MCAP counting for 20% of final grade

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone know more about this or have thoughts to share?

No. There is no recent news. There's no grading scale yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not just 9th graders. It's for any high school student in those classes starting with this year's 9th grade class.

Students in the class of 2027, 2028, 2029, etc. Students from earlier classes are not affected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

Exactly. I’m really upset by this. I feel like the politicians at both the state and county level keep passing stupid mandates that have no real relation to what’s going on with the classrooms. We’re in an education crisis and their solution is just more mandates that are not supported with any educational data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not just 9th graders. It's for any high school student in those classes starting with this year's 9th grade class.

Students in the class of 2027, 2028, 2029, etc. Students from earlier classes are not affected.

That's what they said - starting with this year's 9th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

Exactly. I’m really upset by this. I feel like the politicians at both the state and county level keep passing stupid mandates that have no real relation to what’s going on with the classrooms. We’re in an education crisis and their solution is just more mandates that are not supported with any educational data.

MCPS or the state needs to clarify what happens if students are enrolled in AP Bio or AP Gov. To date, if a student earned 3 or higher on the exam, they didn't have to take the MCAP to meet the graduation requirements. So do they take the AP exam and MCAP? The AP exam scores will not be available until July.

[Anonymous]

Does it apply to just the second semester or will they retroactively apply it to first, too?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

Exactly. I’m really upset by this. I feel like the politicians at both the state and county level keep passing stupid mandates that have no real relation to what’s going on with the classrooms. We’re in an education crisis and their solution is just more mandates that are not supported with any educational data.

Have you looked at the sample questions? It doesn’t look very hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

How can you "tell"? Did someone tell you what to think, or did you look at the test yourself?

Can you give one substantive criticism?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

Exactly. I’m really upset by this. I feel like the politicians at both the state and county level keep passing stupid mandates that have no real relation to what’s going on with the classrooms. We’re in an education crisis and their solution is just more mandates that are not supported with any educational data.

MCPS or the state needs to clarify what happens if students are enrolled in AP Bio or AP Gov. To date, if a student earned 3 or higher on the exam, they didn't have to take the MCAP to meet the graduation requirements. So do they take the AP exam and MCAP? The AP exam scores will not be available until July.

They’ve already clarified this:
https://www.marylandpublicschools.org/about/Documents/DAAIT/Assessment/MCAP/SY2023-2024-EOC-FAQs.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does it apply to just the second semester or will they retroactively apply it to first, too?

My 9th grader’s bio teacher said second semester grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

How can you "tell"? Did someone tell you what to think, or did you look at the test yourself?

Can you give one substantive criticism?

I’m not that poster and haven’t looled at the bio exam. But the English and algebra exams were not well tailored to the curriculum — the scores on it are terrible even for kids that did really well in the class.

Does anyone know how “proficient” will translate to a grade? Will that be an A? Or B? Or C? Or are they doing it by numbers? It wasn’t a test that was designed to be done as a percentage grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

How can you "tell"? Did someone tell you what to think, or did you look at the test yourself?

Can you give one substantive criticism?

I’m not that poster and haven’t looled at the bio exam. But the English and algebra exams were not well tailored to the curriculum — the scores on it are terrible even for kids that did really well in the class.

Does anyone know how “proficient” will translate to a grade? Will that be an A? Or B? Or C? Or are they doing it by numbers? It wasn’t a test that was designed to be done as a percentage grade.

How could the exam be tailored to the curriculum when it’s a state exam? They don’t choose the curriculum for every district.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

How can you "tell"? Did someone tell you what to think, or did you look at the test yourself?

Can you give one substantive criticism?

I’m not that poster and haven’t looled at the bio exam. But the English and algebra exams were not well tailored to the curriculum — the scores on it are terrible even for kids that did really well in the class.

Does anyone know how “proficient” will translate to a grade? Will that be an A? Or B? Or C? Or are they doing it by numbers? It wasn’t a test that was designed to be done as a percentage grade.

How could the exam be tailored to the curriculum when it’s a state exam? They don’t choose the curriculum for every district.

The exam is tailored to the standards. The curriculum written by each district is supposed to be tailored to the same standards. This isn't writing a test to match what you taught. It's a test to make sure students learned what they were supposed to learn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it apply to just the second semester or will they retroactively apply it to first, too?

My 9th grader’s bio teacher said second semester grade.

Yes, the 20% is factored into the second semester grade. (The same for the Gov test.)

I think most folks posting haven't been around long enough to remember how high school exams worked. They were 25% of each semester's grade, and really nothing to freak out about. The exams had a scoring guide to convert them to a letter grade, and then there was a matrix that converted the two quarters plus exam to an overall grade (AAC = A). Because CCE = C, many kids worked just as hard as they needed to get Cs, and then bombed exams because they didn't matter, which led to freakout over failed exams and the eventual elimination of them.

This MCAP process is final exam lite. The only thing not clear yet is if the incorporation of the grade is going to be similar (based on already rounded up letter grades) or based on actual percentages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't these test usually take almost a year to get results. How are they going to incorporate in the grade with that timeline?

Artificial Intelligence. Testing companies have had two years of pilot test data to train AI on after real graders did scoring. They probably did 1st year real scoring and then trained the AI, and then 2nd year validate the AI scoring and adjust.