Unreasonable teachers

[Anonymous]

Never disappoint, DCUM. We seem to start a thread beating up on teachers every single day now.

OP, how do you know what the class grades are? Have you queried the entire class?

I ask because I’ve had this question posed to me. A parent demanded to know why my class was so challenging and nobody could get an A. Almost half the students at the time had As.

Students’ perspectives aren’t always accurate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s tough when teachers use AP multiple choice questions and base their grade on the percentage correct. In order to get a 5 you don’t need to get 90% correct.

So for example APUSH, 60-65 percent will have you most likely passing with a 3 on the actual AP Test. 70 percent is 4 territory. 80 percent will get you a 5. It is really rare to get 100% on any AP test. But if teachers give tests from released questions they have access to and use a traditional grading scales, students find getting A’s challenging.

I do this. But then I curve grades. In my AP course a 50% in may is generally a 3 on the exam, so I curve test scores so that 50% becomes a C-, 65% becomes a B-, and an 80% becomes an A-. That is a smidge tougher than college board's scoring (it's pretty close to 50 (3)/60 (4)/ 75 (5) in reality) but I figure my unit tests on a small chunk of limited standards are easier than the test in May with a year's worth of material and a much longer block of time.

The reality is that at the beginning of the year kids don't perform at a "5" level. I am grading on an AP rubric, giving timely feedback, lots of practice, lots of opportunities to clarify, but it takes a couple of units to understand the AP way of responding to FRQs. By November/December I've got them trained and I usually suggest saving retakes on FRQs until then. It's built in spiral review to study for unit 1/2/3 in December, and the content will feel easier at that point anyway.

By May, my gradebook will be 80% As and Bs, 15% Cs, and 1 or 2 Ds. Right now, with 1 test on the books, it's 30% Ds and I have a couple of Fs. Some will drop when they realize the class is hard, but most will rise to the challenge and improve.

Obviously some of my colleagues are lazy (sorry), but some of us are legitimately training your children to perform at a higher level and they just aren't there yet.

If that’s your process then why not be transparent to parents and more importantly, the students about it? It just causes unnecessary anxiety and stress. I think sometimes students just need to understand that they’ll be ok if they keep putting in the work.

To be clear, my DC doesn’t find the material particularly difficult and does know it well. If it were a multiple choice test for example, they’d have 100%. It’s just they don’t understand the subjective grading that dings them for really small things. Meanwhile their peers are breezing thru the same class with other teachers and a fraction of the work.

This teacher seems transparent, probably not the one OP is referring to.

OP here. I appreciate this teacher’s perspective, we just haven’t received that level of transparency and coupled with other AP teachers not being so harsh on the grading, it is easily misunderstood by students. Thus the mad rush by students requesting to switch out or drop down. This was not even brought up at BTSN so why would any of us know what’s standard AP grading practice and not? Is it truly a style of grading that’s recommended by the AP Board or a preference of the teacher? Why then aren’t all the teachers following protocol? I appreciate the openness of the teachers on here but am left wondering if that’s truly the case for my DS’s class.

I think many teachers are in their own echo chamber and do not realize the impact of their style has on their students. When an equivalent class with another teacher does not do this, it begs the question why would a harsh teacher choose to do this. I think transparency from the start would go a long way in calming students stress levels and foster better relations between parents and teachers to help kids. Just be honest and transparent in your system and let students know why you choose to be tough grader vs. the teacher of the same class that chooses a more reasonable path.

Tough grader could equal the good grader. Reasonable could equal lenient with no standards.

Not sure I follow. At the end of the day, the tough grader’s grade will be stacked up against the reasonable grader’s grade on a college app and the kid who worked harder and maybe learned more will look worse on paper. Our AP teacher needs to strike that balance otherwise they are doing a disservice to hard working kids for no reason other than they think they are being tough for the right reasons. You’re just screwing them over

Honestly, teachers do not care if they are unfairly giving your kid an advantage or disadvantage! They see wealthy Asian or white kids and they do not give one hoot which ones goes to T10, T30 or T50. If they are younger they probably went to a third tier state school and barely kept a 3.0 average. They resent the high score grinders and kids killing themselves to get into top schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never disappoint, DCUM. We seem to start a thread beating up on teachers every single day now.

OP, how do you know what the class grades are? Have you queried the entire class?

I ask because I’ve had this question posed to me. A parent demanded to know why my class was so challenging and nobody could get an A. Almost half the students at the time had As.

Students’ perspectives aren’t always accurate.

It’s not my intention to beat up on teachers but to shine a light on a real problem that many students are dealing with. Believe it or not, students who’ve known each other since elementary school talk pretty openly across the board about their grades. Moreover the teacher herself indicated nobody got above a certain grade. Meanwhile their peers in other classes are acing the same tests.

Nobody likes inequitable circumstances. If all the AP teachers want to be tough on grading together then I could roll with that, but that’s not the case. There is simply a huge discrepancy in grading systems employed at the same school for the same class and it’s a real problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s tough when teachers use AP multiple choice questions and base their grade on the percentage correct. In order to get a 5 you don’t need to get 90% correct.

So for example APUSH, 60-65 percent will have you most likely passing with a 3 on the actual AP Test. 70 percent is 4 territory. 80 percent will get you a 5. It is really rare to get 100% on any AP test. But if teachers give tests from released questions they have access to and use a traditional grading scales, students find getting A’s challenging.

I do this. But then I curve grades. In my AP course a 50% in may is generally a 3 on the exam, so I curve test scores so that 50% becomes a C-, 65% becomes a B-, and an 80% becomes an A-. That is a smidge tougher than college board's scoring (it's pretty close to 50 (3)/60 (4)/ 75 (5) in reality) but I figure my unit tests on a small chunk of limited standards are easier than the test in May with a year's worth of material and a much longer block of time.

The reality is that at the beginning of the year kids don't perform at a "5" level. I am grading on an AP rubric, giving timely feedback, lots of practice, lots of opportunities to clarify, but it takes a couple of units to understand the AP way of responding to FRQs. By November/December I've got them trained and I usually suggest saving retakes on FRQs until then. It's built in spiral review to study for unit 1/2/3 in December, and the content will feel easier at that point anyway.

By May, my gradebook will be 80% As and Bs, 15% Cs, and 1 or 2 Ds. Right now, with 1 test on the books, it's 30% Ds and I have a couple of Fs. Some will drop when they realize the class is hard, but most will rise to the challenge and improve.

Obviously some of my colleagues are lazy (sorry), but some of us are legitimately training your children to perform at a higher level and they just aren't there yet.

If that’s your process then why not be transparent to parents and more importantly, the students about it? It just causes unnecessary anxiety and stress. I think sometimes students just need to understand that they’ll be ok if they keep putting in the work.

To be clear, my DC doesn’t find the material particularly difficult and does know it well. If it were a multiple choice test for example, they’d have 100%. It’s just they don’t understand the subjective grading that dings them for really small things. Meanwhile their peers are breezing thru the same class with other teachers and a fraction of the work.

This teacher seems transparent, probably not the one OP is referring to.

OP here. I appreciate this teacher’s perspective, we just haven’t received that level of transparency and coupled with other AP teachers not being so harsh on the grading, it is easily misunderstood by students. Thus the mad rush by students requesting to switch out or drop down. This was not even brought up at BTSN so why would any of us know what’s standard AP grading practice and not? Is it truly a style of grading that’s recommended by the AP Board or a preference of the teacher? Why then aren’t all the teachers following protocol? I appreciate the openness of the teachers on here but am left wondering if that’s truly the case for my DS’s class.

I think many teachers are in their own echo chamber and do not realize the impact of their style has on their students. When an equivalent class with another teacher does not do this, it begs the question why would a harsh teacher choose to do this. I think transparency from the start would go a long way in calming students stress levels and foster better relations between parents and teachers to help kids. Just be honest and transparent in your system and let students know why you choose to be tough grader vs. the teacher of the same class that chooses a more reasonable path.

Tough grader could equal the good grader. Reasonable could equal lenient with no standards.

Not sure I follow. At the end of the day, the tough grader’s grade will be stacked up against the reasonable grader’s grade on a college app and the kid who worked harder and maybe learned more will look worse on paper. Our AP teacher needs to strike that balance otherwise they are doing a disservice to hard working kids for no reason other than they think they are being tough for the right reasons. You’re just screwing them over

Honestly, teachers do not care if they are unfairly giving your kid an advantage or disadvantage! They see wealthy Asian or white kids and they do not give one hoot which ones goes to T10, T30 or T50. If they are younger they probably went to a third tier state school and barely kept a 3.0 average. They resent the high score grinders and kids killing themselves to get into top schools.

And here’s why I don’t like these threads. OP has a question that can’t actually be answered here. Logically, OP already knows to reach out to the school.

So all this did was open up an opportunity for posters to slam teachers, as if there isn’t enough of that on this site.

And the bad teachers don’t care. They really don’t. The good teachers will take nonsense like the post above personally.

And the good teachers are the ones we should be trying to keep right now. Trust me when I say many of them are already looking for an exit from the profession. Why give more reasons?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s tough when teachers use AP multiple choice questions and base their grade on the percentage correct. In order to get a 5 you don’t need to get 90% correct.

So for example APUSH, 60-65 percent will have you most likely passing with a 3 on the actual AP Test. 70 percent is 4 territory. 80 percent will get you a 5. It is really rare to get 100% on any AP test. But if teachers give tests from released questions they have access to and use a traditional grading scales, students find getting A’s challenging.

I do this. But then I curve grades. In my AP course a 50% in may is generally a 3 on the exam, so I curve test scores so that 50% becomes a C-, 65% becomes a B-, and an 80% becomes an A-. That is a smidge tougher than college board's scoring (it's pretty close to 50 (3)/60 (4)/ 75 (5) in reality) but I figure my unit tests on a small chunk of limited standards are easier than the test in May with a year's worth of material and a much longer block of time.

The reality is that at the beginning of the year kids don't perform at a "5" level. I am grading on an AP rubric, giving timely feedback, lots of practice, lots of opportunities to clarify, but it takes a couple of units to understand the AP way of responding to FRQs. By November/December I've got them trained and I usually suggest saving retakes on FRQs until then. It's built in spiral review to study for unit 1/2/3 in December, and the content will feel easier at that point anyway.

By May, my gradebook will be 80% As and Bs, 15% Cs, and 1 or 2 Ds. Right now, with 1 test on the books, it's 30% Ds and I have a couple of Fs. Some will drop when they realize the class is hard, but most will rise to the challenge and improve.

Obviously some of my colleagues are lazy (sorry), but some of us are legitimately training your children to perform at a higher level and they just aren't there yet.

If that’s your process then why not be transparent to parents and more importantly, the students about it? It just causes unnecessary anxiety and stress. I think sometimes students just need to understand that they’ll be ok if they keep putting in the work.

To be clear, my DC doesn’t find the material particularly difficult and does know it well. If it were a multiple choice test for example, they’d have 100%. It’s just they don’t understand the subjective grading that dings them for really small things. Meanwhile their peers are breezing thru the same class with other teachers and a fraction of the work.

This teacher seems transparent, probably not the one OP is referring to.

OP here. I appreciate this teacher’s perspective, we just haven’t received that level of transparency and coupled with other AP teachers not being so harsh on the grading, it is easily misunderstood by students. Thus the mad rush by students requesting to switch out or drop down. This was not even brought up at BTSN so why would any of us know what’s standard AP grading practice and not? Is it truly a style of grading that’s recommended by the AP Board or a preference of the teacher? Why then aren’t all the teachers following protocol? I appreciate the openness of the teachers on here but am left wondering if that’s truly the case for my DS’s class.

I think many teachers are in their own echo chamber and do not realize the impact of their style has on their students. When an equivalent class with another teacher does not do this, it begs the question why would a harsh teacher choose to do this. I think transparency from the start would go a long way in calming students stress levels and foster better relations between parents and teachers to help kids. Just be honest and transparent in your system and let students know why you choose to be tough grader vs. the teacher of the same class that chooses a more reasonable path.

Tough grader could equal the good grader. Reasonable could equal lenient with no standards.

Not sure I follow. At the end of the day, the tough grader’s grade will be stacked up against the reasonable grader’s grade on a college app and the kid who worked harder and maybe learned more will look worse on paper. Our AP teacher needs to strike that balance otherwise they are doing a disservice to hard working kids for no reason other than they think they are being tough for the right reasons. You’re just screwing them over

Honestly, teachers do not care if they are unfairly giving your kid an advantage or disadvantage! They see wealthy Asian or white kids and they do not give one hoot which ones goes to T10, T30 or T50. If they are younger they probably went to a third tier state school and barely kept a 3.0 average. They resent the high score grinders and kids killing themselves to get into top schools.

And here’s why I don’t like these threads. OP has a question that can’t actually be answered here. Logically, OP already knows to reach out to the school.

So all this did was open up an opportunity for posters to slam teachers, as if there isn’t enough of that on this site.

And the bad teachers don’t care. They really don’t. The good teachers will take nonsense like the post above personally.

And the good teachers are the ones we should be trying to keep right now. Trust me when I say many of them are already looking for an exit from the profession. Why give more reasons?

In over 16 years with FCPS, I’ve never had a school actually address any issue with real solutions. Let’s be honest, FCPS admins give a lot of lip service and no accountability or solutions. My hope is that some “kind” teachers read the post and it resonates or gives a perspective they maybe never considered. Even better if a dept head or principal consider it. If for nothing else then just for the well being of students who are struggling with unfair circumstances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s tough when teachers use AP multiple choice questions and base their grade on the percentage correct. In order to get a 5 you don’t need to get 90% correct.

So for example APUSH, 60-65 percent will have you most likely passing with a 3 on the actual AP Test. 70 percent is 4 territory. 80 percent will get you a 5. It is really rare to get 100% on any AP test. But if teachers give tests from released questions they have access to and use a traditional grading scales, students find getting A’s challenging.

I do this. But then I curve grades. In my AP course a 50% in may is generally a 3 on the exam, so I curve test scores so that 50% becomes a C-, 65% becomes a B-, and an 80% becomes an A-. That is a smidge tougher than college board's scoring (it's pretty close to 50 (3)/60 (4)/ 75 (5) in reality) but I figure my unit tests on a small chunk of limited standards are easier than the test in May with a year's worth of material and a much longer block of time.

The reality is that at the beginning of the year kids don't perform at a "5" level. I am grading on an AP rubric, giving timely feedback, lots of practice, lots of opportunities to clarify, but it takes a couple of units to understand the AP way of responding to FRQs. By November/December I've got them trained and I usually suggest saving retakes on FRQs until then. It's built in spiral review to study for unit 1/2/3 in December, and the content will feel easier at that point anyway.

By May, my gradebook will be 80% As and Bs, 15% Cs, and 1 or 2 Ds. Right now, with 1 test on the books, it's 30% Ds and I have a couple of Fs. Some will drop when they realize the class is hard, but most will rise to the challenge and improve.

Obviously some of my colleagues are lazy (sorry), but some of us are legitimately training your children to perform at a higher level and they just aren't there yet.

If that’s your process then why not be transparent to parents and more importantly, the students about it? It just causes unnecessary anxiety and stress. I think sometimes students just need to understand that they’ll be ok if they keep putting in the work.

To be clear, my DC doesn’t find the material particularly difficult and does know it well. If it were a multiple choice test for example, they’d have 100%. It’s just they don’t understand the subjective grading that dings them for really small things. Meanwhile their peers are breezing thru the same class with other teachers and a fraction of the work.

This teacher seems transparent, probably not the one OP is referring to.

OP here. I appreciate this teacher’s perspective, we just haven’t received that level of transparency and coupled with other AP teachers not being so harsh on the grading, it is easily misunderstood by students. Thus the mad rush by students requesting to switch out or drop down. This was not even brought up at BTSN so why would any of us know what’s standard AP grading practice and not? Is it truly a style of grading that’s recommended by the AP Board or a preference of the teacher? Why then aren’t all the teachers following protocol? I appreciate the openness of the teachers on here but am left wondering if that’s truly the case for my DS’s class.

I think many teachers are in their own echo chamber and do not realize the impact of their style has on their students. When an equivalent class with another teacher does not do this, it begs the question why would a harsh teacher choose to do this. I think transparency from the start would go a long way in calming students stress levels and foster better relations between parents and teachers to help kids. Just be honest and transparent in your system and let students know why you choose to be tough grader vs. the teacher of the same class that chooses a more reasonable path.

Tough grader could equal the good grader. Reasonable could equal lenient with no standards.

Not sure I follow. At the end of the day, the tough grader’s grade will be stacked up against the reasonable grader’s grade on a college app and the kid who worked harder and maybe learned more will look worse on paper. Our AP teacher needs to strike that balance otherwise they are doing a disservice to hard working kids for no reason other than they think they are being tough for the right reasons. You’re just screwing them over

Honestly, teachers do not care if they are unfairly giving your kid an advantage or disadvantage! They see wealthy Asian or white kids and they do not give one hoot which ones goes to T10, T30 or T50. If they are younger they probably went to a third tier state school and barely kept a 3.0 average. They resent the high score grinders and kids killing themselves to get into top schools.

And here’s why I don’t like these threads. OP has a question that can’t actually be answered here. Logically, OP already knows to reach out to the school.

So all this did was open up an opportunity for posters to slam teachers, as if there isn’t enough of that on this site.

And the bad teachers don’t care. They really don’t. The good teachers will take nonsense like the post above personally.

And the good teachers are the ones we should be trying to keep right now. Trust me when I say many of them are already looking for an exit from the profession. Why give more reasons?

In over 16 years with FCPS, I’ve never had a school actually address any issue with real solutions. Let’s be honest, FCPS admins give a lot of lip service and no accountability or solutions. My hope is that some “kind” teachers read the post and it resonates or gives a perspective they maybe never considered. Even better if a dept head or principal consider it. If for nothing else then just for the well being of students who are struggling with unfair circumstances.

Just speak to the school. Seriously.

I’m one of those “kind” teachers, but my ability to weather insults is wearing thin. Hearing regularly what the collective “teachers” are doing wrong as I sacrifice so much to do things right? It’s demoralizing.

The answer is to reach out to your school. That’s where the problem is, so that’s where the solution is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s tough when teachers use AP multiple choice questions and base their grade on the percentage correct. In order to get a 5 you don’t need to get 90% correct.

So for example APUSH, 60-65 percent will have you most likely passing with a 3 on the actual AP Test. 70 percent is 4 territory. 80 percent will get you a 5. It is really rare to get 100% on any AP test. But if teachers give tests from released questions they have access to and use a traditional grading scales, students find getting A’s challenging.

I do this. But then I curve grades. In my AP course a 50% in may is generally a 3 on the exam, so I curve test scores so that 50% becomes a C-, 65% becomes a B-, and an 80% becomes an A-. That is a smidge tougher than college board's scoring (it's pretty close to 50 (3)/60 (4)/ 75 (5) in reality) but I figure my unit tests on a small chunk of limited standards are easier than the test in May with a year's worth of material and a much longer block of time.

The reality is that at the beginning of the year kids don't perform at a "5" level. I am grading on an AP rubric, giving timely feedback, lots of practice, lots of opportunities to clarify, but it takes a couple of units to understand the AP way of responding to FRQs. By November/December I've got them trained and I usually suggest saving retakes on FRQs until then. It's built in spiral review to study for unit 1/2/3 in December, and the content will feel easier at that point anyway.

By May, my gradebook will be 80% As and Bs, 15% Cs, and 1 or 2 Ds. Right now, with 1 test on the books, it's 30% Ds and I have a couple of Fs. Some will drop when they realize the class is hard, but most will rise to the challenge and improve.

Obviously some of my colleagues are lazy (sorry), but some of us are legitimately training your children to perform at a higher level and they just aren't there yet.

If that’s your process then why not be transparent to parents and more importantly, the students about it? It just causes unnecessary anxiety and stress. I think sometimes students just need to understand that they’ll be ok if they keep putting in the work.

To be clear, my DC doesn’t find the material particularly difficult and does know it well. If it were a multiple choice test for example, they’d have 100%. It’s just they don’t understand the subjective grading that dings them for really small things. Meanwhile their peers are breezing thru the same class with other teachers and a fraction of the work.

This teacher seems transparent, probably not the one OP is referring to.

OP here. I appreciate this teacher’s perspective, we just haven’t received that level of transparency and coupled with other AP teachers not being so harsh on the grading, it is easily misunderstood by students. Thus the mad rush by students requesting to switch out or drop down. This was not even brought up at BTSN so why would any of us know what’s standard AP grading practice and not? Is it truly a style of grading that’s recommended by the AP Board or a preference of the teacher? Why then aren’t all the teachers following protocol? I appreciate the openness of the teachers on here but am left wondering if that’s truly the case for my DS’s class.

I think many teachers are in their own echo chamber and do not realize the impact of their style has on their students. When an equivalent class with another teacher does not do this, it begs the question why would a harsh teacher choose to do this. I think transparency from the start would go a long way in calming students stress levels and foster better relations between parents and teachers to help kids. Just be honest and transparent in your system and let students know why you choose to be tough grader vs. the teacher of the same class that chooses a more reasonable path.

Tough grader could equal the good grader. Reasonable could equal lenient with no standards.

Not sure I follow. At the end of the day, the tough grader’s grade will be stacked up against the reasonable grader’s grade on a college app and the kid who worked harder and maybe learned more will look worse on paper. Our AP teacher needs to strike that balance otherwise they are doing a disservice to hard working kids for no reason other than they think they are being tough for the right reasons. You’re just screwing them over

Honestly, teachers do not care if they are unfairly giving your kid an advantage or disadvantage! They see wealthy Asian or white kids and they do not give one hoot which ones goes to T10, T30 or T50. If they are younger they probably went to a third tier state school and barely kept a 3.0 average. They resent the high score grinders and kids killing themselves to get into top schools.

And here’s why I don’t like these threads. OP has a question that can’t actually be answered here. Logically, OP already knows to reach out to the school.

So all this did was open up an opportunity for posters to slam teachers, as if there isn’t enough of that on this site.

And the bad teachers don’t care. They really don’t. The good teachers will take nonsense like the post above personally.

And the good teachers are the ones we should be trying to keep right now. Trust me when I say many of them are already looking for an exit from the profession. Why give more reasons?

In over 16 years with FCPS, I’ve never had a school actually address any issue with real solutions. Let’s be honest, FCPS admins give a lot of lip service and no accountability or solutions. My hope is that some “kind” teachers read the post and it resonates or gives a perspective they maybe never considered. Even better if a dept head or principal consider it. If for nothing else then just for the well being of students who are struggling with unfair circumstances.

Just speak to the school. Seriously.

I’m one of those “kind” teachers, but my ability to weather insults is wearing thin. Hearing regularly what the collective “teachers” are doing wrong as I sacrifice so much to do things right? It’s demoralizing.

The answer is to reach out to your school. That’s where the problem is, so that’s where the solution is.

What solution will the school come up with? I’m curious how you think this ends. Basically my child getting blacklisted for speaking out?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I fully agree that there needs to be some coordination between AP teachers (for the same subject). My daughter's AP Lang teacher recently praised a student (note my kid) who wrote an exemplary passage: "This is exactly the sort of response I was looking for. I'll be posting this for others to use as an example going forward. Congrats, David. Keep it up--guys, this is C+/B- work. Well done". Like WTF? "Exactly what she was looking for" and it's not an A? This is a seasoned teacher with more than 15 years at this HS teaching in the English department. She knows how much pressure these Juniors are under to keep up their GPAs, and how much a B or a C in a core class could hurt them. I'm all for tough grading but this is extreme.

AP Teacher from before.

That's weird. That is not at all what I do in my room. I show them model examples of exactly what I expect, and if they can recreate that level of response in September they get A's. Some can. Many take 2-3 units before they finally get it. The number of kids whose unit 1 tests get annotated with, "Nice information, but you didn't answer the question that was asked" is high at the beginning of the year. By November they are all reading carefully and making sure their responses truly answer the prompt in full.

So in skills based the students would end with A if master it, but won’t kids under rolling or quarter based not get than B at best for year bc so many Lowe grades first half?

My course has 9 units. That means 9 tests, 12-15 quizzes, a zillion formative assignments done in class. Getting a D on the first quiz or test, retaking it a month later and getting an A or B, or even ignoring it and getting As going forward isn’t going to make their grade for the year a B. They’ll end up with an A if they figure it out.

It’s not “so many low grades the first half”. It’s the first unit or two when they literally are answering things wrong because they don’t read carefully or don’t understand how to fully answer yet because my examples and feedback haven’t sunk in. Once they do, they retake it or start performing better and they’re fine.

But remember even though I have 30% with Ds early on, I still have 60% with As and Bs after the first test. While one kid and their friends might be saying it’s so hard, their classmates are able to master it early. If truly no one had an A or B at the end of 1st quarter, my admin team would be all over that gradebook trying to figure out what that teacher was going wrong. The reality is probably 50% have As and Bs instead of the typical 90%.