Experience with grades in 6th Algebra pilot?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most students and parents are not going to be stressed at all. The plan had been to take Algebra 1 in 7th grade anyway. FCPS made it clear that is is easy peasy to scrub the grade and retake if needed. Why would anyone be stressed?

Most of the 700+ students are really liking the Algebra 1 in 6th grade program. Not everyone, of course, but the overwhelming majority of 6th graders are having a positive experience with Algebra 1.

There are a few parents who know this pilot program might be too challenging for their child but still choose to keep them enrolled. Instead of simply opting out, some of them have decided to criticize the entire program. Participation is completely optional. But for some, dropping out would mean admitting that their child isn’t quite ready for what most of the other 700 students are handling just fine. So instead, on their way out, they try to discredit the whole effort, maybe to save face, maybe out of frustration, who knows.

How do you know all of this? And, what does it have to do with my original question? I am almost convinced that our school is botching implementation of a program that could be wonderful (as evidenced by parents at other schools ).

Also, why do you keep insisting that only a parent of a struggling student would complain. Are you somehow related to our teacher, who is refusing to do the basic minimum?
I mean most students at our school pilot are motivated and self starters. It doesn’t take much to make the program a full success.

The attitude is no different then the people insisting geometry in the summer is easy and everyone gets A’s or that A1H in 7th grade is easy. I don’t understand it but it is common on this board.

I am sorry that your child’s class is not communicating basic information with you. I hope that it gets better. Part of the issue might be having an ES teacher used to grading and reporting grading one way teaching a HS class with very different needs.

I strongly suspect that there are a good number of kids struggling and that those kids are in for a rough ride. I hope that their parents move them to the AAP 6th grade class soon but I fear that there are parents who are so focused on acceleration that they won’t move their kid and math is going to quickly become a hated class. It is less that the kids can’t understand the content and more that the pace and expectations are so much greater because it is a HS class. Some kids might be able to understand the concepts but not be ready for the pace and work.

I also think that many of the teachers were not prepared for teaching A1H and that there is a learning curve that is pretty steep.

[Anonymous]

I've had two kids take Algebra in MS. Current 7th grader has 20+ grades right now. Mostly short assignments, with quizzes and tests mixed in.
My older kid probably had 10-15 each quarter.

I will say that having seen a range of teachers wrt to grading, I know that some really have a hard time keeping up with it. I imagine that the new content combined with having to input grades to SIS is a lot for a teacher to keep up with (especially assuming they are a regular ES teacher with very little prep time during the day).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“High school course” = appears on high school transcript, not “is taken in high school

OP, the grading and reporting criteria is clear. A minimum of 7 grades, with no single grade being over 30% of a student’s grade. That means at least 3 summative assignments. Contact the teacher and ask.

—hs teacher with kid in the pilot

It's no more than 35%. So minimum of 2 summative grades.

-Middle School teacher who closely follows the grading policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“High school course” = appears on high school transcript, not “is taken in high school

OP, the grading and reporting criteria is clear. A minimum of 7 grades, with no single grade being over 30% of a student’s grade. That means at least 3 summative assignments. Contact the teacher and ask.

—hs teacher with kid in the pilot

It's no more than 35%. So minimum of 2 summative grades.

-Middle School teacher who closely follows the grading policy.

Sorry, you're right. We had to do 3 because we didn't weight them equally.

[Anonymous]

My child has:

4 summative grades
4 formative grades
4 homework grades

However, they are a bit of an outlier on this board because they attend a school with 6th grade in middle school. Their class is all 8th graders plus them.

I think the real answer is: being a teacher is hard. There is a lot of work involved.

My child also has a class with only 1 grade. A class with 14 assignments in SIS, but only 2 of them are graded.

Teachers aren't keeping anything from you; they aren't neglectful, they are swamped. That probably goes doubly for teachers in ES who weren't expecting to teach this course and are not accustomed to entering grades into the grade system ever, much less regularly.

[Anonymous]

My 6th grade kid has:

2 summative grades
4 formative grades
16 homework grades

So far no one dropped from algebra 1 hr

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thank you for all your replies.

I get the struggles of the teachers in general, but this is a pilot with high expectations. As someone who taught in higher education for a very low pay, I can only say that integrity of doing job well should always come first. I don’t know why our teacher is not doing their job well, possibly struggling with the content, not knowing what to do, not having enough time. Who knows. I don’t believe it is a deliberate intention to create issues for the students. I am sensing somewhat entitled tone in the emails, and communication with students. Something along the lines of “This is a high school course, high school rules. You signed up for the course, so either accept what you are given or leave.” And, this is not about the difficult of the content, students are not complaining about that being an issue at all. But, I am talking about no feedback and barely any grades. I am truly disappointed since my DC was really excited about this opportunity. But DC is doing well so far and says doesn’t mind the unfriendly set up of the class. So, we will let it be.

I just wish there was some sort of oversight from the FCPS. If teacher is struggling, they should provide the necessary support or replacement. But, then, I get that there are many more burning issues across the county that are more worthy of their attention.

Again, thanks for all the replies. It helps clarify the situation for DC too. From what I gather here, there will be other teachers and courses like this in MS and HS, and the goal is to do your best.

To those who say “withdraw if you don’t like it”: you wouldn’t hold back your child a year if their current teacher was not doing a good job. This situation is not any different. DC is excited about the opportunity, more than ready to take on the challenge, and will just have to live with the reality that our school simply doesn’t have a good Algebra
1 teacher. There are far worse things that can happen both at school and life, so they will be fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much feedback is your DC getting from their Algebra teacher so far? Asking about the experience from those who are doing Algebra pilot in 6th grade.

Since this is a HS course, we expected to see less, but not only two grades (across all types of assessments) this far into the school year. We know more needs to be graded and grades will be released eventually. Just wondering whether this is a common experience.

Our school has an in-person Algebra teacher who is on the school premises every day if that matters.

What country are you referring to? Algebra 1 is a middle school course in US. FCPS is an exception, but in most public school systems 6th to 8th grade is middle school. .

In Virginia, the default HS math track is algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, and precalc. That is why algebra is a HS class. If you take it earlier than 9th grade your child is taking the math sequence on an accelerated pace. (This was one of the big issues with the concept of getting rid of acceleration that came up with the VMPI proposal a few years ago)

There are a *ton* of kids who are ready for algebra way before 9th, especially in this area. Just because a lot of kids in this area can work at the HS level, doesn't mean the class isn't a HS level class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much feedback is your DC getting from their Algebra teacher so far? Asking about the experience from those who are doing Algebra pilot in 6th grade.

Since this is a HS course, we expected to see less, but not only two grades (across all types of assessments) this far into the school year. We know more needs to be graded and grades will be released eventually. Just wondering whether this is a common experience.

Our school has an in-person Algebra teacher who is on the school premises every day if that matters.

What country are you referring to? Algebra 1 is a middle school course in US. FCPS is an exception, but in most public school systems 6th to 8th grade is middle school. .

In Virginia, the default HS math track is algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, and precalc. That is why algebra is a HS class. If you take it earlier than 9th grade your child is taking the math sequence on an accelerated pace. (This was one of the big issues with the concept of getting rid of acceleration that came up with the VMPI proposal a few years ago)

There are a *ton* of kids who are ready for algebra way before 9th, especially in this area. Just because a lot of kids in this area can work at the HS level, doesn't mean the class isn't a HS level class.

Just because someone once labeled a middle school course as “high school level” doesn’t make it so — no matter how attached you are to that association. My grandfather went to school in Virginia and often said that academic standards have slipped over time — what used to be taught in middle school is now being pushed to high school.

The reality is, K–12 education in the U.S. often lags behind competitive merit based institutions in developing 3rd world countries. One major reason is this overly cautious mindset that today's middle schoolers aren’t ready for subjects like Algebra 1. That simply isn’t true. For generations, early teens have successfully mastered these concepts in depth. The evidence is there — it’s the system that needs to catch up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much feedback is your DC getting from their Algebra teacher so far? Asking about the experience from those who are doing Algebra pilot in 6th grade.

Since this is a HS course, we expected to see less, but not only two grades (across all types of assessments) this far into the school year. We know more needs to be graded and grades will be released eventually. Just wondering whether this is a common experience.

Our school has an in-person Algebra teacher who is on the school premises every day if that matters.

What country are you referring to? Algebra 1 is a middle school course in US. FCPS is an exception, but in most public school systems 6th to 8th grade is middle school. .

In Virginia, the default HS math track is algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, and precalc. That is why algebra is a HS class. If you take it earlier than 9th grade your child is taking the math sequence on an accelerated pace. (This was one of the big issues with the concept of getting rid of acceleration that came up with the VMPI proposal a few years ago)

There are a *ton* of kids who are ready for algebra way before 9th, especially in this area. Just because a lot of kids in this area can work at the HS level, doesn't mean the class isn't a HS level class.

Just because someone once labeled a middle school course as “high school level” doesn’t make it so — no matter how attached you are to that association. My grandfather went to school in Virginia and often said that academic standards have slipped over time — what used to be taught in middle school is now being pushed to high school.

The reality is, K–12 education in the U.S. often lags behind competitive merit based institutions in developing 3rd world countries. One major reason is this overly cautious mindset that today's middle schoolers aren’t ready for subjects like Algebra 1. That simply isn’t true. For generations, early teens have successfully mastered these concepts in depth. The evidence is there — it’s the system that needs to catch up.

The way they accelerate here leaves a lot of gaps. You have to start the acceleration quite early, otherwise you end up skipping material and calling it acceleration. That's what I fear is bappening with this pilot. My kid went to school outside the US for K and 1st and the math curriculum was already accelerated then. We moved to FCPS for 2nd grade. Turns out the 1st grade curriculum he had overseas was basically the same as 2nd grade here, but they had also learned 1s/2s/5s/10s multiplication. My kid was so bored in FCPS that year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much feedback is your DC getting from their Algebra teacher so far? Asking about the experience from those who are doing Algebra pilot in 6th grade.

Since this is a HS course, we expected to see less, but not only two grades (across all types of assessments) this far into the school year. We know more needs to be graded and grades will be released eventually. Just wondering whether this is a common experience.

Our school has an in-person Algebra teacher who is on the school premises every day if that matters.

What country are you referring to? Algebra 1 is a middle school course in US. FCPS is an exception, but in most public school systems 6th to 8th grade is middle school. .

In Virginia, the default HS math track is algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, and precalc. That is why algebra is a HS class. If you take it earlier than 9th grade your child is taking the math sequence on an accelerated pace. (This was one of the big issues with the concept of getting rid of acceleration that came up with the VMPI proposal a few years ago)

There are a *ton* of kids who are ready for algebra way before 9th, especially in this area. Just because a lot of kids in this area can work at the HS level, doesn't mean the class isn't a HS level class.

Just because someone once labeled a middle school course as “high school level” doesn’t make it so — no matter how attached you are to that association. My grandfather went to school in Virginia and often said that academic standards have slipped over time — what used to be taught in middle school is now being pushed to high school.

The reality is, K–12 education in the U.S. often lags behind competitive merit based institutions in developing 3rd world countries. One major reason is this overly cautious mindset that today's middle schoolers aren’t ready for subjects like Algebra 1. That simply isn’t true. For generations, early teens have successfully mastered these concepts in depth. The evidence is there — it’s the system that needs to catch up.

Algebra is a HS class in the United States, about 25% of US students will take Algebra 1 in MS, the rest will take it in HS. FCPS offers Algebra 1H earlier than most counties in the US. I went to HS in the 1980’s and 8th grade Algebra was considered accelerated at my school in Massachusetts, same for my husband who went to school in Illinois.

The difference is that most countries in the world track kids into specifics schools with different academic requirements. The kids taking Algebra earlier internationally have been tracked into the college prep schools, other kids are tracked into votech type programs where they are less likely to take Algebra 1 in MS. The US does not do that so the curriculum and pacing is different. People in the US like to compare US HS to international HS that are set for college prep but one website I looked at said only 20% of students in the UK are sent to HS for A levels, the other are tracked into different HS programs.

[Anonymous]

Stop blaming the teacher.

It's Algebra. It's not complicated. It's basic mechanical algorithms. If your kid can't get the "instruction" from IXL or Khan practice, your kid doesn't need to be 2-3 years accelerated.

[Anonymous]

Algebra 1 is a HS class and is the first math course in the sequence that is on the transcript. Some kids take it in middle school, but it is considered a HS class. Kids can even expunge the grade if it was taken in middle school and retake in high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stop blaming the teacher.

It's Algebra. It's not complicated. It's basic mechanical algorithms. If your kid can't get the "instruction" from IXL or Khan practice, your kid doesn't need to be 2-3 years accelerated.

I agree. If the kid is not doing well, drop it now. In our kid's class, there are couple of kids who are not following it, but parents are not dropping it yet because they likes "My kid is in Algebra 1 pilot program".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much feedback is your DC getting from their Algebra teacher so far? Asking about the experience from those who are doing Algebra pilot in 6th grade.

Since this is a HS course, we expected to see less, but not only two grades (across all types of assessments) this far into the school year. We know more needs to be graded and grades will be released eventually. Just wondering whether this is a common experience.

Our school has an in-person Algebra teacher who is on the school premises every day if that matters.

What country are you referring to? Algebra 1 is a middle school course in US. FCPS is an exception, but in most public school systems 6th to 8th grade is middle school. .

In Virginia, the default HS math track is algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, and precalc. That is why algebra is a HS class. If you take it earlier than 9th grade your child is taking the math sequence on an accelerated pace. (This was one of the big issues with the concept of getting rid of acceleration that came up with the VMPI proposal a few years ago)

There are a *ton* of kids who are ready for algebra way before 9th, especially in this area. Just because a lot of kids in this area can work at the HS level, doesn't mean the class isn't a HS level class.

Just because someone once labeled a middle school course as “high school level” doesn’t make it so — no matter how attached you are to that association. My grandfather went to school in Virginia and often said that academic standards have slipped over time — what used to be taught in middle school is now being pushed to high school.

The reality is, K–12 education in the U.S. often lags behind competitive merit based institutions in developing 3rd world countries. One major reason is this overly cautious mindset that today's middle schoolers aren’t ready for subjects like Algebra 1. That simply isn’t true. For generations, early teens have successfully mastered these concepts in depth. The evidence is there — it’s the system that needs to catch up.

Algebra is a HS class in the United States, about 25% of US students will take Algebra 1 in MS, the rest will take it in HS. FCPS offers Algebra 1H earlier than most counties in the US. I went to HS in the 1980’s and 8th grade Algebra was considered accelerated at my school in Massachusetts, same for my husband who went to school in Illinois.

The difference is that most countries in the world track kids into specifics schools with different academic requirements. The kids taking Algebra earlier internationally have been tracked into the college prep schools, other kids are tracked into votech type programs where they are less likely to take Algebra 1 in MS. The US does not do that so the curriculum and pacing is different. People in the US like to compare US HS to international HS that are set for college prep but one website I looked at said only 20% of students in the UK are sent to HS for A levels, the other are tracked into different HS programs.

This makes a lot of sense and now I have a better understanding of why Algebra 1 is introduced late in the US.