Well they are money making tools for people who invented them - usually people who wanted a way out of teaching.
They are incredibly easy to make mistakes with. Sometimes teachers give mass + or - points to whole classes (and to kids that aren’t there).
They are horribly time consuming and glitchy for teachers to attach detentions to.
Especially class charts. They are definitely micromanagement, for the kids and for management of teachers.
You are scrutinised and you have to add to it for every lesson (and you can’t just put positive points on).
It’s supposed to be labour saving but it makes so much extra work.
You’re supposed to say “look on class charts” to any parent who queries stuff - but who wants to have a relationship with parents like that?
Gone are the days when you could just ask a kid to stop back and have a conversation. It’s totally deskilling teachers and alienating parents.
As with all school reward systems it is at the mercy of how generous or mean the teacher is. Some can’t use it, some make lip service of using it to keep management off their back.
There’s analytics to make pie charts based on how “well” a class, year, child or student are doing but it’s horribly misleading. For instance, one negative in a given period with no positive gives a red pie, so child looks in deep trouble. It’s faffy to set the parameters and will often re-set in process.
there’s too much emphasis on crime and punishment and not enough on reward. There’s rarely enough resources to reward good kids who don’t want to go to Alton Towers any away!
Parents really should complain because this rubbish is where the money goes.