Data walls’ in Massachusetts shame students with low test scores
2 hours ago
At least one psychopathically cruel person involved in the Holyoke, Mass. public school system thinks it is a good idea to use “data walls” to motivate students.
A data wall is a public display — for grade-school kids, or junior high kids or high school kids — which exhibits test scores or reading levels of all kids for every kid to see. Publicly displayed posters listing the first and last names of students as young as third grade — and perhaps even younger — inform anyone who leers which students are succeeding and which students are failing in a given academic area.
Such a wall might make the most advanced kid in a class feel proud. The kids who struggle with some subject, however—maybe not so much.
Some public school classrooms in Holyoke have been using data walls since the beginning of this academic year, reports local Fox affiliate WGGB. They show each student’s name along with progress in a particular academic area.
“What they say data walls are supposed to do is to create a friendly competition between the students,” Gus Morales, a teacher at Donahue Elementary School, told the Fox station. “What we’ve all seen is that’s not what it does. It demoralizes the students. It lowers their self-esteem because a lot of the students struggle with