50% rule fading away a bit…

[Anonymous]

My son's Spanish teacher gave him 0s all the time last year, even though his 504 allowed for extra time on assignments. She immediately locked assignments if they weren't turned in on time. I can understand marking down a grade for a day late. That's what our teachers used to do. But I don't get the zeros.

And yes, I am aware it's difficult on teachers to have to deal with late assignments. My son wasn't always late. But on some things, slow processing speed makes it super-difficult to complete all homework on time. Hence, the 504.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son's Spanish teacher gave him 0s all the time last year, even though his 504 allowed for extra time on assignments. She immediately locked assignments if they weren't turned in on time. I can understand marking down a grade for a day late. That's what our teachers used to do. But I don't get the zeros.

And yes, I am aware it's difficult on teachers to have to deal with late assignments. My son wasn't always late. But on some things, slow processing speed makes it super-difficult to complete all homework on time. Hence, the 504.

That's one to take up with admin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Last year, for any missing assignment, we had to assign 50%. Then, if we had two-way communication, meaning we actually reached the parent, and the assignment still wasn't turned in, we could assign a zero. Most teachers, including myself, just gave the 50% because 1) there are not enough hours in the day to call home for every missing assignment and 2) it essentially rewards students whose parent do not respond to you, and punishes those whose do.

This year, they are acting as though they have really become more strict, and given us a lot more ability to give a zero. The only change is, we do not have to have two-way communication, so we can issue a zero even if we do not hear back from parents. However, we have to make three documented attempts, per assignment, and bulk emails through Canvas or Synergy do not count. Essentially what this means is that for every missing assignment, in order to give a zero, we need to send a direct email 1-2 times, and also call home 1-2 times, depending on how many emails we sent. This is per student, per assignment. I can tell you in my "on level" classes, I can have 30+ students across different class periods not turn in one assignment. This becomes 90 contacts to assign a zero for ONE assignment for all those students. I think the county knows this is not even possible for a teacher to keep up with, so while they act like they're giving us more power, they expect we will just continue giving 50% because we can't keep up with the communication requirement.

+ 100

[Anonymous]

Expect it to be used only in extreme cases.

[Anonymous]

50% rule would have saved me so many Es on my report card 30 years ago. Homework counted for 40-50% of the grade then, so doing no homework guaranteed you failed the quarter, even if you had perfect scores on all tests and quizzes.

[Anonymous]

Can someone explain what 50% rule is?

[Anonymous]

Class prep category 10%, encouraged to be pass/fail. 100% if satisfactory work turned in. To me that means at least 70% completed with effort. Otherwise 0% if not turned or unsatisfactory work turned in / the like the kid blows off the assignment, does lazy work or doesn’t turn it in. About 7-10 assignments per quarter. Basically once a week.

All task assessments 90% of grade. Default lower limit is 50%. This is so one missing assessment doesn’t totally rank a kids grade. No assessment can be worth more than 25% of the course grade. However, if a teacher tries to contact home and makes two/way contact or has attempted direct contact three times, the teacher can now give a 0%.

Admin can also request that of a kid has been repeatedly skipping classes, that any 50% can be changed to a 0% for all missing assessment for all classes. This is to prevent a student from trying to do one assessment at the end of the quarter at the end of the semester to raise a 50% to at least 60% and therefore abuse the grading system to pass a course with an E. My high school had way too many kids literally just wandering the halls or skipping entirely and showing up in the last few days of the semester to pass a class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Class prep category 10%, encouraged to be pass/fail. 100% if satisfactory work turned in. To me that means at least 70% completed with effort. Otherwise 0% if not turned or unsatisfactory work turned in / the like the kid blows off the assignment, does lazy work or doesn’t turn it in. About 7-10 assignments per quarter. Basically once a week.

All task assessments 90% of grade. Default lower limit is 50%. This is so one missing assessment doesn’t totally rank a kids grade. No assessment can be worth more than 25% of the course grade. However, if a teacher tries to contact home and makes two/way contact or has attempted direct contact three times, the teacher can now give a 0%.

Admin can also request that of a kid has been repeatedly skipping classes, that any 50% can be changed to a 0% for all missing assessment for all classes. This is to prevent a student from trying to do one assessment at the end of the quarter at the end of the semester to raise a 50% to at least 60% and therefore abuse the grading system to pass a course with an E. My high school had way too many kids literally just wandering the halls or skipping entirely and showing up in the last few days of the semester to pass a class.

Which school is encouraging the prep category to be pass/fail? The only options that meet the grading policy are 100%, 90% (if late), and either 50% or 0 if missing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Class prep category 10%, encouraged to be pass/fail. 100% if satisfactory work turned in. To me that means at least 70% completed with effort. Otherwise 0% if not turned or unsatisfactory work turned in / the like the kid blows off the assignment, does lazy work or doesn’t turn it in. About 7-10 assignments per quarter. Basically once a week.

All task assessments 90% of grade. Default lower limit is 50%. This is so one missing assessment doesn’t totally rank a kids grade. No assessment can be worth more than 25% of the course grade. However, if a teacher tries to contact home and makes two/way contact or has attempted direct contact three times, the teacher can now give a 0%.

Admin can also request that of a kid has been repeatedly skipping classes, that any 50% can be changed to a 0% for all missing assessment for all classes. This is to prevent a student from trying to do one assessment at the end of the quarter at the end of the semester to raise a 50% to at least 60% and therefore abuse the grading system to pass a course with an E. My high school had way too many kids literally just wandering the halls or skipping entirely and showing up in the last few days of the semester to pass a class.

If a kid is repeatedly skipping school, it might be better for everyone to encourage them to drop out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Class prep category 10%, encouraged to be pass/fail. 100% if satisfactory work turned in. To me that means at least 70% completed with effort. Otherwise 0% if not turned or unsatisfactory work turned in / the like the kid blows off the assignment, does lazy work or doesn’t turn it in. About 7-10 assignments per quarter. Basically once a week.

All task assessments 90% of grade. Default lower limit is 50%. This is so one missing assessment doesn’t totally rank a kids grade. No assessment can be worth more than 25% of the course grade. However, if a teacher tries to contact home and makes two/way contact or has attempted direct contact three times, the teacher can now give a 0%.

Admin can also request that of a kid has been repeatedly skipping classes, that any 50% can be changed to a 0% for all missing assessment for all classes. This is to prevent a student from trying to do one assessment at the end of the quarter at the end of the semester to raise a 50% to at least 60% and therefore abuse the grading system to pass a course with an E. My high school had way too many kids literally just wandering the halls or skipping entirely and showing up in the last few days of the semester to pass a class.

If a kid is repeatedly skipping school, it might be better for everyone to encourage them to drop out.

Per state law, the mandatory age of attendance is now 18. Until then, the school system is legally obligated to try to get them to attend school, including contacting families and setting up meetings etc. And yes, it does take a lot of administrator and counselor time trying to deal with the truancy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Last year, for any missing assignment, we had to assign 50%. Then, if we had two-way communication, meaning we actually reached the parent, and the assignment still wasn't turned in, we could assign a zero. Most teachers, including myself, just gave the 50% because 1) there are not enough hours in the day to call home for every missing assignment and 2) it essentially rewards students whose parent do not respond to you, and punishes those whose do.

This year, they are acting as though they have really become more strict, and given us a lot more ability to give a zero. The only change is, we do not have to have two-way communication, so we can issue a zero even if we do not hear back from parents. However, we have to make three documented attempts, per assignment, and bulk emails through Canvas or Synergy do not count. Essentially what this means is that for every missing assignment, in order to give a zero, we need to send a direct email 1-2 times, and also call home 1-2 times, depending on how many emails we sent. This is per student, per assignment. I can tell you in my "on level" classes, I can have 30+ students across different class periods not turn in one assignment. This becomes 90 contacts to assign a zero for ONE assignment for all those students. I think the county knows this is not even possible for a teacher to keep up with, so while they act like they're giving us more power, they expect we will just continue giving 50% because we can't keep up with the communication requirement.

At my HS we were told that what was important is that the full story of attempted contacts is documented in Synergy (so that admin knows what happened) when a "Z" is changed to a 0 at the deadline. This very specific example was provided:
attempt #1 - Bulk email through Canvas (for each missing item) with opportunity time(s) for make-up and deadline.
attempt #2 - Bulk email through Synergy (for each missing item) with opportunity times(s) for make-up and deadline.
<teacher also keeps track of any conversations and agreements with the student that weren't followed through on>
attempt #3 - direct email to parents and student with list of all missing assignments and final chance information.

At deadline, assign 0s and create a Synergy comment for documentation with a summary of bulk email attempts, conversations with student, and attempted contact with parent.

To me, I think this is reasonable. Between the bulk emails and periodic in-class make-up days, most students get their late work in. I am typically left with at most a couple of students per class missing a lot of work, but these are also most often students with high absences. In normal years, I would have been emailing parents/admin/counseling about them anyway.

Last year was ridiculous and a whole lot more kids with missing work, but that was mostly because of the overly flexible policies of unexcused absences not causing automatic failures (E3) and taking late work at the end of the quarter. These flexible policies backfired BTW, which is why they are going back to more accountability. I had more failures than ever (as in 1/4 of my students, all with high absences). Kids didn't get that when they skipped class more than half the time, they didn't learn any of the content. So even when I let them make-up assignments and quizzes at the end of the quarter, they had no idea what they were doing and still didn't earn better than the 50% I had already put in the gradebook. Even if I was generous for poor work and gave a 70% C, 2 or 3 completed assignments out of 10 still isn't passing.

I think this year will be much better, especially after a reality check for many in the 1st quarter.