7 Math teachers are leaving Richard Montgomerry HS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Could anyone expain the 50% rule?"

I'll do you one better, I'll show you the actual language that is in the MCPS Grading and Reporting document:

"Assigning a grade lower than 50 percent to a task/assessment [is prohibited]. However, if a student does no work on the task/assessment, the teacher will assign a zero. If a teacher determines the student did not attempt to meet the basic requirements of the task/assessment or the student engaged in academic dishonesty, the teacher may assign a zero"

Source: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/policy/pdf/ikara.pdf

"If my child took a math test with 10 problems to solve and finished all but only got 5 correct answers, shoul$ he receive 50% for this rest?"

He should, and would.

My issue with the 50% rule is the zeros for work that is less than 50% attempted.

I’m going to use an actual example for this past school year without identifying the student.

Student never completed a homework assignment. It was either not attempted at all or about 20-30% attempted. The parent was aware of this all year and took the position that homework was the student’s problem. MP 1-3 final grades were Bs and Cs. MP 4, Student blew the final project. Then the parent wanted to protest all the zeroes for quarter 4 homework. Parent wanted them all bumped up to 50% trying to eke out a C from a D. Under the old system, I could have entered the actual grades of 20, 25, 30 percent and we wouldn’t have even wasted time discussing this on the last day of school. In the end, my admin supported the D because I could document ten months of homework-related emails to the parent.

So you are saying this kid was harmed because his 20% became a 0 because s/he did not attempt every problem?

Well, that explanation is almost impossible to parse. I really wouldn't want to spend a year with that teacher.

I think the scenario is the homework scores were 0s and 50s (including many incomplete assignments which were only bumped up to 50, because of the 50%-rule). The parent then wanted to argue that all the homework scores should be at least 50%, but admin let the 0s stand. If the missing homework had been bumped to 50s, the final homework score wouldn't have been low enough to drag the course grade down from a C to a D for the forth quarter.

So top PP, did this student make progress on learning the objectives of the class? Sounds like your goal is to make homework completion as punitive as possible. I mean fine, if that's your bag, but aren't you the same PP that said the problem with the 50%-rule is it discounts what "the student is actually learning." How did this student manage to get test scores higher than their homework score, if they didn't learn something? Are you sure your homework assignments are actually valuable? Or, perhaps in the end, the student did complete the homework just to study for the test, even though it was then too late to get homework credit. What's your beef exactly? Yay, a student with B/C level understanding gets a D for the quarter, 'cause they didn't get there your way. I'll go out on a limb and say this is a student who will find college much more rewarding than HS.

I was the teacher who had the issue with the parent. Not the prior PP in bold.I was posting after day drinking. Sorry, I don’t do that during the school year. We just got really good health news yesterday.

The student never completed at least 50% of homework. All the homework grades were zero. Homework is set at 10% by my department head. I can’t change that. I can’t give 50% for homework that is 20% attempted. I’d actually rather put in all of the 20 and 30% grades than zeroes. I’m not allowed to.

I think a student who has a non-homework average of a low C would probably benefit from completing homework.

I’m a career changer and was not an education major. Even in college, my freshman year classes required homework and lab reports that had to be completed or it dinged you grade by 10-20%. In my first Econ course, you read two chapters a night and took the chapter quizzes on a scantron that you turnedcin the next lecture. Those were worth 25% of the semester grade. Another 25% was two papers. Then there was a midterm and a final. If you were happy with a C tops, you could blow all the homework off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Could anyone expain the 50% rule?"

I'll do you one better, I'll show you the actual language that is in the MCPS Grading and Reporting document:

"Assigning a grade lower than 50 percent to a task/assessment [is prohibited]. However, if a student does no work on the task/assessment, the teacher will assign a zero. If a teacher determines the student did not attempt to meet the basic requirements of the task/assessment or the student engaged in academic dishonesty, the teacher may assign a zero"

Source: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/policy/pdf/ikara.pdf

"If my child took a math test with 10 problems to solve and finished all but only got 5 correct answers, shoul$ he receive 50% for this rest?"

He should, and would.

My issue with the 50% rule is the zeros for work that is less than 50% attempted.

I’m going to use an actual example for this past school year without identifying the student.

Student never completed a homework assignment. It was either not attempted at all or about 20-30% attempted. The parent was aware of this all year and took the position that homework was the student’s problem. MP 1-3 final grades were Bs and Cs. MP 4, Student blew the final project. Then the parent wanted to protest all the zeroes for quarter 4 homework. Parent wanted them all bumped up to 50% trying to eke out a C from a D. Under the old system, I could have entered the actual grades of 20, 25, 30 percent and we wouldn’t have even wasted time discussing this on the last day of school. In the end, my admin supported the D because I could document ten months of homework-related emails to the parent.

So you are saying this kid was harmed because his 20% became a 0 because s/he did not attempt every problem?

Well, that explanation is almost impossible to parse. I really wouldn't want to spend a year with that teacher.

I think the scenario is the homework scores were 0s and 50s (including many incomplete assignments which were only bumped up to 50, because of the 50%-rule). The parent then wanted to argue that all the homework scores should be at least 50%, but admin let the 0s stand. If the missing homework had been bumped to 50s, the final homework score wouldn't have been low enough to drag the course grade down from a C to a D for the forth quarter.

So top PP, did this student make progress on learning the objectives of the class? Sounds like your goal is to make homework completion as punitive as possible. I mean fine, if that's your bag, but aren't you the same PP that said the problem with the 50%-rule is it discounts what "the student is actually learning." How did this student manage to get test scores higher than their homework score, if they didn't learn something? Are you sure your homework assignments are actually valuable? Or, perhaps in the end, the student did complete the homework just to study for the test, even though it was then too late to get homework credit. What's your beef exactly? Yay, a student with B/C level understanding gets a D for the quarter, 'cause they didn't get there your way. I'll go out on a limb and say this is a student who will find college much more rewarding than HS.

I was the teacher who had the issue with the parent. Not the prior PP in bold.I was posting after day drinking. Sorry, I don’t do that during the school year. We just got really good health news yesterday.

The student never completed at least 50% of homework. All the homework grades were zero. Homework is set at 10% by my department head. I can’t change that. I can’t give 50% for homework that is 20% attempted. I’d actually rather put in all of the 20 and 30% grades than zeroes. I’m not allowed to.

I think a student who has a non-homework average of a low C would probably benefit from completing homework.

I’m a career changer and was not an education major. Even in college, my freshman year classes required homework and lab reports that had to be completed or it dinged you grade by 10-20%. In my first Econ course, you read two chapters a night and took the chapter quizzes on a scantron that you turnedcin the next lecture. Those were worth 25% of the semester grade. Another 25% was two papers. Then there was a midterm and a final. If you were happy with a C tops, you could blow all the homework off.

OK, but then you did use the 50%-rule as an excuse to actually harm the student's grade. Even if it didn't make a difference in letter grade, I don't blame the parent for making the conversation difficult, since your grading sounds capricious.

By your account, the student turned in maybe half the assignments at 20-30% complete, so under regular averaging that would be a homework grade of 25%*0.5 + 0%*0.5 = 12.5%. But you didn't want the 50% rule to be invoked on the partially completed assignments, so you entered 0s for all homework. But even with the 50%-rule the homework grade would be 50%*0.5 + 0%*0.5 = 25%. Homework is 10% of the final grade, so the three options are add 0%, 1.25% or 2.5% to the final grade. You agree, that the middle option is correct, but you'd rather see a student docked a percentage point they earned, than see them gifted a percentage point. That seems unnecessarily petty, especially given the other 90% of the grade was in the C range, I sure hope the additional 1.25% wasn't enough to hold the grade at C.

Thanks for clarifying that you're a different poster. It still seems to me, that if the goal of grades is to quantify progress toward mastery of the course material, this student pretty much demonstrated C level work. If a 25% for the homework grade, knocked things down to a D fair enough, but I see no reason to take a stand against the 50%-rule when the kid is already shooting themself in the foot. Your attitude seems to be this student would do better if they finished their homework, so why can't I make the homework grade even more damaging?

[Anonymous]

Test

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Could anyone expain the 50% rule?"

I'll do you one better, I'll show you the actual language that is in the MCPS Grading and Reporting document:

"Assigning a grade lower than 50 percent to a task/assessment [is prohibited]. However, if a student does no work on the task/assessment, the teacher will assign a zero. If a teacher determines the student did not attempt to meet the basic requirements of the task/assessment or the student engaged in academic dishonesty, the teacher may assign a zero"

Source: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/policy/pdf/ikara.pdf

"If my child took a math test with 10 problems to solve and finished all but only got 5 correct answers, shoul$ he receive 50% for this rest?"

He should, and would.

My issue with the 50% rule is the zeros for work that is less than 50% attempted.

I’m going to use an actual example for this past school year without identifying the student.

Student never completed a homework assignment. It was either not attempted at all or about 20-30% attempted. The parent was aware of this all year and took the position that homework was the student’s problem. MP 1-3 final grades were Bs and Cs. MP 4, Student blew the final project. Then the parent wanted to protest all the zeroes for quarter 4 homework. Parent wanted them all bumped up to 50% trying to eke out a C from a D. Under the old system, I could have entered the actual grades of 20, 25, 30 percent and we wouldn’t have even wasted time discussing this on the last day of school. In the end, my admin supported the D because I could document ten months of homework-related emails to the parent.

So you are saying this kid was harmed because his 20% became a 0 because s/he did not attempt every problem?

Well, that explanation is almost impossible to parse. I really wouldn't want to spend a year with that teacher.

I think the scenario is the homework scores were 0s and 50s (including many incomplete assignments which were only bumped up to 50, because of the 50%-rule). The parent then wanted to argue that all the homework scores should be at least 50%, but admin let the 0s stand. If the missing homework had been bumped to 50s, the final homework score wouldn't have been low enough to drag the course grade down from a C to a D for the forth quarter.

So top PP, did this student make progress on learning the objectives of the class? Sounds like your goal is to make homework completion as punitive as possible. I mean fine, if that's your bag, but aren't you the same PP that said the problem with the 50%-rule is it discounts what "the student is actually learning." How did this student manage to get test scores higher than their homework score, if they didn't learn something? Are you sure your homework assignments are actually valuable? Or, perhaps in the end, the student did complete the homework just to study for the test, even though it was then too late to get homework credit. What's your beef exactly? Yay, a student with B/C level understanding gets a D for the quarter, 'cause they didn't get there your way. I'll go out on a limb and say this is a student who will find college much more rewarding than HS.

I was the teacher who had the issue with the parent. Not the prior PP in bold.I was posting after day drinking. Sorry, I don’t do that during the school year. We just got really good health news yesterday.

The student never completed at least 50% of homework. All the homework grades were zero. Homework is set at 10% by my department head. I can’t change that. I can’t give 50% for homework that is 20% attempted. I’d actually rather put in all of the 20 and 30% grades than zeroes. I’m not allowed to.

I think a student who has a non-homework average of a low C would probably benefit from completing homework.

I’m a career changer and was not an education major. Even in college, my freshman year classes required homework and lab reports that had to be completed or it dinged you grade by 10-20%. In my first Econ course, you read two chapters a night and took the chapter quizzes on a scantron that you turnedcin the next lecture. Those were worth 25% of the semester grade. Another 25% was two papers. Then there was a midterm and a final. If you were happy with a C tops, you could blow all the homework off.

OK, but then you did use the 50%-rule as an excuse to actually harm the student's grade. Even if it didn't make a difference in letter grade, I don't blame the parent for making the conversation difficult, since your grading sounds capricious.

By your account, the student turned in maybe half the assignments at 20-30% complete, so under regular averaging that would be a homework grade of 25%*0.5 + 0%*0.5 = 12.5%. But you didn't want the 50% rule to be invoked on the partially completed assignments, so you entered 0s for all homework. But even with the 50%-rule the homework grade would be 50%*0.5 + 0%*0.5 = 25%. Homework is 10% of the final grade, so the three options are add 0%, 1.25% or 2.5% to the final grade. You agree, that the middle option is correct, but you'd rather see a student docked a percentage point they earned, than see them gifted a percentage point. That seems unnecessarily petty, especially given the other 90% of the grade was in the C range, I sure hope the additional 1.25% wasn't enough to hold the grade at C.

Thanks for clarifying that you're a different poster. It still seems to me, that if the goal of grades is to quantify progress toward mastery of the course material, this student pretty much demonstrated C level work. If a 25% for the homework grade, knocked things down to a D fair enough, but I see no reason to take a stand against the 50%-rule when the kid is already shooting themself in the foot. Your attitude seems to be this student would do better if they finished their homework, so why can't I make the homework grade even more damaging?

Quantification of mediocracy and rewards for little effort. Oh yeah sure, students not doing work or completing assignments are rocking finals because.....oh right there are no final exams anymore!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Could anyone expain the 50% rule?"

I'll do you one better, I'll show you the actual language that is in the MCPS Grading and Reporting document:

"Assigning a grade lower than 50 percent to a task/assessment [is prohibited]. However, if a student does no work on the task/assessment, the teacher will assign a zero. If a teacher determines the student did not attempt to meet the basic requirements of the task/assessment or the student engaged in academic dishonesty, the teacher may assign a zero"

Source: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/policy/pdf/ikara.pdf

"If my child took a math test with 10 problems to solve and finished all but only got 5 correct answers, shoul$ he receive 50% for this rest?"

He should, and would.

My issue with the 50% rule is the zeros for work that is less than 50% attempted.

I’m going to use an actual example for this past school year without identifying the student.

Student never completed a homework assignment. It was either not attempted at all or about 20-30% attempted. The parent was aware of this all year and took the position that homework was the student’s problem. MP 1-3 final grades were Bs and Cs. MP 4, Student blew the final project. Then the parent wanted to protest all the zeroes for quarter 4 homework. Parent wanted them all bumped up to 50% trying to eke out a C from a D. Under the old system, I could have entered the actual grades of 20, 25, 30 percent and we wouldn’t have even wasted time discussing this on the last day of school. In the end, my admin supported the D because I could document ten months of homework-related emails to the parent.

So you are saying this kid was harmed because his 20% became a 0 because s/he did not attempt every problem?

Well, that explanation is almost impossible to parse. I really wouldn't want to spend a year with that teacher.

I think the scenario is the homework scores were 0s and 50s (including many incomplete assignments which were only bumped up to 50, because of the 50%-rule). The parent then wanted to argue that all the homework scores should be at least 50%, but admin let the 0s stand. If the missing homework had been bumped to 50s, the final homework score wouldn't have been low enough to drag the course grade down from a C to a D for the forth quarter.

So top PP, did this student make progress on learning the objectives of the class? Sounds like your goal is to make homework completion as punitive as possible. I mean fine, if that's your bag, but aren't you the same PP that said the problem with the 50%-rule is it discounts what "the student is actually learning." How did this student manage to get test scores higher than their homework score, if they didn't learn something? Are you sure your homework assignments are actually valuable? Or, perhaps in the end, the student did complete the homework just to study for the test, even though it was then too late to get homework credit. What's your beef exactly? Yay, a student with B/C level understanding gets a D for the quarter, 'cause they didn't get there your way. I'll go out on a limb and say this is a student who will find college much more rewarding than HS.

I was the teacher who had the issue with the parent. Not the prior PP in bold.I was posting after day drinking. Sorry, I don’t do that during the school year. We just got really good health news yesterday.

The student never completed at least 50% of homework. All the homework grades were zero. Homework is set at 10% by my department head. I can’t change that. I can’t give 50% for homework that is 20% attempted. I’d actually rather put in all of the 20 and 30% grades than zeroes. I’m not allowed to.

I think a student who has a non-homework average of a low C would probably benefit from completing homework.

I’m a career changer and was not an education major. Even in college, my freshman year classes required homework and lab reports that had to be completed or it dinged you grade by 10-20%. In my first Econ course, you read two chapters a night and took the chapter quizzes on a scantron that you turnedcin the next lecture. Those were worth 25% of the semester grade. Another 25% was two papers. Then there was a midterm and a final. If you were happy with a C tops, you could blow all the homework off.

OK, but then you did use the 50%-rule as an excuse to actually harm the student's grade. Even if it didn't make a difference in letter grade, I don't blame the parent for making the conversation difficult, since your grading sounds capricious.

By your account, the student turned in maybe half the assignments at 20-30% complete, so under regular averaging that would be a homework grade of 25%*0.5 + 0%*0.5 = 12.5%. But you didn't want the 50% rule to be invoked on the partially completed assignments, so you entered 0s for all homework. But even with the 50%-rule the homework grade would be 50%*0.5 + 0%*0.5 = 25%. Homework is 10% of the final grade, so the three options are add 0%, 1.25% or 2.5% to the final grade. You agree, that the middle option is correct, but you'd rather see a student docked a percentage point they earned, than see them gifted a percentage point. That seems unnecessarily petty, especially given the other 90% of the grade was in the C range, I sure hope the additional 1.25% wasn't enough to hold the grade at C.

Thanks for clarifying that you're a different poster. It still seems to me, that if the goal of grades is to quantify progress toward mastery of the course material, this student pretty much demonstrated C level work. If a 25% for the homework grade, knocked things down to a D fair enough, but I see no reason to take a stand against the 50%-rule when the kid is already shooting themself in the foot. Your attitude seems to be this student would do better if they finished their homework, so why can't I make the homework grade even more damaging?

The 50% rule is mean to be applied to assignments that were at least 50% completed. If a student attempted 5 out of 10 items, he could get 50% whether all 5 were correct or not. If he completed 3 out of 10, the student earns 0 under the MCPS grading policy. The policy was meant to encourage students at least make a reasonable attempt.

Gradebook already rounds up. 69.5 is a C. If teachers are overriding grades by hand, that opens up issues of favoritism. Which students are getting that hand up? Is there undue influence behind it? It makes both student and teacher vulnerable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Quantification of mediocracy and rewards for little effort. Oh yeah sure, students not doing work or completing assignments are rocking finals because.....oh right there are no final exams anymore!

I am fine with that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Could anyone expain the 50% rule?"

I'll do you one better, I'll show you the actual language that is in the MCPS Grading and Reporting document:

"Assigning a grade lower than 50 percent to a task/assessment [is prohibited]. However, if a student does no work on the task/assessment, the teacher will assign a zero. If a teacher determines the student did not attempt to meet the basic requirements of the task/assessment or the student engaged in academic dishonesty, the teacher may assign a zero"

Source: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/policy/pdf/ikara.pdf

"If my child took a math test with 10 problems to solve and finished all but only got 5 correct answers, shoul$ he receive 50% for this rest?"

He should, and would.

My issue with the 50% rule is the zeros for work that is less than 50% attempted.

I’m going to use an actual example for this past school year without identifying the student.

Student never completed a homework assignment. It was either not attempted at all or about 20-30% attempted. The parent was aware of this all year and took the position that homework was the student’s problem. MP 1-3 final grades were Bs and Cs. MP 4, Student blew the final project. Then the parent wanted to protest all the zeroes for quarter 4 homework. Parent wanted them all bumped up to 50% trying to eke out a C from a D. Under the old system, I could have entered the actual grades of 20, 25, 30 percent and we wouldn’t have even wasted time discussing this on the last day of school. In the end, my admin supported the D because I could document ten months of homework-related emails to the parent.

So you are saying this kid was harmed because his 20% became a 0 because s/he did not attempt every problem?

Well, that explanation is almost impossible to parse. I really wouldn't want to spend a year with that teacher.

I think the scenario is the homework scores were 0s and 50s (including many incomplete assignments which were only bumped up to 50, because of the 50%-rule). The parent then wanted to argue that all the homework scores should be at least 50%, but admin let the 0s stand. If the missing homework had been bumped to 50s, the final homework score wouldn't have been low enough to drag the course grade down from a C to a D for the forth quarter.

So top PP, did this student make progress on learning the objectives of the class? Sounds like your goal is to make homework completion as punitive as possible. I mean fine, if that's your bag, but aren't you the same PP that said the problem with the 50%-rule is it discounts what "the student is actually learning." How did this student manage to get test scores higher than their homework score, if they didn't learn something? Are you sure your homework assignments are actually valuable? Or, perhaps in the end, the student did complete the homework just to study for the test, even though it was then too late to get homework credit. What's your beef exactly? Yay, a student with B/C level understanding gets a D for the quarter, 'cause they didn't get there your way. I'll go out on a limb and say this is a student who will find college much more rewarding than HS.

I was the teacher who had the issue with the parent. Not the prior PP in bold.I was posting after day drinking. Sorry, I don’t do that during the school year. We just got really good health news yesterday.

The student never completed at least 50% of homework. All the homework grades were zero. Homework is set at 10% by my department head. I can’t change that. I can’t give 50% for homework that is 20% attempted. I’d actually rather put in all of the 20 and 30% grades than zeroes. I’m not allowed to.

I think a student who has a non-homework average of a low C would probably benefit from completing homework.

I’m a career changer and was not an education major. Even in college, my freshman year classes required homework and lab reports that had to be completed or it dinged you grade by 10-20%. In my first Econ course, you read two chapters a night and took the chapter quizzes on a scantron that you turnedcin the next lecture. Those were worth 25% of the semester grade. Another 25% was two papers. Then there was a midterm and a final. If you were happy with a C tops, you could blow all the homework off.

OK, but then you did use the 50%-rule as an excuse to actually harm the student's grade. Even if it didn't make a difference in letter grade, I don't blame the parent for making the conversation difficult, since your grading sounds capricious.

By your account, the student turned in maybe half the assignments at 20-30% complete, so under regular averaging that would be a homework grade of 25%*0.5 + 0%*0.5 = 12.5%. But you didn't want the 50% rule to be invoked on the partially completed assignments, so you entered 0s for all homework. But even with the 50%-rule the homework grade would be 50%*0.5 + 0%*0.5 = 25%. Homework is 10% of the final grade, so the three options are add 0%, 1.25% or 2.5% to the final grade. You agree, that the middle option is correct, but you'd rather see a student docked a percentage point they earned, than see them gifted a percentage point. That seems unnecessarily petty, especially given the other 90% of the grade was in the C range, I sure hope the additional 1.25% wasn't enough to hold the grade at C.

Thanks for clarifying that you're a different poster. It still seems to me, that if the goal of grades is to quantify progress toward mastery of the course material, this student pretty much demonstrated C level work. If a 25% for the homework grade, knocked things down to a D fair enough, but I see no reason to take a stand against the 50%-rule when the kid is already shooting themself in the foot. Your attitude seems to be this student would do better if they finished their homework, so why can't I make the homework grade even more damaging?

The 50% rule is mean to be applied to assignments that were at least 50% completed. If a student attempted 5 out of 10 items, he could get 50% whether all 5 were correct or not. If he completed 3 out of 10, the student earns 0 under the MCPS grading policy. The policy was meant to encourage students at least make a reasonable attempt.

Gradebook already rounds up. 69.5 is a C. If teachers are overriding grades by hand, that opens up issues of favoritism. Which students are getting that hand up? Is there undue influence behind it? It makes both student and teacher vulnerable.

We are told in my school that any attempt at all on the assignment will earn 50% - it could be that they only tried the very first question out of 10 and it is still 50%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok DCUM, here’s the scoop on the 7 math teachers leaving RM.

For a long time now, math teachers have felt unsupported by the administration. Parents and students complain about grading practices and math teachers are pressured to change grades. Math teachers use their experience and expertise to construct pathways and courses to support students’ needs, and administration disregards them. The overall lack of support from the current principal was demoralizing, but the math teachers had a strong sense of community- a familial atmosphere full of support, and packed with hundreds of years of teaching experience among them.

There was some drama regarding the 50% rule, but it had to do with it being implemented in “real time” (a new concept the principal slipped in this year). In order to “punish” the math department for not understanding and appropriately implementing the “real-time” directive, the principal INTERN forwarded complaints about the RT (Ms Goetz) to the compliance office during the actual principal’s 7-week absence. Upon investigating the complaint, on the last day of the principal’s absence, the compliance office hauled in math teachers- one by one and without prior warning or representation- for interrogation. In these “interviews,” teachers were belittled and threatened with further action under the guise of “investigation.” The principal did nothing to protect or support the teachers or the RT. Many of these teachers have been at RM for over a decade and have well respected reputations. Instead of explaining the misunderstanding and standing by the RT, he shrugged his shoulders and said it was “out of his hands.” Blah blah blah, a few months later the RT was forced to step down. Neither the principal nor the principal intern has shown any remorse to the math department or the community.

As for the 7 teachers- McDonald is retiring, but she took a job at a private school. Mr. Chase took an RT job. Chaney, Gaffney, and Weigner are leaving for other MCPS high schools. It is the general consensus among these 5 teachers that they had no intention of leaving. The lack of support for both Ms. Goetz and the Math Department in general, as well as the treatment of the teachers by some administrators, was the catalyst for these changes. Ms. Paine is moving to Nevada, and Ms. Liu is resigning from MCPS to pursue her PhD. It’s also worth noting another two teachers in special ed who are math specific teachers are also leaving.

Thank you for sharing the truth. Was the princical on a 7 week long vacation? Does the Principal Intern hate math? By the way , what does RT mean ?

The MCPS Principal Intern program is similar to a student teacher, where the intern becomes the assistant principal of a school, and then the actual principal leaves for 7 weeks and the intern takes over as “principal.” I don’t know if the intern hates math specifically. “RT” means “resource teacher,” and it’s the department chairperson.

The principal intern, Kiera Butler, has been assigned as an assistant principal at a middle school.