Blanket '2's in Language Arts

[Anonymous]

As a teacher in higher ed I feel the one thing you can count on is that you will get a lot of variation by teacher not only in how freely they give 4s but how they anchor their scores (e.g., making '2' the best score one can get in the first quarter). I think anchoring at 2s in this way is strange and probably specific to this teacher. Maybe an elementary teacher can chime in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 3rd graders teacher said to expect lower grades than we're used to seeing for the first quarter or two because the new curriculum is a big adjustment for a lot of kids. They'll catch up once they adapt to the new format and how much more writing they're doing and be better for it.

Lower grades would be fine. The problem is all the grades on assignments coming home have been good. Nothing approaching a 2 level. If they are struggling with the new curriculum then shouldn't it be showing up in the classwork and homework as well?

Giving every single kid the exact same grade (2) means the report card is worthless for understanding how they are doing. Are they doing as expected with the new material, better than their peers, lagging behind? WTF is a report card even for if every child is unilaterally assigned the exact same grade? Parents shouldn't have to guess if it's a "real" 2 and we need to spend extra time helping, or if the teacher just peaced out on the grading workday and gave everyone the same grade regardless of performance.

The communication we received from the teacher and the school (and that my child said the teacher told her) was that they were grading based on end of year standards so the kids would almost all get 2s, then 3s, then 4s at the end of the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 3rd graders teacher said to expect lower grades than we're used to seeing for the first quarter or two because the new curriculum is a big adjustment for a lot of kids. They'll catch up once they adapt to the new format and how much more writing they're doing and be better for it.

Lower grades would be fine. The problem is all the grades on assignments coming home have been good. Nothing approaching a 2 level. If they are struggling with the new curriculum then shouldn't it be showing up in the classwork and homework as well?

Giving every single kid the exact same grade (2) means the report card is worthless for understanding how they are doing. Are they doing as expected with the new material, better than their peers, lagging behind? WTF is a report card even for if every child is unilaterally assigned the exact same grade? Parents shouldn't have to guess if it's a "real" 2 and we need to spend extra time helping, or if the teacher just peaced out on the grading workday and gave everyone the same grade regardless of performance.

The communication we received from the teacher and the school (and that my child said the teacher told her) was that they were grading based on end of year standards so the kids would almost all get 2s, then 3s, then 4s at the end of the year.

The problem with that grading is it isn’t individualized for kids and doesn’t truly give a snapshot in time. Most of my kids got 3s based off assessments. Some got 2s. Only a couple of 4s. One size fits all grading isn’t true grading.

[Anonymous]

This is exactly why I always told my kids to disregard their entire report cards in elementary school. I told them the only grades I was interested in were the grades for effort and the one for respect under the citizenship category.

I heard from an ES teacher once who was proud of the fact that he had NEVER given any student a 4 because "that would indicate that they had mastered the material and no child is capable of mastering anything"

There is way too much subjectivity in the ES grading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher in higher ed I feel the one thing you can count on is that you will get a lot of variation by teacher not only in how freely they give 4s but how they anchor their scores (e.g., making '2' the best score one can get in the first quarter). I think anchoring at 2s in this way is strange and probably specific to this teacher. Maybe an elementary teacher can chime in.

I am an elementary teacher. Honestly, I just give kids the grades they deserve. If they earn all 4s in first-quarter then they got all 4s. With that in mind I have worked with many teachers they will only give 2s and 3s in the first quarter because “they want to show growth.”

[Anonymous]

We were warned about this. The kids were warned about this. We don't care. It's elementary school.

[Anonymous]

The elementary grades are meaningless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The elementary grades are meaningless.

1s are not a good sign, and 2s aren’t so great either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elementary grades are meaningless.

1s are not a good sign, and 2s aren’t so great either.

If you’ve seen the Benchmark assessments, their prompts and the essays the students are asked to write then 2s make sense, particularly in the 1st quarter.