EOC exams - are there more than biology and government for HS?

[Anonymous]

Is it the teachers who dropped the ball? Schools? Counseling? Who is supposed to communicate this change?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's information that the Blair PTSA sent out in the slides from their meeting this week:

New this year, MCPS will be implementing district wide assessments, which will count 10% towards the marking period grade, in the following classes:

Mathematics: Algebra 1, Honors Geometry, Honors Algebra 2, 2 Year Algebra 2 AB/CD, Honors Precalculus, Precalculus, Statistics and Mathematical Modeling (SAMM), Honors Statistics
English (MP 2 & MP 3): Honors English 9, Honors English 10, Honors English 11, Honors English 12
Social Studies: NSL Government
Science: Biology

And I found this article online about it. There's nothing much on the MCPS website, except for dates listed in the calendar of assessments.

To be clear, that article written by a high school junior is the only document about this new policy that DCUM has found so far.

Why are kids doing the admin's jobs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Students have been taking these assessments for a while, but because they weren’t “for a grade” kids don’t take them seriously. MCPS has been trying to make sure kids are on track for graduation and to pass state level tests, but the internal assessments (low because kids don’t care) and the course grades (high due to retakes) don’t match and they really can’t tell where kids are in their learning. Including them in the quarter grades should improve accuracy about where kids are at and is similar to how the state is rolling the state test into their grades.

To me, a 14 point assessment makes sense as part of the AT 90% (and may actually be 10% of the points in a quarter for the class) but pulling that out as a separate 10% assessment seems a little too hard-azz and makes it hard for kids on the border of the different letter grades to have mobility over the course of the semester.

You don't even know what the 14 is out of and it will be different for each teacher. It could be all quizzes are 5 points so could be a lot more than 10% of the grade. My child's teacher never told them these tests count as a grade. She just assumed they don't count because they have never counted. What the heck?

This is the biggest problem I have. No one warned kids or families the the District Exams were going to be counting for as much. Further they are not giving fair warning that the district assessment is coming up. Yes, kids are actually going to class and getting surprised with these test.

This isn’t as big a deal as some seem to think it is. The grading policy already allows assignments to be up to 25% of the quarter grade. Just because a very specific assignment is broken out so they can pull that specific data across the county does not mean there’s really any impact to course grades.

I think it depends on the calculation, right? Say someone gets 7/14 on the particular county assessment. Does that 50% get locked as a separate 10% of the grade, or is it balanced with the rest of the AT points? I get tracking the data, but there are ways that this could be extremely detrimental to GPA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's information that the Blair PTSA sent out in the slides from their meeting this week:

New this year, MCPS will be implementing district wide assessments, which will count 10% towards the marking period grade, in the following classes:

Mathematics: Algebra 1, Honors Geometry, Honors Algebra 2, 2 Year Algebra 2 AB/CD, Honors Precalculus, Precalculus, Statistics and Mathematical Modeling (SAMM), Honors Statistics
English (MP 2 & MP 3): Honors English 9, Honors English 10, Honors English 11, Honors English 12
Social Studies: NSL Government
Science: Biology

And I found this article online about it. There's nothing much on the MCPS website, except for dates listed in the calendar of assessments.

To be clear, that article written by a high school junior is the only document about this new policy that DCUM has found so far.

Why are kids doing the admin's jobs?

Kudos to the student who wrote the information and knew enough to communicate that this was important. It's pretty nuts that the district, the teachers, the counselors and other staff did not let anyone know about this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is that there was no notice, no communication from MCPS, the schools or teachers about this change.

Our teacher talked about it at BTSN, and it was in her slides.

I just checked the slides for DC’s teachers. No one mentioned it!

PP you responded to. It was in both my middle schooler's English and math slides describing how grades are calculated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it the teachers who dropped the ball? Schools? Counseling? Who is supposed to communicate this change?

Central office made the change, so they definitely should have had clearer communication. Teachers should have made it clear in their syllabi when they describe how grades are calculated.

[Anonymous]

The grading and reporting regulation has something on this: "In secondary courses for which there are districtwide assessments, selected assessments may be calculated as 10 percent of the marking period grade,
as directed by OCIP or the MSDE." https://ww2.montgomerysch...master.pdf

This came from OCIP, which is generally terrible at communicating.

[Anonymous]

This is listed on every single one of my Blair 10th grader’s syllabi. Not at all a surprise

[Anonymous]

I have kids at Blair and Einstein. The Blair principal mentioned this in a weekly email recently. I asked my Einstein kiddo, and she hadn’t heard anything about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have kids at Blair and Einstein. The Blair principal mentioned this in a weekly email recently. I asked my Einstein kiddo, and she hadn’t heard anything about it.

It's included in my Einstein student's math syllabus.

[Anonymous]

Well if the exams are similar to the county finals they used to give...they were really basic exams designed for everyone to be able to pass. They were often the easiest assessments. My kids considered them grade boosters (or ignored them if they already had a strong A).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well if the exams are similar to the county finals they used to give...they were really basic exams designed for everyone to be able to pass. They were often the easiest assessments. My kids considered them grade boosters (or ignored them if they already had a strong A).

They are not now. In fact, data reporting on scores shows District Assessment being the lowest scores.

Grades then external assessments(MCAP,MAP, Dibels), and then District Assessments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have kids at Blair and Einstein. The Blair principal mentioned this in a weekly email recently. I asked my Einstein kiddo, and she hadn’t heard anything about it.

It's included in my Einstein student's math syllabus.

I would 100% believe both that it is on my Einstein kid’s syllabus AND she had no idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have kids at Blair and Einstein. The Blair principal mentioned this in a weekly email recently. I asked my Einstein kiddo, and she hadn’t heard anything about it.

It's included in my Einstein student's math syllabus.

I would 100% believe both that it is on my Einstein kid’s syllabus AND she had no idea.

[Anonymous]

Would it kill them to just call them finals??