APS Most Likely Moving to Standards-Based Grading/Grading for Equity Next School Year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Equity to me means me a good education for all. High standards for all. This ain’t it. They need to abandon this, and start thinking about how to lower the damn class sizes.

adopting policies like this will lower class sizes, as many folks will say, we're out of here.

It won't, though, because they'll just reduce the number of teachers, keeping the class sizes huge. Ask me how I know.

People go to private, and that defunds the public schools. They’ve got to do more with less, and thus, huge class sizes. I thought everyone knew that.

Soooo. APS student population exploding, SB drags its feet to build a 4th high school, so will have super sized school and large classes...

Student population drops, teachers and funding get cut, and end up with large classes...

So basically we are F'd all ways to sunday?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hasn't this shipped sailed long ago???

I mean when you have 27 Valedictorians, it tells you something.

In Fairfax County in the 80s/90s, we had one.

Valedictorian: a student (singular), typically having the highest academic achievements of the class, who delivers the valedictory at a graduation ceremony.

The private schools still have one Valedictorian and one Salutatorian.

Salutatorian: the student who ranks second highest in a graduating class and delivers the salutatory. a graduating class and delivers the salutatory.

The terms have come to mean very little in public HS.

in most of the top private schools they don’t have valedictorians/etc. and they haven’t for a long time. I went to a top private in NYC and my sister went to boarding school and neither of them had a valedictorian. The person who gave the grad speech at my school was selected by teachers. A lot of these schools also don’t externally rank given small size.

I went to a New England boarding school and we definitely had a valedictorian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Which SB member? Priddy?

Looks like my comment got flagged, I guess I offended someone by pointing out that the school board is more responsive to the local Democratic Party than to parents and teachers. But yes, Priddy is the only one. None of the others have kids in the system anymore, or yet

[Anonymous]

It appears this thread has gotten somewhat off topic, but I'm in a school that uses standards-based grading and I like it.

It gives the kids a chance to have their work graded and evaluated, and they can see very clearly which areas they're doing well on and which need work. My middle schooler has been able to turn mediocre "formative" scores into outstanding "summative" scores by focusing his studying in the areas that need the work. They often make a formative similar to what the summative will be, so kids are getting practice in the skills they'll be evaluated on.

I think kids will learn more and be better prepared for the future when this grading system is used.

Not everyone agrees with me. My husband hates it because he thinks everything should count. And I remind my kids that formatives and practice *do* sort of count, because if you're failing those or not doing them, there's no way you are going to do well on the summative. And they completely get that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It appears this thread has gotten somewhat off topic, but I'm in a school that uses standards-based grading and I like it.

It gives the kids a chance to have their work graded and evaluated, and they can see very clearly which areas they're doing well on and which need work. My middle schooler has been able to turn mediocre "formative" scores into outstanding "summative" scores by focusing his studying in the areas that need the work. They often make a formative similar to what the summative will be, so kids are getting practice in the skills they'll be evaluated on.

I think kids will learn more and be better prepared for the future when this grading system is used.

Not everyone agrees with me. My husband hates it because he thinks everything should count. And I remind my kids that formatives and practice *do* sort of count, because if you're failing those or not doing them, there's no way you are going to do well on the summative. And they completely get that.

Are you at a public school? I'm apprehensive that APS class sizes and schools are just too large to have this kind of meaningful feedback. It sounds like for this type of system to work, teachers need to be evaluating kids on a more meaningful, deeper level. I understand how this would work in a private school, just have concerns about APS's implementation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hasn't this shipped sailed long ago???

I mean when you have 27 Valedictorians, it tells you something.

In Fairfax County in the 80s/90s, we had one.

Valedictorian: a student (singular), typically having the highest academic achievements of the class, who delivers the valedictory at a graduation ceremony.

The private schools still have one Valedictorian and one Salutatorian.

Salutatorian: the student who ranks second highest in a graduating class and delivers the salutatory. a graduating class and delivers the salutatory.

The terms have come to mean very little in public HS.

in most of the top private schools they don’t have valedictorians/etc. and they haven’t for a long time. I went to a top private in NYC and my sister went to boarding school and neither of them had a valedictorian. The person who gave the grad speech at my school was selected by teachers. A lot of these schools also don’t externally rank given small size.

I went to a New England boarding school and we definitely had a valedictorian.

My son's DC private still has one Valedictorian. It is academic merit-based, not chosen by popularity or likability of teachers. One of the things I love about the school is the transparency and merit-based system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It appears this thread has gotten somewhat off topic, but I'm in a school that uses standards-based grading and I like it.

It gives the kids a chance to have their work graded and evaluated, and they can see very clearly which areas they're doing well on and which need work. My middle schooler has been able to turn mediocre "formative" scores into outstanding "summative" scores by focusing his studying in the areas that need the work. They often make a formative similar to what the summative will be, so kids are getting practice in the skills they'll be evaluated on.

I think kids will learn more and be better prepared for the future when this grading system is used.

Not everyone agrees with me. My husband hates it because he thinks everything should count. And I remind my kids that formatives and practice *do* sort of count, because if you're failing those or not doing them, there's no way you are going to do well on the summative. And they completely get that.

Getting a D and getting to see the material you got wrong is the same as, clearly seeing what they need to work on and what they got wrong. And, HEY, maybe the should of studied as well.

I cannot stand standards-based grading. We have done away with standardized testing for Universities. This essentially makes GPAs completely irrelevant as well. Ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What exactly are the equity concerns with grades?

Some kids won't have their parents pushing them to do their homework, so it is not fair to grade homework.
The rest is their belief that black kids do poorly, so we need to not grade those things as harshly.

[Anonymous]

Fairfax and Loudoun have both implemented this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax and Loudoun have both implemented this.

Really? Arlington indicated it wanted to be an innovative leader in this area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It appears this thread has gotten somewhat off topic, but I'm in a school that uses standards-based grading and I like it.

It gives the kids a chance to have their work graded and evaluated, and they can see very clearly which areas they're doing well on and which need work. My middle schooler has been able to turn mediocre "formative" scores into outstanding "summative" scores by focusing his studying in the areas that need the work. They often make a formative similar to what the summative will be, so kids are getting practice in the skills they'll be evaluated on.

I think kids will learn more and be better prepared for the future when this grading system is used.

Not everyone agrees with me. My husband hates it because he thinks everything should count. And I remind my kids that formatives and practice *do* sort of count, because if you're failing those or not doing them, there's no way you are going to do well on the summative. And they completely get that.

Getting a D and getting to see the material you got wrong is the same as, clearly seeing what they need to work on and what they got wrong. And, HEY, maybe the should of studied as well.

I cannot stand standards-based grading. We have done away with standardized testing for Universities. This essentially makes GPAs completely irrelevant as well. Ridiculous.

Lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which SB member? Priddy?

Looks like my comment got flagged, I guess I offended someone by pointing out that the school board is more responsive to the local Democratic Party than to parents and teachers. But yes, Priddy is the only one. None of the others have kids in the system anymore, or yet

That's not true. O'Grady still has a son at WHS.
Her replacement come January, Mary Kadera, also has kids in APS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax and Loudoun have both implemented this.

Really? Arlington indicated it wanted to be an innovative leader in this area.

As long as they are "on trend," APS/Arlington considers itself progressive and a leader.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It appears this thread has gotten somewhat off topic, but I'm in a school that uses standards-based grading and I like it.

It gives the kids a chance to have their work graded and evaluated, and they can see very clearly which areas they're doing well on and which need work. My middle schooler has been able to turn mediocre "formative" scores into outstanding "summative" scores by focusing his studying in the areas that need the work. They often make a formative similar to what the summative will be, so kids are getting practice in the skills they'll be evaluated on.

I think kids will learn more and be better prepared for the future when this grading system is used.

Not everyone agrees with me. My husband hates it because he thinks everything should count. And I remind my kids that formatives and practice *do* sort of count, because if you're failing those or not doing them, there's no way you are going to do well on the summative. And they completely get that.

I think the two are separate: standards-based grading and grading for equity. I am actually pro-standards-based grading. I’m actually pro grading for equity, in theory. But giving someone a 50% on work not done is not equitable.

[Anonymous]

How are these kids going to survive in the real world?