http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/13/AR2010111304100.html?hpid=newswell
"The dreaded F has been all but banished from the grade books.
The report cards that arrived home late last week showed few failing grades but instead marks of "I" for incomplete, indicating that students still owe their teachers essential work. They will get Fs only if they fail to complete assignments and learn the content in the months to come."
You have got to be kidding me. Well, they'll still get Fs if they don't complete that work at some point, but still. Basically, a kid fails the test/assignment, and he gets an "I" because he "still owes the teacher work". Well, damn, I wish my college worked like that.
You know, the basic premise here is understandable. This is a school with a lot of failing kids, and they are trying to come up with some option that pads the very hard and very common fall into mediocrity.
Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work like this. If you fail a test in college, you fail, period. There's no make-up. Professors don't make special exceptions for you, and in all likelihood, they don't particularly care about you at all. If you mess up at work you're warned, and if you do it again you're fired and replaced by someone who can do the job competently.
"Oh, that's all right Bill. We'll dock your pay by half, and then when you finish the job in a month we'll give you it all then." No.
While on a moral level I agree with the teachers here, in this case, they are wrong. I'd love to make someone's life easier just as much as the next guy, but in this case, they aren't helping their students - they're crippling them.