More skills based grading at madison hs

[Anonymous]

The grades at Madison also don't use a 100 scale. Sometimes they are out of 4 and only an integer between 0 and 4 is used for grading or sometimes its out of one and the grades are 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was talk this week that Madison might be considering grading all assignments again at least to some low stakes level and just having exit tickets and some in class practice not count towards grading. That would be a step in the right direction and help keep better connection and purpose for all assignments and assessments. I'm pleased at least this change might be happening. There was also talk about making the rubrics for the assignment and assessment grading and feedback more visible to the students and parents pre and post assessment. It's still a lot of unnecessary grading work on assessments to me and I still don't agree with the grade revisions over retakes, but if the staff think it will better streamline how their standards are measured in assessments, I guess it will have some benefit for teachers to make sure all standards are covered.

Sorry I don’t understand this - are the PTA notes posted? What I’d like the school admin to see is how my child received “A”s on practices that the teachers don’t bother to actually grade and then much lower grade on the assessments. So my child is thinking that they know the material when in fact they don’t - the teacher just entered a default A because the practice is not for grading. What a mess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was talk this week that Madison might be considering grading all assignments again at least to some low stakes level and just having exit tickets and some in class practice not count towards grading. That would be a step in the right direction and help keep better connection and purpose for all assignments and assessments. I'm pleased at least this change might be happening. There was also talk about making the rubrics for the assignment and assessment grading and feedback more visible to the students and parents pre and post assessment. It's still a lot of unnecessary grading work on assessments to me and I still don't agree with the grade revisions over retakes, but if the staff think it will better streamline how their standards are measured in assessments, I guess it will have some benefit for teachers to make sure all standards are covered.

Sorry I don’t understand this - are the PTA notes posted? What I’d like the school admin to see is how my child received “A”s on practices that the teachers don’t bother to actually grade and then much lower grade on the assessments. So my child is thinking that they know the material when in fact they don’t - the teacher just entered a default A because the practice is not for grading. What a mess.

I obviously know nothing about your child or how their teachers operate, but this happens a lot in my classroom—especially with lower level classes.

Most of my assignments are self checking. The math problems loop through each other to form a circuit, the graphed functions overlap the problem numbers, the answer to the equations matches an answer bank that solves the riddle, or even just good old fashioned “here are the answers, check your work.” Between answer banks and friends and photomath, just about every single classwork assignment I get is correct. But I have no idea why it’s correct—is it because the student knew what they were doing? Or because their seat mate walked them through it? Or because they took it home and googled and then copied the answers? I grade those assignments to guilt kids into doing them, but they are worth 1 point each while assessments are 100 points (so it ends up with their final grade being ~95% assessments).

Parents get mad that their kid has an A in homework but an F on the test and why can’t their homework be worth more but it just can’t. It’s not an accurate reflection of what the kid knows. It’s fluff points. The only thing that has a major impact on grades in my room are independent assignments done without access to phone/computer/friends, within the walls of my classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was talk this week that Madison might be considering grading all assignments again at least to some low stakes level and just having exit tickets and some in class practice not count towards grading. That would be a step in the right direction and help keep better connection and purpose for all assignments and assessments. I'm pleased at least this change might be happening. There was also talk about making the rubrics for the assignment and assessment grading and feedback more visible to the students and parents pre and post assessment. It's still a lot of unnecessary grading work on assessments to me and I still don't agree with the grade revisions over retakes, but if the staff think it will better streamline how their standards are measured in assessments, I guess it will have some benefit for teachers to make sure all standards are covered.

Sorry I don’t understand this - are the PTA notes posted? What I’d like the school admin to see is how my child received “A”s on practices that the teachers don’t bother to actually grade and then much lower grade on the assessments. So my child is thinking that they know the material when in fact they don’t - the teacher just entered a default A because the practice is not for grading. What a mess.

I obviously know nothing about your child or how their teachers operate, but this happens a lot in my classroom—especially with lower level classes.

Most of my assignments are self checking. The math problems loop through each other to form a circuit, the graphed functions overlap the problem numbers, the answer to the equations matches an answer bank that solves the riddle, or even just good old fashioned “here are the answers, check your work.” Between answer banks and friends and photomath, just about every single classwork assignment I get is correct. But I have no idea why it’s correct—is it because the student knew what they were doing? Or because their seat mate walked them through it? Or because they took it home and googled and then copied the answers? I grade those assignments to guilt kids into doing them, but they are worth 1 point each while assessments are 100 points (so it ends up with their final grade being ~95% assessments).

Parents get mad that their kid has an A in homework but an F on the test and why can’t their homework be worth more but it just can’t. It’s not an accurate reflection of what the kid knows. It’s fluff points. The only thing that has a major impact on grades in my room are independent assignments done without access to phone/computer/friends, within the walls of my classroom.

This isn’t madison. No fluff grades. Classwork in the confines of a classroom counts for nothing. At jmhs, classwork, homework, could look like a grade in SIS, but in a few weeks they all come out as they are not for grading. That’s different from your class and that is one complaint. Your students who have a 92% from tests end up with a 97% with the extra graded assignments, for an A. Jmhs students do not get this. This trickles all the way down until we get to the kids who were getting Fs and ds and now those grades boost up a smidge because assignments they got zeros on for not doing them, disappear. Hence, grades are smushed in the middle, the top kids are hurt, and the bottom are hurt. Admin can claim it’s a success because there are less Fs. How great is this!?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was talk this week that Madison might be considering grading all assignments again at least to some low stakes level and just having exit tickets and some in class practice not count towards grading. That would be a step in the right direction and help keep better connection and purpose for all assignments and assessments. I'm pleased at least this change might be happening. There was also talk about making the rubrics for the assignment and assessment grading and feedback more visible to the students and parents pre and post assessment. It's still a lot of unnecessary grading work on assessments to me and I still don't agree with the grade revisions over retakes, but if the staff think it will better streamline how their standards are measured in assessments, I guess it will have some benefit for teachers to make sure all standards are covered.

Sorry I don’t understand this - are the PTA notes posted? What I’d like the school admin to see is how my child received “A”s on practices that the teachers don’t bother to actually grade and then much lower grade on the assessments. So my child is thinking that they know the material when in fact they don’t - the teacher just entered a default A because the practice is not for grading. What a mess.

I obviously know nothing about your child or how their teachers operate, but this happens a lot in my classroom—especially with lower level classes.

Most of my assignments are self checking. The math problems loop through each other to form a circuit, the graphed functions overlap the problem numbers, the answer to the equations matches an answer bank that solves the riddle, or even just good old fashioned “here are the answers, check your work.” Between answer banks and friends and photomath, just about every single classwork assignment I get is correct. But I have no idea why it’s correct—is it because the student knew what they were doing? Or because their seat mate walked them through it? Or because they took it home and googled and then copied the answers? I grade those assignments to guilt kids into doing them, but they are worth 1 point each while assessments are 100 points (so it ends up with their final grade being ~95% assessments).

Parents get mad that their kid has an A in homework but an F on the test and why can’t their homework be worth more but it just can’t. It’s not an accurate reflection of what the kid knows. It’s fluff points. The only thing that has a major impact on grades in my room are independent assignments done without access to phone/computer/friends, within the walls of my classroom.

This isn’t madison. No fluff grades. Classwork in the confines of a classroom counts for nothing. At jmhs, classwork, homework, could look like a grade in SIS, but in a few weeks they all come out as they are not for grading. That’s different from your class and that is one complaint. Your students who have a 92% from tests end up with a 97% with the extra graded assignments, for an A. Jmhs students do not get this. This trickles all the way down until we get to the kids who were getting Fs and ds and now those grades boost up a smidge because assignments they got zeros on for not doing them, disappear. Hence, grades are smushed in the middle, the top kids are hurt, and the bottom are hurt. Admin can claim it’s a success because there are less Fs. How great is this!?

Agree. At Madison, this is not just in the lower level classes. This is in honors and AP classes. It is not unusual to have grades go from A to D then back up to a B then swing back to a C or D as “practices” cycle in and out of SIS. It is ridiculous to expect 14 year olds to keep up with this when most of the parents and teachers are confused.

[Anonymous]

I just don't understand why schools create problems that didn't exist before. No one was complaining about standards not being met in classes or kids not passing SOLs in any large measure so there was no need to over focus on making sure standards were taught and assessed. The class content and grading just wasn't an issue before. This new grading program is trying to solve a problem that didn't exist and doing it poorly too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just don't understand why schools create problems that didn't exist before. No one was complaining about standards not being met in classes or kids not passing SOLs in any large measure so there was no need to over focus on making sure standards were taught and assessed. The class content and grading just wasn't an issue before. This new grading program is trying to solve a problem that didn't exist and doing it poorly too.

+1

No one talked about the grading system before this change, and under the old system there wasn’t a need to change it every year to try to make it work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was talk this week that Madison might be considering grading all assignments again at least to some low stakes level and just having exit tickets and some in class practice not count towards grading. That would be a step in the right direction and help keep better connection and purpose for all assignments and assessments. I'm pleased at least this change might be happening. There was also talk about making the rubrics for the assignment and assessment grading and feedback more visible to the students and parents pre and post assessment. It's still a lot of unnecessary grading work on assessments to me and I still don't agree with the grade revisions over retakes, but if the staff think it will better streamline how their standards are measured in assessments, I guess it will have some benefit for teachers to make sure all standards are covered.

Sorry I don’t understand this - are the PTA notes posted? What I’d like the school admin to see is how my child received “A”s on practices that the teachers don’t bother to actually grade and then much lower grade on the assessments. So my child is thinking that they know the material when in fact they don’t - the teacher just entered a default A because the practice is not for grading. What a mess.

I obviously know nothing about your child or how their teachers operate, but this happens a lot in my classroom—especially with lower level classes.

Most of my assignments are self checking. The math problems loop through each other to form a circuit, the graphed functions overlap the problem numbers, the answer to the equations matches an answer bank that solves the riddle, or even just good old fashioned “here are the answers, check your work.” Between answer banks and friends and photomath, just about every single classwork assignment I get is correct. But I have no idea why it’s correct—is it because the student knew what they were doing? Or because their seat mate walked them through it? Or because they took it home and googled and then copied the answers? I grade those assignments to guilt kids into doing them, but they are worth 1 point each while assessments are 100 points (so it ends up with their final grade being ~95% assessments).

Parents get mad that their kid has an A in homework but an F on the test and why can’t their homework be worth more but it just can’t. It’s not an accurate reflection of what the kid knows. It’s fluff points. The only thing that has a major impact on grades in my room are independent assignments done without access to phone/computer/friends, within the walls of my classroom.

This isn’t madison. No fluff grades. Classwork in the confines of a classroom counts for nothing. At jmhs, classwork, homework, could look like a grade in SIS, but in a few weeks they all come out as they are not for grading. That’s different from your class and that is one complaint. Your students who have a 92% from tests end up with a 97% with the extra graded assignments, for an A. Jmhs students do not get this. This trickles all the way down until we get to the kids who were getting Fs and ds and now those grades boost up a smidge because assignments they got zeros on for not doing them, disappear. Hence, grades are smushed in the middle, the top kids are hurt, and the bottom are hurt. Admin can claim it’s a success because there are less Fs. How great is this!?

Agree. At Madison, this is not just in the lower level classes. This is in honors and AP classes. It is not unusual to have grades go from A to D then back up to a B then swing back to a C or D as “practices” cycle in and out of SIS. It is ridiculous to expect 14 year olds to keep up with this when most of the parents and teachers are confused.

This is why I have stopped even looking at SIS. It’s meaningless. Some teachers include practice until the end of the unit, others don’t. The grade book is a roller coaster. My DC even has one teacher including good practice grades and temporarily removing assessments with low class averages so senior mid year reports are higher (yes, she has directly stated this in class). She’ll return things to “normal” in 3rd quarter, which is probably going to be a big shock for some students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was talk this week that Madison might be considering grading all assignments again at least to some low stakes level and just having exit tickets and some in class practice not count towards grading. That would be a step in the right direction and help keep better connection and purpose for all assignments and assessments. I'm pleased at least this change might be happening. There was also talk about making the rubrics for the assignment and assessment grading and feedback more visible to the students and parents pre and post assessment. It's still a lot of unnecessary grading work on assessments to me and I still don't agree with the grade revisions over retakes, but if the staff think it will better streamline how their standards are measured in assessments, I guess it will have some benefit for teachers to make sure all standards are covered.

Sorry I don’t understand this - are the PTA notes posted? What I’d like the school admin to see is how my child received “A”s on practices that the teachers don’t bother to actually grade and then much lower grade on the assessments. So my child is thinking that they know the material when in fact they don’t - the teacher just entered a default A because the practice is not for grading. What a mess.

I obviously know nothing about your child or how their teachers operate, but this happens a lot in my classroom—especially with lower level classes.

Most of my assignments are self checking. The math problems loop through each other to form a circuit, the graphed functions overlap the problem numbers, the answer to the equations matches an answer bank that solves the riddle, or even just good old fashioned “here are the answers, check your work.” Between answer banks and friends and photomath, just about every single classwork assignment I get is correct. But I have no idea why it’s correct—is it because the student knew what they were doing? Or because their seat mate walked them through it? Or because they took it home and googled and then copied the answers? I grade those assignments to guilt kids into doing them, but they are worth 1 point each while assessments are 100 points (so it ends up with their final grade being ~95% assessments).

Parents get mad that their kid has an A in homework but an F on the test and why can’t their homework be worth more but it just can’t. It’s not an accurate reflection of what the kid knows. It’s fluff points. The only thing that has a major impact on grades in my room are independent assignments done without access to phone/computer/friends, within the walls of my classroom.

This isn’t madison. No fluff grades. Classwork in the confines of a classroom counts for nothing. At jmhs, classwork, homework, could look like a grade in SIS, but in a few weeks they all come out as they are not for grading. That’s different from your class and that is one complaint. Your students who have a 92% from tests end up with a 97% with the extra graded assignments, for an A. Jmhs students do not get this. This trickles all the way down until we get to the kids who were getting Fs and ds and now those grades boost up a smidge because assignments they got zeros on for not doing them, disappear. Hence, grades are smushed in the middle, the top kids are hurt, and the bottom are hurt. Admin can claim it’s a success because there are less Fs. How great is this!?

Agree. At Madison, this is not just in the lower level classes. This is in honors and AP classes. It is not unusual to have grades go from A to D then back up to a B then swing back to a C or D as “practices” cycle in and out of SIS. It is ridiculous to expect 14 year olds to keep up with this when most of the parents and teachers are confused.

This is why I have stopped even looking at SIS. It’s meaningless. Some teachers include practice until the end of the unit, others don’t. The grade book is a roller coaster. My DC even has one teacher including good practice grades and temporarily removing assessments with low class averages so senior mid year reports are higher (yes, she has directly stated this in class). She’ll return things to “normal” in 3rd quarter, which is probably going to be a big shock for some students.

I love this teacher. This is a very kind thing to do to help out the seniors who have had to put up with this for a few years now. I wish more teachers would work around the system like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was talk this week that Madison might be considering grading all assignments again at least to some low stakes level and just having exit tickets and some in class practice not count towards grading. That would be a step in the right direction and help keep better connection and purpose for all assignments and assessments. I'm pleased at least this change might be happening. There was also talk about making the rubrics for the assignment and assessment grading and feedback more visible to the students and parents pre and post assessment. It's still a lot of unnecessary grading work on assessments to me and I still don't agree with the grade revisions over retakes, but if the staff think it will better streamline how their standards are measured in assessments, I guess it will have some benefit for teachers to make sure all standards are covered.

Sorry I don’t understand this - are the PTA notes posted? What I’d like the school admin to see is how my child received “A”s on practices that the teachers don’t bother to actually grade and then much lower grade on the assessments. So my child is thinking that they know the material when in fact they don’t - the teacher just entered a default A because the practice is not for grading. What a mess.

I obviously know nothing about your child or how their teachers operate, but this happens a lot in my classroom—especially with lower level classes.

Most of my assignments are self checking. The math problems loop through each other to form a circuit, the graphed functions overlap the problem numbers, the answer to the equations matches an answer bank that solves the riddle, or even just good old fashioned “here are the answers, check your work.” Between answer banks and friends and photomath, just about every single classwork assignment I get is correct. But I have no idea why it’s correct—is it because the student knew what they were doing? Or because their seat mate walked them through it? Or because they took it home and googled and then copied the answers? I grade those assignments to guilt kids into doing them, but they are worth 1 point each while assessments are 100 points (so it ends up with their final grade being ~95% assessments).

Parents get mad that their kid has an A in homework but an F on the test and why can’t their homework be worth more but it just can’t. It’s not an accurate reflection of what the kid knows. It’s fluff points. The only thing that has a major impact on grades in my room are independent assignments done without access to phone/computer/friends, within the walls of my classroom.

This isn’t madison. No fluff grades. Classwork in the confines of a classroom counts for nothing. At jmhs, classwork, homework, could look like a grade in SIS, but in a few weeks they all come out as they are not for grading. That’s different from your class and that is one complaint. Your students who have a 92% from tests end up with a 97% with the extra graded assignments, for an A. Jmhs students do not get this. This trickles all the way down until we get to the kids who were getting Fs and ds and now those grades boost up a smidge because assignments they got zeros on for not doing them, disappear. Hence, grades are smushed in the middle, the top kids are hurt, and the bottom are hurt. Admin can claim it’s a success because there are less Fs. How great is this!?

Agree. At Madison, this is not just in the lower level classes. This is in honors and AP classes. It is not unusual to have grades go from A to D then back up to a B then swing back to a C or D as “practices” cycle in and out of SIS. It is ridiculous to expect 14 year olds to keep up with this when most of the parents and teachers are confused.

This is why I have stopped even looking at SIS. It’s meaningless. Some teachers include practice until the end of the unit, others don’t. The grade book is a roller coaster. My DC even has one teacher including good practice grades and temporarily removing assessments with low class averages so senior mid year reports are higher (yes, she has directly stated this in class). She’ll return things to “normal” in 3rd quarter, which is probably going to be a big shock for some students.

I love this teacher. This is a very kind thing to do to help out the seniors who have had to put up with this for a few years now. I wish more teachers would work around the system like this.

Sure, it’s nice in theory. In reality, that’s a whole lot of kids (this teacher has at least three sections of this course) who have no idea what their actual grade is. And a lot of them aren’t seniors so they’re not getting any benefit from being in the dark until late January/early February. In fact, for juniors it’s the opposite of helpful for them to have an inaccurate, possibly inflated, picture of their performance for half the year.

[Anonymous]

This concept of SBG is very frustrating. What I am understanding is that parents and teachers had no choice because it was forced upon everyone. Now, there are many talks and meetings from Madison on how great it is but no one at Madison is acknowledging the downsides unless you are a parent or student. Teachers might anonymously. We are trying to keep an open mind since my DC is new to Madison but so far it’s awful. Their grades are great but they don’t do homework, aren’t motivated to even consider it. They are constantly stressed guessing what their grade will be among different teachers. Ok, first quarter went well for them, but they now worry about how that might change along the year as they continue to try and figure out grading with their different teachers. At this point, for everyone that dislikes SBG, what are our options? We can’t transfer schools. Homeschool isn’t an option. Are more people for or against SBG at Madison? My feeling is more against but what can be done to go back to the traditional grading system at this point? Is the principal the decision maker that we need to show only the few appreciate this system? What steps do we need to complete to accomplish this? Or am I wrong and do most people like this direction of SBG and it’s faults are being worked out on the Madison kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was talk this week that Madison might be considering grading all assignments again at least to some low stakes level and just having exit tickets and some in class practice not count towards grading. That would be a step in the right direction and help keep better connection and purpose for all assignments and assessments. I'm pleased at least this change might be happening. There was also talk about making the rubrics for the assignment and assessment grading and feedback more visible to the students and parents pre and post assessment. It's still a lot of unnecessary grading work on assessments to me and I still don't agree with the grade revisions over retakes, but if the staff think it will better streamline how their standards are measured in assessments, I guess it will have some benefit for teachers to make sure all standards are covered.

Sorry I don’t understand this - are the PTA notes posted? What I’d like the school admin to see is how my child received “A”s on practices that the teachers don’t bother to actually grade and then much lower grade on the assessments. So my child is thinking that they know the material when in fact they don’t - the teacher just entered a default A because the practice is not for grading. What a mess.

I obviously know nothing about your child or how their teachers operate, but this happens a lot in my classroom—especially with lower level classes.

Most of my assignments are self checking. The math problems loop through each other to form a circuit, the graphed functions overlap the problem numbers, the answer to the equations matches an answer bank that solves the riddle, or even just good old fashioned “here are the answers, check your work.” Between answer banks and friends and photomath, just about every single classwork assignment I get is correct. But I have no idea why it’s correct—is it because the student knew what they were doing? Or because their seat mate walked them through it? Or because they took it home and googled and then copied the answers? I grade those assignments to guilt kids into doing them, but they are worth 1 point each while assessments are 100 points (so it ends up with their final grade being ~95% assessments).

Parents get mad that their kid has an A in homework but an F on the test and why can’t their homework be worth more but it just can’t. It’s not an accurate reflection of what the kid knows. It’s fluff points. The only thing that has a major impact on grades in my room are independent assignments done without access to phone/computer/friends, within the walls of my classroom.

This to me is the heart of parent's complaints...they can't game their kids' grades anymore and they are realizing their kids are not learning the material and aren't the geniuses they thought they were.

SO they whine about what other schools are doing and how it just isn't fair and blah blah blah while ignoring the heart of the issue.

[Anonymous]

^ While at the same time complaining about grade inflation making their kid seem less competitive. So gross. They don't care about learning...only grade grubbing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ While at the same time complaining about grade inflation making their kid seem less competitive. So gross. They don't care about learning...only grade grubbing.

Yeah and previously, kids and families that didn't do any schoolwork or homework were upset they were getting failing grades and poor grades. They didn't care about learning... only whether they received a grade less than others who worked harder. Disgusting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ While at the same time complaining about grade inflation making their kid seem less competitive. So gross. They don't care about learning...only grade grubbing.

Yeah and previously, kids and families that didn't do any schoolwork or homework were upset they were getting failing grades and poor grades. They didn't care about learning... only whether they received a grade less than others who worked harder. Disgusting.

This grading program does nothing to help kids learn. It's obvious it does not help with grades or with learning. I don't know what you are smoking.