Please no more skills based grading!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's no accountability for the quality ofnthe tests. When a "test" is only four questions and multiple choice with no partial credit, one mistake in a calculation and the kid has a C. So one little mistake has a huge effect on the grade but piles of homework and classwork count for nothing. Its stressful for the kids and letting them retake up to an A was the counterbalance to that.

No kids used the first test for "review" bc every teacher required huge packets to be completed (no credit for completing review packets) before another chance at the four multiple choice questions.

+1

[Anonymous]

Our skills based grading sucked. Content quizzes and tests and long homework packets counted as nothing. However, after my kid worked their butt off on the science project, they were graded harshly on presentation skills for looking at notecards during final presentation. Teacher seemed to purposely give kids high grades that she wanted to lift up and lower kids that she felt were unworthy of an A in the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How does it promote equity?

In the past, grades could included things like homework (either graded homework or completed homework) as part of the grade.

However, homework is racist. So it must be ungraded, or eliminated.

Some of the most anti-homework parents I know are white. They don’t think Larla should be forced to do homework after school and dance/acro/parkour class.

And I agree. Kids are in school all day - then we ask them to work hours after school on homework? Ridiculous. College was easy for me after FCPS high school! It was refreshing only having reading for homework.

Um, where did you go to college such that you only had reading for homework? I did 10 years of higher ed and that was never my experience. It was much harder than high school, and I had a ton of work to do outside of class between reading, writing, and problem sets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you are going to allow retakes, let the kids retake up to a 100. Who does that hurt? The teachers aren't doing anything by hand. Everything is automated. Even English tests are multiple choice.

I am an English teacher. The only multiple-choice assessments we, as a department, give are the ones provided by the district (which are required but are not graded). Every other assessment is short answer or essay-based.

On average, our students have five or six summative assessments per quarter, one or two of which are full-length essays.

Untrue for our school. Multiple choice was used for reading comprehension questions for passages and the one book required. Multiple choice was also used for telling if paragraphs were problem-solving, chronological, sequential, cause-effect, etc. multiple choice was used for literary terms like personification, metaphor, simile, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our skills based grading sucked. Content quizzes and tests and long homework packets counted as nothing. However, after my kid worked their butt off on the science project, they were graded harshly on presentation skills for looking at notecards during final presentation. Teacher seemed to purposely give kids high grades that she wanted to lift up and lower kids that she felt were unworthy of an A in the class.

This is the big issue with SBG, it is so easy to social engineer equitable grading. Surprised it isn’t in place county wide in FCPS.

Perhaps the next thing the school board does post boundary study.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our skills based grading sucked. Content quizzes and tests and long homework packets counted as nothing. However, after my kid worked their butt off on the science project, they were graded harshly on presentation skills for looking at notecards during final presentation. Teacher seemed to purposely give kids high grades that she wanted to lift up and lower kids that she felt were unworthy of an A in the class.

This is the big issue with SBG, it is so easy to social engineer equitable grading. Surprised it isn’t in place county wide in FCPS.

Perhaps the next thing the school board does post boundary study.

It’s only easy to do so, if rubrics and exemplars are not used. SBG is supposed to include both. They make it clear to students and parents how the teacher will evaluate the student.

I teach in a different district and I’ve wanted us to switch to SBG for the past five years because I see students who don’t master the objectives passing based on other parts of the assignment that are really just fluff but make up 75% of the points.