Why are kids mad about the new grading?

[Anonymous]

The biggest changes are the 5 day cut off at the end of the marking period and the requirement that work show progress on the standards to fall under the 50% rule.

Most A and B students will not struggle to meet those criteria. The students who slack because a C or D cobbled together at the last minute is acceptable will struggle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Students don't like it because they will never have breathing room. There's never a time until maybe the last couple of weeks of the semester where they think they can let up on the gas.

This is particularly pronounced when kids have a bunch of different tough classes in quarters 1 and 3 and and they'd like to let up the gas on one to focus on another course. But if they do that, they could potentially lower their percentage score on the course they let up on, and it could now come back to haunt them in the semester grade.

Also, the issue isn't so much in the reality of how many times this will actually lead to a lower semester grade. It's in the anxiety that such a thing COULD happen, so they can never let up on any course until the see the light of the end of the semester on the horizon.

Whether you interpret this as a good thing (it keeps kids on task all semester) or a bad thing (it keeps kids stressed and overdoing it out of fear of next quarter's grading) is a matter of perspective.

Right, I tried to make a similar point earlier, but didn’t explain it as well as you. It would be great if there would be fewer assessments during the semester, because adding on more things may be too much. I don't have a problem with summative assessments or averaging MP letter grades (especially with the first, the second, ehh, I don’t know that it's really necessary), but I do have an issue with kids always needing to be "on."

Yes, agreed. Plus the teachers have traditionally upped the A/T assignments at interim and near the end of the Q. Having assessments in every subject on the same day/week obviously causes extra stress, harder to study for back-to-back-to-back tests (and faculty aren't particularly sympathetic, when IMO they should be) The end of the Q assessments have not been graded until after the Q is closed - obviously a problem for any type of "bombed it" situation and kids can be so stressed.