The beauty of the program is that students set their own standard for performance, record it, and then eventually grade themselves.

It is a 10-year time-capsule and class reunion program that helps students focus onto their own futures. They write letters to themselves in the last weeks of 8th grade in Language Arts classes. They are sealed by the students into self-addressed envelopes which the students hold as they pose with their Language Arts class standing in front of the 350-pound vault bolted to the floor in our middle school lobby. After the photo they each place their letter onto the shelf for their class, one of 10 shelves inside the vault.

They know it will stay there until their 10-year class reunion when they return to celebrate and reclaim the letter. They know they will also be asked to speak with the then current 8th grade class about their recommendations for success. They are warned to prepare for questions such as ‘Would you do anything differently if you were 13 again?’

With such a focus on the future our students are staying in school in much greater numbers. They are motivated by their own personal goals, not by a project needing hundreds of thousands of tax dollars annually! This is real life!

We must no longer mis-lead ourselves as to the severity of the crisis our Dallas ISD students face. See http://www.studentmotivation.org for more details as to the School Archive Project as one solution. If donors can be located for the 350-pound vaults that are bolted to the floors in the school lobbys to function as the time-capsules, and for the $2/student expenses for running the project, it will help these School Archive Projects get started.

If we allow our students to set their own standards they will be beyond what we ourselves are setting. This is not related to any “grading policy.”

School Archive Projects are a low-budget solution to a monumental crisis Dallas ISD has been facing for years.

Based on your argument, I need to rethink that. Of course, in the job market you can underperform yourself out of a job. We don’t want that to happen to kids in school (at least I think we don’t) which is why so much effort is expended on that bottom 10%.

Maybe there’s a middle ground. If you’ve got kids and parents who are trying and failing, they should be given more assistance than those who aren’t trying. If one or the other (kid or parent) is trying, they should be assisted as well…but it should be understood all around that there is a cost for not trying.

As far as the general gist of your post. I absolutely, violently agree. Lowering the bar to turn failure into mere mediocrity is not the answer.