“Equity Grading”

[Anonymous]

Lake Braddock is now touting that it’s working towards implementing “equity grading”?

Obviously that’s a buzzword that sounds anti-merit and already has dozens of parents furious. And the people at LBSS who tout this seem to be trying to sing to a choir other parents, like perhaps to the new superintendent.

But what does it really mean? Willing to listen if someone can explain what the positives are, but otherwise increasingly inclined to pull my kids out of FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Link?

[Anonymous]

Eliminating lowest grades. Make up missing work from 1st quarter. Grading on a "trend". You can't hold all kids to the same standards so you have to find ways to improve all grades.

[Anonymous]

Contact the school and listen. You give us just about nothing to go on, so you will get generic rants, which may well be what you are looking for.

[Anonymous]

It’s a specific approach that means no 0s for missing work, clear rubrics, opportunities for retakes, less emphasis on graded homework among other things. It has pros and cons. I do think that calling it “grading for equity” is a little tricky since that makes any questions about the details and their efficacy cast one as an opponent of “equitable grading” (and I’m all for actual equitable grading!) and like any pedagogical approach it’s okay to scrutinize and evaluate it. It’s a bit like calling a specific curriculum “Engaging and warm teaching approach.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Contact the school and listen. You give us just about nothing to go on, so you will get generic rants, which may well be what you are looking for.

But it’s the school that is pushing out the sound bites without explaining what it actually means. Why do they think this type of messaging will be well received? They are the ones who seem to assume we’ll all accept this is a good development.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s a specific approach that means no 0s for missing work, clear rubrics, opportunities for retakes, less emphasis on graded homework among other things. It has pros and cons. I do think that calling it “grading for equity” is a little tricky since that makes any questions about the details and their efficacy cast one as an opponent of “equitable grading” (and I’m all for actual equitable grading!) and like any pedagogical approach it’s okay to scrutinize and evaluate it. It’s a bit like calling a specific curriculum “Engaging and warm teaching approach.”

Am I wrong to think this is a lot more work for teachers?

[Anonymous]

Will there also be an official Equity Truancy Policy where at-risk students will be attendance-optional?

[Anonymous]

Well it's stupid, but how does that affect your kids specifically, OP?

There are lots of things I don't like about public school, but I'd rather stick to public and save all this money to put into retirement, college and other things, than pay what I consider to be OUTRAGEOUS money to private - that doesn't even go to teachers, but to administrators.

My kids have gone through the system, one is a junior and looking at colleges, and public schools have been good to us. Some of the equity push is downright racist to Asians, and that's not OK, but it's better to fight this from the inside.

[Anonymous]

Attendance is pretty much ignored nowadays.

[Anonymous]

Contact the youngkin snitch line

[Anonymous]

Under this plan, no school will identify or award or otherwise recognize individual academic achievements. All GPAs will be averaged but with highest and lowest scores eliminated.

There shall be no valedictorians or public identification of individual student achievement. All FCPS HS students shall start the academic year with a grace-granted weighted GPA of a 2.75 and with the rolling grade book, this GPA shall stand until and unless student meets their Individualized Metric Rubric Standard (IMRS) and submits their monthly IMRS report to their assigned administrator. Once submitted and completed with a parent and guidance counselor signature, an adjustment will be added to the 2.75. Inaction or failure to complete the IMRS shall keep the 2.75 GPA stagnant.

[Anonymous]

Tear up the FCPS HS parking lots. Build low income housing in the of these huge lots. Make all students walk or ride the bus. Not fair that UMC FCPS get to drive themselves to school while FARMS students don’t have this privilege.

[Anonymous]

Continue to lower the bar, FCPS!

[Anonymous]

An equity truancy policy would look at the circumstances of a kid's absences and not penalize the kid if he had to work, or babysit while a parent worked, or didn't have a way to get to school (for a younger kid).

An equity grading policy might recognize that some kids are getting a lot of parental (or professional) help on certain projects vs other kids who do not have access to printers or PhD parents at home. Ultimately, final grades should reflect whether kids learned the material...whether that happened on time, or more slowly over the year. The final grade should reflect what the student has achieved by the end of the class.