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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher in FCPS with kids in APS, I was surprised when my 9th grader started this year and none of his teachers allowed retakes or remediation. This has been standard in my FCPS HS for probably 10 years now. I am not saying it is ideal, but for my child who struggles with test taking and gets anxiety, I would welcome the opportunity for him to remediate his assessments. I also think it's interesting to think about grades in different counties and how they compare. Do colleges know about this differing policy between counties?

Retakes are important for sure but it shouldn't completely cancel out the original grade. My high school allowed retakes but there was a limit to how much it could improve your score. So for example if you got a 70 on an exam and a 90 on a retake, you final score for that test would be a 75.

[Anonymous]

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

Guessing that it has something to do with differentiating students?

[Anonymous]

No idea of whether this will actually happen, but how would this dovetail with wealthy/nerdy Arlington, where top college attendance is sought after and fetishized to an extreme level?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:WHAT IS WRONG WITH APS?! If I could do it all over again I would never have moved to this school district. I don't care about the all the fake controversies about CRT, trans issues, but this is ridiculous. Who is calling them out on this?

No one will. Who wants to be in the wrong side of a push toward equity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher in FCPS with kids in APS, I was surprised when my 9th grader started this year and none of his teachers allowed retakes or remediation. This has been standard in my FCPS HS for probably 10 years now. I am not saying it is ideal, but for my child who struggles with test taking and gets anxiety, I would welcome the opportunity for him to remediate his assessments. I also think it's interesting to think about grades in different counties and how they compare. Do colleges know about this differing policy between counties?

What do you mean by remediation? It sounds like revision. I would expect "remediation" to be an instructional practice that helped students who are having difficulty meeting standards learn to meet them. If kids need help with anxiety about test-taking, that seems like a matter to be addressed by an IEP (which I realize APS sucks at), not a wholesale forgiveness of laziness/resistance, which is what it was when my kids got bad grades.

[Anonymous]

The slides say 100 teachers have read the book. How many teachers are in APS? A change of this magnitude needs a lot more support from the instructors than can possibly be there yet.

[Anonymous]

Just because you read this dumb book doesn't mean you agree with it. Were teachers also provided with a book with other ideas? Where is the diversity of thought?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher in FCPS with kids in APS, I was surprised when my 9th grader started this year and none of his teachers allowed retakes or remediation. This has been standard in my FCPS HS for probably 10 years now. I am not saying it is ideal, but for my child who struggles with test taking and gets anxiety, I would welcome the opportunity for him to remediate his assessments. I also think it's interesting to think about grades in different counties and how they compare. Do colleges know about this differing policy between counties?

What do you mean by remediation? It sounds like revision. I would expect "remediation" to be an instructional practice that helped students who are having difficulty meeting standards learn to meet them. If kids need help with anxiety about test-taking, that seems like a matter to be addressed by an IEP (which I realize APS sucks at), not a wholesale forgiveness of laziness/resistance, which is what it was when my kids got bad grades.

So remediation at our school is what students do before a retake. Students meet with the teacher to go over concepts and work on skills. This helps avoid kids just blowing off tests the first time and assuming they can just do a retake. They actually have to put in some work before doing the retake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WHAT IS WRONG WITH APS?! If I could do it all over again I would never have moved to this school district. I don't care about the all the fake controversies about CRT, trans issues, but this is ridiculous. Who is calling them out on this?

No one will. Who wants to be in the wrong side of a push toward equity?

But a lot of APS's most recent policies are not really promoting equity, not matter how much the diversity and equity staff at Syphax tell us that they are. I grew up in an immigrant household (dad didn't even attend high school) with parents who worked long hours and did not have a great command of English. Was it harder for me than the kids with PhD parents? Of course. Life isn't fair. Some people have to work harder than others. The world wont give you bonus equity points to make up for a difficult upbringing. Lowering expectations for kids does them no favors now and could be disastrous when they are adults.

I guess I was lucky in that my parents taught me that I better learn how to push a pencil or I would spend the rest of my life pushing a mop. My mom would make most "Tiger Moms" cry. She didn't need language skills or an education of her own to instill a work ethic or the fear of god if I came home with anything less than "A"s. That's your equity right there.

[Anonymous]

I read the book (a while ago, so I've forgotten quite a bit) and my kid's independent school uses this approach to grading. Read the book - it really is thought provoking, and makes you think about what school is for. What is the point?

For my kid's school, this approach has reinforced that grades are measuring learning. The point is to learn the material, so if you retake a test, and you've learned the material by the second try, cool. Yeah, you don't get as many points as the person who got it right on the first try (retakes are for 80% of credit or something) but you still get rewarded for learning.

They also provide points for a variety of activities, some of which my kid is better able to do than get a good grade on a test. He is dyslexic and tests are not terribly good measures of his knowledge. He is always the one leading the group work and making sure the group project gets done well, though. So he gets points for that. But it is all very clear - everyone is eligible for the same number of points for the same tasks, and anyone can retake a test or redo an assignment for the same percent credit.

So its not only APS - some independent schools are using this approach, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I read the book (a while ago, so I've forgotten quite a bit) and my kid's independent school uses this approach to grading. Read the book - it really is thought provoking, and makes you think about what school is for. What is the point?

For my kid's school, this approach has reinforced that grades are measuring learning. The point is to learn the material, so if you retake a test, and you've learned the material by the second try, cool. Yeah, you don't get as many points as the person who got it right on the first try (retakes are for 80% of credit or something) but you still get rewarded for learning.

They also provide points for a variety of activities, some of which my kid is better able to do than get a good grade on a test. He is dyslexic and tests are not terribly good measures of his knowledge. He is always the one leading the group work and making sure the group project gets done well, though. So he gets points for that. But it is all very clear - everyone is eligible for the same number of points for the same tasks, and anyone can retake a test or redo an assignment for the same percent credit.

So its not only APS - some independent schools are using this approach, too.

+ 1

Haven’t read the book but these are all things our private school does anyway.

[Anonymous]

I think it’s a troubling misinterpretation of this policy to say, as another PP did, that it’s “lowering expectations.”

It’s really not, and in many ways it’s raising expectations. The point is you learn the material - and you keep trying to learn it even if you had a “late” assignment or failed one test. It’s an approach that suggests it’s never too late.

I’m totally on board.

[Anonymous]

I think this would be a totally fine, potentially better, grading protocol. But, in combination with the abolition of standardized testing, the combined effect will be to make it impossible to identify which students are more capable than others—allowing college admissions, in particular, to be determined by racial quotas and political litmus tests, rather than merit or capability.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read the book (a while ago, so I've forgotten quite a bit) and my kid's independent school uses this approach to grading. Read the book - it really is thought provoking, and makes you think about what school is for. What is the point?

For my kid's school, this approach has reinforced that grades are measuring learning. The point is to learn the material, so if you retake a test, and you've learned the material by the second try, cool. Yeah, you don't get as many points as the person who got it right on the first try (retakes are for 80% of credit or something) but you still get rewarded for learning.

They also provide points for a variety of activities, some of which my kid is better able to do than get a good grade on a test. He is dyslexic and tests are not terribly good measures of his knowledge. He is always the one leading the group work and making sure the group project gets done well, though. So he gets points for that. But it is all very clear - everyone is eligible for the same number of points for the same tasks, and anyone can retake a test or redo an assignment for the same percent credit.

So its not only APS - some independent schools are using this approach, too.

+ 1

Haven’t read the book but these are all things our private school does anyway.

I posted above asking whether anyone had any information as to what the effect on college admissions may be for kids from a public school using this type of system.

I know that private schools have used alternative grading systems, but it seems like private schools have much smaller classes and more resources to devote to these meaningful group projects you mentioned. My fear is that in large public schools with larger classes, there will be no real way for students to distinguish themselves and no real way for those outside the school to evaluate a student's record. I have elementary kids who have been under standards based grading and the report cards I get only state that my kids are meeting a minimum standard. It's a check box. Any comments on the report card are formulaic sentences, half of which only describe the work the class has been doing that quarter. I know this because I've compared with friends- all of our kids will get the same comments on the report card, word for word. (And I had kids in elementary before standards based grading, and it was different).

I like the idea of meaningfully evaluating kids on something other then tests, and questioning what it is we're asking kids to achieve and learn in school. But this type of system, as implemented in a private school, seems incompatible with APS the way APS has implemented standards based grading in elementary and with other things APS has done, like increasing class sizes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of the slides illustrate the inconsistencies in grading policies. An example showed the differences across just one subject in one school--I would be supportive of making those policies more consistent.

The solution to that is just to have consistent standards. Cherry-picking a handful of instructor level inconsistencies in order to justify a wholesale, politically motivated district wide change in policy is intellectually dishonest and the admin must be pretty thick if they think they’re persuading anyone with these feeble examples.

I tell my own kids, school is your job, and your teacher is your boss. sometimes you’ll get a teacher who is “hard”, or talented, or who just mails it in. Get used to it, it’s the same thing for working adults. Get enough education so that when you get a dud, you can find another job you like better, with better people.