Equity-grading/ SBG - all FCPS high schools? (or only some)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What a strange post, how does it negatively effect your child in any way?

DP -my kids and many other kids are being damaged by this grading policy. There are parents that know their kids aren’t doing much in class anymore along with lowered expectations of what kids are expected to do at school now. These parents are spending hours trying to teach them at home. Kids learned to be independent and accountable under the old system. SBG does not prepare kids for college or life.

My kid says school is less interesting with SBG - DC does not like seeing everything through the lens of skills, says rubrics are vague, and isn’t learning much.

You ask “what’s the negative impact?” Kids that have already experienced a learning loss during COVID are now experiencing another even more profound one because they are also not learning important skills of independence, resilience and accountability. I would say the only reason it’s not an even bigger disaster is that your average student at Madison doesn’t understand the grading system at all and continues to do the practice because they don’t realize it doesn’t count.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the parent of a rising 9th grader. The removal of older grades in SIS is one of those umbrella additions that really is not at the core of creating grades based on skills. Before parents and kids could see geades for practice quizzes first attempt and second attempt if a retake was taken for summatives and if your school followed FCPS's guidelines you knew a retake would only bring the summative grade up to an 80. You could follow every part of the learning and with retakes only earning a B there was no worry that a child would show up as a straight A student for something they were drugging with.

Now grades get replaced or aren't shown at all except the final best grade and there seems to be no limit to the top grade you can get with a retake. It's one of these umbrella inclusions that they somehow associate with SBG but really doesn't fit the original purpose of SBG which was to have more accurate skills grading.

This is a good thing, though. We want our children to master the material. That’s the point of school, not to create some bell curve of achievers and losers.

You’re missing the point. Kids are not mastering anything. For example, multiple choice test with 4 possible answers to each question. Retake the test a few times even with some new questions thrown in impossible not to get at or near the maximum retest grade. So even the poorest performers get a B without needed to learn, just retain a few answers for a short period of time and on to the next topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the parent of a rising 9th grader. The removal of older grades in SIS is one of those umbrella additions that really is not at the core of creating grades based on skills. Before parents and kids could see geades for practice quizzes first attempt and second attempt if a retake was taken for summatives and if your school followed FCPS's guidelines you knew a retake would only bring the summative grade up to an 80. You could follow every part of the learning and with retakes only earning a B there was no worry that a child would show up as a straight A student for something they were drugging with.

Now grades get replaced or aren't shown at all except the final best grade and there seems to be no limit to the top grade you can get with a retake. It's one of these umbrella inclusions that they somehow associate with SBG but really doesn't fit the original purpose of SBG which was to have more accurate skills grading.

This is a good thing, though. We want our children to master the material. That’s the point of school, not to create some bell curve of achievers and losers.

You’re missing the point. Kids are not mastering anything. For example, multiple choice test with 4 possible answers to each question. Retake the test a few times even with some new questions thrown in impossible not to get at or near the maximum retest grade. So even the poorest performers get a B without needed to learn, just retain a few answers for a short period of time and on to the next topic.

Is that what your kids are doing?

Because mine do take the time to look at what they got wrong and review the material.

[Anonymous]

People have skills on a bell curve. All different types of skills. We have professions for specialization. College is for specialization. You aren't going to be able to change human nature so we are all the same like robots.

The retakes and lower percentages of practice grades was to allow for mistakes to be made and to learn from them. Not to create equality but to make sure that kids could recover from setbacks. It was never meant to completely eliminate a bell curve.

In college, a professor will grade "on a curve" to make sure their students have a chance at success to pass and also grade themselves on their ability to teach the information to their students. They take the median grade and then grade up and down from there. They are not giving everyone the same grade. They are just helping kids from failing, meeting the kids where they are academically, and taking some of the responsibility of learning on their ability to teach.

Any grading policy needs to still have a bell curve because that's what grading measures. How can you have a policy that you say is more accurate and then having no match to reality?

The grading policy should also encourage kids to try again, not lose hope, challenge themselves, and practice concepts with diligence. This grading policy does not achieve these basic goals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a parent with a rising 9th grader, what is SBG? I've read through this thread and there are puzzle pieces missing.

At the most basic level it is grading by core skills to learn throughout the year and not by assignment. Think those skills you see on the elementary report cards that measure your child's skill growth across the year as in "computes numbers fluently and makes accurate assessments" instead of a singular grade for the Unit 5 algebra test. It's a little complex to compare this too because the Unit 5 test before SBG used to also be divided up into several sections if not by skills. A Unit 5 math test both before and after would have been and still is divided up into several grades, just now they are broken up by skill rather than type of problem such as short answer or essay or Unit 5.1 and 5.2 questions.

Because FCPS really made this change not to just better measure skill growth related to SOL passing, but also or instead to bring grades to a middle and reduce the achievement gap, there are a lot of other changes that were implemented and are now part of the SBG change but are peripheral to the main purpose of grading by skills rather than project or test. Homework is no longer assessed, or feedback given. This greatly changes the motivation of students if you have a child who needs regular feedback and who needs more carrots to complete practice work. Now many students come completely unprepared for class because they are only assessed on the summatives. Retakes are now teacher dependent rather than a guideline for the school to follow where any summative grade below an 80 can be retaken to achieve an 80, so if there is a type of problem in Unit 5.2 that your child doesn't understand related to a skill such as "computing numbers fluently" and they get a C on that skill for the Unit 5 summative, rather than retaking the unit 5 test to get an 80 and understand the content better, they will now have to wait until the Unit 6 test and try to compute better on that test and then if they do well on this test and get a B on that skill for unit 6, the old grade for that skill from Unit 5 will be replaced with a B despite never doing another Unit 5 problem. If it's a D on the Unit 6 test, then the C from the last test will just remain. Quizzes are optional grading measurements for teachers depending on the school, class and teacher. Some classes, kids are only assessed on the unit summative tests and no other work for the year. So, in addition to having changing summative grades, they only get graded on one summative test every month or so. Grades come in late for summatives because they are large tests, and you can be finding out that the grade for the summative completely changed your GPA with little time to correct or relearn information you didn't realize you didn't know from the old unit.

All of this helps to provide less work to the teacher. Oh, they say they have to enter more grades for each test and it's true they may now have five "skill" grades rather than 2 or 3 in the previous system, but it's just a larger breakdown of the same test into more sections while grading many fewer assignments. Kids have a hard time relating to the skills because there is nothing specific on their assignments that call out the skills being assessed so the skill breakdown is really for admin to see. They are the only ones that care that all of the SOL skills are being taught. From the student's perspective, they are getting graded on much fewer assignments/work and getting much less homework assigned and feedback on classwork and homework back to them. It may or may not help them to have grades related to skills, but what definitely doesn't help is to give them less feedback on work and less work to do overall.

FCPS also keeps going back and forth on whether zeros are part of this initiative. It's like a bill in congress where you think the change is about one main topic and then FCPS tries to tack on many other initiatives to have them fly under the radar under this umbrella change. So no one really knows all that SBG encompasses because FCPS keeps adding to the initiative.

I have 2 high achievers and one middle range kid who struggles.

Ironically, this standards based grading makes it far more difficult for my middle range kid to learn, retain, prepare and achieve academically. The good students are fine with whatever system they get.

I am sure that FCPS is going to find that this no accountability, subjective system is far worse for the students it is supposed to help, than the traditional system of clear expectations, high, concrete standards, and a simple, accountable grading system tgat makes sense to students and parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What a strange post, how does it negatively effect your child in any way?

DP -my kids and many other kids are being damaged by this grading policy. There are parents that know their kids aren’t doing much in class anymore along with lowered expectations of what kids are expected to do at school now. These parents are spending hours trying to teach them at home. Kids learned to be independent and accountable under the old system. SBG does not prepare kids for college or life.

My kid says school is less interesting with SBG - DC does not like seeing everything through the lens of skills, says rubrics are vague, and isn’t learning much.

You ask “what’s the negative impact?” Kids that have already experienced a learning loss during COVID are now experiencing another even more profound one because they are also not learning important skills of independence, resilience and accountability. I would say the only reason it’s not an even bigger disaster is that your average student at Madison doesn’t understand the grading system at all and continues to do the practice because they don’t realize it doesn’t count.

Enough COVID whining. If someone's kid isn't caught up by now, that's on the parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the parent of a rising 9th grader. The removal of older grades in SIS is one of those umbrella additions that really is not at the core of creating grades based on skills. Before parents and kids could see geades for practice quizzes first attempt and second attempt if a retake was taken for summatives and if your school followed FCPS's guidelines you knew a retake would only bring the summative grade up to an 80. You could follow every part of the learning and with retakes only earning a B there was no worry that a child would show up as a straight A student for something they were drugging with.

Now grades get replaced or aren't shown at all except the final best grade and there seems to be no limit to the top grade you can get with a retake. It's one of these umbrella inclusions that they somehow associate with SBG but really doesn't fit the original purpose of SBG which was to have more accurate skills grading.

This is a good thing, though. We want our children to master the material. That’s the point of school, not to create some bell curve of achievers and losers.

You’re missing the point. Kids are not mastering anything. For example, multiple choice test with 4 possible answers to each question. Retake the test a few times even with some new questions thrown in impossible not to get at or near the maximum retest grade. So even the poorest performers get a B without needed to learn, just retain a few answers for a short period of time and on to the next topic.

Is that what your kids are doing?

Because mine do take the time to look at what they got wrong and review the material.

+2. Not only that, my DC's teacher require test corrections to be made prior to taking the re-take. So that they know what htey missed and learn from it. This is in APUSH and AP Pre-calc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a parent with a rising 9th grader, what is SBG? I've read through this thread and there are puzzle pieces missing.

At the most basic level it is grading by core skills to learn throughout the year and not by assignment. Think those skills you see on the elementary report cards that measure your child's skill growth across the year as in "computes numbers fluently and makes accurate assessments" instead of a singular grade for the Unit 5 algebra test. It's a little complex to compare this too because the Unit 5 test before SBG used to also be divided up into several sections if not by skills. A Unit 5 math test both before and after would have been and still is divided up into several grades, just now they are broken up by skill rather than type of problem such as short answer or essay or Unit 5.1 and 5.2 questions.

Because FCPS really made this change not to just better measure skill growth related to SOL passing, but also or instead to bring grades to a middle and reduce the achievement gap, there are a lot of other changes that were implemented and are now part of the SBG change but are peripheral to the main purpose of grading by skills rather than project or test. Homework is no longer assessed, or feedback given. This greatly changes the motivation of students if you have a child who needs regular feedback and who needs more carrots to complete practice work. Now many students come completely unprepared for class because they are only assessed on the summatives. Retakes are now teacher dependent rather than a guideline for the school to follow where any summative grade below an 80 can be retaken to achieve an 80, so if there is a type of problem in Unit 5.2 that your child doesn't understand related to a skill such as "computing numbers fluently" and they get a C on that skill for the Unit 5 summative, rather than retaking the unit 5 test to get an 80 and understand the content better, they will now have to wait until the Unit 6 test and try to compute better on that test and then if they do well on this test and get a B on that skill for unit 6, the old grade for that skill from Unit 5 will be replaced with a B despite never doing another Unit 5 problem. If it's a D on the Unit 6 test, then the C from the last test will just remain. Quizzes are optional grading measurements for teachers depending on the school, class and teacher. Some classes, kids are only assessed on the unit summative tests and no other work for the year. So, in addition to having changing summative grades, they only get graded on one summative test every month or so. Grades come in late for summatives because they are large tests, and you can be finding out that the grade for the summative completely changed your GPA with little time to correct or relearn information you didn't realize you didn't know from the old unit.

All of this helps to provide less work to the teacher. Oh, they say they have to enter more grades for each test and it's true they may now have five "skill" grades rather than 2 or 3 in the previous system, but it's just a larger breakdown of the same test into more sections while grading many fewer assignments. Kids have a hard time relating to the skills because there is nothing specific on their assignments that call out the skills being assessed so the skill breakdown is really for admin to see. They are the only ones that care that all of the SOL skills are being taught. From the student's perspective, they are getting graded on much fewer assignments/work and getting much less homework assigned and feedback on classwork and homework back to them. It may or may not help them to have grades related to skills, but what definitely doesn't help is to give them less feedback on work and less work to do overall.

FCPS also keeps going back and forth on whether zeros are part of this initiative. It's like a bill in congress where you think the change is about one main topic and then FCPS tries to tack on many other initiatives to have them fly under the radar under this umbrella change. So no one really knows all that SBG encompasses because FCPS keeps adding to the initiative.

I have 2 high achievers and one middle range kid who struggles.

Ironically, this standards based grading makes it far more difficult for my middle range kid to learn, retain, prepare and achieve academically. The good students are fine with whatever system they get.

I am sure that FCPS is going to find that this no accountability, subjective system is far worse for the students it is supposed to help, than the traditional system of clear expectations, high, concrete standards, and a simple, accountable grading system tgat makes sense to students and parents.

I think this is correct. My kids are dealing with free retakes for the first time. Our youngest is a bit of a slacker and would rather do anything but extra work. My oldest just retook a test that she got a 99 on to raise her score to a 99.5 (you can earn back half of your points) because she competes with her friends to see who has the best grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a parent with a rising 9th grader, what is SBG? I've read through this thread and there are puzzle pieces missing.

At the most basic level it is grading by core skills to learn throughout the year and not by assignment. Think those skills you see on the elementary report cards that measure your child's skill growth across the year as in "computes numbers fluently and makes accurate assessments" instead of a singular grade for the Unit 5 algebra test. It's a little complex to compare this too because the Unit 5 test before SBG used to also be divided up into several sections if not by skills. A Unit 5 math test both before and after would have been and still is divided up into several grades, just now they are broken up by skill rather than type of problem such as short answer or essay or Unit 5.1 and 5.2 questions.

Because FCPS really made this change not to just better measure skill growth related to SOL passing, but also or instead to bring grades to a middle and reduce the achievement gap, there are a lot of other changes that were implemented and are now part of the SBG change but are peripheral to the main purpose of grading by skills rather than project or test. Homework is no longer assessed, or feedback given. This greatly changes the motivation of students if you have a child who needs regular feedback and who needs more carrots to complete practice work. Now many students come completely unprepared for class because they are only assessed on the summatives. Retakes are now teacher dependent rather than a guideline for the school to follow where any summative grade below an 80 can be retaken to achieve an 80, so if there is a type of problem in Unit 5.2 that your child doesn't understand related to a skill such as "computing numbers fluently" and they get a C on that skill for the Unit 5 summative, rather than retaking the unit 5 test to get an 80 and understand the content better, they will now have to wait until the Unit 6 test and try to compute better on that test and then if they do well on this test and get a B on that skill for unit 6, the old grade for that skill from Unit 5 will be replaced with a B despite never doing another Unit 5 problem. If it's a D on the Unit 6 test, then the C from the last test will just remain. Quizzes are optional grading measurements for teachers depending on the school, class and teacher. Some classes, kids are only assessed on the unit summative tests and no other work for the year. So, in addition to having changing summative grades, they only get graded on one summative test every month or so. Grades come in late for summatives because they are large tests, and you can be finding out that the grade for the summative completely changed your GPA with little time to correct or relearn information you didn't realize you didn't know from the old unit.

All of this helps to provide less work to the teacher. Oh, they say they have to enter more grades for each test and it's true they may now have five "skill" grades rather than 2 or 3 in the previous system, but it's just a larger breakdown of the same test into more sections while grading many fewer assignments. Kids have a hard time relating to the skills because there is nothing specific on their assignments that call out the skills being assessed so the skill breakdown is really for admin to see. They are the only ones that care that all of the SOL skills are being taught. From the student's perspective, they are getting graded on much fewer assignments/work and getting much less homework assigned and feedback on classwork and homework back to them. It may or may not help them to have grades related to skills, but what definitely doesn't help is to give them less feedback on work and less work to do overall.

FCPS also keeps going back and forth on whether zeros are part of this initiative. It's like a bill in congress where you think the change is about one main topic and then FCPS tries to tack on many other initiatives to have them fly under the radar under this umbrella change. So no one really knows all that SBG encompasses because FCPS keeps adding to the initiative.

I have 2 high achievers and one middle range kid who struggles.

Ironically, this standards based grading makes it far more difficult for my middle range kid to learn, retain, prepare and achieve academically. The good students are fine with whatever system they get.

I am sure that FCPS is going to find that this no accountability, subjective system is far worse for the students it is supposed to help, than the traditional system of clear expectations, high, concrete standards, and a simple, accountable grading system tgat makes sense to students and parents.

I think this is correct. My kids are dealing with free retakes for the first time. Our youngest is a bit of a slacker and would rather do anything but extra work. My oldest just retook a test that she got a 99 on to raise her score to a 99.5 (you can earn back half of your points) because she competes with her friends to see who has the best grades.

That is a complete waste of a teacher's time. Great. So they won't grade homework and give feedback but will grade a previous 99 score. And somehow this helps struggling students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a parent with a rising 9th grader, what is SBG? I've read through this thread and there are puzzle pieces missing.

At the most basic level it is grading by core skills to learn throughout the year and not by assignment. Think those skills you see on the elementary report cards that measure your child's skill growth across the year as in "computes numbers fluently and makes accurate assessments" instead of a singular grade for the Unit 5 algebra test. It's a little complex to compare this too because the Unit 5 test before SBG used to also be divided up into several sections if not by skills. A Unit 5 math test both before and after would have been and still is divided up into several grades, just now they are broken up by skill rather than type of problem such as short answer or essay or Unit 5.1 and 5.2 questions.

Because FCPS really made this change not to just better measure skill growth related to SOL passing, but also or instead to bring grades to a middle and reduce the achievement gap, there are a lot of other changes that were implemented and are now part of the SBG change but are peripheral to the main purpose of grading by skills rather than project or test. Homework is no longer assessed, or feedback given. This greatly changes the motivation of students if you have a child who needs regular feedback and who needs more carrots to complete practice work. Now many students come completely unprepared for class because they are only assessed on the summatives. Retakes are now teacher dependent rather than a guideline for the school to follow where any summative grade below an 80 can be retaken to achieve an 80, so if there is a type of problem in Unit 5.2 that your child doesn't understand related to a skill such as "computing numbers fluently" and they get a C on that skill for the Unit 5 summative, rather than retaking the unit 5 test to get an 80 and understand the content better, they will now have to wait until the Unit 6 test and try to compute better on that test and then if they do well on this test and get a B on that skill for unit 6, the old grade for that skill from Unit 5 will be replaced with a B despite never doing another Unit 5 problem. If it's a D on the Unit 6 test, then the C from the last test will just remain. Quizzes are optional grading measurements for teachers depending on the school, class and teacher. Some classes, kids are only assessed on the unit summative tests and no other work for the year. So, in addition to having changing summative grades, they only get graded on one summative test every month or so. Grades come in late for summatives because they are large tests, and you can be finding out that the grade for the summative completely changed your GPA with little time to correct or relearn information you didn't realize you didn't know from the old unit.

All of this helps to provide less work to the teacher. Oh, they say they have to enter more grades for each test and it's true they may now have five "skill" grades rather than 2 or 3 in the previous system, but it's just a larger breakdown of the same test into more sections while grading many fewer assignments. Kids have a hard time relating to the skills because there is nothing specific on their assignments that call out the skills being assessed so the skill breakdown is really for admin to see. They are the only ones that care that all of the SOL skills are being taught. From the student's perspective, they are getting graded on much fewer assignments/work and getting much less homework assigned and feedback on classwork and homework back to them. It may or may not help them to have grades related to skills, but what definitely doesn't help is to give them less feedback on work and less work to do overall.

FCPS also keeps going back and forth on whether zeros are part of this initiative. It's like a bill in congress where you think the change is about one main topic and then FCPS tries to tack on many other initiatives to have them fly under the radar under this umbrella change. So no one really knows all that SBG encompasses because FCPS keeps adding to the initiative.

I have 2 high achievers and one middle range kid who struggles.

Ironically, this standards based grading makes it far more difficult for my middle range kid to learn, retain, prepare and achieve academically. The good students are fine with whatever system they get.

I am sure that FCPS is going to find that this no accountability, subjective system is far worse for the students it is supposed to help, than the traditional system of clear expectations, high, concrete standards, and a simple, accountable grading system tgat makes sense to students and parents.

I think this is correct. My kids are dealing with free retakes for the first time. Our youngest is a bit of a slacker and would rather do anything but extra work. My oldest just retook a test that she got a 99 on to raise her score to a 99.5 (you can earn back half of your points) because she competes with her friends to see who has the best grades.

That is a complete waste of a teacher's time. Great. So they won't grade homework and give feedback but will grade a previous 99 score. And somehow this helps struggling students.

Not speaking for SBG because we're not doing that (yet), but we don't grade homework because it's an opportunity to practice and can't be more than 10% of students' grades. We post the key so they get feedback, and that's another reason it's worth so little and is only graded on completion--because a third of the kids don't even bother doing it, another third copy the key, and the third who actually work at it deserve a chance to practice and get things wrong and fix their mistakes so they can learn.
OTOH I agree that most of us hate it when kids who have an A retake a test for a higher A. Grade-grubbing behavior enabled by the ridiculous retake up to 100% policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a parent with a rising 9th grader, what is SBG? I've read through this thread and there are puzzle pieces missing.

At the most basic level it is grading by core skills to learn throughout the year and not by assignment. Think those skills you see on the elementary report cards that measure your child's skill growth across the year as in "computes numbers fluently and makes accurate assessments" instead of a singular grade for the Unit 5 algebra test. It's a little complex to compare this too because the Unit 5 test before SBG used to also be divided up into several sections if not by skills. A Unit 5 math test both before and after would have been and still is divided up into several grades, just now they are broken up by skill rather than type of problem such as short answer or essay or Unit 5.1 and 5.2 questions.

Because FCPS really made this change not to just better measure skill growth related to SOL passing, but also or instead to bring grades to a middle and reduce the achievement gap, there are a lot of other changes that were implemented and are now part of the SBG change but are peripheral to the main purpose of grading by skills rather than project or test. Homework is no longer assessed, or feedback given. This greatly changes the motivation of students if you have a child who needs regular feedback and who needs more carrots to complete practice work. Now many students come completely unprepared for class because they are only assessed on the summatives. Retakes are now teacher dependent rather than a guideline for the school to follow where any summative grade below an 80 can be retaken to achieve an 80, so if there is a type of problem in Unit 5.2 that your child doesn't understand related to a skill such as "computing numbers fluently" and they get a C on that skill for the Unit 5 summative, rather than retaking the unit 5 test to get an 80 and understand the content better, they will now have to wait until the Unit 6 test and try to compute better on that test and then if they do well on this test and get a B on that skill for unit 6, the old grade for that skill from Unit 5 will be replaced with a B despite never doing another Unit 5 problem. If it's a D on the Unit 6 test, then the C from the last test will just remain. Quizzes are optional grading measurements for teachers depending on the school, class and teacher. Some classes, kids are only assessed on the unit summative tests and no other work for the year. So, in addition to having changing summative grades, they only get graded on one summative test every month or so. Grades come in late for summatives because they are large tests, and you can be finding out that the grade for the summative completely changed your GPA with little time to correct or relearn information you didn't realize you didn't know from the old unit.

All of this helps to provide less work to the teacher. Oh, they say they have to enter more grades for each test and it's true they may now have five "skill" grades rather than 2 or 3 in the previous system, but it's just a larger breakdown of the same test into more sections while grading many fewer assignments. Kids have a hard time relating to the skills because there is nothing specific on their assignments that call out the skills being assessed so the skill breakdown is really for admin to see. They are the only ones that care that all of the SOL skills are being taught. From the student's perspective, they are getting graded on much fewer assignments/work and getting much less homework assigned and feedback on classwork and homework back to them. It may or may not help them to have grades related to skills, but what definitely doesn't help is to give them less feedback on work and less work to do overall.

FCPS also keeps going back and forth on whether zeros are part of this initiative. It's like a bill in congress where you think the change is about one main topic and then FCPS tries to tack on many other initiatives to have them fly under the radar under this umbrella change. So no one really knows all that SBG encompasses because FCPS keeps adding to the initiative.

I have 2 high achievers and one middle range kid who struggles.

Ironically, this standards based grading makes it far more difficult for my middle range kid to learn, retain, prepare and achieve academically. The good students are fine with whatever system they get.

[b]I am sure that FCPS is going to find that this no accountability, subjective system is far worse for the students it is supposed to help, than the traditional system of clear expectations, high, concrete standards, and a simple, accountable grading system tgat makes sense to students and parents.

FCPS will harm the exact democratic they think they are helping. They do this repeatedly.

Progressives are ultimately horrible people, not matter what their claimed intentions are.

But, you parents in FFX had a chance to change this last November. You voted for more of the same.

“Equity first. Academics? - somewhere lower down on the list.” - that is literally what your school board and your superintendent have said, repeatedly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a parent with a rising 9th grader, what is SBG? I've read through this thread and there are puzzle pieces missing.

At the most basic level it is grading by core skills to learn throughout the year and not by assignment. Think those skills you see on the elementary report cards that measure your child's skill growth across the year as in "computes numbers fluently and makes accurate assessments" instead of a singular grade for the Unit 5 algebra test. It's a little complex to compare this too because the Unit 5 test before SBG used to also be divided up into several sections if not by skills. A Unit 5 math test both before and after would have been and still is divided up into several grades, just now they are broken up by skill rather than type of problem such as short answer or essay or Unit 5.1 and 5.2 questions.

Because FCPS really made this change not to just better measure skill growth related to SOL passing, but also or instead to bring grades to a middle and reduce the achievement gap, there are a lot of other changes that were implemented and are now part of the SBG change but are peripheral to the main purpose of grading by skills rather than project or test. Homework is no longer assessed, or feedback given. This greatly changes the motivation of students if you have a child who needs regular feedback and who needs more carrots to complete practice work. Now many students come completely unprepared for class because they are only assessed on the summatives. Retakes are now teacher dependent rather than a guideline for the school to follow where any summative grade below an 80 can be retaken to achieve an 80, so if there is a type of problem in Unit 5.2 that your child doesn't understand related to a skill such as "computing numbers fluently" and they get a C on that skill for the Unit 5 summative, rather than retaking the unit 5 test to get an 80 and understand the content better, they will now have to wait until the Unit 6 test and try to compute better on that test and then if they do well on this test and get a B on that skill for unit 6, the old grade for that skill from Unit 5 will be replaced with a B despite never doing another Unit 5 problem. If it's a D on the Unit 6 test, then the C from the last test will just remain. Quizzes are optional grading measurements for teachers depending on the school, class and teacher. Some classes, kids are only assessed on the unit summative tests and no other work for the year. So, in addition to having changing summative grades, they only get graded on one summative test every month or so. Grades come in late for summatives because they are large tests, and you can be finding out that the grade for the summative completely changed your GPA with little time to correct or relearn information you didn't realize you didn't know from the old unit.

All of this helps to provide less work to the teacher. Oh, they say they have to enter more grades for each test and it's true they may now have five "skill" grades rather than 2 or 3 in the previous system, but it's just a larger breakdown of the same test into more sections while grading many fewer assignments. Kids have a hard time relating to the skills because there is nothing specific on their assignments that call out the skills being assessed so the skill breakdown is really for admin to see. They are the only ones that care that all of the SOL skills are being taught. From the student's perspective, they are getting graded on much fewer assignments/work and getting much less homework assigned and feedback on classwork and homework back to them. It may or may not help them to have grades related to skills, but what definitely doesn't help is to give them less feedback on work and less work to do overall.

FCPS also keeps going back and forth on whether zeros are part of this initiative. It's like a bill in congress where you think the change is about one main topic and then FCPS tries to tack on many other initiatives to have them fly under the radar under this umbrella change. So no one really knows all that SBG encompasses because FCPS keeps adding to the initiative.

I have 2 high achievers and one middle range kid who struggles.

Ironically, this standards based grading makes it far more difficult for my middle range kid to learn, retain, prepare and achieve academically. The good students are fine with whatever system they get.

I am sure that FCPS is going to find that this no accountability, subjective system is far worse for the students it is supposed to help, than the traditional system of clear expectations, high, concrete standards, and a simple, accountable grading system tgat makes sense to students and parents.

I think this is correct. My kids are dealing with free retakes for the first time. Our youngest is a bit of a slacker and would rather do anything but extra work. My oldest just retook a test that she got a 99 on to raise her score to a 99.5 (you can earn back half of your points) because she competes with her friends to see who has the best grades.

That is a complete waste of a teacher's time. Great. So they won't grade homework and give feedback but will grade a previous 99 score. And somehow this helps struggling students.

Not speaking for SBG because we're not doing that (yet), but we don't grade homework because it's an opportunity to practice and can't be more than 10% of students' grades. We post the key so they get feedback, and that's another reason it's worth so little and is only graded on completion--because a third of the kids don't even bother doing it, another third copy the key, and the third who actually work at it deserve a chance to practice and get things wrong and fix their mistakes so they can learn.
OTOH I agree that most of us hate it when kids who have an A retake a test for a higher A. Grade-grubbing behavior enabled by the ridiculous retake up to 100% policy.

Fcps policy recommendations are to regrade up to an 80 so why don’t you just work to that policy. If the kid with a 99 wants to take the test again and get an 80 I guess they can but no one is forcing you to give retakes up to 100. It’s not even recommended.

[Anonymous]

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I agree. My son is at McLean and has one teacher who randomly uses a very confusing and discouraging system (average test scores are between 30 and 50%) that sounds a lot like SBG. I don’t understand why she tests things they aren’t expected to have learned yet.

Ugh, what subject? Any way to avoid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the parent of a rising 9th grader. The removal of older grades in SIS is one of those umbrella additions that really is not at the core of creating grades based on skills. Before parents and kids could see geades for practice quizzes first attempt and second attempt if a retake was taken for summatives and if your school followed FCPS's guidelines you knew a retake would only bring the summative grade up to an 80. You could follow every part of the learning and with retakes only earning a B there was no worry that a child would show up as a straight A student for something they were drugging with.

Now grades get replaced or aren't shown at all except the final best grade and there seems to be no limit to the top grade you can get with a retake. It's one of these umbrella inclusions that they somehow associate with SBG but really doesn't fit the original purpose of SBG which was to have more accurate skills grading.

This is a good thing, though. We want our children to master the material. That’s the point of school, not to create some bell curve of achievers and losers.

You’re missing the point. Kids are not mastering anything. For example, multiple choice test with 4 possible answers to each question. Retake the test a few times even with some new questions thrown in impossible not to get at or near the maximum retest grade. So even the poorest performers get a B without needed to learn, just retain a few answers for a short period of time and on to the next topic.

Only one retake is allowed. And my kid never has to do them in the first place. But it’s a nice cushion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a parent with a rising 9th grader, what is SBG? I've read through this thread and there are puzzle pieces missing.

At the most basic level it is grading by core skills to learn throughout the year and not by assignment. Think those skills you see on the elementary report cards that measure your child's skill growth across the year as in "computes numbers fluently and makes accurate assessments" instead of a singular grade for the Unit 5 algebra test. It's a little complex to compare this too because the Unit 5 test before SBG used to also be divided up into several sections if not by skills. A Unit 5 math test both before and after would have been and still is divided up into several grades, just now they are broken up by skill rather than type of problem such as short answer or essay or Unit 5.1 and 5.2 questions.

Because FCPS really made this change not to just better measure skill growth related to SOL passing, but also or instead to bring grades to a middle and reduce the achievement gap, there are a lot of other changes that were implemented and are now part of the SBG change but are peripheral to the main purpose of grading by skills rather than project or test. Homework is no longer assessed, or feedback given. This greatly changes the motivation of students if you have a child who needs regular feedback and who needs more carrots to complete practice work. Now many students come completely unprepared for class because they are only assessed on the summatives. Retakes are now teacher dependent rather than a guideline for the school to follow where any summative grade below an 80 can be retaken to achieve an 80, so if there is a type of problem in Unit 5.2 that your child doesn't understand related to a skill such as "computing numbers fluently" and they get a C on that skill for the Unit 5 summative, rather than retaking the unit 5 test to get an 80 and understand the content better, they will now have to wait until the Unit 6 test and try to compute better on that test and then if they do well on this test and get a B on that skill for unit 6, the old grade for that skill from Unit 5 will be replaced with a B despite never doing another Unit 5 problem. If it's a D on the Unit 6 test, then the C from the last test will just remain. Quizzes are optional grading measurements for teachers depending on the school, class and teacher. Some classes, kids are only assessed on the unit summative tests and no other work for the year. So, in addition to having changing summative grades, they only get graded on one summative test every month or so. Grades come in late for summatives because they are large tests, and you can be finding out that the grade for the summative completely changed your GPA with little time to correct or relearn information you didn't realize you didn't know from the old unit.

All of this helps to provide less work to the teacher. Oh, they say they have to enter more grades for each test and it's true they may now have five "skill" grades rather than 2 or 3 in the previous system, but it's just a larger breakdown of the same test into more sections while grading many fewer assignments. Kids have a hard time relating to the skills because there is nothing specific on their assignments that call out the skills being assessed so the skill breakdown is really for admin to see. They are the only ones that care that all of the SOL skills are being taught. From the student's perspective, they are getting graded on much fewer assignments/work and getting much less homework assigned and feedback on classwork and homework back to them. It may or may not help them to have grades related to skills, but what definitely doesn't help is to give them less feedback on work and less work to do overall.

FCPS also keeps going back and forth on whether zeros are part of this initiative. It's like a bill in congress where you think the change is about one main topic and then FCPS tries to tack on many other initiatives to have them fly under the radar under this umbrella change. So no one really knows all that SBG encompasses because FCPS keeps adding to the initiative.

I have 2 high achievers and one middle range kid who struggles.

Ironically, this standards based grading makes it far more difficult for my middle range kid to learn, retain, prepare and achieve academically. The good students are fine with whatever system they get.

I am sure that FCPS is going to find that this no accountability, subjective system is far worse for the students it is supposed to help, than the traditional system of clear expectations, high, concrete standards, and a simple, accountable grading system tgat makes sense to students and parents.

I think this is correct. My kids are dealing with free retakes for the first time. Our youngest is a bit of a slacker and would rather do anything but extra work. My oldest just retook a test that she got a 99 on to raise her score to a 99.5 (you can earn back half of your points) because she competes with her friends to see who has the best grades.

That is a complete waste of a teacher's time. Great. So they won't grade homework and give feedback but will grade a previous 99 score. And somehow this helps struggling students.

Not speaking for SBG because we're not doing that (yet), but we don't grade homework because it's an opportunity to practice and can't be more than 10% of students' grades. We post the key so they get feedback, and that's another reason it's worth so little and is only graded on completion--because a third of the kids don't even bother doing it, another third copy the key, and the third who actually work at it deserve a chance to practice and get things wrong and fix their mistakes so they can learn.
OTOH I agree that most of us hate it when kids who have an A retake a test for a higher A. Grade-grubbing behavior enabled by the ridiculous retake up to 100% policy.

Fcps policy recommendations are to regrade up to an 80 so why don’t you just work to that policy. If the kid with a 99 wants to take the test again and get an 80 I guess they can but no one is forcing you to give retakes up to 100. It’s not even recommended.

Because it's just a recommendation and our admin said no--we still have to cap them at 100%. They are forcing us.