Grading at the last minute

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All semester long one of my son’s classes was showing 0 missing assignments and to his knowledge he didn’t have any missing. Today(!) all of a sudden he is showing 1 missing. He is annoyed and so am I. He still has an A but this last minute grading and catching up can mess up some kids.

It'd almost as like your son should have know what his assignments were prior to the end of the semester.

Yeah, stop blaming everyone else when you really need to be looking in a mirror.

Are you this nasty in real life or do you just like to be mean to strangers online?

The message came across as nasty, but I agree with the previous poster. We cannot blame everything on teachers. We need to teach our kids how to be proactive if they're really grade conscious. My son has developed the habit of checking his Canvas every week to see which ones are marked as not submitted. I also check Parent Vue every week to see which work has not been graded, and I counter check it with my son's Canvas to make sure that he indeed submitted the work. Never had the problem of last-minute notification of missing assignment.

Then consider your DC lucky. My DC has had this problem with at least one teacher every year of MS/HS. Even with email and in person followups about the grades. In one of my kids classes they got 6 new grades today. Three of which didn’t even have an assignment listed in Synergy until today, and one of which has been pending a grade since before Winter break.

[Anonymous]

Grades are due TODAY so sorry but they are not late.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All semester long one of my son’s classes was showing 0 missing assignments and to his knowledge he didn’t have any missing. Today(!) all of a sudden he is showing 1 missing. He is annoyed and so am I. He still has an A but this last minute grading and catching up can mess up some kids.

It'd almost as like your son should have know what his assignments were prior to the end of the semester.

Yeah, stop blaming everyone else when you really need to be looking in a mirror.

Are you this nasty in real life or do you just like to be mean to strangers online?

The message came across as nasty, but I agree with the previous poster. We cannot blame everything on teachers. We need to teach our kids how to be proactive if they're really grade conscious. My son has developed the habit of checking his Canvas every week to see which ones are marked as not submitted. I also check Parent Vue every week to see which work has not been graded, and I counter check it with my son's Canvas to make sure that he indeed submitted the work. Never had the problem of last-minute notification of missing assignment.

This assumes that a lot of teachers communicate in advance and run clear, organized and updated Canvas pages. I assure you thi sis not the case.

Stop defaulting to always assuming the teachers are blameless. A lot of teachers struggle or fail to offer insights and tools to allow students and parents to plan and manage without them.

Where did you read that "teachers are blameless?" My point was we cannot blame EVERYTHING on teachers. Like majority of people, the better you communicate, the better you'll get a response. If the style of communication you use with the teachers is the same style of communication you have on this forum, then I'm not surprised why your experience with communicating with teachers is not positive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your kid needs to get a life.

Lol- kid has a good life - just wants to make sure the grades earned are the grades posted on the report card and learning to speak up when needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look, middle school grades DO NOT COUNT for anything so just calm yourself down. If your child is a junior in high school that really stinks because teachers are human and sometimes they make mistakes and grading so many things at the last minute makes it pretty much impossible to correct grading errors.

DC had an issue a couple of years ago where grades were misentered. The teacher gave DC the grades for a student who is next in line alphabetically and the teacher refused to correct. I was silly then as my child was in MS but felt it was the principle of the thing. Escalated to department head who also refused to do anything and I gave up. If my child were in high school I would have been furious.

DP. For a hs Jr it’s different. It’s a real problem.

[Anonymous]

My sympathies. You are right to tightly monitor their grading. I learned this the hard way because my DC got a B and never received one before. Turns out the teacher was negligent and sloppy. The rest of the year we checked twice a week to make sure everything with that particular teacher was properly recorded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Once again one of DC's middle school teachers is dumping grades into Canvas and pushing them to into synergy late last night and today. Grades still being added at noon today. Kidddo has been tracking and watching since this teacher has the rep of doing this and has emailed twice for this morning regarding assignments the teacher said were not turned in but were. The teacher then proceeds to reply back that the assignments were found and the grades will be updated. Ugg. I know teachers are busy, but this just seems to be beyond anything that is acceptable. My kid is online checking - what about all the others who are enjoying a day off. This is also a long time teacher, so not new to the system. Just voicing frustration.

We had 4 teacher errors between my two kids. One got fixed in time, the other 3 didn’t. Thankfully it wasn’t an error that dropped them down, but still so unfair.

[Anonymous]

I see so many concerns about grading on DCUM. I wish parents would advocate for more teacher planning time. We all agree that grading is a critical part of a teacher’s job, yet a teacher’s workday often contains no time for grading at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I see so many concerns about grading on DCUM. I wish parents would advocate for more teacher planning time. We all agree that grading is a critical part of a teacher’s job, yet a teacher’s workday often contains no time for grading at all.

+1,000,000 Thank you for your post!

[Anonymous]

Sometimes my kid turns in things super late on Canvas. When I look at Canvas, I see that they turned it in at the last minute, therefore last minute grading. Not saying that is what happened here, but I bet it happens a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sometimes my kid turns in things super late on Canvas. When I look at Canvas, I see that they turned it in at the last minute, therefore last minute grading. Not saying that is what happened here, but I bet it happens a lot.

Teacher here. This happens all the time. I grade all late work on Saturdays, so a late assignment turned in on Monday is going to wait six days before I take a look at at it. Routines like this are the only way I can stay on top of the workload.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sometimes my kid turns in things super late on Canvas. When I look at Canvas, I see that they turned it in at the last minute, therefore last minute grading. Not saying that is what happened here, but I bet it happens a lot.

+1
One of DC's teachers was grading late but it is because a ton of students in her classes turned in late assignments this quarter. I think the snow days threw a lot of kids off.

[Anonymous]

Very frustrating.

[Anonymous]

Totally sympathize with teachers' not having enough time.

Totally sympathize with students' not having timely assignment feedback (or even advance notice to allow their own planning) such that they might have agency in their own performance/improvement.

Totally understand that some teachers are better about this than others, but that that is only one facet of teacher performance -- everyone has relative strengths and weaknesses. But the variation is pretty high in this regard, and the impact can be substantial.

The question is, what can administrators, both school and central, do to define an appropriate expectation for this important responsiveness, encourage or demand fidelity to that from teachers, and identify & implement supports for teachers to meet this goal.

Of course, the costs & benefits of all that would have to be weighed against those of alternate goals. MCPS should be forthright with an explanation of an associated decision, especially if it is deemed less worthy of pursuit in light of other initiatives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All semester long one of my son’s classes was showing 0 missing assignments and to his knowledge he didn’t have any missing. Today(!) all of a sudden he is showing 1 missing. He is annoyed and so am I. He still has an A but this last minute grading and catching up can mess up some kids.

It'd almost as like your son should have know what his assignments were prior to the end of the semester.

Yeah, stop blaming everyone else when you really need to be looking in a mirror.

Are you this nasty in real life or do you just like to be mean to strangers online?

The message came across as nasty, but I agree with the previous poster. We cannot blame everything on teachers. We need to teach our kids how to be proactive if they're really grade conscious. My son has developed the habit of checking his Canvas every week to see which ones are marked as not submitted. I also check Parent Vue every week to see which work has not been graded, and I counter check it with my son's Canvas to make sure that he indeed submitted the work. Never had the problem of last-minute notification of missing assignment.

This assumes that a lot of teachers communicate in advance and run clear, organized and updated Canvas pages. I assure you thi sis not the case.

Stop defaulting to always assuming the teachers are blameless. A lot of teachers struggle or fail to offer insights and tools to allow students and parents to plan and manage without them.

I agree. Canvas for certain teachers rarely seems to be updated. Our process for checking on assignments involves looking at Canvas AND asking the teacher if they have all assignments. Often the teacher shares that they have received assignments that aren’t yet reflected on Canvas or they can’t “see” an assignment that was electronically submitted multiple times. And this is towards the end of marking periods when you’d hope Canvas is relatively up to date.

I honestly wish they would go back to using paper and pencils because the multiple platforms the kids have to use to receive and submit assignments is horrifically complicated.