One easy thing to do to close the achievement gap

[Anonymous]

Many here are against that idea because grade is not everything. And it'll hurt the feelings of those who don't score well or test well.

[Anonymous]

When my son was in K, I went to the classroom to help for a party. There were two lovely young girls sitting next to the bookshelf and reading a book. I was impressed because other kids were running round in the classroom. However, when I walked over, I saw the two girls held the book upside down and just moved their fingers on the pictured. It was sad!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The achievement gap in ES is minimal? Come to a high FARMS school like mine and talk to the students. Watch them in class. Read them books. You will see right away that this is not true. As for the teacher, communicating with parents about student weaknesses only works if 1) you can get in touch with parents 2) the parents are interested in school and how their child(ren) are doing. I am a teacher and I keep a log with a few pages for each student. Every time I attempt to contact parents, I make a note. Out of my class of 24, 9 of them have parents I have never met or talked to. I have contacted them a minimum of 10 times each. I have called and left messages, sent home notes, emailed if an email address was provided, texted and had the social worker make a home visit. Your solution to improvement only works if someone at home is on board. At my school, the struggling students are usually the ones whose parents are MIA. The only learning happening in these kids' lives is at school. Other parents don't understand that school is a lot different than it used to be. The KG teachers have monthly workshops for parents and the few parents that attend had no idea that their kids would have to be reading in KG. They thought if they knew their letters and could count to 10, they would be good to go. At the end of the year, report cards are kept in the office for parents to pick up. They can pick them up M-F all summer. By the time we return to school, half to 3/4 of the report cards are still sitting in the office.

Yes, yes to this. If you are a parent who is involved and care about your child's education, you shouldn't have a problem getting the feedback that you are seeking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live in a middle class neighborhood of single family homes. Last year, our neighborhood school bus-stop had five students (all boys) in the 3rd grade. They had grown up together, the moms were friends and occasionally had coffee together. Three of the students had got into the magnet HGC program, one was moving to another neighborhood and one was continuing on the home school. The home school student was Hispanic. The mom was feeling very sad that her son had not got into HGC program. She said that her son was getting all "P"s, just like every other student.

I told her that actually the "P" means nothing. It is a range of scores from 50-100% and that it is meaningless. She asked why would MCPS do that? She said that she would prefer that her son got home the correct measure of where he stood in all subjects. Not only a grade card that had A, B, C and D, but a grade card that gave his results in percentage.

Why would MCPS not consider that? The gap in knowledge is minimal in Elementary Schools. If MCPS was honest with the parents where exactly the students were behind in the elementary levels then it would be easy to fill those gaps.

All Ps were never enough for a HGC - at least in the past. This year the kid's chances would have been higher due to the new selection process, but I still believe that being 'proficient' and on grade level doesn't make one 'gifted'.

[Anonymous]

Long story short - MCPS is failing in being a good parent to your child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Long story short - MCPS is failing in being a good parent to your child.

Okay, as others mentioned here already, tere are no longer Ps, ES, etc. We are now at A,B,C,D. If parents don't know that yet and know that we are over half way into the school year, then MCPS is not the one failing here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in a middle class neighborhood of single family homes. Last year, our neighborhood school bus-stop had five students (all boys) in the 3rd grade. They had grown up together, the moms were friends and occasionally had coffee together. Three of the students had got into the magnet HGC program, one was moving to another neighborhood and one was continuing on the home school. The home school student was Hispanic. The mom was feeling very sad that her son had not got into HGC program. She said that her son was getting all "P"s, just like every other student.

I told her that actually the "P" means nothing. It is a range of scores from 50-100% and that it is meaningless. She asked why would MCPS do that? She said that she would prefer that her son got home the correct measure of where he stood in all subjects. Not only a grade card that had A, B, C and D, but a grade card that gave his results in percentage.

Why would MCPS not consider that? The gap in knowledge is minimal in Elementary Schools. If MCPS was honest with the parents where exactly the students were behind in the elementary levels then it would be easy to fill those gaps.

All Ps were never enough for a HGC - at least in the past. This year the kid's chances would have been higher due to the new selection process, but I still believe that being 'proficient' and on grade level doesn't make one 'gifted'.

Umm... my kid got mostly "P"s at his regular ES several years ago and so did most of his peers. They were just not giving ES to anyone for anything at the school. He easily got selected to Clearspring HGC, both programs at Clemente MS, all three programs at PHS and the program at RMIB. And he is not the only one from his home elementary who has followed this path. Most of the kids have moved as a cohort from one magnet school to another and each of them were usually only getting Ps at their elementary school. It is very much dependent on teachers.

[Anonymous]

The Ps grading system is only one part of MCPS's avoidance of transparency.

Consider:

Around the time my college student started K, MCPS was revising their grading system. If a student attempted homework, they would receive a minimum of 50%. If a student did poorly on a test they could be reassessed. Extra credit would no longer be given, but if a student attempted an assignment, the minimum grade they could get on it (if it was graded) was 50%. Most homework was not graded, but merely checked for completion.

In practice, tests in elementary never came home. They were county-wide assessments and sending them home would compromise their security. Instead parents got summary reports with information stating the student's scores for both on-grade level and above grade level items. Each score would have three ranges denoting whether the scores demonstrated complee understanding, developing understanding, or minimal understanding. There was no way for the parents to see which questions had been missed or why they had been missed. The kids did review the tests in class, but then they had to return them rather than being able to keep them for future reference.

Meanwhile, for writing assignments, I was informed by a curriculum developer that teachers were only supposed to correct a selection of errors, focusing on a specific subsection. For example, this paper the teacher might correct capitalization, another paper they might correct punctuation. It was thought that correcting all errors would be too demoralizing.

Report cards for K-2 used (O)utstanding, (S)atisfactory, and (N)eeds Improvement. Grades 3-5 had letter grades (A-E), but the really informative part were the Teacher Comments included with the report cards.

In 2012, the elementary report card was changed. Gone were letter grades and teacher comments. Ps covered a wide range of achievement ranging from mastery to barely passing. It was apparently unclear what level of performance merited the top grade E, with reports that in some schools it was extremely rare.

When Algebra final exam failure rates became so high it created a controversy, they decided the answer was to eliminate finals.

Here's a reference to the crisis in Forbes. Bad press for "one of the best school systems in the nation".

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2014/06/30/an-82-percent-failure-rate-on-high-school-algebra-exams/amp/

If MCPS is returning to letter grades for elementary report cards I applaud them for moving in the right direction. I would argue, however, that it is only the first step in a long road needed to give students and parents an accurate accounting of a student's performance.

[Anonymous]

Close-the-achievement-gap can make every kids equally good or equally bad. The latter is "easier", technically and politically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

If MCPS is returning to letter grades for elementary report cards I applaud them for moving in the right direction. I would argue, however, that it is only the first step in a long road needed to give students and parents an accurate accounting of a student's performance.

"If"?

[Anonymous]

OP asked a very good, but did not touch the root cause of the achievement gap. The kid has a responsible mother and the difference between him and the other two in HGC is not the achievement gap that is usually discussed or MCPS wants to reduce. As other Pps mentioned, the real gap is between normal families and those with very irresponsible parents. The gap can never be significantly reduced until these parents can be changed. So it is about parents not about kids.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone thought about it that the Assessment and the standardized test are biased against minority groups? It is like buying shoes. A certain brand of shoes are narrow and looks beautiful but it doesn't fit your feet well. You need to find a pair of shoes that fit your feet not shave your feet to fit the shoes. If the current education standards and methods consistently fail a large group of people, a different approach and standard should be created to fit the population.

[Anonymous]

I like Ms. Good Teach!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP asked a very good, but did not touch the root cause of the achievement gap. The kid has a responsible mother and the difference between him and the other two in HGC is not the achievement gap that is usually discussed or MCPS wants to reduce. As other Pps mentioned, the real gap is between normal families and those with very irresponsible parents. The gap can never be significantly reduced until these parents can be changed. So it is about parents not about kids.

this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in a middle class neighborhood of single family homes. Last year, our neighborhood school bus-stop had five students (all boys) in the 3rd grade. They had grown up together, the moms were friends and occasionally had coffee together. Three of the students had got into the magnet HGC program, one was moving to another neighborhood and one was continuing on the home school. The home school student was Hispanic. The mom was feeling very sad that her son had not got into HGC program. She said that her son was getting all "P"s, just like every other student.

I told her that actually the "P" means nothing. It is a range of scores from 50-100% and that it is meaningless. She asked why would MCPS do that? She said that she would prefer that her son got home the correct measure of where he stood in all subjects. Not only a grade card that had A, B, C and D, but a grade card that gave his results in percentage.

Why would MCPS not consider that? The gap in knowledge is minimal in Elementary Schools. If MCPS was honest with the parents where exactly the students were behind in the elementary levels then it would be easy to fill those gaps.

MCPS has done away with this grading methodology. They are now back to doing A, B, C, D but these are still not percentage based. I'm okay with them going back to this method and I feel like between this and the communications I have with my kid's teacher, that I have a great grasp my child's performance. At the ES level, I don't need to know percentages.

Its still overly subjective. We get very little work back and no regularly information from the teacher so all we get are subjective a, b's so we have no idea what it all means.