New FCPS grading policy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate this new policy. A cap of 90% would be much better. This is going to be more work for teachers as kids who gets A minuses now and call it a day will try to retest each time to get the max points. It will add stress to those kids too by trying to be perfectionist about it.

I teach at a school that already has the 100% retake policy. Some teachers have 2/3 or more of their students retaking, with the corresponding increase in grading workload. The other side effect is that between that and the 50% quarterly minimum, overall grades are much higher and mean a lot less than they used to.

How does the grade mean less if that is the grade they got? They retook a different test after remediation and with time better understood the material. That is an earned grade. Way more earned than a curve, which ALL AP classes do.

I think that's true if the retake was a one off, meaning for instance that a student who generally gets B's got a D and is retaking. One thing I've observed is that a good number of students who do systematic retakes still do worse on cumulative exams like midterms and finals. I have one recent example that stands out in my mind of a student who usually got D's and F's, then would study like crazy, do corrections, go over their last test and corrections right before the retake, and get high B's or even A-'s. Kudos for persistence and effort. The problem is that the grade on the final was an F. Final grade in the class was something like a B-. Did the student master the material at the B- level? Likely not. That matters for classes in which you expect the grade to reflect preparedness for the next level up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids who actually need the retakes almost never take them. They should put a limit on who can retake a test (eg, c or lower).

Nah. If a kid wants to make sure he gets an A in the class instead of a B, nothing wrong with that at all.

Too bad this new grading policy wont be enforced for all Fairfax high schools. Apparently equity only matters if you have a principal who cares about their students more than their own careers. Why is the school board and administration allowing this to happen?

Where does it say this policy will not take place at all high schools? It looks like this is a new policy to standardize all the high schools since they currently all have different policies.

I do wonder how this will affect the schools using the SBG method though.

This won’t apply to schools with SBG. There are no retakes. New grades can replace old ones, but not on the same material. Supposedly on the same “skills.” It is a hot mess and everyone knows it, otherwise the new grading policy would be SBG rather than something new. It is unfortunate that kids at Madison and Herndon have a totally separate grading policy.

Is this stated somewhere? Board docs or elsewhere?

I can't believe I'm learning about grading policy changes by FCPS from the newspaper and DCUM and haven't received any communication from the school or the school board.

Agree. They send out a million newsletters- I haven’t seen this in one yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate this new policy. A cap of 90% would be much better. This is going to be more work for teachers as kids who gets A minuses now and call it a day will try to retest each time to get the max points. It will add stress to those kids too by trying to be perfectionist about it.

I teach at a school that already has the 100% retake policy. Some teachers have 2/3 or more of their students retaking, with the corresponding increase in grading workload. The other side effect is that between that and the 50% quarterly minimum, overall grades are much higher and mean a lot less than they used to.

How does the grade mean less if that is the grade they got? They retook a different test after remediation and with time better understood the material. That is an earned grade. Way more earned than a curve, which ALL AP classes do.

I think that's true if the retake was a one off, meaning for instance that a student who generally gets B's got a D and is retaking. One thing I've observed is that a good number of students who do systematic retakes still do worse on cumulative exams like midterms and finals. I have one recent example that stands out in my mind of a student who usually got D's and F's, then would study like crazy, do corrections, go over their last test and corrections right before the retake, and get high B's or even A-'s. Kudos for persistence and effort. The problem is that the grade on the final was an F. Final grade in the class was something like a B-. Did the student master the material at the B- level? Likely not. That matters for classes in which you expect the grade to reflect preparedness for the next level up.

If only this kid could grasp that "study like crazy up front" means no need for a retake...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate this new policy. A cap of 90% would be much better. This is going to be more work for teachers as kids who gets A minuses now and call it a day will try to retest each time to get the max points. It will add stress to those kids too by trying to be perfectionist about it.

I teach at a school that already has the 100% retake policy. Some teachers have 2/3 or more of their students retaking, with the corresponding increase in grading workload. The other side effect is that between that and the 50% quarterly minimum, overall grades are much higher and mean a lot less than they used to.

How does the grade mean less if that is the grade they got? They retook a different test after remediation and with time better understood the material. That is an earned grade. Way more earned than a curve, which ALL AP classes do.

I think that's true if the retake was a one off, meaning for instance that a student who generally gets B's got a D and is retaking. One thing I've observed is that a good number of students who do systematic retakes still do worse on cumulative exams like midterms and finals. I have one recent example that stands out in my mind of a student who usually got D's and F's, then would study like crazy, do corrections, go over their last test and corrections right before the retake, and get high B's or even A-'s. Kudos for persistence and effort. The problem is that the grade on the final was an F. Final grade in the class was something like a B-. Did the student master the material at the B- level? Likely not. That matters for classes in which you expect the grade to reflect preparedness for the next level up.

If only this kid could grasp that "study like crazy up front" means no need for a retake...

Well, that's part of the problem with this policy, isn't it? If you know you effectively get two shots with zero penalty, there's not much of an incentive to take the first one too seriously. It's not infrequent to hear a student tell his/her friend two seats over right before a test "I didn't study" or "I'm not ready" and "I'll just do the retake."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids who actually need the retakes almost never take them. They should put a limit on who can retake a test (eg, c or lower).

Nah. If a kid wants to make sure he gets an A in the class instead of a B, nothing wrong with that at all.

Too bad this new grading policy wont be enforced for all Fairfax high schools. Apparently equity only matters if you have a principal who cares about their students more than their own careers. Why is the school board and administration allowing this to happen?

Where does it say this policy will not take place at all high schools? It looks like this is a new policy to standardize all the high schools since they currently all have different policies.

I do wonder how this will affect the schools using the SBG method though.

This won’t apply to schools with SBG. There are no retakes. New grades can replace old ones, but not on the same material. Supposedly on the same “skills.” It is a hot mess and everyone knows it, otherwise the new grading policy would be SBG rather than something new. It is unfortunate that kids at Madison and Herndon have a totally separate grading policy.

Wrong. It applies to all schools, inc, JMHS and Herndon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids who actually need the retakes almost never take them. They should put a limit on who can retake a test (eg, c or lower).

Nah. If a kid wants to make sure he gets an A in the class instead of a B, nothing wrong with that at all.

Too bad this new grading policy wont be enforced for all Fairfax high schools. Apparently equity only matters if you have a principal who cares about their students more than their own careers. Why is the school board and administration allowing this to happen?

Where does it say this policy will not take place at all high schools? It looks like this is a new policy to standardize all the high schools since they currently all have different policies.

I do wonder how this will affect the schools using the SBG method though.

This won’t apply to schools with SBG. There are no retakes. New grades can replace old ones, but not on the same material. Supposedly on the same “skills.” It is a hot mess and everyone knows it, otherwise the new grading policy would be SBG rather than something new. It is unfortunate that kids at Madison and Herndon have a totally separate grading policy.

Wrong. It applies to all schools, inc, JMHS and Herndon.

This is just not true. The original email said they would be pausing SBG roll out to new schools, not stopping them at JMHS and Herndon. The principal may claim that SBG meets the criteria, when it does not. Because the “retakes” are not that, they actually count and if you score lower (which happens all the time) then you are out of luck. Stuck with original low grade and now another low grade. For every other school, the retake will only count if it is higher than the existing grade. I hope Madison parents wake up. Because the GPAs of every other kid are going to be going up without Madison and Herndon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate this new policy. A cap of 90% would be much better. This is going to be more work for teachers as kids who gets A minuses now and call it a day will try to retest each time to get the max points. It will add stress to those kids too by trying to be perfectionist about it.

I teach at a school that already has the 100% retake policy. Some teachers have 2/3 or more of their students retaking, with the corresponding increase in grading workload. The other side effect is that between that and the 50% quarterly minimum, overall grades are much higher and mean a lot less than they used to.

How does the grade mean less if that is the grade they got? They retook a different test after remediation and with time better understood the material. That is an earned grade. Way more earned than a curve, which ALL AP classes do.

I think that's true if the retake was a one off, meaning for instance that a student who generally gets B's got a D and is retaking. One thing I've observed is that a good number of students who do systematic retakes still do worse on cumulative exams like midterms and finals. I have one recent example that stands out in my mind of a student who usually got D's and F's, then would study like crazy, do corrections, go over their last test and corrections right before the retake, and get high B's or even A-'s. Kudos for persistence and effort. The problem is that the grade on the final was an F. Final grade in the class was something like a B-. Did the student master the material at the B- level? Likely not. That matters for classes in which you expect the grade to reflect preparedness for the next level up.

I don't know in classes where retakes were allowed my kid did systematic retakes. Her teachers would try to talk her out of it but she'd point to the syllabus. In one class she could retake any grade so she always retook any grade below a 95. Her thought process was to front load grades in case something happened in Q3 or Q4 that caused her to falter. In classes where a retake was only allowed below 80 she retook an exam twice. She rarely scores below a 90, let alone below 80 (exception being AP Chem final) but she faltered in that class twice and used the policy. Had she needed to do it X times, she would have. She got a 98 on the final in that class.

And she would study her ass off because she did not want to, or like to, do retakes. She'd just do it because her grade was eh (below 95) and she could so she didn't put off studying the first time. She also scored well on her final exams so maybe she is an outlier, but I don't know. In AP Chemistry the teacher said the highest grade on the final was a C (my kid included) and instead of curving the final she gave EVERYONE a chance to retake the final if they wanted (different test) after 2 days of remediation. My daughter said only 3 kids in her class chose to. She got an A- on the retake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids who actually need the retakes almost never take them. They should put a limit on who can retake a test (eg, c or lower).

Nah. If a kid wants to make sure he gets an A in the class instead of a B, nothing wrong with that at all.

Too bad this new grading policy wont be enforced for all Fairfax high schools. Apparently equity only matters if you have a principal who cares about their students more than their own careers. Why is the school board and administration allowing this to happen?

Where does it say this policy will not take place at all high schools? It looks like this is a new policy to standardize all the high schools since they currently all have different policies.

I do wonder how this will affect the schools using the SBG method though.

This won’t apply to schools with SBG. There are no retakes. New grades can replace old ones, but not on the same material. Supposedly on the same “skills.” It is a hot mess and everyone knows it, otherwise the new grading policy would be SBG rather than something new. It is unfortunate that kids at Madison and Herndon have a totally separate grading policy.

Wrong. It applies to all schools, inc, JMHS and Herndon.

This is just not true. The original email said they would be pausing SBG roll out to new schools, not stopping them at JMHS and Herndon. The principal may claim that SBG meets the criteria, when it does not. Because the “retakes” are not that, they actually count and if you score lower (which happens all the time) then you are out of luck. Stuck with original low grade and now another low grade. For every other school, the retake will only count if it is higher than the existing grade. I hope Madison parents wake up. Because the GPAs of every other kid are going to be going up without Madison and Herndon.

You are wrong. The new grading policy applies to all fcps HSs.

- teacher

[Anonymous]

Thank you,teacher, for that clarification. But if she’s wrong it’s only because the email that Presidio sent out was unclear about what would happen to the schools that already have SBG. Just saying there is a pause in rolling it out left the parents of those schools wondering. And we have not yet had clear communication about what is happening outside of hearing it from teachers here.

[Anonymous]

If a student retakes, and scores lower than on the initial test, which grade counts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you,teacher, for that clarification. But if she’s wrong it’s only because the email that Presidio sent out was unclear about what would happen to the schools that already have SBG. Just saying there is a pause in rolling it out left the parents of those schools wondering. And we have not yet had clear communication about what is happening outside of hearing it from teachers here.

It did note that it was a uniform policy. I understand it also referenced SBG, but the policy itself applies throughout the whole county.

[Anonymous]

I saw it first in the Washington Post but it is here as well under 2024-45 updates: https://www.fcps.edu/academics/grading-and-reporting/secondary

[Anonymous]

I think this will make many kids go: let me give the test a shot without studying and see if I can get a score that I can live with. Then if it is within a couple of points close to what they want, they would give up on make up because they realize now they have to study the test just for a couple of points.

This might end up hurting the kids even more. When you suddenly remove the incentive to study for tests the first time, you have more students who would not study for tests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this will make many kids go: let me give the test a shot without studying and see if I can get a score that I can live with. Then if it is within a couple of points close to what they want, they would give up on make up because they realize now they have to study the test just for a couple of points.

This might end up hurting the kids even more. When you suddenly remove the incentive to study for tests the first time, you have more students who would not study for tests.

We’ve had this policy all year and this was not the case in our house. It takes a lot of time to retake- remediation and then the retake during advisory time or after school. Many retakes take up a lot of time and my kid was very happy when he got an A and didn’t have to retake so he studied. Honestly, he only got a higher score on the retake about half the time so while I am glad they have retakes it didn’t change his attitude and sometimes didn’t improve his grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids who actually need the retakes almost never take them. They should put a limit on who can retake a test (eg, c or lower).

Nah. If a kid wants to make sure he gets an A in the class instead of a B, nothing wrong with that at all.

Too bad this new grading policy wont be enforced for all Fairfax high schools. Apparently equity only matters if you have a principal who cares about their students more than their own careers. Why is the school board and administration allowing this to happen?

Where does it say this policy will not take place at all high schools? It looks like this is a new policy to standardize all the high schools since they currently all have different policies.

I do wonder how this will affect the schools using the SBG method though.

This won’t apply to schools with SBG. There are no retakes. New grades can replace old ones, but not on the same material. Supposedly on the same “skills.” It is a hot mess and everyone knows it, otherwise the new grading policy would be SBG rather than something new. It is unfortunate that kids at Madison and Herndon have a totally separate grading policy.

Wrong. It applies to all schools, inc, JMHS and Herndon.

This is just not true. The original email said they would be pausing SBG roll out to new schools, not stopping them at JMHS and Herndon. The principal may claim that SBG meets the criteria, when it does not. Because the “retakes” are not that, they actually count and if you score lower (which happens all the time) then you are out of luck. Stuck with original low grade and now another low grade. For every other school, the retake will only count if it is higher than the existing grade. I hope Madison parents wake up. Because the GPAs of every other kid are going to be going up without Madison and Herndon.

You are wrong. The new grading policy applies to all fcps HSs.

- teacher

What school are you from? I’m not sure how a teacher from a school not at Madison is going to know what is going on at the school. The last email said the leadership team would be meeting to see how to address SBG in the context of the new guidance. I simply do not trust the administration not to play games with claiming that SBG meets these guidelines. I very much hope you are right though and that this means SBG is somehow disappearing.