I Hate Synergy!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The teacher can set up her assignments to show missing if nothing is submitted in Canvas. Why they chose not to do this is beyond me.

How is that done so that it communicates a zero in Synergy without violating a school level policy against zeros in Synergy?

My Canvas assignments show a zero if nothing is submitted, but we weren’t allowed to sync that zero to Synergy. In synergy it had to be 50%. A lot of parents and students only look at grades on Synergy not Canvas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if MCPS kept Synergy broken for an entire school year to cover up how much grade inflation was going on. At least for my child, Canvas has a much different level of performance than Synergy communicates. His report card grades are fine but Canvas shows many assignments he failed but received 100% completion. You think this year was rough, what is going to happen next year? There is a price to pay when children are passed on without the skills they were supposed to learn this year.

If it’s in the 10% category, they get 100% for completion, even if every single answer is wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if MCPS kept Synergy broken for an entire school year to cover up how much grade inflation was going on. At least for my child, Canvas has a much different level of performance than Synergy communicates. His report card grades are fine but Canvas shows many assignments he failed but received 100% completion. You think this year was rough, what is going to happen next year? There is a price to pay when children are passed on without the skills they were supposed to learn this year.

If it’s in the 10% category, they get 100% for completion, even if every single answer is wrong.

This was a huge issue with my child. He never looked in Canvas for his grades. He only looked at Synergy. He was failing quizzes right and left but would think he was doing great. He didn’t get feedback that he was missing concepts till he took a unit test and failed.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Today is the last day of the quarter. My child has a teacher that hasn’t posted grades for assignments due in May. Synergy has not been synced the whole month of June. We are trying to use Canvas but because some assignments are weighted toward a 90% category and some are 10%, we have no idea where my son stand right now in a class. He could have an A, B, or C depending on what is calculated towards the 90% category. It’s also very difficult to know what is missing because the teacher doesn’t use 0s or any method to flag an assignment as missing.

Families should have better information to track a student’s progress in a class.

The teacher can’t use zeros most likely. Most schools prohibited it or made teachers get a written acknowledgement from parents that they knew an assignment was missing. Why doesn’t your son know what work he hasn’t completed? I have two 9th graders and don’t need to make posts like yours.

Don’t be an ass. Many kids are struggling with issues like ADHD or mental health challenges this year of working from home that make tracking assignments challenging. My kid also is struggling tracking assignments and so are thousands of kids in the system. PPs have all made legitimate criticisms of the workflow policies and tools MCPS uses.

According to DCUM’s posts, every kid in MCPS has ADHD or depression or was watching 6 younger siblings while the parents worked as Covid doctors/grocery store workers. The county’s stats don’t bear that out. The pandemic was a shock, but mild inconvenience for the majority of children whose parents are posting complaints here. Those kids either decided on their own to phone it on or their parents encouraged them to do so.

Ditto on the don’t be an ass. I’m a high school teacher and after Semester A made some school wide changes in how things were assigned and how Canvas had to look so that kids could find things. My own kid at another high school was struggling to turn things in on time because he never knew what was actually due when. I finally got his login to look through Canvas, and OMFG what a freaking unhelpful mess. Only 3 teachers had some sort of organization structure and regular pattern of assignments, only 2 had instructional materials posted. If a kid missed some verbal instruction during class time, they were immediately lost about what was going on. Build two or three classes in a row like that, they are so behind they can’t catch up, alcant figure it out on their own from the Canvas disaster, and are too embarrassed to ask. Hello, anxiety.

This year stank and I’m glad it’s over. If you and you kids made it through relatively unscathed or even more successful than before, good for you. But try counting your blessings instead of gloating that you are somehow better than everyone who had a less than successful year.

This year did suck but...I'm sorry but your high school students couldnt figure Canvas out after a semester? My elementary students figured out Canvas after a few weeks. It wasn't difficult to make Canvas easy to navigate.

7 different setups in Canvas is a lot harder than 1. About half of my child’s high school teachers did not publish the Canvas grade book so we could see a summary of assignments. There are also a lot of assignments per quarter for each class.

You can’t compare your child’s strengths to a high school child’s struggles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Today is the last day of the quarter. My child has a teacher that hasn’t posted grades for assignments due in May. Synergy has not been synced the whole month of June. We are trying to use Canvas but because some assignments are weighted toward a 90% category and some are 10%, we have no idea where my son stand right now in a class. He could have an A, B, or C depending on what is calculated towards the 90% category. It’s also very difficult to know what is missing because the teacher doesn’t use 0s or any method to flag an assignment as missing.

Families should have better information to track a student’s progress in a class.

The teacher can’t use zeros most likely. Most schools prohibited it or made teachers get a written acknowledgement from parents that they knew an assignment was missing. Why doesn’t your son know what work he hasn’t completed? I have two 9th graders and don’t need to make posts like yours.

Don’t be an ass. Many kids are struggling with issues like ADHD or mental health challenges this year of working from home that make tracking assignments challenging. My kid also is struggling tracking assignments and so are thousands of kids in the system. PPs have all made legitimate criticisms of the workflow policies and tools MCPS uses.

According to DCUM’s posts, every kid in MCPS has ADHD or depression or was watching 6 younger siblings while the parents worked as Covid doctors/grocery store workers. The county’s stats don’t bear that out. The pandemic was a shock, but mild inconvenience for the majority of children whose parents are posting complaints here. Those kids either decided on their own to phone it on or their parents encouraged them to do so.

Ditto on the don’t be an ass. I’m a high school teacher and after Semester A made some school wide changes in how things were assigned and how Canvas had to look so that kids could find things. My own kid at another high school was struggling to turn things in on time because he never knew what was actually due when. I finally got his login to look through Canvas, and OMFG what a freaking unhelpful mess. Only 3 teachers had some sort of organization structure and regular pattern of assignments, only 2 had instructional materials posted. If a kid missed some verbal instruction during class time, they were immediately lost about what was going on. Build two or three classes in a row like that, they are so behind they can’t catch up, alcant figure it out on their own from the Canvas disaster, and are too embarrassed to ask. Hello, anxiety.

This year stank and I’m glad it’s over. If you and you kids made it through relatively unscathed or even more successful than before, good for you. But try counting your blessings instead of gloating that you are somehow better than everyone who had a less than successful year.

This year did suck but...I'm sorry but your high school students couldnt figure Canvas out after a semester? My elementary students figured out Canvas after a few weeks. It wasn't difficult to make Canvas easy to navigate.

7 different setups in Canvas is a lot harder than 1. About half of my child’s high school teachers did not publish the Canvas grade book so we could see a summary of assignments. There are also a lot of assignments per quarter for each class.

You can’t compare your child’s strengths to a high school child’s struggles.

What elementary student had one setup? Oh yeah. None.. they had math, reading, writing, science, social studies, all other specials... so more than 7. Figured it out with no problems. All of these problems seem like a “I’m a parent and I can’t figure it out” vs students being fully capable (and also, your
kid obviously knew exactly what they were missing.. come on)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Today is the last day of the quarter. My child has a teacher that hasn’t posted grades for assignments due in May. Synergy has not been synced the whole month of June. We are trying to use Canvas but because some assignments are weighted toward a 90% category and some are 10%, we have no idea where my son stand right now in a class. He could have an A, B, or C depending on what is calculated towards the 90% category. It’s also very difficult to know what is missing because the teacher doesn’t use 0s or any method to flag an assignment as missing.

Families should have better information to track a student’s progress in a class.

The teacher can’t use zeros most likely. Most schools prohibited it or made teachers get a written acknowledgement from parents that they knew an assignment was missing. Why doesn’t your son know what work he hasn’t completed? I have two 9th graders and don’t need to make posts like yours.

Don’t be an ass. Many kids are struggling with issues like ADHD or mental health challenges this year of working from home that make tracking assignments challenging. My kid also is struggling tracking assignments and so are thousands of kids in the system. PPs have all made legitimate criticisms of the workflow policies and tools MCPS uses.

According to DCUM’s posts, every kid in MCPS has ADHD or depression or was watching 6 younger siblings while the parents worked as Covid doctors/grocery store workers. The county’s stats don’t bear that out. The pandemic was a shock, but mild inconvenience for the majority of children whose parents are posting complaints here. Those kids either decided on their own to phone it on or their parents encouraged them to do so.

Ditto on the don’t be an ass. I’m a high school teacher and after Semester A made some school wide changes in how things were assigned and how Canvas had to look so that kids could find things. My own kid at another high school was struggling to turn things in on time because he never knew what was actually due when. I finally got his login to look through Canvas, and OMFG what a freaking unhelpful mess. Only 3 teachers had some sort of organization structure and regular pattern of assignments, only 2 had instructional materials posted. If a kid missed some verbal instruction during class time, they were immediately lost about what was going on. Build two or three classes in a row like that, they are so behind they can’t catch up, alcant figure it out on their own from the Canvas disaster, and are too embarrassed to ask. Hello, anxiety.

This year stank and I’m glad it’s over. If you and you kids made it through relatively unscathed or even more successful than before, good for you. But try counting your blessings instead of gloating that you are somehow better than everyone who had a less than successful year.

This year did suck but...I'm sorry but your high school students couldnt figure Canvas out after a semester? My elementary students figured out Canvas after a few weeks. It wasn't difficult to make Canvas easy to navigate.

7 different setups in Canvas is a lot harder than 1. About half of my child’s high school teachers did not publish the Canvas grade book so we could see a summary of assignments. There are also a lot of assignments per quarter for each class.

You can’t compare your child’s strengths to a high school child’s struggles.

Congratulations on facilitating learned helplessness.

[Anonymous]

At some point the BOE will need an accounting for how many children failed classes this year. For students with disabilities, they failures were up 30% in December.

Perhaps your child is a genius. Congratulations.

For my child, the delivery of information was unnavigable and inappropriate. MCPS response to a year of discrimination on the basis of a disability was Compensatory Educational Services. This includes compensation for the tutor that collected data on the Canvas problems. She had difficulty with where to find information as well.

From her perspective, some schools did a better job setting up Canvas classrooms than others. Some teachers did a better job than others. My child has an IEP so if problems keep occurring next August, we will ask for specific changes to the IEP in regards to Canvas much like he has specific needs in the physical classroom.

[Anonymous]

To all the complaining parents -
Your lack of empathy for the demands that teachers face on a daily basis is shameful.
I guess it never occurred to you that a teacher spends 60-70 hours a week serving you and your child. I guess you haven't considered the number of hours it takes to prepare daily lessons, the energy required to deliver them, and then the number of hours it takes to grade 160 copies of a single assignment, then the number of hours it takes to enter them into synergy. You also seem to be unaware of the pressure placed on teachers by administrators to adjust grades so that you can pretend that your child is actually performing up to standards. Add the pressure via email by parents like you to either change the grade or extend the deadline. Your sense of entitlement is,sadly, typical.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have one kid in a different school system that uses Canvas and another system for final grades like Synergy. This school set it up so much better.

1. CANVAS is considered the active system of record. There is a feature where a teacher can assign % weight to different categories. Homework, class work, projects, assessments and exam. This way the student/parent can see the actual course grade. There is a feature where you can see the grade based on what has been graded or based on what has not.

2. In canvas there is also another field where an attribute can show late, missing. This way for a teacher who gives 50 or 40% for missing assignments, the student and parent can still see that it is missing.

3. Comments and median shows in canvas. This is very helpful. Teachers put comments here. All assignments are collected and recorded in canvas. There are integration with gizmo, nearpod, Google etc.

4. The school only synchs to the final grade system at interim and semester ends. This system has the gpa, class rank, standardized test scores, emergency contact and is where the students do registration. The final grades in this system are released a week after the last final. Grades should not differ from what is seen in Canvas.

5. Teachers are required to post upcoming assignments for the following week no later than Sunday at 5 pm. Teachers are encouraged to grade assignments within 48 hours and are required to be finished grading with grades entered by each 6 week mark. Most hit the 48 hour mark and English was the only course that took 4 weeks to grade.

This is so much saner and there is zero reason why MCPS decided not to use CANVAS in a logical way. It really was a huge fail for MCPS to do this setting up teachers and students not to succeed.

I don’t see comments in the parent canvas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To all the complaining parents -
Your lack of empathy for the demands that teachers face on a daily basis is shameful.
I guess it never occurred to you that a teacher spends 60-70 hours a week serving you and your child. I guess you haven't considered the number of hours it takes to prepare daily lessons, the energy required to deliver them, and then the number of hours it takes to grade 160 copies of a single assignment, then the number of hours it takes to enter them into synergy. You also seem to be unaware of the pressure placed on teachers by administrators to adjust grades so that you can pretend that your child is actually performing up to standards. Add the pressure via email by parents like you to either change the grade or extend the deadline. Your sense of entitlement is,sadly, typical.

I was at a school (BCC cluster) where we werent allowed to give Ds. Grace. I'm at a new school now and D's were the norm all last year. It depends on each building. If your kids were getting Cs last year in a BCC cluster, I'd look again.

[jsteele]

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1083121.page