Skills-Based Grading

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Again, this isn’t coming from the board. It’s coming from administrators. And I am not understanding that this is equity driven. It seems harder to get good grades.

Here’s the explanation: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/19/05/grade-expectations

The idea is that grades should reflect what the kid knows at the end. That means, grades for quizzes, homework, class work, participation, etc. count for nothing. It also means for kids who are low A students down to about C+ students, their grades will often come down because there is no buffer to help boost their grade to the next level. Kids who are tippy top As, are fine, but that’s not the majority.

Of course, you also have teachers who have very hard grading policies, extremely hard tests, and are poor teachers. Add that to some schools/teachers applying this process and others aren’t, it’s a terrible policy. I know others will argue that in college there are only final assessments and shouldn’t kids’ grades be based on what they actually know at the end. The problems with this are: this isn’t college yet, it’s not a universal system so kids who are under it, are compared to kids who aren’t, and these grades have a major effect on the student’s trajectory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, this isn’t coming from the board. It’s coming from administrators. And I am not understanding that this is equity driven. It seems harder to get good grades.

Here’s the explanation: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/19/05/grade-expectations

The idea is that grades should reflect what the kid knows at the end. That means, grades for quizzes, homework, class work, participation, etc. count for nothing. It also means for kids who are low A students down to about C+ students, their grades will often come down because there is no buffer to help boost their grade to the next level. Kids who are tippy top As, are fine, but that’s not the majority.

Of course, you also have teachers who have very hard grading policies, extremely hard tests, and are poor teachers. Add that to some schools/teachers applying this process and others aren’t, it’s a terrible policy. I know others will argue that in college there are only final assessments and shouldn’t kids’ grades be based on what they actually know at the end. The problems with this are: this isn’t college yet, it’s not a universal system so kids who are under it, are compared to kids who aren’t, and these grades have a major effect on the student’s trajectory.

If that's the policy, the exams should be standardized across departments and weighted to whatever the average is supposed to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, this isn’t coming from the board. It’s coming from administrators. And I am not understanding that this is equity driven. It seems harder to get good grades.

Here’s the explanation: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/19/05/grade-expectations

The idea is that grades should reflect what the kid knows at the end. That means, grades for quizzes, homework, class work, participation, etc. count for nothing. It also means for kids who are low A students down to about C+ students, their grades will often come down because there is no buffer to help boost their grade to the next level. Kids who are tippy top As, are fine, but that’s not the majority.

Of course, you also have teachers who have very hard grading policies, extremely hard tests, and are poor teachers. Add that to some schools/teachers applying this process and others aren’t, it’s a terrible policy. I know others will argue that in college there are only final assessments and shouldn’t kids’ grades be based on what they actually know at the end. The problems with this are: this isn’t college yet, it’s not a universal system so kids who are under it, are compared to kids who aren’t, and these grades have a major effect on the student’s trajectory.

If that's the policy, the exams should be standardized across departments and weighted to whatever the average is supposed to be.

Obviously, a lot can be done with this bad system, but they don’t do that. Students who are graded under it are at a huge disadvantage. The ones who benefit are the ones who did little to no work before and can get a C on a formative assessment. Failing to do classwork or homework or doing poorly on quizzes will mean nothing and those bad grades disappear and the student gets a C. Everyone else is punished, however…except kids in FCPS who don’t have this policy and are compared through college admissions - to kids who do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My high-schooler is in a math class with skills-based grading. The way this pilot program was explained during the open house was that students would have multiple chances at re-assessment and the purpose seemed to be to give kids more chances to master the material. In practice, it seems far more stressful on the students than the regular grading system because they've eliminated all A-, B+ grades and each question receives its own individual grade of A, B, C etc. No partial credit is given, so any mistake automatically results in a B. My child with an A- currently appears to have little chance of raising the grade to an A with half the class left, so is a bit frustrated despite doing pretty well on the exams. Perfect on most of them and with minor mistakes on the others (which seemed like they would have merited an A- or B+ under the previous grading system. So my question is--was this really a way to help tackle grade inflation more than giving kids the chance to demonstrate mastery? I don't plan on saying anything to the teacher or school, I'm just internally questioning why this change was made, especially since it is coming for all classes next year.

The SB and many schools see this as a more equitable approach. In other words, equity.

Yeah, equity, basically water down academics to help raise scores. And any criticism of these types of progressive education reforms is bigoted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Or move. When businesses start going after FCPS they tend to listen more.

The whole country is pushing this kind of education policy. You like playing musical chairs? You can’t escape the watering down of academics for purported equity purposes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or move. When businesses start going after FCPS they tend to listen more.

The whole country is pushing this kind of education policy. You like playing musical chairs? You can’t escape the watering down of academics for purported equity purposes.

Many private schools don’t. They don’t care if parents want to accuse teachers of racism if they give low grades. They offer help but it is up to the student to take it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, this isn’t coming from the board. It’s coming from administrators. And I am not understanding that this is equity driven. It seems harder to get good grades.

Here’s the explanation: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/19/05/grade-expectations

The idea is that grades should reflect what the kid knows at the end. That means, grades for quizzes, homework, class work, participation, etc. count for nothing. It also means for kids who are low A students down to about C+ students, their grades will often come down because there is no buffer to help boost their grade to the next level. Kids who are tippy top As, are fine, but that’s not the majority.

Of course, you also have teachers who have very hard grading policies, extremely hard tests, and are poor teachers. Add that to some schools/teachers applying this process and others aren’t, it’s a terrible policy. I know others will argue that in college there are only final assessments and shouldn’t kids’ grades be based on what they actually know at the end. The problems with this are: this isn’t college yet, it’s not a universal system so kids who are under it, are compared to kids who aren’t, and these grades have a major effect on the student’s trajectory.

Actually, I taught in college, and this is not how college is. Or at least, it varies widely by teacher and department. To be fair, including participation in a grade has always been problematic and very unscientific. So I'd be glad if that were gone. But as usual, FCPS takes a thing that could work and makes it awful. The idea of this kind of policy is that it prevent students from doing poorly simply because of missing an assignment or doing badly on one test, which is admittedly a problem with strict grading policies. Like for example, my kid got all A's on all assessments in one class, and then got a B because he missed a couple of homeworks (because they were a waste of his time). But FCPS has apparently managed to implement this in such a way that grades are somehow even more dependent on a single missed thing or poor performance, which is the exact opposite of how it's supposed to work, which makes it exactly as ass-backwards as everything FCPS does.

[Anonymous]

I can confirm. My kid had 100s all year on all assignments for an elective. Like 30 or so based on my rough count. Missed one assignment, grade dropped from an A to an A-. It is the change that an A is 3.8 out of a 4.0 versus 93 out of a 100. I’d be less critical of this system if we went back to the old grading scale.

[Anonymous]

A friend who was teaching in college said he did not "require" homework. However, if a student was on the borderline of a grade, the homework turned in would make a difference. He left it up to the students to decide whether or not to do it.

Not sure if this is 100% right for high school, but it makes sense to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was a school board work session in the fall where the board was told that a group of school administrators is studying grading policy and will recommend changes later this year. It was so vague - why are they doing this? What is it based on? What is skills based and what is standards based? I am going to pay attention to see what the group recommends and hopefully they will share their research.

Equity.

This is about equity.

Push down the kids so everyone achieves the same mediocre results.

Fcps school board does not want a world class school system which ranks as the best in the state.

Fcps school board wants an equity based school system where everyone has the same mediocre results and no one excels.

Individual principals and many of our wonderful teachers still want a system of excellence, rigor and consequences.

This is a top down leadership issue.

Your billions of dollars of taxpayer funded fcps budget hard at work eliminating excellence and achievement for equity.

[Anonymous]

As a teacher, I have nothing positive to say about standards-based grading. It increased my workload at least ten-fold, frustrates my students and their families, and is not an accurate measure of students' progress. It seems that it should be an accurate measure, but it is not.

As an FCPS parent, I have nothing positive to say about standards-based grading. My child and their friends, all high-achieving students, cannot figure out where they currently stand because the entire approach FCPS has taken is confusing, at times inflating grades and at other times significantly deflating them.

[Anonymous]

This is the new paradigm, set up a confusing grading system “designed” to help Johnny/Jane succeed, but really all it does it create a way to make everyone average.

Equity in action!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is the new paradigm, set up a confusing grading system “designed” to help Johnny/Jane succeed, but really all it does it create a way to make everyone average.

Equity in action!

This equals 'flattery." Insincere and the kids know it. It doesn't help anyone.