One easy thing to do to close the achievement gap

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another letter from Mrs. Goodteach.

"Hi Mrs MNO. Your child PQR is a delight in classroom. He was able to answer 97 questions correctly out of 100 questions correctly. Since he is bright and hardworking we will give him some more advanced work.

Here are some worksheets that you need to get him to work on. Here are the answer key to the worksheets that you can use to check his work but do not share the answer key with him. Here is a detailed step by step method in English and Spanish for you to use to teach him at home. I need him to work for 30 minutes each night with you to do this work,

I will continue to work with him at school and you please work with him at home. We will talk again in 2 weeks time to see how much he has learned. We want to make sure that he is constantly challenged. d.

- Mrs. GoodTeach.

So, your solution to closing the achievement gap is to give high performing kids worksheets to do at home, something that has been proven not to improve achievement, and will almost certainly replace the things that bright children spontaneously do that grow their skills?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Transparency on the part of MCPS would help parents help their children

Do you not talk to your child's teacher or is the teacher completely unreachable?

Teachers always say the student is on grade level. Seriously, there are tons of threads on here about people trying to get teachers to give them more feedback and it’s always the same “grade level” non-answers. Unless your kid is behind or has SN you’re not going to get real feedback from their teacher.

Not my experience at all. My kids teachers have sent home a sheet for Reading and another one for Math. Each sheet explains what my child is doing well in, where there's room for improvement, and a suggested plan on how to improve.

Which school? which grade? how frequently is this communicated to you?

[Anonymous]

The entire premise of the OP's comment is false. MCPS has already done away with P's and is now giving A, B, C, etc. in elementary school. Thread done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another letter from Mrs. Goodteach.

"Hi Mrs MNO. Your child PQR is a delight in classroom. He was able to answer 97 questions correctly out of 100 questions correctly. Since he is bright and hardworking we will give him some more advanced work.

Here are some worksheets that you need to get him to work on. Here are the answer key to the worksheets that you can use to check his work but do not share the answer key with him. Here is a detailed step by step method in English and Spanish for you to use to teach him at home. I need him to work for 30 minutes each night with you to do this work,

I will continue to work with him at school and you please work with him at home. We will talk again in 2 weeks time to see how much he has learned. We want to make sure that he is constantly challenged. d.

- Mrs. GoodTeach.

So, your solution to closing the achievement gap is to give high performing kids worksheets to do at home, something that has been proven not to improve achievement, and will almost certainly replace the things that bright children spontaneously do that grow their skills?



You are right. THat is the reason we should not make URM kids come to the magnet programs based on filling a quota. They are happy and bright and have a life. Let the unhappy children work hard and go to these highly selective magnets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in a middle class neighborhood of single family homes. Last year, our neighborhood school bus-stop had five students (all boys) in the 3rd grade. They had grown up together, the moms were friends and occasionally had coffee together. Three of the students had got into the magnet HGC program, one was moving to another neighborhood and one was continuing on the home school. The home school student was Hispanic. The mom was feeling very sad that her son had not got into HGC program. She said that her son was getting all "P"s, just like every other student.

I told her that actually the "P" means nothing. It is a range of scores from 50-100% and that it is meaningless. She asked why would MCPS do that? She said that she would prefer that her son got home the correct measure of where he stood in all subjects. Not only a grade card that had A, B, C and D, but a grade card that gave his results in percentage.

Why would MCPS not consider that? The gap in knowledge is minimal in Elementary Schools. If MCPS was honest with the parents where exactly the students were behind in the elementary levels then it would be easy to fill those gaps.

This has nothing to do with closing the achievement gap. It's a simple poor grading system. Why would MCPS use such system? Who really knows... MCPS is beyond stupid.

Yes, it will shrink the achievement gap. Even parents without higher education can help their students at lower grades with homework and their studies. This can only happen if they are given accurate measurements of where their kids are. If they are thinking that their child is doing as well as the next child because they have a "P" like everyone else they will never intervene. If they know that the kid is at a 50% then they have an incentive to really help their child out. If the lament is always that the parents are not involved, then why make it harder for them to be involved and contribute while they have the ability to.

Sadly it will not. MCPS's old grading system was like that. they changed to the current system because the gap wasn't closing. The current system does exactly what it is supposed to do as you can read from OP's post. It makes everything fuzzy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The entire premise of the OP's comment is false. MCPS has already done away with P's and is now giving A, B, C, etc. in elementary school. Thread done.

I do not think percentage is being given for each assignment?

[Anonymous]

Dear Me. Good teanpcher:

You will be on probation. A teacher is not allowed to talk about any student's classroom ranking, including sudtent and parent. In the report card, not negatives, it will hurt student's self-esteem.
All students are great, have done their best in class, and achieved on gtade level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Transparency on the part of MCPS would help parents help their children

Do you not talk to your child's teacher or is the teacher completely unreachable?

Teachers always say the student is on grade level. Seriously, there are tons of threads on here about people trying to get teachers to give them more feedback and it’s always the same “grade level” non-answers. Unless your kid is behind or has SN you’re not going to get real feedback from their teacher.

Not my experience at all. My kids teachers have sent home a sheet for Reading and another one for Math. Each sheet explains what my child is doing well in, where there's room for improvement, and a suggested plan on how to improve.

Which school? which grade? how frequently is this communicated to you?

1st and 4th grade. Strawberry Knoll. Received it once this year for my 1st grader, twice for my 4th grader. Seriously, I don't really need these evaluation sheets as there's nothing that I can't find out through emails. I'm actually floored that parents are finding this information difficult to obtain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dear Me. Good teacher:

You will be on probation. A teacher is not allowed to talk about any student's classroom ranking, including student and parent. In the report card, no negatives, it will hurt student's self-esteem.
All students are great, have done their best in class, and achieved on grade level.

OK. No class ranking. How about mastery of content? What about saying we want your kid to master the content? Why is that objectionable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Transparency on the part of MCPS would help parents help their children

Do you not talk to your child's teacher or is the teacher completely unreachable?

Teachers always say the student is on grade level. Seriously, there are tons of threads on here about people trying to get teachers to give them more feedback and it’s always the same “grade level” non-answers. Unless your kid is behind or has SN you’re not going to get real feedback from their teacher.

Not my experience at all. My kids teachers have sent home a sheet for Reading and another one for Math. Each sheet explains what my child is doing well in, where there's room for improvement, and a suggested plan on how to improve.

Which school? which grade? how frequently is this communicated to you?

1st and 4th grade. Strawberry Knoll. Received it once this year for my 1st grader, twice for my 4th grader. Seriously, I don't really need these evaluation sheets as there's nothing that I can't find out through emails. I'm actually floored that parents are finding this information difficult to obtain.

Love how naive ES parents are. Please tell me that you are Asian or White, so that I can sleep better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Transparency on the part of MCPS would help parents help their children

Do you not talk to your child's teacher or is the teacher completely unreachable?

Teachers always say the student is on grade level. Seriously, there are tons of threads on here about people trying to get teachers to give them more feedback and it’s always the same “grade level” non-answers. Unless your kid is behind or has SN you’re not going to get real feedback from their teacher.

Not my experience at all. My kids teachers have sent home a sheet for Reading and another one for Math. Each sheet explains what my child is doing well in, where there's room for improvement, and a suggested plan on how to improve.

Which school? which grade? how frequently is this communicated to you?

1st and 4th grade. Strawberry Knoll. Received it once this year for my 1st grader, twice for my 4th grader. Seriously, I don't really need these evaluation sheets as there's nothing that I can't find out through emails. I'm actually floored that parents are finding this information difficult to obtain.

Love how naive ES parents are. Please tell me that you are Asian or White, so that I can sleep better.

don't be a jerk. we are ALL concerned parents. why pick on asian/white parents? go f-yourself

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Transparency on the part of MCPS would help parents help their children

Do you not talk to your child's teacher or is the teacher completely unreachable?

Teachers always say the student is on grade level. Seriously, there are tons of threads on here about people trying to get teachers to give them more feedback and it’s always the same “grade level” non-answers. Unless your kid is behind or has SN you’re not going to get real feedback from their teacher.

Not my experience at all. My kids teachers have sent home a sheet for Reading and another one for Math. Each sheet explains what my child is doing well in, where there's room for improvement, and a suggested plan on how to improve.

Which school? which grade? how frequently is this communicated to you?

1st and 4th grade. Strawberry Knoll. Received it once this year for my 1st grader, twice for my 4th grader. Seriously, I don't really need these evaluation sheets as there's nothing that I can't find out through emails. I'm actually floored that parents are finding this information difficult to obtain.

Love how naive ES parents are. Please tell me that you are Asian or White, so that I can sleep better.

don't be a jerk. we are ALL concerned parents. why pick on asian/white parents? go f-yourself

What does the color of my skin or ethnicity have anything to do with this? Trust me, I am far from being naive. Just a parent that knows that this is a 2 way street. You can't expect the school to spoon feed everything to you. You need to have those open lines of communication with the teacher and if you're not getting it, then go talk to the principal and demand it. Really this is not rocket science. I find it very difficult to believe that a school will give you zero or useless feedback when you're asking for input about your child.

[Anonymous]

This achievement gap exists in every county, every state, every country in the world. Good luck in getting MCPS to fix it.

[Anonymous]

The achievement gap in ES is minimal? Come to a high FARMS school like mine and talk to the students. Watch them in class. Read them books. You will see right away that this is not true. As for the teacher, communicating with parents about student weaknesses only works if 1) you can get in touch with parents 2) the parents are interested in school and how their child(ren) are doing. I am a teacher and I keep a log with a few pages for each student. Every time I attempt to contact parents, I make a note. Out of my class of 24, 9 of them have parents I have never met or talked to. I have contacted them a minimum of 10 times each. I have called and left messages, sent home notes, emailed if an email address was provided, texted and had the social worker make a home visit. Your solution to improvement only works if someone at home is on board. At my school, the struggling students are usually the ones whose parents are MIA. The only learning happening in these kids' lives is at school. Other parents don't understand that school is a lot different than it used to be. The KG teachers have monthly workshops for parents and the few parents that attend had no idea that their kids would have to be reading in KG. They thought if they knew their letters and could count to 10, they would be good to go. At the end of the year, report cards are kept in the office for parents to pick up. They can pick them up M-F all summer. By the time we return to school, half to 3/4 of the report cards are still sitting in the office.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the OP. My daughter was in private and due to needing an IEP, I had to pull her and put her in public.

Her private report cards had narratives from each teacher. Yes, they always start with Your child ABC is a delight.... but then then included the objectives of the term and specifics of what my child did to meet or not meet those objectives. ie, this term we studied colonial America. We read book XYZ, created a diorama, and wrote an essay. The essay spanned multiple weeks and incorporated both history and grammar as we worked with the students to organize, write, and rewrite their essays.

Your child struggled with keeping up with the class in reading the book. Your child did not understand the inferences and was unable to connect the feeling of the settlers. I am recommending reading support.

The lack of reading comprehension led to a diorama that lacked illustrating the struggles of early colonial life. Please come see your childs diorama and those of the rest of the class at our colonial life presentation on Dec 1, 201X.

ABC also struggles to organize her writing. As part of her reading support, we will be assisting her with writing skills.

-------------------------------------------------------------

This type of narrative is provided for english, history, science, math, PE, art, and music. In private I knew exactly what my kid was struggling with, given examples and opportunities to view my kids work against her peers.

This years public school report card was 1 page. It had letter grades. She got some As and some Bs. I have no idea what they did in the class. I don't know what work earned her an A and what earned her a B. I have not seen the grading rubrics, if they exist. I have requested a conference with the teacher but have not been able to get her to respond to me to schedule a date.

If all I knew was my kid was getting As and Bs, I would have no idea that my kid is really struggling. I believe my kids grades are in inflated--yes, even in elem school. For the conference, I have pulled together all the worksheets she has brought home and I am hoping to discuss with the teacher how her work translates into her grades.