Changes to grading for all MCPS high school students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher, I am excited by the 5 day blackout period at the end of each quarter. I am worried that the 50% rule seems murkier than ever —regardless of product or accuracy is wild. That that mean Larla can draw 5 misleading doodles about Westward Expansion and get 12.5 points for a 25 point essay?

The points don’t matter in the end. The grade matters.
It’s just a compressed scale.

Just think of it as, on every task, the student is only graded in their worst half of the work, and the scale is 20% D, 40% C, 60% B, 80% A.

Please stop trying to explain math to people who think they learned better in the 80s and 90s lol

Seriously though, they are not interested in understanding why this actually makes sense. They just think it's a particulation trophy and are happy imagining they know better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My rising senior is super pissed that they can change the way the game is played 3/4 of the way through for some kids. Of course they can’t just phase in changes; MCPS is gonna MCPS.

It’s not a game. It’s an attempt to instill a sense of responsibility for getting an education before our nation collapses in a trash fire of ignorance.

Grades are not 100% objective, and anything that involves at least some subjectivity can be gamed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair, the purpose of grading is to measure how well a student understands the material and how well they can complete the skill under a time constraint. For the teacher, grading should be looked at individually and as a whole. If the entire class is missing one question or section then the teacher needs to course correction as they didn’t word or present the material adequately. For the student, grading is part of the learning cycle where they learn more by seeing what they got wrong, understanding why and should be in a position to course correction and do better the next time.

Of course none of this happens because students drop assignments and tests into a black box where the teacher doesn’t return them until the day before quarter ends or much later or maybe never. Tests may be quickly reviewed in class but they are snatched back so the teacher isn’t bothered to create more than one test. This deprives students of an excellent end of year study guide but god forbid the teacher do anything pedagogical.

This is all true but I wouldn’t frame it as a knock on the teachers. McPS doesn’t give them the time to give the feedback or get grading done timely. Also, in college if a prof realizes a test was bad because one or more questions were poorly phrased or too hard, they can adjust the grades or give extra credit or something. I remember in my HS physics cclass, the teacher gave an army assignment that was impossible and almost everyone failed it, so the teacher assigned an additional assignment as “extra credit” to account for it. McPS doesn’t allow extra credit or grading on a carve. I do think people are gojng to complain more about unfair grading or violations of the grading policy — that currently happens a lot but parents let it go because it so rarely makes a difference under the current grading policy.

Good news! The new policy requires teachers to return graded school work within 10 school days.

The current policy also requires stuff to be turned back promptly but there’s zero enforcement of it. What are the principals going to do — fire teachers? They can’t even fire the truly terrible teachers because there’s such a shortage.

Isn’t that where 0s come in? My kid has been more than 10 days late and gotten a zero. Why don’t you uphold the policy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher, I am excited by the 5 day blackout period at the end of each quarter. I am worried that the 50% rule seems murkier than ever —regardless of product or accuracy is wild. That that mean Larla can draw 5 misleading doodles about Westward Expansion and get 12.5 points for a 25 point essay?

The points don’t matter in the end. The grade matters.
It’s just a compressed scale.

Just think of it as, on every task, the student is only graded in their worst half of the work, and the scale is 20% D, 40% C, 60% B, 80% A.

Please stop trying to explain math to people who think they learned better in the 80s and 90s lol

Seriously though, they are not interested in understanding why this actually makes sense. They just think it's a particulation trophy and are happy imagining they know better.

Everytime you say participation trophy, you show you are not a serious person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of the responses on here are very harsh toward students. Do you really think final semester tests or projects are going to encourage better school attendance? What evidence based foundation is that hypothesis resting on?

Bs at High performing MCPS high schools knock kids out of UMD. We're not just talking about Princeton here. Kids who have to work rather than spend time with Tutors are going to suffer most.

MCPS has a presentation that shows that attendance drops a lot in MP2 and MP4 due to the current grading policy. You might try reading it. There is actual data behind this.

Correlation is not causation.

Best response on here

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would students not get into college? These changes just better reflect the learning in class over a full semester rather than the better quarter.

I don't think it's about not getting into college at all, it's about some kids having a harder time getting into the more selective colleges they want, especially if the colleges are still thinking "well we know MCPS has rampant grade inflation, so getting any Bs is a big deal." And that it's especially frustrating for kids who would have made different decisions about what classes to take what year if they knew this was coming.

I personally think that the benefits for the student body as a whole of applying it to everyone immediately are important enough to balance out those concerns, but I do see why it bothers people.

Kids who are unable to persevere through these changes don’t deserve the more selective universities. This will separate those who truly want it from those who are only half in it. This is not keeping kids from the high grades- only making sure they work throughout the whole semester to EARN the grade! A B might knock them out from HYP, but certainly not selective colleges!

Agree with this. It will be clear who the true A students are. They deserve that edge in elite college admissions.

Let's be real. Grades measure attention and time commitment to irrelevant detail, and concordance with teacher's personal biases.

Irrelevant detail? It's called content mastery, dear.

It’s called trivialities and having the same nonstandard sense of language that the teacher has, and ignoring glaring mistakes and guessing what the teacher was trying to ask about. Most teachers don’t understand what they are teaching, which is why they are teachers and not having a career in the field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I disagree with not rounding X9.5 ti 10. Isn’t it a very basic rule of math?

I also do not get why all four grading periods are equal. This is still screwy as was the previous way. Why not simply count all grades earned within the semester toward the final grade?

NP here.

If someone wishes to have a strict view of "at least X%", then "at least X%" means you have to be at X.0, Not (X-0.5). For example, an A is at least 90% would mean an A is at least 90.0, not 89.5.

I am fine with that, quite honestly. Not all college profs allow 0.5 bump.

You are arguing with people who do not understand algebra.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If grades weren’t important for learning, we wouldn’t have them. But they absolutely are necessary, at least for students whose minds are not fully developed, and would not be intrinsically motivated to learn algebraic equations. Also, teachers cannot adequately measure a students learning without grades. If you would like to keep living in La La Land, go ahead…

I love this response! It really demonstrates super well how the most vehement opinions are often based on false assumptions and cognitive biases:

1. Research consistently shows that grades are not necessary for learning and may in fact undermine it. See Self-Determination Theory (external rewards (ike grades can actually crowd out intrinsic motivation); and mastery vs performance orientation (Dweck) - emphasis on performance comes at expense of mastery.

For younger and less motivated learners, research consistently shows that clear goals, support, and feedback work better than letter grades.

2. *Feedback* is necessary; grades are not. More than thirty years of research demonstrate that adding a grade to feedback actually reduces the effect of the feedback.

tl;dr The opposite of what you said is true

lol

Cool. Now how does a college know if a student is ready to access college level material?

Is that really the question? Community Colleges offer a wide range of classes to a range of students. How do they know if students are ready?

Grades are poor measures of learning. They are excellent measures of a student's ability to earn certain grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I disagree with not rounding X9.5 ti 10. Isn’t it a very basic rule of math?

I also do not get why all four grading periods are equal. This is still screwy as was the previous way. Why not simply count all grades earned within the semester toward the final grade?

NP here.

If someone wishes to have a strict view of "at least X%", then "at least X%" means you have to be at X.0, Not (X-0.5). For example, an A is at least 90% would mean an A is at least 90.0, not 89.5.

I am fine with that, quite honestly. Not all college profs allow 0.5 bump.

I am 51 years old and had a numerical grading system. Even in the olden days, when someone was ended up with an 89.5, it was rounded to a 90. Of all of MCPS’s policies, rounding is the least controversial/probelmatic.

It's doesn't really matter one way or the other what the cut off is, but there's no argument in favor of rounding a cutoff. If you want the cutoff to be 89.5, make the cut off 89.5, and say it is 89.5! Don't make the cutoff 89.5 but lie and say it's 90.

Anyone who doesn't understand this doesn't deserve a high school diploma, and probably was educated in MCPS.

The problem is MCPS's grading scale just uses whole numbers. It says a B is 80-89 and an A is 90-100. So 89.5 has to be rounded, and rounding up is the standard. If they don't want to round, they should change the scale to say a B is 80-89.9, etc.

This is absolute nonsense. Rounding isn’t more standard than truncating. Are you retiring at 64 1/2 because rounds to 65? Buying a beer at 20 1/2 because it rounds to 21?

Apples and oranges. Ages work one way, grades another.

[Anonymous]

Damn! My DC just finished high school. I wish he were still in 11th ... that will make DC work so much harder!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair, the purpose of grading is to measure how well a student understands the material and how well they can complete the skill under a time constraint. For the teacher, grading should be looked at individually and as a whole. If the entire class is missing one question or section then the teacher needs to course correction as they didn’t word or present the material adequately. For the student, grading is part of the learning cycle where they learn more by seeing what they got wrong, understanding why and should be in a position to course correction and do better the next time.

Of course none of this happens because students drop assignments and tests into a black box where the teacher doesn’t return them until the day before quarter ends or much later or maybe never. Tests may be quickly reviewed in class but they are snatched back so the teacher isn’t bothered to create more than one test. This deprives students of an excellent end of year study guide but god forbid the teacher do anything pedagogical.

This is all true but I wouldn’t frame it as a knock on the teachers. McPS doesn’t give them the time to give the feedback or get grading done timely. Also, in college if a prof realizes a test was bad because one or more questions were poorly phrased or too hard, they can adjust the grades or give extra credit or something. I remember in my HS physics cclass, the teacher gave an army assignment that was impossible and almost everyone failed it, so the teacher assigned an additional assignment as “extra credit” to account for it. McPS doesn’t allow extra credit or grading on a carve. I do think people are gojng to complain more about unfair grading or violations of the grading policy — that currently happens a lot but parents let it go because it so rarely makes a difference under the current grading policy.

Good news! The new policy requires teachers to return graded school work within 10 school days.

DP. And I assume the county isn’t giving teachers any additional time to get this done, right? Just more demands on teachers’ home lives?

DP. It will just change the variety of assessments and amount of individualized feedback I give. My course is almost exclusively writing currently and I provide unique comments to every student. Next year will be 45% quizzes and written assignments will get canned comments.

My kids have never received feedback on writing assignments. Just random scores.

Same

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair, the purpose of grading is to measure how well a student understands the material and how well they can complete the skill under a time constraint. For the teacher, grading should be looked at individually and as a whole. If the entire class is missing one question or section then the teacher needs to course correction as they didn’t word or present the material adequately. For the student, grading is part of the learning cycle where they learn more by seeing what they got wrong, understanding why and should be in a position to course correction and do better the next time.

Of course none of this happens because students drop assignments and tests into a black box where the teacher doesn’t return them until the day before quarter ends or much later or maybe never. Tests may be quickly reviewed in class but they are snatched back so the teacher isn’t bothered to create more than one test. This deprives students of an excellent end of year study guide but god forbid the teacher do anything pedagogical.

This is all true but I wouldn’t frame it as a knock on the teachers. McPS doesn’t give them the time to give the feedback or get grading done timely. Also, in college if a prof realizes a test was bad because one or more questions were poorly phrased or too hard, they can adjust the grades or give extra credit or something. I remember in my HS physics cclass, the teacher gave an army assignment that was impossible and almost everyone failed it, so the teacher assigned an additional assignment as “extra credit” to account for it. McPS doesn’t allow extra credit or grading on a carve. I do think people are gojng to complain more about unfair grading or violations of the grading policy — that currently happens a lot but parents let it go because it so rarely makes a difference under the current grading policy.

Good news! The new policy requires teachers to return graded school work within 10 school days.

The current policy also requires stuff to be turned back promptly but there’s zero enforcement of it. What are the principals going to do — fire teachers? They can’t even fire the truly terrible teachers because there’s such a shortage.

Isn’t that where 0s come in? My kid has been more than 10 days late and gotten a zero. Why don’t you uphold the policy?

It’s teacher specific. We have teachers who don’t go by the 10 day rule and give zeros.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair, the purpose of grading is to measure how well a student understands the material and how well they can complete the skill under a time constraint. For the teacher, grading should be looked at individually and as a whole. If the entire class is missing one question or section then the teacher needs to course correction as they didn’t word or present the material adequately. For the student, grading is part of the learning cycle where they learn more by seeing what they got wrong, understanding why and should be in a position to course correction and do better the next time.

Of course none of this happens because students drop assignments and tests into a black box where the teacher doesn’t return them until the day before quarter ends or much later or maybe never. Tests may be quickly reviewed in class but they are snatched back so the teacher isn’t bothered to create more than one test. This deprives students of an excellent end of year study guide but god forbid the teacher do anything pedagogical.

This is all true but I wouldn’t frame it as a knock on the teachers. McPS doesn’t give them the time to give the feedback or get grading done timely. Also, in college if a prof realizes a test was bad because one or more questions were poorly phrased or too hard, they can adjust the grades or give extra credit or something. I remember in my HS physics cclass, the teacher gave an army assignment that was impossible and almost everyone failed it, so the teacher assigned an additional assignment as “extra credit” to account for it. McPS doesn’t allow extra credit or grading on a carve. I do think people are gojng to complain more about unfair grading or violations of the grading policy — that currently happens a lot but parents let it go because it so rarely makes a difference under the current grading policy.

Good news! The new policy requires teachers to return graded school work within 10 school days.

DP. And I assume the county isn’t giving teachers any additional time to get this done, right? Just more demands on teachers’ home lives?

You want more rigor for students but not more rigor on giving students feedback?

There are multiple comments on this thread about the absence of written feedback on student work.

I’m a high school teacher who ALWAYS leaves written feedback. I make my students review my feedback and then they have to correct their work using my comments as a guide.

Guess when I leave these comments: at night when I should be with my own children, on Saturday mornings when I should be watching my own kids at practice, on Sunday when I would like to be on a family trip. I work 7 days a week to do what people on this thread want.

So yes, it would be nice to get a little bit of time AT work to DO my work. Then you can get the type of feedback you want for your children without burning out the teacher. I’m very good at what I do, but I’m not sticking around much longer. I’d like a job that respects my health and time.

How much more rigor do you want to impose on me?

[Anonymous]

I looked at the guidance and two other things stood out to me.

First, there will no longer be semester grades for year long classes. They will just have full year grades averaging all four quarters. This seems like a big shift.

Second, two retakes will be allowed per quarter (with some exceptions), which is a major shift from today when retakes are not permitted. That should help students during the shift to more rigorous grading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I looked at the guidance and two other things stood out to me.

First, there will no longer be semester grades for year long classes. They will just have full year grades averaging all four quarters. This seems like a big shift.

Second, two retakes will be allowed per quarter (with some exceptions), which is a major shift from today when retakes are not permitted. That should help students during the shift to more rigorous grading.

The yearlong classes are in middle school. The high school classes are all semester length classes.