“Equity Grading”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These kids are going to be in for a rude awakening when they have a job.

Eh not really, college is easier than high school and jobs are easier than college. Going from 7-8 areas and bosses down to 4-5 down to 1-3 max.

Plus, with most jobs you are given 40 hours a week to do the work. Imagine how much you could get done if you actually spent 40 hours a week doing work in high school or college.

I thought STEM was harder than HS. Thank God for the curve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These kids are going to be in for a rude awakening when they have a job.

Eh not really, college is easier than high school and jobs are easier than college. Going from 7-8 areas and bosses down to 4-5 down to 1-3 max.

Plus, with most jobs you are given 40 hours a week to do the work. Imagine how much you could get done if you actually spent 40 hours a week doing work in high school or college.

I thought STEM was harder than HS. Thank God for the curve.

I was going to say... it's news to me that statistical theory, calculus II and III are easier than calc I and AP history. Maybe PP is talking liberal arts. So much equity

[Anonymous]

I'm an enginnering major. College was much easier than HS because I could pick my schedule and my professors. I could also balance my schedule the way I saw fit and still meet prerequisites.

[Anonymous]

^ that should say "was an enginnering major." I graduated in 1998. Lol!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grading homework is stupid. I'm grading mom/dad/tutor's work half the time, and online apps' work the other half. The only things that should be graded are assignments completed in class. Essays should be written in class, math work completed within the classroom walls, etc. Anything that is allowed to leave the classroom is no longer an honest assessment of the students' work.

Then grade classwork, oral participation, writing prompts given in class, etc. the answer is not exclude all but major assessments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stewart, who has three children who attend Wakefield High School, says grading homework assignments is vital.

“It gives teachers a sense of what students learned before progressing to the next unit or the next topic,” he said.

Teachers are not using homework to guide their topic pace in the classroom. This is a flat out lie. They have X units to cover and the pace accordingly. If kids' HW shows they need to slowdown the teachers do no such thing. I just left a 9th grade transition night where a biology teacher said, we have 12 units to get through and SOL prep so we do a new unit every 2 weeks and test every 2 weeks. Pretty sure if HW showed the kids were not grasping unit 5, she would not slow down. She has her year set and she has to meet it due to the demands of her higher ups.

Teachers should be using formative assessment to gauge what students understand and/or can do. That is not the purpose of homework. Formative assessment can include an entrance/exit ticket, a warm-up, a mini-quiz, a short recording or video (like in a language class), a problem or a prompt to respond to on a white board, or some other short, narrowly-focused task for students to demonstrate what they understand and/or can do. Not homework. Homework is for practice and should be counted for completion only.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stewart, who has three children who attend Wakefield High School, says grading homework assignments is vital.

“It gives teachers a sense of what students learned before progressing to the next unit or the next topic,” he said.

Teachers are not using homework to guide their topic pace in the classroom. This is a flat out lie. They have X units to cover and the pace accordingly. If kids' HW shows they need to slowdown the teachers do no such thing. I just left a 9th grade transition night where a biology teacher said, we have 12 units to get through and SOL prep so we do a new unit every 2 weeks and test every 2 weeks. Pretty sure if HW showed the kids were not grasping unit 5, she would not slow down. She has her year set and she has to meet it due to the demands of her higher ups.

Teachers should be using formative assessment to gauge what students understand and/or can do. That is not the purpose of homework. Formative assessment can include an entrance/exit ticket, a warm-up, a mini-quiz, a short recording or video (like in a language class), a problem or a prompt to respond to on a white board, or some other short, narrowly-focused task for students to demonstrate what they understand and/or can do. Not homework. Homework is for practice and should be counted for completion only.

We do. Thanks for the “mansplaining”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stewart, who has three children who attend Wakefield High School, says grading homework assignments is vital.

“It gives teachers a sense of what students learned before progressing to the next unit or the next topic,” he said.

Teachers are not using homework to guide their topic pace in the classroom. This is a flat out lie. They have X units to cover and the pace accordingly. If kids' HW shows they need to slowdown the teachers do no such thing. I just left a 9th grade transition night where a biology teacher said, we have 12 units to get through and SOL prep so we do a new unit every 2 weeks and test every 2 weeks. Pretty sure if HW showed the kids were not grasping unit 5, she would not slow down. She has her year set and she has to meet it due to the demands of her higher ups.

Teachers should be using formative assessment to gauge what students understand and/or can do. That is not the purpose of homework. Formative assessment can include an entrance/exit ticket, a warm-up, a mini-quiz, a short recording or video (like in a language class), a problem or a prompt to respond to on a white board, or some other short, narrowly-focused task for students to demonstrate what they understand and/or can do. Not homework. Homework is for practice and should be counted for completion only.

We do. Thanks for the “mansplaining”.

That wasn't for you, teacher. That was directed to the parents on this board.

And I'm not a man, but thanks for the assumption.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read it

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/19/12/harvard-edcast-grading-equity

I'm not sure whether he realizes that the unavoidable conclusion of his argument for accuracy is that you shouldn't grade students at all during the year but just administer a final exam, and that will be the grade.
The problem with that approach is that the vast majority of students have very low self-regulation skills and won't do any work if they're not constantly badgered to do it. The idea of not grading homework and convincing students that they need to do it to learn only works with the kids who knew that in the first place.

I've had several articles come up on my news feed from teachers saying that they've stopped grading entirely. And how happy they are!

I’ve graded very little since Jan and COULD NOT be happier. I highly recommend it, but I’ve also submitted my resignation for June-so happy all around.

There are like a gazillion teacher work days in the calendar. There's no excuse not to be able to keep up with grading. And everything is electronic so it's not like you are manually calculating the average like pre-technolgy (and yet teachers pre-2000 seemed to manage grades just fine w/o computers and w/o all the teacher work days).

Okay. I’ll play. If I receive 120 essays, it will take me over 20 hours to grade that assignment at 10 minutes / essay. While I’m grading those, I also gave a test that will take me 10 hours at 5 minutes / test. (I have to move forward with curriculum!) I can’t take time off from my primary role of teaching to get through those 30 hours of assignments to grade. I get (at most) 60 minutes a day away from students to get all of my work done. Oops! Now my planning period has been taken away to either cover a class or attend a meeting. THERE’S the reason teachers can’t catch up. If I now have to provide retakes, all of those new exams I have to write and rewritten papers I have to score have to happen on top of the 30 extra hours of work / week I already have.

Serious question.... do you not expect to have to catch up on work in the evenings? Or weekends sometimes? I don't know too many professionals who don't have to get back on the computer at night to get everything done. Not all of them (myself included) are well paid either. I don't think about my job as X number of hours... I think of it as working as long as it takes to get the job done. Why would teachers be exempt from this? My mom was a teacher and she brought home grading all the time.

I am, IMO, well paid ($200k+) and I do not experience this. I work 40 hours per week. Maybe 6 weeks out of the year I work an extra 5 hours or so. If I do work those extra hours, I am financially compensated for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read it

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/19/12/harvard-edcast-grading-equity

I'm not sure whether he realizes that the unavoidable conclusion of his argument for accuracy is that you shouldn't grade students at all during the year but just administer a final exam, and that will be the grade.
The problem with that approach is that the vast majority of students have very low self-regulation skills and won't do any work if they're not constantly badgered to do it. The idea of not grading homework and convincing students that they need to do it to learn only works with the kids who knew that in the first place.

I've had several articles come up on my news feed from teachers saying that they've stopped grading entirely. And how happy they are!

I’ve graded very little since Jan and COULD NOT be happier. I highly recommend it, but I’ve also submitted my resignation for June-so happy all around.

There are like a gazillion teacher work days in the calendar. There's no excuse not to be able to keep up with grading. And everything is electronic so it's not like you are manually calculating the average like pre-technolgy (and yet teachers pre-2000 seemed to manage grades just fine w/o computers and w/o all the teacher work days).

Okay. I’ll play. If I receive 120 essays, it will take me over 20 hours to grade that assignment at 10 minutes / essay. While I’m grading those, I also gave a test that will take me 10 hours at 5 minutes / test. (I have to move forward with curriculum!) I can’t take time off from my primary role of teaching to get through those 30 hours of assignments to grade. I get (at most) 60 minutes a day away from students to get all of my work done. Oops! Now my planning period has been taken away to either cover a class or attend a meeting. THERE’S the reason teachers can’t catch up. If I now have to provide retakes, all of those new exams I have to write and rewritten papers I have to score have to happen on top of the 30 extra hours of work / week I already have.

Serious question.... do you not expect to have to catch up on work in the evenings? Or weekends sometimes? I don't know too many professionals who don't have to get back on the computer at night to get everything done. Not all of them (myself included) are well paid either. I don't think about my job as X number of hours... I think of it as working as long as it takes to get the job done. Why would teachers be exempt from this? My mom was a teacher and she brought home grading all the time.

I am, IMO, well paid ($200k+) and I do not experience this. I work 40 hours per week. Maybe 6 weeks out of the year I work an extra 5 hours or so. If I do work those extra hours, I am financially compensated for them.

Also, if it doesn't look like I can get all my work done, I am able to distribute my work to a colleague or get assistance from someone. It is not the zero sum game that education is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read it

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/19/12/harvard-edcast-grading-equity

I'm not sure whether he realizes that the unavoidable conclusion of his argument for accuracy is that you shouldn't grade students at all during the year but just administer a final exam, and that will be the grade.
The problem with that approach is that the vast majority of students have very low self-regulation skills and won't do any work if they're not constantly badgered to do it. The idea of not grading homework and convincing students that they need to do it to learn only works with the kids who knew that in the first place.

I've had several articles come up on my news feed from teachers saying that they've stopped grading entirely. And how happy they are!

I’ve graded very little since Jan and COULD NOT be happier. I highly recommend it, but I’ve also submitted my resignation for June-so happy all around.

There are like a gazillion teacher work days in the calendar. There's no excuse not to be able to keep up with grading. And everything is electronic so it's not like you are manually calculating the average like pre-technolgy (and yet teachers pre-2000 seemed to manage grades just fine w/o computers and w/o all the teacher work days).

Okay. I’ll play. If I receive 120 essays, it will take me over 20 hours to grade that assignment at 10 minutes / essay. While I’m grading those, I also gave a test that will take me 10 hours at 5 minutes / test. (I have to move forward with curriculum!) I can’t take time off from my primary role of teaching to get through those 30 hours of assignments to grade. I get (at most) 60 minutes a day away from students to get all of my work done. Oops! Now my planning period has been taken away to either cover a class or attend a meeting. THERE’S the reason teachers can’t catch up. If I now have to provide retakes, all of those new exams I have to write and rewritten papers I have to score have to happen on top of the 30 extra hours of work / week I already have.

Serious question.... do you not expect to have to catch up on work in the evenings? Or weekends sometimes? I don't know too many professionals who don't have to get back on the computer at night to get everything done. Not all of them (myself included) are well paid either. I don't think about my job as X number of hours... I think of it as working as long as it takes to get the job done. Why would teachers be exempt from this? My mom was a teacher and she brought home grading all the time.

I am, IMO, well paid ($200k+) and I do not experience this. I work 40 hours per week. Maybe 6 weeks out of the year I work an extra 5 hours or so. If I do work those extra hours, I am financially compensated for them.

Also, if it doesn't look like I can get all my work done, I am able to distribute my work to a colleague or get assistance from someone. It is not the zero sum game that education is.

Doesn't work if you do work on a quota/billable hour system.

[Anonymous]

My kid is in a MS (not in FCPS) that uses Standards Based Grading. The way they ensure that the kids do homework, etc is that kids are required to turn in these “formative” assignments to be allowed to take the test/other “summative” assignment that counts for a grade. So lots of work they are required to do, but counts for nothing towards their grade.
Also, the school still puts a letter grade on the report card, and there is no consistency in how teachers “translate” SBG to letter grades. Some do so I in such a way that if a kid has 10 level 4s (highest possible) but two level 3s, they get a B. Even if they had 100 4s, if they have more than one 3, they can’t earn an A. Others average grades as before.
Students also need to write something justifying their grade. Shouldn’t it just be objective?
Sure, having a retake opportunity is nice, but mostly this system is confusing & seemingly LESS fair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in a MS (not in FCPS) that uses Standards Based Grading. The way they ensure that the kids do homework, etc is that kids are required to turn in these “formative” assignments to be allowed to take the test/other “summative” assignment that counts for a grade. So lots of work they are required to do, but counts for nothing towards their grade.
Also, the school still puts a letter grade on the report card, and there is no consistency in how teachers “translate” SBG to letter grades. Some do so I in such a way that if a kid has 10 level 4s (highest possible) but two level 3s, they get a B. Even if they had 100 4s, if they have more than one 3, they can’t earn an A. Others average grades as before.
Students also need to write something justifying their grade. Shouldn’t it just be objective?
Sure, having a retake opportunity is nice, but mostly this system is confusing & seemingly LESS fair.

This is very much like the IB grading system in HS. Very vague and hand-wavey. I’ve literally had teachers say, “well, I feels like a C+ to me.” Avoid IB at all costs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in a MS (not in FCPS) that uses Standards Based Grading. The way they ensure that the kids do homework, etc is that kids are required to turn in these “formative” assignments to be allowed to take the test/other “summative” assignment that counts for a grade. So lots of work they are required to do, but counts for nothing towards their grade.
Also, the school still puts a letter grade on the report card, and there is no consistency in how teachers “translate” SBG to letter grades. Some do so I in such a way that if a kid has 10 level 4s (highest possible) but two level 3s, they get a B. Even if they had 100 4s, if they have more than one 3, they can’t earn an A. Others average grades as before.
Students also need to write something justifying their grade. Shouldn’t it just be objective?
Sure, having a retake opportunity is nice, but mostly this system is confusing & seemingly LESS fair.

This is very much like the IB grading system in HS. Very vague and hand-wavey. I’ve literally had teachers say, “well, I feels like a C+ to me.” Avoid IB at all costs.

Thanks. I don’t know much about IB. But as my middle schooler said, “your grade should be a fact, not an opinion.” Obviously there’s some subjectivity grading things like essays, but I generally agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read it

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/19/12/harvard-edcast-grading-equity

I'm not sure whether he realizes that the unavoidable conclusion of his argument for accuracy is that you shouldn't grade students at all during the year but just administer a final exam, and that will be the grade.
The problem with that approach is that the vast majority of students have very low self-regulation skills and won't do any work if they're not constantly badgered to do it. The idea of not grading homework and convincing students that they need to do it to learn only works with the kids who knew that in the first place.

I've had several articles come up on my news feed from teachers saying that they've stopped grading entirely. And how happy they are!

I’ve graded very little since Jan and COULD NOT be happier. I highly recommend it, but I’ve also submitted my resignation for June-so happy all around.

There are like a gazillion teacher work days in the calendar. There's no excuse not to be able to keep up with grading. And everything is electronic so it's not like you are manually calculating the average like pre-technolgy (and yet teachers pre-2000 seemed to manage grades just fine w/o computers and w/o all the teacher work days).

Okay. I’ll play. If I receive 120 essays, it will take me over 20 hours to grade that assignment at 10 minutes / essay. While I’m grading those, I also gave a test that will take me 10 hours at 5 minutes / test. (I have to move forward with curriculum!) I can’t take time off from my primary role of teaching to get through those 30 hours of assignments to grade. I get (at most) 60 minutes a day away from students to get all of my work done. Oops! Now my planning period has been taken away to either cover a class or attend a meeting. THERE’S the reason teachers can’t catch up. If I now have to provide retakes, all of those new exams I have to write and rewritten papers I have to score have to happen on top of the 30 extra hours of work / week I already have.

Serious question.... do you not expect to have to catch up on work in the evenings? Or weekends sometimes? I don't know too many professionals who don't have to get back on the computer at night to get everything done. Not all of them (myself included) are well paid either. I don't think about my job as X number of hours... I think of it as working as long as it takes to get the job done. Why would teachers be exempt from this? My mom was a teacher and she brought home grading all the time.

I am, IMO, well paid ($200k+) and I do not experience this. I work 40 hours per week. Maybe 6 weeks out of the year I work an extra 5 hours or so. If I do work those extra hours, I am financially compensated for them.

Also, if it doesn't look like I can get all my work done, I am able to distribute my work to a colleague or get assistance from someone. It is not the zero sum game that education is.

Doesn't work if you do work on a quota/billable hour system.

That doesn't change the fact that it's not as clear cut as people here are trying to make it out to be.