Teacher exposes the craptastic decline iof MCPS in Reddit rant

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That was a pretty enlightening Reddit thread. If a student is not self-motivated and high-performing, they are completely failed by MCPS schools today. It's a race to the bottom for average kids. And it's entirely caused by central office bureaucrats. Monica McKnight cannot leave soon enough.

Exactly. It’s a damn shame. How do we change this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That was a pretty enlightening Reddit thread. If a student is not self-motivated and high-performing, they are completely failed by MCPS schools today. It's a race to the bottom for average kids. And it's entirely caused by central office bureaucrats. Monica McKnight cannot leave soon enough.

So in summary, to increase graduation rates, MCPS stopped requiring kids actually go to class and stopped teachers from giving zeros for not doing any assignments. That caused a drop in attendance rates, so they redefined absences as just very tardy. The result is that kids without parental oversight are hanging out in the hallways and graduating with no skills, knowledge, or self-discipline. However, the graduation and attendance rates are meeting metrics.

Lol, you all need to name schools for me to believe this. And even more, you need to name schools because all that was done in the name of equity, but if true, it's actually hurting the kids who need equity.

What will naming schools actually accomplish for you? I know there is the 50% rule at Blair and Eastern. Does that make it real for you now?

I teach at one of these schools and have a DC at the other. I can confirm that the 50% rule is used. I have another child at a third secondary school and it is used there as well.

Most teachers at our school are not using it anymore. Some are but very few. Our classes for electives have a regular class for all and higher test in. Dance is a pe class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of it is true, but we have a few really good teacher this year who are holding the kids accountable and really tuff with grading but they are also teaching them the the skills that they didn't get in ES or MS. The teachers can do far more and some choose not to. The worst are the ones who will not read or return email when you try to work with them.

The teachers are probably holding the students as accountable as admin will allow. I would love to be at a school where deadlines were enforced unless there was a good reason to give an extension to a student. It shouldn’t be the case that any student can turn in work eight weeks late for any reason just two days before the end of the quarter.

That wouldn’t fly at private school.

We are talking mcps, not private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever. Let the kids ‘pass’, graduate, and learn the hard way that their slacking off will not land them a career. They can work a crappy job and be miserable, get fired for not coming in, and deal with the consequences. These are not little kids- these are soon to be adults who have made a choice. Teachers- stop wasting your energy on these students/parents that don’t respect what you do. We can’t save them all and instead, focus your energy on the ones that want to learn and the ones you can make an impact on. I changed my ways in the last two years and it has made teaching so much more enjoyable and meaningful.

You must not have SLOs where you are. At my school, we were given a list of the lowest performers and told to focus on them for the SLO. In 2 months, I have to show multi-point data that they have improved although all of them are two or more years behind and one is chronically absent.

Virginia has slo. This is mcps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That was a pretty enlightening Reddit thread. If a student is not self-motivated and high-performing, they are completely failed by MCPS schools today. It's a race to the bottom for average kids. And it's entirely caused by central office bureaucrats. Monica McKnight cannot leave soon enough.

So in summary, to increase graduation rates, MCPS stopped requiring kids actually go to class and stopped teachers from giving zeros for not doing any assignments. That caused a drop in attendance rates, so they redefined absences as just very tardy. The result is that kids without parental oversight are hanging out in the hallways and graduating with no skills, knowledge, or self-discipline. However, the graduation and attendance rates are meeting metrics.

Lol, you all need to name schools for me to believe this. And even more, you need to name schools because all that was done in the name of equity, but if true, it's actually hurting the kids who need equity.

I can’t believe you don’t believe this. What is your involvement with public schools? Do you have kids enrolled?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is an American culture problem. We want to pretend everyone is the same, but they aren't. Not every kid is college-bound. But every kid should be able to learn and thrive and end high school able to read and understand enough math to live life and pursue higher education if desired. Everyone who has an average IQ (and I mean everyone) can learn to read and do algebra. Also, we can teach kids what tools they can use to have success. What we can't do is pretend every kid needs to or is able to make it through AP calculus by their senior year in high school. Kids unfortunately do not start school on a level playing field. Schools can't level all the differences. If we were able and willing to meet kids where they are, spend more time reteaching kids who need repetition to get concepts and spend time building background knowledge for kids that need that, we'd end up with more kids happy and thriving in school. Unfortunately, we want to pretend different needs don't exist, all kids can meet the same benchmarks in the same time frame, and we consequently teach to an almost non-existent middle which leaves a lot of kids bored and a lot of kids perpetually confused.

But why????? How do we change this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That was a pretty enlightening Reddit thread. If a student is not self-motivated and high-performing, they are completely failed by MCPS schools today. It's a race to the bottom for average kids. And it's entirely caused by central office bureaucrats. Monica McKnight cannot leave soon enough.

So in summary, to increase graduation rates, MCPS stopped requiring kids actually go to class and stopped teachers from giving zeros for not doing any assignments. That caused a drop in attendance rates, so they redefined absences as just very tardy. The result is that kids without parental oversight are hanging out in the hallways and graduating with no skills, knowledge, or self-discipline. However, the graduation and attendance rates are meeting metrics.

Lol, you all need to name schools for me to believe this. And even more, you need to name schools because all that was done in the name of equity, but if true, it's actually hurting the kids who need equity.

What will naming schools actually accomplish for you? I know there is the 50% rule at Blair and Eastern. Does that make it real for you now?

I genuinely am not a fan of these sky-is-falling MCPS posts, but this one does hit the nail on the head. Instead of educating failing students to close the gap they're purposefully harming the better students to make the bad ones look better. This is kind of nuts.

C’mon, people were complaining about this on DCUM years ago, when the policies were first introduced!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That was a pretty enlightening Reddit thread. If a student is not self-motivated and high-performing, they are completely failed by MCPS schools today. It's a race to the bottom for average kids. And it's entirely caused by central office bureaucrats. Monica McKnight cannot leave soon enough.

So in summary, to increase graduation rates, MCPS stopped requiring kids actually go to class and stopped teachers from giving zeros for not doing any assignments. That caused a drop in attendance rates, so they redefined absences as just very tardy. The result is that kids without parental oversight are hanging out in the hallways and graduating with no skills, knowledge, or self-discipline. However, the graduation and attendance rates are meeting metrics.

Lol, you all need to name schools for me to believe this. And even more, you need to name schools because all that was done in the name of equity, but if true, it's actually hurting the kids who need equity.

"

It's a tiny bit more complicated than that. I'm not arguing in favor of the 50% policy, but it's not exactly as described above.

The rule was meant to help kids who had one really bad assignment or one missed assignment not to just give up on the class. So, instead of getting a 0 and seeing that pull down your entire grade, you got a 50% up until the end of the semester, while the teacher was meant to help you get the assignment caught up. Yes, it is onerous on the part of the teacher and both students and parents should be paying better attention than this, but the actual origin of the policy was not nearly as cynical as PPs are making it out to be. It was meant to give kids some grace, and keep them from just giving up and thinking there was no way to even get close to a passing grade if everything they turn in afterward is being pulled down by the 0.

The child can absolutely still get a 0 if the work isn't caught up by the end of the semester, though.

I do think this policy is hurting kids, but it's not hurting the high achieving ones because we're still talking about kids who are getting Ds and Fs. They aren't "competing" with college-bound kids.

What I do think is hurting college-bound kids is the "honors for all" approach that has now pervaded every single grade level up to 11th grade. It means there is no differentiated option for most 9th and 10th graders in English, social studies, or science. Even math isn't differentiated because even the "advanced" kids are still in mixed-grade classes. So, "Honors Pre Calculus" is a mix of super advanced 9th grades, regular advanced 10th graders, grade level 11th graders, and below grade level seniors. That's absurd.

That’s always been the case. The advance as of the class has nothing to do with its content. Honors in the designation has nothing to do with when you take the course. You take the course when you are ready/prepared regardless of grade.

Up until a few years ago, there would have been an on-level Pre-Calculus class and an Honors Pre-Calculus class. Either would be open to kids who wanted the challenge, but the Honors class would have mostly been geared toward kids for whom this is not their terminal math course. When MCPS moved to "Honors for All," that ended.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think enough criticism or scrutiny is being aimed at MSDE. Some of these idiotic policies are being driven by equally idiotic demands, audits, arbitrary metrics, etc. from the bureaucrats in Annapolis. They’ve picked some random number of what percentage should be in self-contained classes, how much suspension makes you racist, etc. based on fantasyland research from their third-rate PhD program and use it as a cudgel. The push toward inclusion for all that is dumping kids in classrooms with inadequate support is not just an MCPS initiative and MSDE wants to make it even worse, without realizing that not every county is the same or that their pie in the sky figures on paper don’t work in reality.

Who do we write to about this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That was a pretty enlightening Reddit thread. If a student is not self-motivated and high-performing, they are completely failed by MCPS schools today. It's a race to the bottom for average kids. And it's entirely caused by central office bureaucrats. Monica McKnight cannot leave soon enough.

So in summary, to increase graduation rates, MCPS stopped requiring kids actually go to class and stopped teachers from giving zeros for not doing any assignments. That caused a drop in attendance rates, so they redefined absences as just very tardy. The result is that kids without parental oversight are hanging out in the hallways and graduating with no skills, knowledge, or self-discipline. However, the graduation and attendance rates are meeting metrics.

Lol, you all need to name schools for me to believe this. And even more, you need to name schools because all that was done in the name of equity, but if true, it's actually hurting the kids who need equity.

"

It's a tiny bit more complicated than that. I'm not arguing in favor of the 50% policy, but it's not exactly as described above.

The rule was meant to help kids who had one really bad assignment or one missed assignment not to just give up on the class. So, instead of getting a 0 and seeing that pull down your entire grade, you got a 50% up until the end of the semester, while the teacher was meant to help you get the assignment caught up. Yes, it is onerous on the part of the teacher and both students and parents should be paying better attention than this, but the actual origin of the policy was not nearly as cynical as PPs are making it out to be. It was meant to give kids some grace, and keep them from just giving up and thinking there was no way to even get close to a passing grade if everything they turn in afterward is being pulled down by the 0.

The child can absolutely still get a 0 if the work isn't caught up by the end of the semester, though.

I do think this policy is hurting kids, but it's not hurting the high achieving ones because we're still talking about kids who are getting Ds and Fs. They aren't "competing" with college-bound kids.

What I do think is hurting college-bound kids is the "honors for all" approach that has now pervaded every single grade level up to 11th grade. It means there is no differentiated option for most 9th and 10th graders in English, social studies, or science. Even math isn't differentiated because even the "advanced" kids are still in mixed-grade classes. So, "Honors Pre Calculus" is a mix of super advanced 9th grades, regular advanced 10th graders, grade level 11th graders, and below grade level seniors. That's absurd.

That’s always been the case. The advance as of the class has nothing to do with its content. Honors in the designation has nothing to do with when you take the course. You take the course when you are ready/prepared regardless of grade.

Up until a few years ago, there would have been an on-level Pre-Calculus class and an Honors Pre-Calculus class. Either would be open to kids who wanted the challenge, but the Honors class would have mostly been geared toward kids for whom this is not their terminal math course. When MCPS moved to "Honors for All," that ended.

What year was honors for all introduced?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a secondary teacher in NYC and can echo a lot of this. I teach honors, gen Ed and ICT science classes. Last year my school was one in the district that piloted removing homework from the grading policy. Just removing it entirely.

This is a well performing school in a good nyc district. Parents want homework. My honors parents complain when there is not homework. I really have mixed opinions on HW overall, but believe it is ok especially in moderation, and students benefit from working on skills and reading at home.

Also, there is tons of homework at the competitive high schools these kids are trying to get into- so what does it say if we give them 0 homework for years before?

It’s all absurd. There is no accountability for students or parents; all on the teachers. I am expected to call parents when kids have missing assignments (!) even though I spend hours per week updating a digital gradebook that has EVERYTHING there. And I have 150 students.

This is why teachers want to leave

The homework thing is utter madness. I have a 6th grader who is decent in math but I’ve discovered needs to do extra practice at home to lock in concepts. Ie “homework.” He cannot fully internalize the concepts in class because it goes to fast or too slow and skips over what he needs to learn. Homework is *literally the way* kids are supposed to review and solidify learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever. Let the kids ‘pass’, graduate, and learn the hard way that their slacking off will not land them a career. They can work a crappy job and be miserable, get fired for not coming in, and deal with the consequences. These are not little kids- these are soon to be adults who have made a choice. Teachers- stop wasting your energy on these students/parents that don’t respect what you do. We can’t save them all and instead, focus your energy on the ones that want to learn and the ones you can make an impact on. I changed my ways in the last two years and it has made teaching so much more enjoyable and meaningful.

You must not have SLOs where you are. At my school, we were given a list of the lowest performers and told to focus on them for the SLO. In 2 months, I have to show multi-point data that they have improved although all of them are two or more years behind and one is chronically absent.

Virginia has slo. This is mcps.

SLOs are different from the SOLs.

SLOs are Student Learning Objectives, and I believe MCPS uses these. (I used to teach in PGCPS, where SLOs were an absolute joke.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of it is true, but we have a few really good teacher this year who are holding the kids accountable and really tuff with grading but they are also teaching them the the skills that they didn't get in ES or MS. The teachers can do far more and some choose not to. The worst are the ones who will not read or return email when you try to work with them.

Parents don’t care. Period. I have 12 kids who had over 26 absences each in quarter 1. It’s time for a mirror.

What’s even worse is when admin wants content teachers to just take the initiative to call parents of chronically absent students when we have 120-180 students each. And when there is a dedicated attendance teacher.

I do agree with this that the Attendance teachers should be handling the calling to chronically absent parents. Even if afterwards what is needed is a meeting scheduled w/ a particular teacher. The is already an automated robocall system. It shows in ParentVue and there is training in different languages on how to utilize. A call and email or letter should come from the Attendance office at a certain point and suggest a meeting with counselors/teachers. I’m all for helping and trying to reach students and families, but at a certain point people have to operate within the 21st century or at the least within the operational understanding of the area they live(ie desert vs rural vs suburban/urban.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That was a pretty enlightening Reddit thread. If a student is not self-motivated and high-performing, they are completely failed by MCPS schools today. It's a race to the bottom for average kids. And it's entirely caused by central office bureaucrats. Monica McKnight cannot leave soon enough.

So in summary, to increase graduation rates, MCPS stopped requiring kids actually go to class and stopped teachers from giving zeros for not doing any assignments. That caused a drop in attendance rates, so they redefined absences as just very tardy. The result is that kids without parental oversight are hanging out in the hallways and graduating with no skills, knowledge, or self-discipline. However, the graduation and attendance rates are meeting metrics.

Lol, you all need to name schools for me to believe this. And even more, you need to name schools because all that was done in the name of equity, but if true, it's actually hurting the kids who need equity.

"

It's a tiny bit more complicated than that. I'm not arguing in favor of the 50% policy, but it's not exactly as described above.

The rule was meant to help kids who had one really bad assignment or one missed assignment not to just give up on the class. So, instead of getting a 0 and seeing that pull down your entire grade, you got a 50% up until the end of the semester, while the teacher was meant to help you get the assignment caught up. Yes, it is onerous on the part of the teacher and both students and parents should be paying better attention than this, but the actual origin of the policy was not nearly as cynical as PPs are making it out to be. It was meant to give kids some grace, and keep them from just giving up and thinking there was no way to even get close to a passing grade if everything they turn in afterward is being pulled down by the 0.

The child can absolutely still get a 0 if the work isn't caught up by the end of the semester, though.

I do think this policy is hurting kids, but it's not hurting the high achieving ones because we're still talking about kids who are getting Ds and Fs. They aren't "competing" with college-bound kids.

What I do think is hurting college-bound kids is the "honors for all" approach that has now pervaded every single grade level up to 11th grade. It means there is no differentiated option for most 9th and 10th graders in English, social studies, or science. Even math isn't differentiated because even the "advanced" kids are still in mixed-grade classes. So, "Honors Pre Calculus" is a mix of super advanced 9th grades, regular advanced 10th graders, grade level 11th graders, and below grade level seniors. That's absurd.

That’s always been the case. The advance as of the class has nothing to do with its content. Honors in the designation has nothing to do with when you take the course. You take the course when you are ready/prepared regardless of grade.

Up until a few years ago, there would have been an on-level Pre-Calculus class and an Honors Pre-Calculus class. Either would be open to kids who wanted the challenge, but the Honors class would have mostly been geared toward kids for whom this is not their terminal math course. When MCPS moved to "Honors for All," that ended.

On-level pre-calc still exists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach dance at a high school in MCPS (dream job-or so I thought). The students in the ALL of my classes don't want to do anything except TikTok dances. They don't want to learn anything. They don't think they need to because they can do a 10 second TikTok dance and therefore, they are "dancers." They get tired after about 5 minutes of moving. They complain everything is "too hard." It's pathetic and embarrassing. I don't know where everything went wrong, but it's a joke. Quitting at the end of this year, if I make it that long.

Ha, I saw these two girls watching and doing a Tik Tok dance and thought it was sad. In our day (I am 35), we used to make up our own dances! At least they were getting some physical activity