Blanket '2's in Language Arts

[Anonymous]

My fifth grader's report card came back and every child received all 2's in the Language Arts section. The rest of the report card is mostly 4's as usual. We just received a group email from the teacher, probably because all the parents are hitting her inbox.

The district has provided guidance on how Language Arts grades should be reported this year. Since we will be teaching and reinforcing these learning standards throughout the entire year, students are not expected to demonstrate full mastery by the end of the first quarter. As a result, all students will receive a score of "2" for this first quarter. This approach is designed to allow students to show continued growth as the year progresses.

Talk about lazy and useless grading. How is this acceptable? Any other teachers / schools doing this or is it our teacher's own misguided take on (or stupid protest of) the new Language Arts curriculum? How can giving children "bad" grades who have always been good students help them to want to learn?

Yes, I realize these elementary school number grades don't matter in the long run. But I don't think telling my child, "don't worry, grades don't matter" is a good message either.

[Anonymous]

This is one of those things I really hated (and my kids came to hate) about the standards based grading system. If this is really a district decision - which I'd question if I were you, but I don't have a kid in ELA to say - then I guess they've decided starting with 2s will make them look good?

We experienced this with teachers who just wanted to make it look like every kid was growing. They'd start the kid off with a lower grade - usually a 3 - and make sure that they got to a 4 by the end of the year. The quality of the work wouldn't change at all.

Instead of "grades don't matter" we focused on the kids doing their best on each individual assignment - not that we saw many of those - and then reinforced that the number grades were a reflection of a lot of things and not all of them were under our kids' control.

They vastly, vastly prefer getting percentage grades on everything and knowing how all those grades come together into a letter grade.

[Anonymous]

It's a long road. You will have plenty of years of middle and high school to care about grades a little too much. Just tell your child that it's nothing to worry about and this is just their policy and they will improve throughout the year.

[Anonymous]

I know people like to hate on travel sports, but it was really helpful to have something more competitive in their lives as well as an academic competitive team so that they could see that there were people who were striving for things beyond a basic level of competence and things that had real measurements. The report card my kid got from their travel sport was more in depth than FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Not this year so can’t say if yours is FCPS mandate, but in prior years did have ES teachers who graded like this- said even if kids deserved a 4, would put lower score so the kids would see and be motivated to do better each quarter. My only question at open house was if she shows kids the report cards and she said no, so worked for us because we don’t show to our kid. Kid never knew and she changed grading the next year as think too many parents complained.

[Anonymous]

So you think grades should motivate your child? Grades show demonstrated mastery. Sounds like the kids haven’t done that yet.

[Anonymous]

Weird my kid is terrible in writing and got 2s in phonics and writing but got 3s and 4s in over categories. This seem school specific and very lazy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My fifth grader's report card came back and every child received all 2's in the Language Arts section. The rest of the report card is mostly 4's as usual. We just received a group email from the teacher, probably because all the parents are hitting her inbox.

The district has provided guidance on how Language Arts grades should be reported this year. Since we will be teaching and reinforcing these learning standards throughout the entire year, students are not expected to demonstrate full mastery by the end of the first quarter. As a result, all students will receive a score of "2" for this first quarter. This approach is designed to allow students to show continued growth as the year progresses.

Talk about lazy and useless grading. How is this acceptable? Any other teachers / schools doing this or is it our teacher's own misguided take on (or stupid protest of) the new Language Arts curriculum? How can giving children "bad" grades who have always been good students help them to want to learn?

Yes, I realize these elementary school number grades don't matter in the long run. But I don't think telling my child, "don't worry, grades don't matter" is a good message either.

Teacher here. I did not give all 2’s to everyone. Did some kids get 2s? Yes. Most ended up getting 3s. A couple of 4’s.

[Anonymous]

DP
My kids teacher said a 4 is only for 100% perfect all of the time.
So, what does that make a 3? 75-99? 85-99?

Previously I thought a 4 was like an A, a 3 like a B....but that can't be if 4's are only for perfection...

[Anonymous]

Oh dear god, this has been in all the email communications and you should have expected it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh dear god, this has been in all the email communications and you should have expected it.

Which e-mails?
I read all the emails from the school and teachers and I don't remember seeing anything about grading.
Even said to DH this evening that it would cut down on a lot of confusion if they could just take some time to explain the changes, lol.

[Anonymous]

Our school has been sending emails warning us about this for weeks. Dr. Reid's emails have been hinting at it, but I do think they could have done a better job of messaging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My fifth grader's report card came back and every child received all 2's in the Language Arts section. The rest of the report card is mostly 4's as usual. We just received a group email from the teacher, probably because all the parents are hitting her inbox.

The district has provided guidance on how Language Arts grades should be reported this year. Since we will be teaching and reinforcing these learning standards throughout the entire year, students are not expected to demonstrate full mastery by the end of the first quarter. As a result, all students will receive a score of "2" for this first quarter. This approach is designed to allow students to show continued growth as the year progresses.

Talk about lazy and useless grading. How is this acceptable? Any other teachers / schools doing this or is it our teacher's own misguided take on (or stupid protest of) the new Language Arts curriculum? How can giving children "bad" grades who have always been good students help them to want to learn?

Yes, I realize these elementary school number grades don't matter in the long run. But I don't think telling my child, "don't worry, grades don't matter" is a good message either.

My 3rd grader's teacher has been prepping the children, which I appreciated.

[Anonymous]

My 3rd graders teacher said to expect lower grades than we're used to seeing for the first quarter or two because the new curriculum is a big adjustment for a lot of kids. They'll catch up once they adapt to the new format and how much more writing they're doing and be better for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 3rd graders teacher said to expect lower grades than we're used to seeing for the first quarter or two because the new curriculum is a big adjustment for a lot of kids. They'll catch up once they adapt to the new format and how much more writing they're doing and be better for it.

Lower grades would be fine. The problem is all the grades on assignments coming home have been good. Nothing approaching a 2 level. If they are struggling with the new curriculum then shouldn't it be showing up in the classwork and homework as well?

Giving every single kid the exact same grade (2) means the report card is worthless for understanding how they are doing. Are they doing as expected with the new material, better than their peers, lagging behind? WTF is a report card even for if every child is unilaterally assigned the exact same grade? Parents shouldn't have to guess if it's a "real" 2 and we need to spend extra time helping, or if the teacher just peaced out on the grading workday and gave everyone the same grade regardless of performance.