Grades are a farce

[Anonymous]

MS.

In one class, 30% of the whole Tasks and Assessment grade for the quarter is a poster project about the topic they are studying this month. Less than 10 sentences, plus clip art pictures.
One third of that project (10% of the whole quarter) grade is for the aesthetics of the pictures and fonts.

There's even a penalty point in the rubric for including too much information.

This the teacher trying to give away points to get kid's grades up right?

Nope! The average grade for the whole class is 70%, and most of the points being taken off are for these visual features.

Is this a way for the teacher to manipulate grades for favored/disfavored students?

[Anonymous]

Sounds like you’re mad about your kid’s grade in the class. I imagine you’ve engaged admin about your concerns regarding this teacher. What have they said?

[Anonymous]

How do you know the average grade for the entire class? Only the teacher should know that.

[Anonymous]

OP, most of MS is a joke academically speaking.

It gets better in HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do you know the average grade for the entire class? Only the teacher should know that.

Depending on how the teacher has canvass set up, you can sometimes see the class average by clicking a button. During the pandemic this was true for most assignments but less common now. I wish you could still see it because when my kid bombs a test it is somewhat helpful to know if the whole class struggled with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you know the average grade for the entire class? Only the teacher should know that.

Depending on how the teacher has canvass set up, you can sometimes see the class average by clicking a button. During the pandemic this was true for most assignments but less common now. I wish you could still see it because when my kid bombs a test it is somewhat helpful to know if the whole class struggled with it.

That’s been automatically turned off.

[Anonymous]

Grade inflation is real. So, at my kid’s W school, it basically depends on the teacher you get. Some are easy graders, some are not. Some pass out As for showing up, some are really good teachers and really care to teach the subject and kids hate it because they want the easy A. So, if you get lucky or complain and get the right teachers, you can end up with a 4.0 or greater, no sweat. But this does not meant you will get a 4 or R on the AP exams.

[Anonymous]

^4 or 5

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you know the average grade for the entire class? Only the teacher should know that.

Depending on how the teacher has canvass set up, you can sometimes see the class average by clicking a button. During the pandemic this was true for most assignments but less common now. I wish you could still see it because when my kid bombs a test it is somewhat helpful to know if the whole class struggled with it.

That’s been automatically turned off.

ParentVue shows min, max, and mean.

The means are hard to interpret because the mean includes all the "50%" from kids who didn't hand in anything.

[Anonymous]

A Spanish teacher in my second child's 7th grade was like this. She graded for rapidity of execution, coloring, cutting up little pieces of paper to make a booklet...not the actual words in it!

My first child has dysgraphia and low processing speed. He's very bad with fine motor skills, scissors, etc. But he's very cerebral. If he had had this teacher, I would have complained to the Principal. He would have committed a list of words to memory no problem, but had a terrible grade with this assignment!

Like PP said, it gets better in high school, academically speaking - my first child did very well in high school! Conversely, some kids are surprised at the transition, because their good MS grades weren't actually about their study and academic skills...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grade inflation is real. So, at my kid’s W school, it basically depends on the teacher you get. Some are easy graders, some are not. Some pass out As for showing up, some are really good teachers and really care to teach the subject and kids hate it because they want the easy A. So, if you get lucky or complain and get the right teachers, you can end up with a 4.0 or greater, no sweat. But this does not meant you will get a 4 or R on the AP exams.

That’s not grade inflation and that’s normal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you know the average grade for the entire class? Only the teacher should know that.

Depending on how the teacher has canvass set up, you can sometimes see the class average by clicking a button. During the pandemic this was true for most assignments but less common now. I wish you could still see it because when my kid bombs a test it is somewhat helpful to know if the whole class struggled with it.

That’s been automatically turned off.

Works for me but it's not always easy to find.

[Anonymous]

Yeah having zero standards and rigor is normal in education. Let me rephrase that. It's normal for babysitters who don't intend to teach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you know the average grade for the entire class? Only the teacher should know that.

Depending on how the teacher has canvass set up, you can sometimes see the class average by clicking a button. During the pandemic this was true for most assignments but less common now. I wish you could still see it because when my kid bombs a test it is somewhat helpful to know if the whole class struggled with it.

That’s been automatically turned off.

Works for me but it's not always easy to find.

If you are using MyMCPS it’s not always accurate. Not all assignments are in there. ParentVue I don’t know about because I only concern myself with my kid and not the whole class.