borderline HS grade-talk to the teacher?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel you OP. My kid is just 1 point away in two different classes to a higher semester grade and without that he falls below the line for the college he’s hoping to go to. Both teachers have said no to redoing past assignments or additional assignments. And these are teachers he really loves. I respect the need to be stricter but all other teachers are opening assignments left and right for kids to get grades up. There also should be more nuance to grades vs. 79 is C and 80 is B.

We should do away with letter grades altogether. Most countries just have numerical scores, some out of 20 (France), some out of 100 (East Asian nations).

I would support that, but as an interim step MCPS should certainly add plus/minus to the current grading system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel you OP. My kid is just 1 point away in two different classes to a higher semester grade and without that he falls below the line for the college he’s hoping to go to. Both teachers have said no to redoing past assignments or additional assignments. And these are teachers he really loves. I respect the need to be stricter but all other teachers are opening assignments left and right for kids to get grades up. There also should be more nuance to grades vs. 79 is C and 80 is B.

The grading and reporting regulation requires them to offer at least 2 retakes per quarter. Have they offered them yet? See 4a on page 12 of the regulation:

"Teachers must provide students with at least two opportunities per marking period to retake or revise an assessment product designed to evaluate the student’s mastery of content, such as unit assessments, papers, projects, quizzes or tests, and/or performance tasks."

https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/policy/pdf/master%20ika-ra.pdf

I was told by my admin that once the deadline passes, the student's ability to reassess does too

[Anonymous]

Tutor or summer school to prepare for next year.

Executive function coaching to not wait until the semester is 90% over before working on grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel you OP. My kid is just 1 point away in two different classes to a higher semester grade and without that he falls below the line for the college he’s hoping to go to. Both teachers have said no to redoing past assignments or additional assignments. And these are teachers he really loves. I respect the need to be stricter but all other teachers are opening assignments left and right for kids to get grades up. There also should be more nuance to grades vs. 79 is C and 80 is B.

We should do away with letter grades altogether. Most countries just have numerical scores, some out of 20 (France), some out of 100 (East Asian nations).

I would support that, but as an interim step MCPS should certainly add plus/minus to the current grading system.

Then you'll have more people grade-grubbing to get above the next cutoff.

The solution is for gatekeepers to not take grades so seriously, and use relevant measures of readiness instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel you OP. My kid is just 1 point away in two different classes to a higher semester grade and without that he falls below the line for the college he’s hoping to go to. Both teachers have said no to redoing past assignments or additional assignments. And these are teachers he really loves. I respect the need to be stricter but all other teachers are opening assignments left and right for kids to get grades up. There also should be more nuance to grades vs. 79 is C and 80 is B.

We should do away with letter grades altogether. Most countries just have numerical scores, some out of 20 (France), some out of 100 (East Asian nations).

I would support that, but as an interim step MCPS should certainly add plus/minus to the current grading system.

Then you'll have more people grade-grubbing to get above the next cutoff.

The solution is for gatekeepers to not take grades so seriously, and use relevant measures of readiness instead.

100%. Your kid graduating with a 3.7 GPA is not the end of the world. It's ok to have a few Bs or, god forbid C's, on their transcript.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tutor or summer school to prepare for next year.

Executive function coaching to not wait until the semester is 90% over before working on grades.

In a lot of cases the teachers aren’t grading until the semester is 90% over.

[Anonymous]

My older kids were just advising my current HS student on which teachers bump grades and which don't so it must be a thing. I don't think they can give an A on the transcript if the percentage is 88. But I think they can be very generous on final assignments or even be persuaded that a prior assignment was graded too harshly or, if they realize a lot of kids have grades lower than they would have in prior years (due to the new grading system) they could make some generous last-week-of-school assignments or something like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My older kids were just advising my current HS student on which teachers bump grades and which don't so it must be a thing. I don't think they can give an A on the transcript if the percentage is 88. But I think they can be very generous on final assignments or even be persuaded that a prior assignment was graded too harshly or, if they realize a lot of kids have grades lower than they would have in prior years (due to the new grading system) they could make some generous last-week-of-school assignments or something like that.

The issue with the "free points" assignments in the last week is that they cannot be extra credit. They have to be added as an AT or PP. Which means if a kid doesn't do them, the grade goes down a lot more than it will go up if they did do it. If you have an 88%, a 10/10 AT grade will probably move you up to an 88.6% at most.

[Anonymous]

I’m a teacher and I don’t bump grades. If I bump for one, I feel compelled to bump all grades to remain consistent. Then I’ll have a new crop of students asking me to bump grades and the situation repeats itself.

And I say this as a parent of a 9th grader who was 2 points (not percentage points… just points) away from an A for the YEAR in one of her classes.

But that’s what she earned and so I didn’t encourage her to beg for the higher grade.

[Anonymous]

I’m a high school English teacher, and I don’t change grades, but one piece of advice I can offer is to have your child go in with suggestions about the assignments he could redo instead of just saying, is there anything I can do? That would make it feel more like they have already looked at their grades and aren’t asking the teacher to dig something up for them to do. Show up with solutions, not just asking for a pity grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's touch dealing with borderline grade when the kids and parents are mentally borderline themselves. The lesson should be try your best and nobodies perfect. But y'all take it as a B grade is a teacher trying to give your student gigantic student loans if they were a couple points away from an A.

I'm not sure what came first the massive grade manipulation/ do over culture, exploiting teachers as the new ones live with poverty wages(after you consider all the money and student debt that comes out of our check), corrupted Ed officials getting glazed and financial incentive by Ed and edtech company sleazebags.

There is so much to unpack here I can't even

[Anonymous]

Just like most industries in America it's corruption that has no checks congressionally anymore. Now we have students hyped up on gas station drugs on top of themedicinal amphetamines. Still no support for the teachers who work tirelessly everyday.

[Anonymous]

You need to leave it to your teenager at this point to talk to his or her teachers. It isn't your job anymore. If your kid doesn't do it, then your kid pays the price and learns a lesson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel you OP. My kid is just 1 point away in two different classes to a higher semester grade and without that he falls below the line for the college he’s hoping to go to. Both teachers have said no to redoing past assignments or additional assignments. And these are teachers he really loves. I respect the need to be stricter but all other teachers are opening assignments left and right for kids to get grades up. There also should be more nuance to grades vs. 79 is C and 80 is B.

The grading and reporting regulation requires them to offer at least 2 retakes per quarter. Have they offered them yet? See 4a on page 12 of the regulation:

"Teachers must provide students with at least two opportunities per marking period to retake or revise an assessment product designed to evaluate the student’s mastery of content, such as unit assessments, papers, projects, quizzes or tests, and/or performance tasks."

https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/policy/pdf/master%20ika-ra.pdf

I was told by my admin that once the deadline passes, the student's ability to reassess does too

Well that doesn’t make any sense unless your admin also told you that you need to grade the assignment/assessment early enough before the deadline so the student knows whether or not he needs to prep and plan for the reassessment. I don’t see language in the policy that says reassessments must occur before the published deadlines.

[Anonymous]

Look to see if they actually have 9 all task assignments. The policy is a minimum of nine. If they don’t then they are required to add them.