Would you support standards-based grading for all subjects in all MCPS schools?
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Anonymous
| Standards based grading could eliminate excessive homework and Zs for missing assignments. |
Anonymous
| I don’t think the homework is excessive but yes they need to get rid to the 50%. |
Anonymous
Which 50% ? The poor kids? That would make for a bette school system but those kids would just fill up the jails later |
Anonymous
Don't really see this as an issue to be concerned about. In fact, I really have to wonder about anyone who is concerned about it. |
Anonymous
| The issue is absent students or students who avoid doing work in class (but may make it up later). We are not allowed to grade behavior, which is why homework is only allowed to be 10% of the overall grade. |
Anonymous
Actual standards based grading doesn't focus on specific assignments going into the gradebook and somehow converting that to % or letter grades. We actually had standards based grading in elementary school for many years, and parents hated it. They couldn't handle knowing exactly how much smarter Larla was compared to Larlo, when the feedback they got was their student was meeting standard. Somehow parents think there is some meaningful difference between an A and a B, when the main difference between those grades in ES and MS is usually organizational and attentiveness to details. I think that any skill based subject could be a great candidate for standards based grading, especially math. Ever use KhanAcademy.org? It has great granularity about math skills, grouped into strands, and organized into courses. Each skill has multiple levels from practice to mastery. And you can see how students are doing in each skill in a couple of ways. I would love for MCPS to actually shift instruction so that kids, teachers, and parents were focused on that level of standards based progress monitoring, rather than thinking completing some homework and taking quizzes and tests that may or may not be strongly aligned to the standards is really a good measure of what students know. But the real issue is that students who only partially know a concept, then get moved to the next grade level and start out behind. Over time, they fall further and further behind because they have gaps in knowledge and don't fully grasp new content. tl;dr I would support standards based grading in ES and MS for Math and English, if we actually track the standards and not attempt to turn that into a letter grade. |
Anonymous
| I don’t think standards based grading is the nirvana some people act like it is. I have spoken with several teachers who use it and they seem to have mixed feelings about how effective it is |
Anonymous
| I'd rather we don't subject our children to more unproven experiments in education and maybe stick with proven methods like the 50% rule which is working fine. |
Anonymous
| Look how well SGB worked out in Baltimore schools |
Anonymous
| What is standards based grading and how is it different from what we currently have? |
Anonymous
Yeah. That’s my question. |
Anonymous
It is complicated to explain. You should google it. Let’s just say it is the latest fad in education |
Anonymous
I don't think it's working "fine". It's leading to grade inflation, laziness, and gaming the system. Kids are graduating without being able to read or do math at a HS level. Kids are matriculating into HS reading at an ES level. Who is exactly is that serving? |
Anonymous
You don't even know the discussion and want an opinion. It makes it a nightmare as a parent to track assignments as it makes assignments appear turned in when they are not. It has noting to do with "poor" but you'd probably consider us "poor" and your kids would never attend the schools our kids attend. Better is making sure all kids get a quality education. |
Anonymous
| MCPS needs to push kids through. There is already tons of grade inflation. The standard would have to be very low so nearly everyone would graduate. |