Grades 3rd quarter

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid hasn't had a grade entered since March 19 in one class. When are teachers supposed to get grades in?

Yesterday

If you have a teacher who is a hot mess who can't seem to manage Gradebook, at what point do you flag this to someone else in the school (guidance counselor)? All my kids' teachers are fine except for one who is near retirement whose grades lag by a month or so and even when grades are entered--it's often a mix of wrong stuff (0s and 50%s for the whole class.)

My experience is that the administration is utterly incapable of doing anything about the teachers who are a hot mess. What are they going to do -- fire them? They can't hire for most of these positions, so they really don't want to fire. Instead, the counselor will give you the sympathetic face, and say that they are aware of the problem and that efforts are being made to address it (which they probably aren't, but the counselors have no authority). My HS kid has one awful teacher who is getting fired -- after not doing much all year, she came into the class and blamed all the kids for the fact that her contract is getting not renewed -- literally said it was THEIR FAULT she was getting fire -- so of course at this point she's doing even less. I'm not the one that complained about her, but I'm sure some parents probably did.

For parents -- if you aren't checking the canvass grades as well as parentvue, that's sometimes helpful. You should consider that the grade is whichever is higher -- canvas or parentvue. And if they both say zero, there's a *chance* that it hasn't been turned in, but a chance that it just hasn't been entered onto either system. It makes it really, really hard for parents that want to impose consequences on their teens -- you can't really say "You're grounded until you're caught up on all that missing work" when you really can't tell what's missing!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Worst part of the new grading policy is you are seeing more and more teachers no longer assigning papers. Knowing we have only 10 days to grade for 150 kids, most English teachers I know are just chunking them into smaller, easier to read and grade assignments. Instead of kids having to write a 5 paragraph paper in 3 weeks, we are asking them to write 5 individual paragraphs with each being completed over a week. Also helps reach the AT requirements.

A 5 paragraph essay takes 3 weeks to write? Shouldn’t it take a week at most?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Worst part of the new grading policy is you are seeing more and more teachers no longer assigning papers. Knowing we have only 10 days to grade for 150 kids, most English teachers I know are just chunking them into smaller, easier to read and grade assignments. Instead of kids having to write a 5 paragraph paper in 3 weeks, we are asking them to write 5 individual paragraphs with each being completed over a week. Also helps reach the AT requirements.

I'm sympathetic to this, but I'm also kind of wondering. I went to a public HS in the 80s. My classes had probably 25-30 kids in them. We had essays assigned several times per semester (typically multiple pages were expected) and the teachers read them and provided substantive feedback within a week or so. And back then they had to read handwriting, typically not typed papers. What is it that's making it so hard for the current teachers to do that? Did the 80s teachers work more nights? Or do the current teachers have too much admin burden and -- if that's it -- is there a way to address that? If you're a HS english teacher, would it work to have a day or two a week where you assign the kids to talk amongst themselves about the reading, or something like that, while you grade essays? I think we also had classes where we traded essays and each marked up each other's essays with comments and constructive feedback. That could sometimes be really helpful itself.

So many things:
1. I’ve worked in schools where we aren’t allowed to have students view each others’ work, so there goes the chance for peer reviews.
2. When I began my career, planning periods were for grading and planning. Now they are for meetings and covering other teachers’ classes.
3. I used to be able to grade a random paper or two during the school day while students worked independently. Today’s students require constant supervision. I don’t sit during the school day. I walk and supervise.
4. The curriculum used to be more logical and more skills-based. I could do targeted focus on writing and help students do it well. Now the list of topics I’m responsible for has grown exponentially, taking time away from teaching the basics well.
5. The list of administrative tasks has grown tremendously.

So essentially, I have way more to do with considerably less time.

I’d love to go back to the early 2000s. Education made more sense then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Worst part of the new grading policy is you are seeing more and more teachers no longer assigning papers. Knowing we have only 10 days to grade for 150 kids, most English teachers I know are just chunking them into smaller, easier to read and grade assignments. Instead of kids having to write a 5 paragraph paper in 3 weeks, we are asking them to write 5 individual paragraphs with each being completed over a week. Also helps reach the AT requirements.

A 5 paragraph essay takes 3 weeks to write? Shouldn’t it take a week at most?

3 weeks to include outline, research, rough draft, peer editing, final

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid hasn't had a grade entered since March 19 in one class. When are teachers supposed to get grades in?

Yesterday

If you have a teacher who is a hot mess who can't seem to manage Gradebook, at what point do you flag this to someone else in the school (guidance counselor)? All my kids' teachers are fine except for one who is near retirement whose grades lag by a month or so and even when grades are entered--it's often a mix of wrong stuff (0s and 50%s for the whole class.)

My experience is that the administration is utterly incapable of doing anything about the teachers who are a hot mess. What are they going to do -- fire them? They can't hire for most of these positions, so they really don't want to fire. Instead, the counselor will give you the sympathetic face, and say that they are aware of the problem and that efforts are being made to address it (which they probably aren't, but the counselors have no authority). My HS kid has one awful teacher who is getting fired -- after not doing much all year, she came into the class and blamed all the kids for the fact that her contract is getting not renewed -- literally said it was THEIR FAULT she was getting fire -- so of course at this point she's doing even less. I'm not the one that complained about her, but I'm sure some parents probably did.

For parents -- if you aren't checking the canvass grades as well as parentvue, that's sometimes helpful. You should consider that the grade is whichever is higher -- canvas or parentvue. And if they both say zero, there's a *chance* that it hasn't been turned in, but a chance that it just hasn't been entered onto either system. It makes it really, really hard for parents that want to impose consequences on their teens -- you can't really say "You're grounded until you're caught up on all that missing work" when you really can't tell what's missing!

Yes this. I have a kid who tends towards being disorganized, and it’s impossible to try to help him with this one teacher because no information is inputted, and often when it’s inputted my kid insists it’s wrong and sure enough, the teacher reverses his bad grade a few days later.

It’s ridiculous that McPS is moving towards a zero tolerance for late work by students but isn’t keeping on top of teachers to provide the same level of professionalism to the kids who depend on them for feedback.

[Anonymous]

The one teacher that submitted grades yesterday does not use canvas. I have no idea what has been assigned or if it’s missing.

[Anonymous]

It is tremendously hard for my kid with learning disabilities and an IEP that allows for extra time (which may or may not be actually given) to track progress when things aren’t graded until the very end of the quarter. Things appear as missing when he turned them in and we cannot prove it was within the bounds of his deadline (different from classmates). I think teaching is a tremendously difficult job. I also can’t imagine that a room full of kids who can’t track how they are doing is that conducive to learning and academic growth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is tremendously hard for my kid with learning disabilities and an IEP that allows for extra time (which may or may not be actually given) to track progress when things aren’t graded until the very end of the quarter. Things appear as missing when he turned them in and we cannot prove it was within the bounds of his deadline (different from classmates). I think teaching is a tremendously difficult job. I also can’t imagine that a room full of kids who can’t track how they are doing is that conducive to learning and academic growth.

My kid has had a similar experience. We have tried to help him keep track but in some classes it’s basically impossible to tell whether things are truly missing until it’s too late. Third quarter had a couple things marked as zero that really affected his grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is tremendously hard for my kid with learning disabilities and an IEP that allows for extra time (which may or may not be actually given) to track progress when things aren’t graded until the very end of the quarter. Things appear as missing when he turned them in and we cannot prove it was within the bounds of his deadline (different from classmates). I think teaching is a tremendously difficult job. I also can’t imagine that a room full of kids who can’t track how they are doing is that conducive to learning and academic growth.

Yup. My kid has ADHD and a 504 and we have found navigating his completion of tasks to be really difficult with some classes because the teachers just aren’t putting in grades til the end of the MP.

[Anonymous]

not up

[Anonymous]

I’ve tried emailing the teachers to ask for help with this but they’re not very receptive. Why can’t I have a syllabus that details what assignments are due and by when? What makes HS planning so different from college? I get it if this is your first year teaching a class but after a few years, isn’t the planning mostly done? Sure there will be some tweaks here and there but the topics and assessments/assignments should be planned. You can’t tell me that every teacher is starting from scratch every year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve tried emailing the teachers to ask for help with this but they’re not very receptive. Why can’t I have a syllabus that details what assignments are due and by when? What makes HS planning so different from college? I get it if this is your first year teaching a class but after a few years, isn’t the planning mostly done? Sure there will be some tweaks here and there but the topics and assessments/assignments should be planned. You can’t tell me that every teacher is starting from scratch every year.

I think part of it is there are just too many darn assignments. College classes would never have 10 AT assignments per marking period, or 20 per semester, or whatever the required number is. It's frankly insane and makes things harder for kids and teachers. I get that it's supposed to reinforce learning, but I'm not sure it does that either.

[Anonymous]

They're up! Both of my kids got perfect report cards (3rd and K, hahahaha)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They're up! Both of my kids got perfect report cards (3rd and K, hahahaha)

Good for them!