MCAP counting for 20% of final grade

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

How can you "tell"? Did someone tell you what to think, or did you look at the test yourself?

Can you give one substantive criticism?

I’m not that poster and haven’t looled at the bio exam. But the English and algebra exams were not well tailored to the curriculum — the scores on it are terrible even for kids that did really well in the class.

Does anyone know how “proficient” will translate to a grade? Will that be an A? Or B? Or C? Or are they doing it by numbers? It wasn’t a test that was designed to be done as a percentage grade.

How could the exam be tailored to the curriculum when it’s a state exam? They don’t choose the curriculum for every district.

The exam is tailored to the standards. The curriculum written by each district is supposed to be tailored to the same standards. This isn't writing a test to match what you taught. It's a test to make sure students learned what they were supposed to learn.

This is the problem with the test. It measures a student's background knowledge. No wonder students living in poverty don't do well on them. The tests just really mirror the demographics of the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

How can you "tell"? Did someone tell you what to think, or did you look at the test yourself?

Can you give one substantive criticism?

I’m not that poster and haven’t looled at the bio exam. But the English and algebra exams were not well tailored to the curriculum — the scores on it are terrible even for kids that did really well in the class.

Does anyone know how “proficient” will translate to a grade? Will that be an A? Or B? Or C? Or are they doing it by numbers? It wasn’t a test that was designed to be done as a percentage grade.

How could the exam be tailored to the curriculum when it’s a state exam? They don’t choose the curriculum for every district.

The exam is tailored to the standards. The curriculum written by each district is supposed to be tailored to the same standards. This isn't writing a test to match what you taught. It's a test to make sure students learned what they were supposed to learn.

This is the problem with the test. It measures a student's background knowledge. No wonder students living in poverty don't do well on them. The tests just really mirror the demographics of the school.

Huh? It’s not “background knowledge”. It’s content knowledge and skills application that the student should have learned by taking the course. It’s the responsibility of the district to develop a good curriculum, the teacher to teach it, and the students to learn it.

If most students in the district are not passing the exam, then that’s a curriculum problem. If most students in one school or with one teacher are not passing, but other schools with similar demographics have high pass rates, then that’s a teacher problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

How can you "tell"? Did someone tell you what to think, or did you look at the test yourself?

Can you give one substantive criticism?

I’m not that poster and haven’t looled at the bio exam. But the English and algebra exams were not well tailored to the curriculum — the scores on it are terrible even for kids that did really well in the class.

Does anyone know how “proficient” will translate to a grade? Will that be an A? Or B? Or C? Or are they doing it by numbers? It wasn’t a test that was designed to be done as a percentage grade.

How could the exam be tailored to the curriculum when it’s a state exam? They don’t choose the curriculum for every district.

The exam is tailored to the standards. The curriculum written by each district is supposed to be tailored to the same standards. This isn't writing a test to match what you taught. It's a test to make sure students learned what they were supposed to learn.

This is the problem with the test. It measures a student's background knowledge. No wonder students living in poverty don't do well on them. The tests just really mirror the demographics of the school.

Huh? It’s not “background knowledge”. It’s content knowledge and skills application that the student should have learned by taking the course. It’s the responsibility of the district to develop a good curriculum, the teacher to teach it, and the students to learn it.

If most students in the district are not passing the exam, then that’s a curriculum problem. If most students in one school or with one teacher are not passing, but other schools with similar demographics have high pass rates, then that’s a teacher problem.

Or it's a standards problem, or it's a test problem, or it's a social fabric problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't these test usually take almost a year to get results. How are they going to incorporate in the grade with that timeline?

Artificial Intelligence. Testing companies have had two years of pilot test data to train AI on after real graders did scoring. They probably did 1st year real scoring and then trained the AI, and then 2nd year validate the AI scoring and adjust.

This actually happened in UK

https://www.axios.com/2020/08/19/england-exams-algorithm-grading

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't these test usually take almost a year to get results. How are they going to incorporate in the grade with that timeline?

Artificial Intelligence. Testing companies have had two years of pilot test data to train AI on after real graders did scoring. They probably did 1st year real scoring and then trained the AI, and then 2nd year validate the AI scoring and adjust.

This actually happened in UK

https://www.axios.com/2020/08/19/england-exams-algorithm-grading

That's not the same thing. In the UK, students didn't actually take A-level exams in 2020. Instead, the teachers "estimated" how they thought their students would have performed on the exams, and then the algorithm weighted the scores based on previous school average performance (assuming the teachers would inflate the grades.)

Take 60k writing samples from the 2021 LMISA scored normally by human readers and train an AI on that data. In 2022 have the AI score the written answers and double check it's accuracy against human scoring. In 2023, don't use any questions the AI didn't score accurately in 2022, and then you can turn around results in the 9 days promised.

[Anonymous]

So the final semester grade will be Q3 grade (37.5%), Q4 grade (37.5%) plus MCAP (25%) ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So the final semester grade will be Q3 grade (37.5%), Q4 grade (37.5%) plus MCAP (25%) ?

No, the stated plan at this point is to incorporate MCPA into semester B´s final grade. They have not clarified further details.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

How can you "tell"? Did someone tell you what to think, or did you look at the test yourself?

Can you give one substantive criticism?

I’m not that poster and haven’t looled at the bio exam. But the English and algebra exams were not well tailored to the curriculum — the scores on it are terrible even for kids that did really well in the class.

Does anyone know how “proficient” will translate to a grade? Will that be an A? Or B? Or C? Or are they doing it by numbers? It wasn’t a test that was designed to be done as a percentage grade.

How could the exam be tailored to the curriculum when it’s a state exam? They don’t choose the curriculum for every district.

The exam is tailored to the standards. The curriculum written by each district is supposed to be tailored to the same standards. This isn't writing a test to match what you taught. It's a test to make sure students learned what they were supposed to learn.

This is the problem with the test. It measures a student's background knowledge. No wonder students living in poverty don't do well on them. The tests just really mirror the demographics of the school.

Huh? It’s not “background knowledge”. It’s content knowledge and skills application that the student should have learned by taking the course. It’s the responsibility of the district to develop a good curriculum, the teacher to teach it, and the students to learn it.

If most students in the district are not passing the exam, then that’s a curriculum problem. If most students in one school or with one teacher are not passing, but other schools with similar demographics have high pass rates, then that’s a teacher problem.

Or it's a standards problem, or it's a test problem, or it's a social fabric problem.

Watering down the curriculum so students can pass is worthless. In the real world success comes from knowledge and work, not a piece of paper that says you passed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So the final semester grade will be Q3 grade (37.5%), Q4 grade (37.5%) plus MCAP (25%) ?

No, the stated plan at this point is to incorporate MCPA into semester B´s final grade. They have not clarified further details.

Is that what I said? MCPS has said the test will be 25% of the semester grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So the final semester grade will be Q3 grade (37.5%), Q4 grade (37.5%) plus MCAP (25%) ?

No, the stated plan at this point is to incorporate MCPA into semester B´s final grade. They have not clarified further details.

Is that what I said? MCPS has said the test will be 25% of the semester grade.

Didn’t they say 20 percent?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So the final semester grade will be Q3 grade (37.5%), Q4 grade (37.5%) plus MCAP (25%) ?

No, the stated plan at this point is to incorporate MCPA into semester B´s final grade. They have not clarified further details.

Is that what I said? MCPS has said the test will be 25% of the semester grade.

Didn’t they say 20 percent?

Just checked and answering my own question - it’s 20 percent not 25.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So the final semester grade will be Q3 grade (37.5%), Q4 grade (37.5%) plus MCAP (25%) ?

No, the stated plan at this point is to incorporate MCPA into semester B´s final grade. They have not clarified further details.

Is that what I said? MCPS has said the test will be 25% of the semester grade.

Didn’t they say 20 percent?

Just checked and answering my own question - it’s 20 percent not 25.

Ok so q3 (40%) + q4 (40%) + test (20%) = 2nd semester grade. Will this take into account that numerical grade (95 for instance) or just assign a number for A, B, C?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So the final semester grade will be Q3 grade (37.5%), Q4 grade (37.5%) plus MCAP (25%) ?

No, the stated plan at this point is to incorporate MCPA into semester B´s final grade. They have not clarified further details.

Is that what I said? MCPS has said the test will be 25% of the semester grade.

Didn’t they say 20 percent?

Just checked and answering my own question - it’s 20 percent not 25.

Ok so q3 (40%) + q4 (40%) + test (20%) = 2nd semester grade. Will this take into account that numerical grade (95 for instance) or just assign a number for A, B, C?

Nobody knows.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I'm not opposed to something like this. Other countries have more high-stakes, broadly administered assessments of curriculum mastery than we do. A-levels, Bac, Abitur, gaokao, Suneung, etc. I think it keeps standards from being watered down as much as they have here. But those exams are very rigorously developed and tightly monitored and from what I can tell, MCAP is yet more poorly conceived, poorly written garbage. It's not the theory of this, it's the execution.

How can you "tell"? Did someone tell you what to think, or did you look at the test yourself?

Can you give one substantive criticism?

I’m not that poster and haven’t looled at the bio exam. But the English and algebra exams were not well tailored to the curriculum — the scores on it are terrible even for kids that did really well in the class.

Does anyone know how “proficient” will translate to a grade? Will that be an A? Or B? Or C? Or are they doing it by numbers? It wasn’t a test that was designed to be done as a percentage grade.

How could the exam be tailored to the curriculum when it’s a state exam? They don’t choose the curriculum for every district.

The exam is tailored to the standards. The curriculum written by each district is supposed to be tailored to the same standards. This isn't writing a test to match what you taught. It's a test to make sure students learned what they were supposed to learn.

This is the problem with the test. It measures a student's background knowledge. No wonder students living in poverty don't do well on them. The tests just really mirror the demographics of the school.

Huh? It’s not “background knowledge”. It’s content knowledge and skills application that the student should have learned by taking the course. It’s the responsibility of the district to develop a good curriculum, the teacher to teach it, and the students to learn it.

If most students in the district are not passing the exam, then that’s a curriculum problem. If most students in one school or with one teacher are not passing, but other schools with similar demographics have high pass rates, then that’s a teacher problem.

Or it's a standards problem, or it's a test problem, or it's a social fabric problem.

Watering down the curriculum so students can pass is worthless. In the real world success comes from knowledge and work, not a piece of paper that says you passed.

Thank you for your insight,. ChatGPT