An easy A in FCPS?
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Anonymous
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What in the world??? Does FCPS do this? I hope not. My kids are in elementary in FCPS so I'm not sure how HS grades are done. Just read this insanity about MoCo and was curious.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/an-easy-a-under-new-rules-these-high-school-students-could-see-grades-soar/2016/05/11/6f3e2a5a-16f2-11e6-9e16-2e5a123aac62_story.html |
Anonymous
| When did this become so complicated? Your final grade used to be an average of all your previous grades when grades were numbered. |
Anonymous
| Does FCPS do that? Average your grades? Kids still take finals in FCPS too, right? |
Anonymous
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FCPS high schools have had wildly different grade distributions - from each other. Our HS routinely awarded only 3% of students straight A's (unweighted) for any given quarter. Quarter after quarter, year and year. It was easy to track since they published the the All A Honor Roll. Very disheartening since just down the road the grade distribution was vastly different - much greater percentage of A's (without as high a level of SAT scores, college attendance, AP class participation - just not as high of an academic profile and yet the unweighted grade bell curve is vastly different)
FCPS has got to normalize their grading system. Oh, but that would mean their achievement gap would be in the spotlight. I feel for their dilemma. |
Anonymous
| Sigh... Another sad day in MCPS. Maybe they think this will close the achievement gap. |
Anonymous
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As far as I know, FCPS grades are based on a student's actual grades! Nothing about trends, no rounding up, etc., as described in the linked article. While the students receive a letter grade each quarter on the report card, the exact grade (%) is recorded in the grade book (I think one of my kids go stuck with an 89.44 as a final grade). Teachers seem to have some leeway in how much weight to give to a midterm and final, but that's it.
There is a lot of variation in how individual teachers actually grade (the worst is example was my DC's 9th grade Spanish teacher - he didn't assign homework, use any written materials, or even make the students do the PALS most quarters. Grades were based on how much he liked you. My DC didn't even take a PALS the second half of the year and she got an A in the class. She had to switch to a different language, though, since she didn't learn Spanish.) Some accept late work, some don't. Some allow retakes, some don't, etc. Still, a formal system where your grade is based on something other than your grade seems absurd. |
Anonymous
Yes, for most classes the final counts for about 10% of the final grade. The quarters add up to the rest (2/9) except for Honor's sciences which have another 10% counted for the independent project (so quarters are 20% each). Some teachers grade on the straight average. Others grade on the trend (meaning if you got a C first quarter and then got a B then an A and an A, they might give you an A) - this is mainly the AP History teachers as they are trying to get the student learn how to write for history and they grade based on what they want to see by the end of the year. Some classes have their finals right after APs, some classes, like English, have a final essay or project in lieu of a final. Somee have the regular final on the last week of school- most of these are freshman and sophomore years. It all depends. |