A for effort vs. F for skills

i find myself inspired by a fellow MACer's blog post (yes, again) to write a related post of my own... when reading michael bindon's thoughts on grading student effort versus student ability (http://mbindon.blogspot.com/2009/12/for-effort.html), i tried to offer a new perspective on this discussion, but quickly felt myself heading for a tangent and stopped short of what i wanted to say. the main point of my comment:

"in our mac courses (and essentially every university class i've taken in the past five years), somewhere between 10 and 15% of a student's grade is determined by "participation"- attendance at course meetings, active listening during lecture, and efforts in class discussions. if an elite university is comfortable rewarding students for effort, is it that peculiar to ask middle and high schools to do the same?"

i'm starting to think that striking a balance between rewarding effort and rewarding ability is our best shot at inspiring long-lasting student achievement. this is particularly applicable to the high school level, where students are struggling less with the "what"s of school (what is my teacher telling me? what are the consequences for my actions in school?) and more with the "why"s (why does this matter? why should i attend class or do my homework?)... for those students who may be struggling with class material, or even those just struggling with these "why"s, rewarding effort along with accuracy may offset both their struggles and "why"s. if students are aware that putting effort into an assignment will count for something, won't they be more likely to turn it in if the fear of failure is removed?

this is not to say that those students who hand in completed homework riddled with wrong answers will get their assignments back with an A and no corrections, nor am i suggesting that a student who half-asses her/his way through the same homework with every answer correct will be penalized for not trying hard enough; instead, i want to meet that struggling student halfway and ask more of my skilled student, in hopes of inspiring both to achieve at their highest levels. with each new day in my placement, i watch those struggling students neglect their assignments and quizzes. when they turn in their work, they're often thanked for this effort with the same F they would have gotten if they'd done nothing at all. if we took away the stigma of failure and guarantee, say, a 60% minimum for doing the work, maybe students would complete assignments. and if we create assignments to help students make sense of the material, wouldn't inspiring their completion of these tasks instill more knowledge than doing nothing at all? conversely, when we award A's to those above-average students who do only the bare minimum, are we not discouraging more meaningful achievement? I have a student in my class whose photographic memory helps him ace the weekly vocabulary assignments and quizzes with ease, essentially guaranteeing him a C in the course if he completes nothing more than the vocab each week (a flaw in my mentor teacher's system, i'm well-aware). his skills allow him to neglect more meaningful learning, but my mentor teacher has no leverage to keep his efforts towards the rest of class in check. if our goal as educators is both to help students master material and to hold "high standards" (as we talked about at length in field instruction some months ago) for these young people to inspire their greatness, then meeting struggling students halfway and asking more skilled students to meet us in the middle seems like a plausible means of reaching that objective.