I liked the point this teacher made that some kids were really given the chance to shine because they had some extra time. I definitely know that when some students miss a first deadline, they simply give up and figure "why bother now?"

I am still torn on "life lessons..." I do think that students need to be able to cope with the realities of life, college, jobs, deadlines, etc. I mean, the National Council for the Social Studies web page's tag line is "Creating Effective Citizens." In some situations, in order to be "effective" don't kids need to be able to meet deadlines? This is one of the conundrums I still grapple with. It's not necessarily that I want to penalize kids for doing things late, I just worry that some kids might never figure out certain norms. Thoughts?

I agree Meghan that part of what we as teachers do everyday is support the growth of our students to become effective citizens which includes meeting deadlines; how we best accomplish that is our dilema. The demotivation factor for students to show what they know and can do if they cannot do it in the time limit is my concern. How do we effectively assess what a student knows and can do regarding content without letting the late or unorganized or messy factors get in our way of evaluating? This of course leads to what does a grade really mean. And leads to our questions regarding how to assess a students growth towards being an effective citizen. Wormeli's suggestion of seperate grading categories makes sense to me.

One of the teacher comments was regarding the "fairness" to the student who turned his/her work in on time. However, in a proficiency grading classroom, if a student who turned the project in on time was assessed as "in progress" in some areas versus "proficient", that student would have an opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge later and without penalty to their grade.