ethic is important but If a person can learn a concept without doing a lot of meaningless work then why should they have to waste their time. One of the things that I like about college is that when most of my professor give homework it is optional, if you need the practice you do it but if you don't then it saves you time.

In college, you're paying for the right to work as hard as you want to. That's why so many drop out or end up on academic probation.

Busy work won't kill you. I don't like the concept of it, but I had to do it too, and I bitched about it, but I still did it.

In the time that you cry about it, you could have had it finished.

Parent in the making.

no one ever said you weren't.

I'm talking about measuring success in school, and then in higher learning, and finally in the work force.

A benchmark isn't a be all end all, so don't even try and take it personally.

or it's indicative of the knowledge one has advantageously crammed for.

Dear god.

<== Vasectomy client in the making.

5 on euro history, 4 on us hist and 4 on english. got me 15 credits of college credit and saved me about 10000 bucks in tuition due to getting out of college in 3 years.

but overall standardized tests are pretty lame, really. i think way too much stock is placed in them but as said above, we may need them from an efficiency stand point. the lsat in particular was really idiotic.

i am always up for discussion and debate on this issue but i'd love to hear from everybody when they've got a 7 or 8 year old with special needs--or not. it would be interesting to hear your personal viewpoint vs your political viewpoint.

and, once again for the record, i respect the hell out of most educators.

Special needs studens are still students. Standardized testing just tests how they do on a standardized test, not how well they learn or what they know.

I agree that they should have extended testing time, but the basic premise of testing, while necessary, is flawed.

Education should be more individualized, and i believe, more self directed.

We're parents of a special needs child. We've got an IEP and are exempt from standardized testing. The school's accountability is heightened because of the special needs status. We meet at least semi-annually to review progress with the teacher, social worker, speech and occupational therapists, and psychologist. We've got kick-ass recourse, due in part to the No Child Left Behind program, to ensure the school district is devoting adequate resources to educate our child: additional class-room assistants--one on one for a few years, speech and occupational therapy, mainstream classes where appropriate, et al.

this is a bad generalization in my opinion

what determines how succesful you are cannot be "measured" in my opinion. with work ethic - you either have it or not. with education - you apply it or not

high gpa does not mean great work ethic nor does it mean you can apply it to the real world.

Consider the average person, their scholastic acheivement, and their work ethic, then tell me that their standardized test score is a better measurement of their potential for success in their endeavors than their GPA.

That's like looking at someone's resume, their actual work experience, and saying that it isn't indicative of the work that they've done.

Your GPA is a synopsis of the work that you've done in school, quantized.

So testing ended at 11:45 today, and we've got a half day schedule. So i'm traveling from class to class for 20 minute music periods. That's a laugh.

I'm staring at this class of lazy ghetto rat 8th graders, and I'm telling you as a teacher with 7 years of experience, their GPA is directly indicative of their current work ethic, their future work ethic, and what they will make of themselves as they go through life, without exception. These 32 kids will spend their lives doing whatever they feel like, whenever they feel like it, and no one except the police will make them do otherwise.

Real JAIL

i uhhh know a lot of lazy ass mofos who had a high gpa, though. so i'm not really sure what it really means on the high end either.

We take the 8th graders on a field trip to Cook County Jail every year near the beginning of the year. We always make sure that they get to talk to a few alumni turned inmate.

It doesn't seem to curb any undesirable behaviors.

Work ethics refer to those behavioral characteristics and attitudes desired by employers including: attendance, character, teamwork, appearance, attitude, productivity, organizational skills, communication, cooperation, and respect.

unless i am off base here
GPA does not define any of those "values"

my point is: Your GPA is not indicative of your work ethic. maybe yu just worded it wrong in the thread but...

how about these benchmarks for success/ethic ->how long someone has worked a specified job? how many total jobs has that person had? what that person started at - finished at. the kind of job it was? extra activities that person does?

i didn't take it personally. at all.
it just seems like such a main stream measurement and that is not how i think nor is it what i believe in.

and see, maybe if i went to high school more often i'd know how to fix that sentence.

Of course not. Dependence on the system can be achieved just as easily in jail as in civilian life. You just have to learn to take it up the backside for awhile. Apologies to OPA! for making that sound like the only undesirable thing about jail.

When you're a student, your school work is your job, your grades are your evaluation of the work you've done, and your GPA is a numerical value assigned to the mean of that work. Your transcripts indicate what classes you've taken, which is equivalent to a work history. There's a reason that colleges request your transcripts, and that some employers do too, depending on the field.

It can show consistency or lack thereof, it can show strengths and weaknesses, and it can show trends over time in efficiency and time management. All public school transcripts should have days absent with and without excuse, because those records determine full time equivalency which when you boil it down = dollars per student in government funding.

While it isn't a summation of work ethic (and shy of a recommendation letter, what is?) it is a much better indicator than a damn standardized test.

I think that in a lot of ways a persons/schools financial sitiguation affect the education. Poor people/schools usually do poorly at school at a much higher rate than upper middle class/rich people. This true for many reasons, for example richer schools can afford to have better resources. Also parents that are better off are more likely to stress the value of an education and have the time/resources to help them. I have personal experince with this. I grew up in Chapel Hill North Carolina which is one of the best and richest school systems in the nation. I went to school their till 7th grade. While I was there I was constantly chalanged by my teachers plus my schools all had updated equipment. The school was also able to offer a broad range of classes such as video and classes of that nature. When I was in 8th grade my family moved to Candler NC, a fairly middle class school system that was feed by a lot of trailer parks, and the school quality changed drasticaly. In 8th grade I was learning stuff that I had already learned in 6th grade. There was only one computer lab and that had out dated computers and I wasn't chalanged in class anymore. In my highschool no one went to a prestigious uiversity and a good portion either just went to community college or didn't go at all. I kept in touch with a lot of my friends from Chapel Hill and a large number of them ended up going to Ivy league schools or schools like Duke and UNC. My main point is that in a lot of ways GPA is not indicative of sucesses or work ethic but of money. Of course there are many execptions to this rule but I don't really think that the SAT or GPA is a very good measure of work ethic or that much at all. I think that the goverment needs to change the way that they fund schools becuase if they keep on giving funding to schools that do well then the schools that don't do well won't get any better.