final exam in math - is this normal

[Anonymous]

In MCPS honors math courses are significantly harder than on level. Many kids drop down to on level in math for this reason. What you have described mirrors exactly my understanding of honors vs on level. No calculator. Having to apply learning to questions beyond what is taught by the instructor, etc.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for the input! Glad to see this kind of difficult test questions is standard. My kid is also in honors English and that class was a joke so I don’t have a great sense of what a high school honors math class is supposed to mean. In the end my kid studied his tail off and got an A in the exam. This teacher has had other crazy grading policies so it’s hard for me to give him the benefit of the doubt, but seems like the way teacher handled the final was standard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. This teacher does not grade on a curve. Only a few kids get As each year (maybe 2-3 in a class of 25-30 kids), and this teacher's class is regularly the only B a lot of very strong students get during their time in high school based on what my kids and I have heard.

That would be because they haven’t gotten the ability yet to take their knowledge and ise that knowledge to solve all kinds of problems If the student can’t get past only using the knowledge with classwork already done, that’s just memorizing. I can understand given As only to students who understand it well enough to apply it in new problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. This teacher does not grade on a curve. Only a few kids get As each year (maybe 2-3 in a class of 25-30 kids), and this teacher's class is regularly the only B a lot of very strong students get during their time in high school based on what my kids and I have heard.

That would be because they haven’t gotten the ability yet to take their knowledge and ise that knowledge to solve all kinds of problems If the student can’t get past only using the knowledge with classwork already done, that’s just memorizing. I can understand given As only to students who understand it well enough to apply it in new problems.

Or it could be the teacher doesn’t do a great job of explaining or giving kids hard practice problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks for the input! Glad to see this kind of difficult test questions is standard. My kid is also in honors English and that class was a joke so I don’t have a great sense of what a high school honors math class is supposed to mean. In the end my kid studied his tail off and got an A in the exam. This teacher has had other crazy grading policies so it’s hard for me to give him the benefit of the doubt, but seems like the way teacher handled the final was standard.

If this is MCPS this is normal. Honors math really is honors. Honors everything else is not honors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Im all for exams being hard, what I had concerns about was no partial credit for computationally intensive problems under tight time constraints with no calculator.

My kid goes to a magnet stem high school and all their math classes have been like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. This teacher does not grade on a curve. Only a few kids get As each year (maybe 2-3 in a class of 25-30 kids), and this teacher's class is regularly the only B a lot of very strong students get during their time in high school based on what my kids and I have heard.

That would be because they haven’t gotten the ability yet to take their knowledge and ise that knowledge to solve all kinds of problems If the student can’t get past only using the knowledge with classwork already done, that’s just memorizing. I can understand given As only to students who understand it well enough to apply it in new problems.

Or it could be the teacher doesn’t do a great job of explaining or giving kids hard practice problems.

I’m sure some students were able to apply what they learned with different scenarios. I can see how difficult it would be for most kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. This teacher does not grade on a curve. Only a few kids get As each year (maybe 2-3 in a class of 25-30 kids), and this teacher's class is regularly the only B a lot of very strong students get during their time in high school based on what my kids and I have heard.

That would be because they haven’t gotten the ability yet to take their knowledge and ise that knowledge to solve all kinds of problems If the student can’t get past only using the knowledge with classwork already done, that’s just memorizing. I can understand given As only to students who understand it well enough to apply it in new problems.

Or it could be the teacher doesn’t do a great job of explaining or giving kids hard practice problems.

I’m sure some students were able to apply what they learned with different scenarios. I can see how difficult it would be for most kids.

Again, MCPS parent here. This is why many kids drop down to on level once they hit honors Algebra 2 or honors precalc. That includes kids that are two years accelerated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:100% normal.

Our honors algebra 2 classes are exactly as you describe, no calculator, multi step. The final has zero partial credit because of timing for grading.

TBH the final is easier than anything we’ve given all year, but the scores are always significantly lower than during the year. Even when we gave it early in prior years so we had time to give partial credit, even when we made it straight multiple choice, even when we spend 2 weeks reviewing in class. The kids struggle to perform on cumulative exams. The 85% thing isn’t surprising to me.

But the final is written with the input of all algebra 2 honors teachers, sitting around a table with the same policies for all of us. If one teacher is giving partial credit and one isn’t, that’s a problem. If one allows a calculator and one doesn’t, that’s a problem. If the tests aren’t the same across teachers (or at least equivalent version a/b/c) that’s a problem.

I don't see any problems with the way the exam is structured--this is a math class, not a class in applying algorithms. But not awarding partial credit is ridiculous--at the elite university I went to they always awarded partial credit because they were more interested in our thought process than simply getting the right answer. Also, with AI it's extremely easy to produce a rubric and have a computer take the first pass at grading, so timing shouldn't be such an issue. I've tried completing worksheets, photographing them, and feeding them into AI, and the results are pretty amazing.