We’ve had 13 days of school. How’s the new grading policy going?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a professor and I've also taught at the high school level.

Ten day turnaround is entirely reasonable. You have to grade them at some point. Why not grade them in a timely fashion so that the student can benefit from the feedback?

Can you recommend a way to do that?

Let’s say you have 150 essays. Each will take 15 minutes to score. That’s 37.5 sustained hours of grading for that assignment alone.

If you divide the work by 10 days, including weekends, you are adding 3.75 hours of work to each day. If you give yourself the weekend off, you’re adding 4.7 hours of work to each work day.

You have one planning period. Maybe you can get 40 minutes of grading in.

And that’s just for that one assignment. That doesn’t include emails, data, meetings, planning lessons, meeting with students, running clubs, other assignments, or other duties as assigned.

So, considering the circumstances, can you offer a recommendation? How did you get this done in 10 days?

Well said.

So, ah, do you guys just NOT GRADE THE PAPERS AT ALL?

You have to grade the papers at some point. It's not like waiting helps!

Explain how letting the work get backed up helps. When DO you grade it? It's not like they give you guys weeks off to grade.

Well, I’ll be honest: most of us think it’s unreasonable to give up all of our off-hours to a job. We have families and other obligations.

If schools think grading is important (which it is), then time would be provided during the work week for it. If I have to choose between grading papers and taking care of my family, my family will always win. And that’s as it should be.

I would NEVER tell a person in another profession that their nights and weekends belong to me, that I expect them to put their job first. I would tell them to get another job, one that respects them.

And for all the “MCPS is full” comments: schools are scrambling to find martyrs now, and the door is ever-revolving as people try for a year and realize the job can be miserable. If your goal is just putting a warm body in each classroom, that can be done. If your goal is to put a successful, impactful teacher in each classroom, that can’t.

Then, find a different way to assign work so you can more easily grade it or find a new job given you are unhappy. Most jobs require weekends and evenings now. It sucks but its how it is.

What other jobs require almost 24/7 effort from an employee to complete tasks? Is this something you are going to roll over and accept? This is why unions were created. Let’s not revisit history please.

Are you kidding that you don't know? Unions are useless.

Districts with unions tend to have the highest salaries and best benefits so they attract the best teachers. I remember reading about a ton of teachers leaving one district and going over the state line to another district with a great union. The pay was significantly higher and that meant the schools could actually interview multiple candidates for each position.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a professor and I've also taught at the high school level.

Ten day turnaround is entirely reasonable. You have to grade them at some point. Why not grade them in a timely fashion so that the student can benefit from the feedback?

Can you recommend a way to do that?

Let’s say you have 150 essays. Each will take 15 minutes to score. That’s 37.5 sustained hours of grading for that assignment alone.

If you divide the work by 10 days, including weekends, you are adding 3.75 hours of work to each day. If you give yourself the weekend off, you’re adding 4.7 hours of work to each work day.

You have one planning period. Maybe you can get 40 minutes of grading in.

And that’s just for that one assignment. That doesn’t include emails, data, meetings, planning lessons, meeting with students, running clubs, other assignments, or other duties as assigned.

So, considering the circumstances, can you offer a recommendation? How did you get this done in 10 days?

Well said.

So, ah, do you guys just NOT GRADE THE PAPERS AT ALL?

You have to grade the papers at some point. It's not like waiting helps!

Explain how letting the work get backed up helps. When DO you grade it? It's not like they give you guys weeks off to grade.

Well, I’ll be honest: most of us think it’s unreasonable to give up all of our off-hours to a job. We have families and other obligations.

If schools think grading is important (which it is), then time would be provided during the work week for it. If I have to choose between grading papers and taking care of my family, my family will always win. And that’s as it should be.

I would NEVER tell a person in another profession that their nights and weekends belong to me, that I expect them to put their job first. I would tell them to get another job, one that respects them.

And for all the “MCPS is full” comments: schools are scrambling to find martyrs now, and the door is ever-revolving as people try for a year and realize the job can be miserable. If your goal is just putting a warm body in each classroom, that can be done. If your goal is to put a successful, impactful teacher in each classroom, that can’t.

Then, find a different way to assign work so you can more easily grade it or find a new job given you are unhappy. Most jobs require weekends and evenings now. It sucks but its how it is.

What other jobs require almost 24/7 effort from an employee to complete tasks? Is this something you are going to roll over and accept? This is why unions were created. Let’s not revisit history please.

Are you kidding that you don't know? Unions are useless.

Districts with unions tend to have the highest salaries and best benefits so they attract the best teachers. I remember reading about a ton of teachers leaving one district and going over the state line to another district with a great union. The pay was significantly higher and that meant the schools could actually interview multiple candidates for each position.

Outside DC, MCPS is one of the highest paid. New article came out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a professor and I've also taught at the high school level.

Ten day turnaround is entirely reasonable. You have to grade them at some point. Why not grade them in a timely fashion so that the student can benefit from the feedback?

Can you recommend a way to do that?

Let’s say you have 150 essays. Each will take 15 minutes to score. That’s 37.5 sustained hours of grading for that assignment alone.

If you divide the work by 10 days, including weekends, you are adding 3.75 hours of work to each day. If you give yourself the weekend off, you’re adding 4.7 hours of work to each work day.

You have one planning period. Maybe you can get 40 minutes of grading in.

And that’s just for that one assignment. That doesn’t include emails, data, meetings, planning lessons, meeting with students, running clubs, other assignments, or other duties as assigned.

So, considering the circumstances, can you offer a recommendation? How did you get this done in 10 days?

Well said.

So, ah, do you guys just NOT GRADE THE PAPERS AT ALL?

You have to grade the papers at some point. It's not like waiting helps!

Explain how letting the work get backed up helps. When DO you grade it? It's not like they give you guys weeks off to grade.

Well, I’ll be honest: most of us think it’s unreasonable to give up all of our off-hours to a job. We have families and other obligations.

If schools think grading is important (which it is), then time would be provided during the work week for it. If I have to choose between grading papers and taking care of my family, my family will always win. And that’s as it should be.

I would NEVER tell a person in another profession that their nights and weekends belong to me, that I expect them to put their job first. I would tell them to get another job, one that respects them.

And for all the “MCPS is full” comments: schools are scrambling to find martyrs now, and the door is ever-revolving as people try for a year and realize the job can be miserable. If your goal is just putting a warm body in each classroom, that can be done. If your goal is to put a successful, impactful teacher in each classroom, that can’t.

Then, find a different way to assign work so you can more easily grade it or find a new job given you are unhappy. Most jobs require weekends and evenings now. It sucks but its how it is.

What other jobs require almost 24/7 effort from an employee to complete tasks? Is this something you are going to roll over and accept? This is why unions were created. Let’s not revisit history please.

Many service professions such as trades and public safety require employees to be on call essentially 24/7 during assigned blocks. Before I became a teacher, I spent 2 years working as a plumber and I cannot tell you the number of personal plans I had to cancel and/or avoid scheduling in the first place to make this happen.

When fellow teachers claim that nobody else has to give up their personal and family lives to do the job it immediately points out how sheltered that individual really is.

But teachers AREN’T saying that other professions have easy work weeks. They ARE saying teachers’ off hours are a factor when discussing timely grading. I’ve been following this thread closely. Two posts have claimed that teachers said they work harder, but I haven’t seen a teacher actually say that.

My DH is in public safety. Yes, he works overtime. It’s almost always by choice and he gets paid time and a half. My cousin works in an on-call trade. Yes, he misses out on occasional family activities, but he gets paid for that work.

So while I respect your argument that other professions work off hours, I’m not sure your two examples are good ones if you are attempting to illustrate regular, unpaid, evening work.

Then, don't assign work. Simple. Why assign work if you will not grade it?

Sigh. Nobody is saying they won’t grade work. Let’s stop making things up. That isn’t productive or useful.

Teachers are simply saying that grading has to be done during their evenings or weekends. There’s no time during their work day to grade, so schools are relying on teachers giving up their private time to get a mandatory part of their jobs done. Let me say that again: It is mandatory, yet very little (if any) paid work hours are devoted to it. The system relies on unpaid work, forcing teachers to decide between their families and stacks of papers.

Teachers are merely presenting the problem. Some of us are solving it by quitting in an effort to preserve our own families and other obligations. Some of us are solving it by refusing to do the extras tacked on to our days, like college recommendation letters. NOBODY is saying they are refusing to grade.

We had a teacher last year simply not grade. The principal didn't seem to care. She would have bene my child's teacher again this year and she was such a nightmare we refused the class despite the guidance counselor pushing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I put aside 30 minutes each night to grade assignments as they are submitted. I know that means I'm "working for free" but it helps me keep things at a manageable level so I can get everything done in compliance with the new grading policy.

What subject and grade level?

I would be thrilled if it was just 30 min a night for seven nights.

It usually 2.5 to 3 hours a night for 4-5 nights to grade a single secondary writing assignment with comments.

Hon. English 9.

I'm sure the grading responsibility will increase as the year progresses but so far through 3 weeks we have not done any large scale assignments. Each one takes 2-3 minutes to review and grade. When we get to larger written assignments, we have two staff members who work in the writing center who can assist with the heavy lifting of evaluating papers.

That’s great!

The grading load is why our school has difficulty keeping English teachers. It’s usually the cited reason when people quit. If we had someone to help with essay comments, we may be able to grow some veteran department members!

Our school has mostly veteran teachers. The problem with others grading is it’s very subjective. Last year a teacher helped grade and gave my kid a bad grade on a paragraph of an essay. Regular teacher graded the entire assignment and no changes made and gave a perfect score. MCPS needs consistency.

Grading IS subjective... and the teacher who gave your child a bad grade on a paragraph was probably more helpful to your child than one giving a perfect score, provided there were comments. All teachers have something different to contribute, and it sure beats a machine grading everyone's papers the same way, which leads to homogeneity in writing.

How was it helpful? There was no feedback and no way to reach out to the teacher to discuss why. I suspect why was the paragraph alone made no sense without the entire essay (the assignment was to just turn in that paragraph) and it was very technical. If the regular teacher gave it an A without any changes, then how was that C helpful when child went to the regular teacher who said it was good. The inconsistencies are a problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a professor and I've also taught at the high school level.

Ten day turnaround is entirely reasonable. You have to grade them at some point. Why not grade them in a timely fashion so that the student can benefit from the feedback?

Can you recommend a way to do that?

Let’s say you have 150 essays. Each will take 15 minutes to score. That’s 37.5 sustained hours of grading for that assignment alone.

If you divide the work by 10 days, including weekends, you are adding 3.75 hours of work to each day. If you give yourself the weekend off, you’re adding 4.7 hours of work to each work day.

You have one planning period. Maybe you can get 40 minutes of grading in.

And that’s just for that one assignment. That doesn’t include emails, data, meetings, planning lessons, meeting with students, running clubs, other assignments, or other duties as assigned.

So, considering the circumstances, can you offer a recommendation? How did you get this done in 10 days?

Well said.

So, ah, do you guys just NOT GRADE THE PAPERS AT ALL?

You have to grade the papers at some point. It's not like waiting helps!

Explain how letting the work get backed up helps. When DO you grade it? It's not like they give you guys weeks off to grade.

In the past, it might take 3 weeks to grade extended writing and I assigned either shorter work or ungraded tasks in between.
My grades meet the 10 day deadline, but here are the effects:
I hold students to the deadlines except for true emergencies.
I spend less time planning with the result that we won’t do some fun things that require a lot of set up.
I am less likely to return incomplete work for a student to finish.
I’ve stopped proactively emailing parents multiple times about missing work before the deadline passes.
I am not writing recommendations.
I do not attend IEP or 504 meetings unless a general educator is required.

Teachers never reach out with missed work. Its rare they respond to emails. None go to IEP or 504 meetings. Be real.

IEP meetings cannot occur without certain people including an administrator, a general educator, and a special educator. If a student has more than one teacher, many schools have the gen ed teachers rotate so the same one doesn't go to all of the meetings.

No, we didn't have ones at ours. It is very school specific.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I put aside 30 minutes each night to grade assignments as they are submitted. I know that means I'm "working for free" but it helps me keep things at a manageable level so I can get everything done in compliance with the new grading policy.

What subject and grade level?

I would be thrilled if it was just 30 min a night for seven nights.

It usually 2.5 to 3 hours a night for 4-5 nights to grade a single secondary writing assignment with comments.

Hon. English 9.

I'm sure the grading responsibility will increase as the year progresses but so far through 3 weeks we have not done any large scale assignments. Each one takes 2-3 minutes to review and grade. When we get to larger written assignments, we have two staff members who work in the writing center who can assist with the heavy lifting of evaluating papers.

That’s great!

The grading load is why our school has difficulty keeping English teachers. It’s usually the cited reason when people quit. If we had someone to help with essay comments, we may be able to grow some veteran department members!

Our school has mostly veteran teachers. The problem with others grading is it’s very subjective. Last year a teacher helped grade and gave my kid a bad grade on a paragraph of an essay. Regular teacher graded the entire assignment and no changes made and gave a perfect score. MCPS needs consistency.

Grading IS subjective... and the teacher who gave your child a bad grade on a paragraph was probably more helpful to your child than one giving a perfect score, provided there were comments. All teachers have something different to contribute, and it sure beats a machine grading everyone's papers the same way, which leads to homogeneity in writing.

How was it helpful? There was no feedback and no way to reach out to the teacher to discuss why. I suspect why was the paragraph alone made no sense without the entire essay (the assignment was to just turn in that paragraph) and it was very technical. If the regular teacher gave it an A without any changes, then how was that C helpful when child went to the regular teacher who said it was good. The inconsistencies are a problem.

You have just as many problems with reading then, because I wrote "provided there were comments." The subjectivity is part of writing and grading writing. It is not a problem. Just receiving an A is not an indication of excellence. It is the default grade for teachers who don't have time to grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I put aside 30 minutes each night to grade assignments as they are submitted. I know that means I'm "working for free" but it helps me keep things at a manageable level so I can get everything done in compliance with the new grading policy.

What subject and grade level?

I would be thrilled if it was just 30 min a night for seven nights.

It usually 2.5 to 3 hours a night for 4-5 nights to grade a single secondary writing assignment with comments.

Hon. English 9.

I'm sure the grading responsibility will increase as the year progresses but so far through 3 weeks we have not done any large scale assignments. Each one takes 2-3 minutes to review and grade. When we get to larger written assignments, we have two staff members who work in the writing center who can assist with the heavy lifting of evaluating papers.

That’s great!

The grading load is why our school has difficulty keeping English teachers. It’s usually the cited reason when people quit. If we had someone to help with essay comments, we may be able to grow some veteran department members!

Our school has mostly veteran teachers. The problem with others grading is it’s very subjective. Last year a teacher helped grade and gave my kid a bad grade on a paragraph of an essay. Regular teacher graded the entire assignment and no changes made and gave a perfect score. MCPS needs consistency.

Grading IS subjective... and the teacher who gave your child a bad grade on a paragraph was probably more helpful to your child than one giving a perfect score, provided there were comments. All teachers have something different to contribute, and it sure beats a machine grading everyone's papers the same way, which leads to homogeneity in writing.

How was it helpful? There was no feedback and no way to reach out to the teacher to discuss why. I suspect why was the paragraph alone made no sense without the entire essay (the assignment was to just turn in that paragraph) and it was very technical. If the regular teacher gave it an A without any changes, then how was that C helpful when child went to the regular teacher who said it was good. The inconsistencies are a problem.

The person you are responding to specified “provided there were comments”

The parents read no better than the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find that grading takes longer with the new changes. Since the grading scale changed, I grade more carefully and write comments for every point deduction because I expect that some kids/parents will try to claw back every point that they can.

I’ve taught nitpickers and the children of nitpickers for the last 13 years so I always grade carefully and write comments.

We had to redo all of our rubrics to eliminate the fluff that used to protect As and Bs. Now it’s the barebones so that it is crystal clear when a student didn’t meet the objectives.

We want feedback on what our kids did wrong and what they need to improve because we want to support them and if necessary get a tutor. A random grade is useless.

Detailed comments make grading take much longer. It is often not the best use of teacher time because most kids completely ignore the comments and never even read them. And at the HS level, how many parents are realistically going through all the graded assignments for their child and reading all the comments - almost none. Better to grade fast with minimal feedback and if kids have questions, they can directly speak with the teacher