Madison H.S. Parents - Principal Survey and Skills-Based Grading

[Anonymous]

I did watch the video. I just don't believe what they are saying is true. Their assessment of how the system will work well to me is flawed. It both raises and lowers grades because of the grade replacement and the whole number grading and reduction of grading assessments throughout the year.

[Anonymous]

It’s just grade welfare. Lazy kids are learning the same or less, but now get higher grades.

[Anonymous]

I feel like these new ideas are actually coming from people who don't have deep thinking. Since when were grades only about content and not skill? Where did this idea even come from? It's entirely made up that grading only involved content before. Now instead of kids actually doing assignments and getting feedback from teachers and having an option a few times a year to reassess to a median grade level, teacher will spend more time dividing up content from skill and doing mathematical formulas of grading to show an upward trend.

[Anonymous]

I am just glad to see most people on this post agree that SBG is bad for learning for the majority of the students! I have taught at college for 20+ years and totally agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m mostly concerned it doesn’t encourage learning.

Quite the opposite! It doesn't DIScourage learning. It encourages kids to keep doing better on the next test b/c if they do, they will get a bump up on the most recent previous test.

Look, we know that you are the poster we suspect of being admin or someone close to admin. Please just start your own pro-SBG at Madison thread and see if you get any posts/views besides your own.

I am just a parent at Madison, and I tend to agree with PP. SBG has been fine. My kid is learning the material, he has to revisit it every unit, and his grades have not changed.

I AM the poster who asked earlier about grade inflation, and in the end, that is all I am seeing here...people mad that homework doesn't prop up a grade on a bad test anymore. The question remains: is your kid learning the material? If so, and most likely, why are you upset?

This nonsense that Madison students will have lower grades is just that-nonsense

I am not really seeing any legit arguments.

First this argument is flawed because there wasn't a problem with grading or schoolwork to begin with so the idea that you have to refute something that is new to me is flawed. Why doesn't Madison have to prove that it needs to be changed? What problems are they trying to even solve?

There is no benefit to not grading assignments. It makes it confusing to figure out which assignments will be graded and what ones won't. It leads to less practice and less proficiency. it encourages ignoring schoolwork. It's work for the teacher with no benefit to the student. Who wants to go through the trouble of assigning work that doesn't get done? Does it matter if you don't think it will harm anyone? Do we just experiment with an idea that unless we see harm it's all ok? Do we wait for harm to show up? Even the supposedly benefit of helping kids who have a job or have to watch a sibling is suspect because the better fix for this is to have longer due dates for completion, not elimination of work. Kids need practice and that's why practice is assigned.

As for the grading, at least with a retake or test corrections the child got to demonstrate proficiency in an area of learning. It was also systematic for only certain assessments and most classes the most you could get would be a B. Changing a grade from the past doesn't do anything beneficial. It also encourages cheating I would imagine because kids will get confused why its ok to just change a grade from the past based on a future grade. Where in the world does this actually happen beneficially where we whitewash the past with no added effort?

The grading at just a full letter grade doesn't make sense either. They don't match other schools and the point spread from one grade to the other is too large which is why we have smaller point spreads to begin with. The grading of assessments should follow the same grading as the final grade. Why have two different grading systems?

I think the grading is set up to reduce low grades and high grades and bring more people into the B/C range but without doing any work to really lower their grade or bring it up. It's just arbitrarily tweaking grades in a manufactured way.

The school didn't request this change. It's coming from above. Why be angry at parents who didn't want it to begin with? Not everyone is on board with every change is good change.

You obviously didn't watch the video or the background info on why. The video is about next year's policies, by the way. Grades aren't being lowered. Kids are given an opportunity to raise their overall grade by showing an upward trend. You can disagree with this policy, but not the fact that it tends to RAISE grades, not lower them.

The video is right in that it does raise the grades for the lower performing kids. I don’t dispute that and I personally don’t have a problem with that, though I think the folks worrying about kids not doing homework have a valid point. But the video sidesteps the other real effect that it is much harder to get an A because of the point spread and elimination of -/+ grades. This is what Madison admin is not being upfront about and what I am worried about. I don’t have genius kids who are aiming for top colleges. Just regular kids who will have a lower gpa because of this which will make it harder to get into the local public schools like JMU or Virginia Tech because the other FCPS schools won’t have this.

[Anonymous]

In my 20+ years of science college teaching, I have tried many different methods, some were successful but most not. The important things I have learned are:
1. Be clear of the class expectation (how many hours of work)
2. Be consistent/organized of class context and structure (due date and so on)
3. Be passionate about the subject and be available
4. Providing more opportunity for make-up can backfire. For one year, I offered makeup exams for every exam and guess what? The average went down as "most" students assume they will do well on the makeup without "real" study. In addition, the topics in many science classes build on each other. If you did not master chapters 1 and 2, then you are likely to have problems with chapters 3 and 4. Actually my colleagues (again in science) mostly agree that we can predict the overall semester grade mainly based on their first exam grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In my 20+ years of science college teaching, I have tried many different methods, some were successful but most not. The important things I have learned are:
1. Be clear of the class expectation (how many hours of work)
2. Be consistent/organized of class context and structure (due date and so on)
3. Be passionate about the subject and be available
4. Providing more opportunity for make-up can backfire. For one year, I offered makeup exams for every exam and guess what? The average went down as "most" students assume they will do well on the makeup without "real" study. In addition, the topics in many science classes build on each other. If you did not master chapters 1 and 2, then you are likely to have problems with chapters 3 and 4. Actually my colleagues (again in science) mostly agree that we can predict the overall semester grade mainly based on their first exam grade.

The new plan reduces or totally eliminates make up exams. Instead of allowing/encouraging kids to look backward at material for make up exams for past content, the new plan scrsps that and focusses kids on the future content. No need for retaking exams from last month's content when you can boost that last grade by diung better on the next exam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m mostly concerned it doesn’t encourage learning.

Quite the opposite! It doesn't DIScourage learning. It encourages kids to keep doing better on the next test b/c if they do, they will get a bump up on the most recent previous test.

Look, we know that you are the poster we suspect of being admin or someone close to admin. Please just start your own pro-SBG at Madison thread and see if you get any posts/views besides your own.

I am just a parent at Madison, and I tend to agree with PP. SBG has been fine. My kid is learning the material, he has to revisit it every unit, and his grades have not changed.

I AM the poster who asked earlier about grade inflation, and in the end, that is all I am seeing here...people mad that homework doesn't prop up a grade on a bad test anymore. The question remains: is your kid learning the material? If so, and most likely, why are you upset?

This nonsense that Madison students will have lower grades is just that-nonsense

I am not really seeing any legit arguments.

First this argument is flawed because there wasn't a problem with grading or schoolwork to begin with so the idea that you have to refute something that is new to me is flawed. Why doesn't Madison have to prove that it needs to be changed? What problems are they trying to even solve?

There is no benefit to not grading assignments. It makes it confusing to figure out which assignments will be graded and what ones won't. It leads to less practice and less proficiency. it encourages ignoring schoolwork. It's work for the teacher with no benefit to the student. Who wants to go through the trouble of assigning work that doesn't get done? Does it matter if you don't think it will harm anyone? Do we just experiment with an idea that unless we see harm it's all ok? Do we wait for harm to show up? Even the supposedly benefit of helping kids who have a job or have to watch a sibling is suspect because the better fix for this is to have longer due dates for completion, not elimination of work. Kids need practice and that's why practice is assigned.

As for the grading, at least with a retake or test corrections the child got to demonstrate proficiency in an area of learning. It was also systematic for only certain assessments and most classes the most you could get would be a B. Changing a grade from the past doesn't do anything beneficial. It also encourages cheating I would imagine because kids will get confused why its ok to just change a grade from the past based on a future grade. Where in the world does this actually happen beneficially where we whitewash the past with no added effort?

The grading at just a full letter grade doesn't make sense either. They don't match other schools and the point spread from one grade to the other is too large which is why we have smaller point spreads to begin with. The grading of assessments should follow the same grading as the final grade. Why have two different grading systems?

I think the grading is set up to reduce low grades and high grades and bring more people into the B/C range but without doing any work to really lower their grade or bring it up. It's just arbitrarily tweaking grades in a manufactured way.

The school didn't request this change. It's coming from above. Why be angry at parents who didn't want it to begin with? Not everyone is on board with every change is good change.

You obviously didn't watch the video or the background info on why. The video is about next year's policies, by the way. Grades aren't being lowered. Kids are given an opportunity to raise their overall grade by showing an upward trend. You can disagree with this policy, but not the fact that it tends to RAISE grades, not lower them.

The video is right in that it does raise the grades for the lower performing kids. I don’t dispute that and I personally don’t have a problem with that, though I think the folks worrying about kids not doing homework have a valid point. But the video sidesteps the other real effect that it is much harder to get an A because of the point spread and elimination of -/+ grades. This is what Madison admin is not being upfront about and what I am worried about. I don’t have genius kids who are aiming for top colleges. Just regular kids who will have a lower gpa because of this which will make it harder to get into the local public schools like JMU or Virginia Tech because the other FCPS schools won’t have this.

Not sure you understand that by eliminating + and - on each formative or summative assignment they are NOT "lowering grades." The effect is a wash. It's neutral because some in the padt who would have had an A- on a tadk would get a boost upward to an A. And others who would have had a B+ on a task would have a drop to a B. But over the course of the year, and across all student, the effect of eliminating + and - is net neutral, not a "lowering". An equal number of kids lose minus as tjose losing on the plus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my 20+ years of science college teaching, I have tried many different methods, some were successful but most not. The important things I have learned are:
1. Be clear of the class expectation (how many hours of work)
2. Be consistent/organized of class context and structure (due date and so on)
3. Be passionate about the subject and be available
4. Providing more opportunity for make-up can backfire. For one year, I offered makeup exams for every exam and guess what? The average went down as "most" students assume they will do well on the makeup without "real" study. In addition, the topics in many science classes build on each other. If you did not master chapters 1 and 2, then you are likely to have problems with chapters 3 and 4. Actually my colleagues (again in science) mostly agree that we can predict the overall semester grade mainly based on their first exam grade.

The new plan reduces or totally eliminates make up exams. Instead of allowing/encouraging kids to look backward at material for make up exams for past content, the new plan scrsps that and focusses kids on the future content. No need for retaking exams from last month's content when you can boost that last grade by diung better on the next exam.

Retakes for the most part were only available for quarter summative tests and before there were many other grades, so these had less weight. Any retakes only were up to a B grade and required the student to learn new content and master skills to bring up their grade.

[Anonymous]

Hopefully the straight A kids won’t be affected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hopefully the straight A kids won’t be affected.

They could be. With less assessments, it's possible their grade could drop if they don't do well on one assessment. I guess just make sure you do well on the last one. Seems to be the way to game the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hopefully the straight A kids won’t be affected.

I read the May PTSA minutes. SBG impacts them too. Looks like SBG decreases motivation, increases test anxiety, and erodes quality of time spent in class.

[Anonymous]

There are other issues like who decides what a “skill” is and how does that translate to other unrelated content? Why are previous assessments (skills) being marked not for grading so only the 3 or so more recent assessments being counted?

But what can be done about all this? Who do we contact to express our concerns?

[Anonymous]

From the April PTA minutes for Madison:

Grading
Plans to complete the transition to the skills-based assessment grading system in 2023-24 are on course

JMHS is collaborating with other high schools concerning the new grading system and its implementation

Designing high-quality skills assessments will be the instructional focus at JMHS in 2023-24

§ Consultants will be brought in to help design better assessments

§ Better assessments will provide more precise feedback about students’ progress

Fairfax County School Board is now focusing on the grading discussion. Depending on the actions of the Board:

§ JMHS’ current plans to complete the shift to the new grading system in 2023-24 may be put on-hold;

§ Planned focus groups at JMHS about grading may be pushed to May.

[Anonymous]

With the newly designed “high quality skills assessments” eliminate letter grades completely starting next year? That’s where I’m confused.