Help me understand the logic behind Weighting All Tasks/Assessments so heavily

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So at the high school level, MCPS weights All Tasks/Assessments at 90% and Practice/Prep at 10%. Not sure if this applies at MS as well.

I understand the motive behind this is to reduce the impact and influence that homework has on a student's grade, as I understand some in MCPS have come to believe that requiring homework for all students is unfair and unequitable, since not all students have the stability and support at home to do homework daily.

But 90% vs 10% seems unreasonably weighted, because if you don't practice, how can you expect to do well on assessments?

And unfortunately, the message kids receive (sometimes from teachers themselves!!!) is that they don't really need to worry about missing or skipping practice/prep assignments "since it's only 10%" of their grade. And with the automatic 50% rule, not doing those homework assignments doesn't tank their grade like if they were getting 0s for missing those assignments.

Even if I were to buy into the premise that classwork and assessments matter more than homework, the current weights seem off and self-defeating, since consistent prep and practice is key to developing and demonstrating mastery on assessments. So why not do 80% All Tasks/Assessments and 20% Prep/Practice. Or why not 70/30 split?

Just looking for context and history here behind this decision and what evidence was used to decide on the 90/10 split.

Why ask why? Highly trained experts in education at the MCPS CO have made these decisions for you. I don't think it's something you can easily explain to those who don't possess advanced degrees in education but rest assured this is all for the best.

[Anonymous]

The practice/prep category is meaningless unless what you want to know is which homework your child turned in. Not did well on. Not completed. Not even tried at least 50% of. Just simply turned in.

All Tasks is where competency can be detected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That is how it works in most university level classes. Homework is essential to do, but worth a small percentage of grades. It makes sense to me, as tests actually measure a students ability. On homework, you expect the student gets some help.

Again, homework is not the only thing that falls under the prep/practice category. There is a good chunk of classwork (such as warm-ups) that also fall under this category.

Grades are supposed to be a measure of student understanding of content. Why should practice and preparation, even done in class, be part of the 90% category? We are grading knowledge, not behavior. In this age of everyone get a trophy, the idea that classwork is only worth doing if it “earns points” has crept into student (and parent) thinking, and it is a real problem. Students shouldn’t need an extrinsic motivation (like points) to do what they need to do to learn.

I don't agree. The soft skills of good attendance, meeting deadlines, etc should be part of the grade. There are very few students who can skip their classes and not do any outside of class preparation and still get a good grade.

Then you've proven that there is no need to grade them on their parents' parenting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That is how it works in most university level classes. Homework is essential to do, but worth a small percentage of grades. It makes sense to me, as tests actually measure a students ability. On homework, you expect the student gets some help.

Again, homework is not the only thing that falls under the prep/practice category. There is a good chunk of classwork (such as warm-ups) that also fall under this category.

Grades are supposed to be a measure of student understanding of content. Why should practice and preparation, even done in class, be part of the 90% category? We are grading knowledge, not behavior. In this age of everyone get a trophy, the idea that classwork is only worth doing if it “earns points” has crept into student (and parent) thinking, and it is a real problem. Students shouldn’t need an extrinsic motivation (like points) to do what they need to do to learn.

I don't agree. The soft skills of good attendance, meeting deadlines, etc should be part of the grade. There are very few students who can skip their classes and not do any outside of class preparation and still get a good grade.

Then you've proven that there is no need to grade them on their parents' parenting.

Yep, and the method employed by MCPS has a proven track record of success.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this is how a lot of college courses are graded, especially STEM related classes. may as well get them ready early

10% HW
90% tests/quizes/final

+1. I also disagree with the comment that MCPS is preparing the kids well. What matters most in universities / colleges are finals. Homework was never made important in a serious college. Too much cheating / plagiarism. Frats and Sororities all had stacks of prior Homework that the kids were copying. Typically Community Colleges or low-end schools weigh the homework higher than finals.

But, if the parents are all for it, so be it. Their kids will just get hammered.

Finals only matter in some universities/colleges and then only some classes. I had two university professors who told everyone their grade before finals and then let you choose if you wanted to sit for the final. The reason being that unless you were within 2-3 points of the next highest grade you weren’t likely to get a higher grade regardless of how you did on the final. However, doing bad could risk your current grade. Made for better classes because students worked hard all semester so as to not need to take the final.

I’m taking a course right now that was supposed to have 75% of the overall grade from two exams and a paper. The professor just canceled the final because “everyone is doing well and [she doesn’t] want to waste our time or [hers] on a cumulative test.” I understand, but it reweights the final paper considerably. We don’t even know any details about it yet so pretty much all of us are now more stressed than if we had the final.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this is how a lot of college courses are graded, especially STEM related classes. may as well get them ready early

10% HW
90% tests/quizes/final

+1. I also disagree with the comment that MCPS is preparing the kids well. What matters most in universities / colleges are finals. Homework was never made important in a serious college. Too much cheating / plagiarism. Frats and Sororities all had stacks of prior Homework that the kids were copying. Typically Community Colleges or low-end schools weigh the homework higher than finals.

But, if the parents are all for it, so be it. Their kids will just get hammered.

Finals only matter in some universities/colleges and then only some classes. I had two university professors who told everyone their grade before finals and then let you choose if you wanted to sit for the final. The reason being that unless you were within 2-3 points of the next highest grade you weren’t likely to get a higher grade regardless of how you did on the final. However, doing bad could risk your current grade. Made for better classes because students worked hard all semester so as to not need to take the final.

I’m taking a course right now that was supposed to have 75% of the overall grade from two exams and a paper. The professor just canceled the final because “everyone is doing well and [she doesn’t] want to waste our time or [hers] on a cumulative test.” I understand, but it reweights the final paper considerably. We don’t even know any details about it yet so pretty much all of us are now more stressed than if we had the final.

Prof is probably saying that you are all getting As, but I can see how the vagueness can trigger anxiety.

[Anonymous]

We just got some guidance on this from our middle school. It appears if an assignment is just not submitted by the deadline (say a research paper), it gets a zero. That deadline is 7 days after the assignment due date. So in theory, the 'all tasks' section could be less than 50%.

I think the real question is if the admin will back the teachers up when kids start failing, or if they ask teachers to make assignments easier so everyone passes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the other problems of the 90/10 split is that some classes end up having almost all assignments practice and just a few all tasks/assessments. If a math class does a ~weekly "exit ticket" that is classified as an assessment, that is great. There are enough grades in the book to cushion. If there are just 2-3 small assessments in a quarter and then 1-2 bigger county formatives, then being a little slower to pick up a new concept can suddenly derail a grade. Teachers that classify too much as practice/prep aren't ultimately doing a student any favors. I'd much prefer a 70/30 split or (similar to what we used to have) 10% homework/20-30%classwork or formative assignments/60-70% summatives or tests)

Now no more than 7 hw and 12 all task assignments are allowed at my school. I think there should be twice as much practice as assessment if the purpose of practice is preparation.

So it seems the way my kid's foreign language teacher is getting around it is to give the kids a very large packet (10-12 pages) at the beginning of the week, and telling them to split it up across the week. It's due the following Monday, and is graded for completeness as *one* of the 7 practice assignments. She then gives a quiz 2 days later that is basically on the same material as the 10 pages practice. So you can copy the hw, and get full points, but it's definitely in the student's interest to just do the hw sincerely since it preps them for the quiz.