HS Teachers, I'm curious-- do this semester's grade distributions look different from prior years?

[Anonymous]

I kept a running tally all semester of how many times I had to tell each student to get off their phone, put headphones away, get off youtube or games, etc. Last week I checked to see which students would fall a percentage point short of the next higher semester grade. Students who had less than 3 strikes, I made sure I found that extra percentage point somewhere in their MP2 grade and bumped them up.

Is it fair to the student who barely missed an A but had a phone addiction? Maybe not. Do I care? Nope. Sometimes it pays to follow the rules

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I kept a running tally all semester of how many times I had to tell each student to get off their phone, put headphones away, get off youtube or games, etc. Last week I checked to see which students would fall a percentage point short of the next higher semester grade. Students who had less than 3 strikes, I made sure I found that extra percentage point somewhere in their MP2 grade and bumped them up.

Is it fair to the student who barely missed an A but had a phone addiction? Maybe not. Do I care? Nope. Sometimes it pays to follow the rules

I’m all for this IF you announced to the class that you’ll give an extra point for a cell free semester! If you didn’t then you are just unfairly grading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I kept a running tally all semester of how many times I had to tell each student to get off their phone, put headphones away, get off youtube or games, etc. Last week I checked to see which students would fall a percentage point short of the next higher semester grade. Students who had less than 3 strikes, I made sure I found that extra percentage point somewhere in their MP2 grade and bumped them up.

Is it fair to the student who barely missed an A but had a phone addiction? Maybe not. Do I care? Nope. Sometimes it pays to follow the rules

I’m all for this IF you announced to the class that you’ll give an extra point for a cell free semester! If you didn’t then you are just unfairly grading.

I told them that I was tracking these infractions and that they would be used to justify decisions made later in the semester. It started out as tracking them so I could have accurate data to present to parents whenever I needed to have communication with them about behavior or grades. It since became used for this as well.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Parent here. It has to change. DD's AP Calc BC teacher warned us at BTSN that our kids, maybe for the first time in their lives, would have Bs. And it's true - DD has an A for the semester, but a B for the last quarter. Her first B in math.

I love this new grading policy, BTW. It's so much more fair than the previous one.

Explain that to me like I'm five. Are you one of these people who think grading needs to be on a bell curve to be "fair?"

PP you replied to. I hated the old system of using quarter letter grades to determine semester letter grades. That's not granular enough. It's much more accurate to calculate the average of the number grade for each quarter to get the semester grade, and then convert that to a letter.

Ideally, we wouldn't even have letter grades. We would just stick to numbers. This is how most of the world does it.

I don't know what you're referring regarding bell curves.

Some people complain about grading and their definition of "fair" is for As to be rationed. So, a bell curve looks like a few kids failing or getting Ds, a peak of kids getting Bs and Cs and then sloping down so only a few get As.

It's arbitrary as hell, because it suggests that not all students can master the material or should be given the opportunity to (even though that's what secondary school is for).

Usually, these are parents of either high-performing or highly-pushed kids who resent that other kids who struggle more are given the opportunity to earn the same marks with things like retakes, etc. It's a really backwards and twisted way to think.

Except it prepares them for college. Wait until they get into a weeder class with curve killing cheaters. Until universities stop using the bell curve, it should be in high school.

[Anonymous]

I am of the belief that if a majority of the kids in your class are getting an A, that class doesn't need to be offered anymore because apparently the kids already knew everything they needed to know.

We need to go back to normalizing the fact that a C is average and there is nothing wrong with being average. B's should be for kids who are putting out a little more effort. A's should only go to the kids that truly go above and beyond and master the subject material. No more of this you simply turned everything in so you get a 90% nonsense.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My kid got his first C (low B in Q1 and mid C in Q2 - would've been a B under the old system) - plus 1 B and 5 As. These grades a more accurate reflection of his work, but it seems unfair for this to happen junior year, even with the letter MCPS will send with transcripts explaining the change. I also have a 9th grader and have no issues with the new grading system overall.

Teacher here. A C in a MCPS course is pretty bad. It means your kid doesn’t know the content. It is not hard to earn a C. Either your kid is not understanding the content even at a basic level or your kid has bad executive functioning and is not turning in assignments. Does your kid ever go to office hours for extra support?

He just wasn't putting in the work. It was a hard class that was not in his comfort zone and he shut down. We actually know plenty of kids with Cs in MCPS courses (it was just the first time for my kid). Some kids struggle with ADHD, LDs, etc. I don't know what course you teach, but not everyone in MCPS has a 4.9 WGPA, even though you'd think that's the case from reading DCUM!

My apologies for boasting, but my kid with ADHD and learning disabilities had a 4.67 weighted high school GPA when he applied for college. Please don't use these diagnoses as an excuse for poor performance. They can explain some academic struggles, I agree. But then what do you do? Shrug and say "oh he's hit his ceiling"? Or actually do something about it?

I'm a DP, but you're super rude.

PP you replied. I acknowledge that, and would never say what I just wrote to someone face-to-face. But it needs to be said, because I get so irritated when parents lower expectations as soon as their kid gets a diagnosis, or struggles deeply in school. Maybe I'm a contrarian, but when my kid was born as a micro-preemie and doctors told me he'd never walk or talk on a normal schedule, I was like "OK, I'm going to do my best to prove them wrong" Which I did. Then as a toddler he was diagnosed with a global developmental delay and all kinds of motor/feeding issues, and we got therapies for those. The elementary school gave him an IEP. I worked with him at home every day after school until he was on grade level. And then he was diagnosed with abysmal processing speed, severe ADHD, dysgraphia and dyscalculia and we worked on that too, with the help of meds for ADHD. And finally during a second round of neuropsych that was done with Adderall, we found autism that his severe ADHD had masked during the prior neuropsych. No one was surprised. That got him residential accommodations in college: single room with private bath.

At no point did my expectations change for this kid. I knew he was smart but needed reteaching, academic support and reminders to do stuff every 5 minutes. He clawed his way into college despite early predictions that he might never make it into general ed!

I just want to tell parents not to give up on their kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First year teacher here so i cant compare to previous years but 40% of my 9th graders failed semester 1 of Honors English 9

OMG and with the lame new curriculum too. Wow.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:First year teacher here so i cant compare to previous years but 40% of my 9th graders failed semester 1 of Honors English 9

??? Are you in a low-income neighborhood?

I am outside the Beltway. That is all i will say

That's unusually low. If it's in-line with your school's previous achievement, it's not you. If it's not, it's you. Be prepared to document how you did things.

It was because of zeros. We had 12 AT assignments and 12 PP assignments in Q2. 24 assignments. The kids who failed on average had 18 missing assignments. I even disobeyed the grading policy and had unlimited deadlines. Nothing. Even the

Well that's on them. Good for you for holding them accountable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Strong argument for using A- and B+, etc. for the semester grade.

Agree. I don't understand why MCPS doesn't do this.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:First year teacher here so i cant compare to previous years but 40% of my 9th graders failed semester 1 of Honors English 9

??? Are you in a low-income neighborhood?

I am outside the Beltway. That is all i will say

That's unusually low. If it's in-line with your school's previous achievement, it's not you. If it's not, it's you. Be prepared to document how you did things.

It was because of zeros. We had 12 AT assignments and 12 PP assignments in Q2. 24 assignments. The kids who failed on average had 18 missing assignments. I even disobeyed the grading policy and had unlimited deadlines. Nothing. Even the

I hope you reached out to your team lead or department head to assist you in managing this. You have terrible or even catastrophic stats and really need to figure out how to work through this if you expect to keep your job. I’m not a teacher but it seems like there have to be strategies beyond extending due dates to get kids to a passing level.

Teacher here at a different school. This is not that unusual actually. Assuming that the previous teacher is at a low income/high immigrant school, you will be shocked at how appalling attendance can be. Two years ago, I had a kid who attended 5 days of school out of a full year and administrators pressured me to pass her so she could graduate. That stuff is harder to pull off now - as it should be.

You're right that I am shocked. It doesn't surprise me that some kids have bad attendance and, probably in most cases, consequently bad grades. But the numbers are what shock me. Especially given that it's an honors course. I don't understand why kids who have poor attendance would even be signing up for honors classes. Regardless, at this point, though, I would think that at least some of that would be weeded out by the attendance policy that calls for disenrollment after a certain number of absences - which actually happened to one of my kids who had to be out for medical reasons.

You mention that part of what shocks you is that this is an Honors Course. I am also a 9th grade English teacher in MCPS. Keep in mind that, at the majority of schools, Honors English is the only course offered. I've been teaching in MCPS for 28 years. I started in middle school, and for the first decade of my teaching career, the material I was teaching to 7th and 8th grade honors students was significantly more challenging than the current "honors" 9th grade curriculum. High achieving students are at such a disadvantage under the current system because there is such a wide disparity in the abilities of students that we are practically teaching the "honors" course at a remedial level.

The powers that be would tell you that "differentiation is key", but in a class of 30 students, you cannot possibly teach anyone at a level that is truly honors. In a given section, I might have half a dozen students who are diligent, high achieving students. In addition, I might have 6-8 IEP students, 3-4 ESL (English as a second language - remember these kids are being put directly into our English classes for the most part), and a handful of 504 students. Over half the class has some set of accommodations that I am legally bound to meet, along with others who probably need accommodations but have yet to be identified as such. Trust me when I say that it is the bright, capable students who want to be challenged that are falling through the cracks. If you are the parent of such a student, I highly recommend having them take as many AP courses as possible because they are the only "real" honors classes being offered in many cases.

And have you seen the literature on the new English curriculum? The novel choices in Quarter 1 include All American Boys, A Separate Peace, and a graphic novel. While the subjects may be appropriate for 9th graders, the reading level of these books is about 6th grade or so. Compare this to the literary quality of books like To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, and Of Mice and Men.

And no one is reading A Separate Peace. It's ridiculous.

The new curriculum for MS is harder than the 9th grade English curriculum for "honors" courses. Pathetic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not going to try to figure out the mess of the quote thread from my original post about all my kids having zeros.

We do graded work in class every single day. Most PP assignments are assignments that are designed to be done in a single class period. the AT assignments are assignments that will be worked on over 2-3 days. Everything we do in my class can and should be completed in class with no expectation of actual homework. However, if they don't use their time in class wisely, they then have to do it at home. The issue is that a lot of these 9th graders seem to think that they don't have to finish or do anything at home.

I even tell my kids at least 3-4 times a semester that turning in an incomplete assignment can still potentially earn them a 50% which is better than a 0. They still won't do it. They complete 70% of the assignment in class and then throw it away when they leave the room. It's weird but hopefully they get the wake up call they need

Do you at least expect your English students to read the books on their own? Or are you giving them time in class for that too? This sounds like very low standards and expectations, but I realize that is built into the MCPS-written curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am of the belief that if a majority of the kids in your class are getting an A, that class doesn't need to be offered anymore because apparently the kids already knew everything they needed to know.

We need to go back to normalizing the fact that a C is average and there is nothing wrong with being average. B's should be for kids who are putting out a little more effort. A's should only go to the kids that truly go above and beyond and master the subject material. No more of this you simply turned everything in so you get a 90% nonsense.

You gotta send your kids back in time or to private school for this. I spent a lot of money to send my kid to Catholic school where he got lower grades. He learned a lot more there though- how to work hard, turn in work on time, write well, pay attention, take notes, not be given retakes and so many other skills. Worth every penny I didn’t have.

- a public school teacher and parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not going to try to figure out the mess of the quote thread from my original post about all my kids having zeros.

We do graded work in class every single day. Most PP assignments are assignments that are designed to be done in a single class period. the AT assignments are assignments that will be worked on over 2-3 days. Everything we do in my class can and should be completed in class with no expectation of actual homework. However, if they don't use their time in class wisely, they then have to do it at home. The issue is that a lot of these 9th graders seem to think that they don't have to finish or do anything at home.

I even tell my kids at least 3-4 times a semester that turning in an incomplete assignment can still potentially earn them a 50% which is better than a 0. They still won't do it. They complete 70% of the assignment in class and then throw it away when they leave the room. It's weird but hopefully they get the wake up call they need

Do you at least expect your English students to read the books on their own? Or are you giving them time in class for that too? This sounds like very low standards and expectations, but I realize that is built into the MCPS-written curriculum.

As a matter of fact, I am an English teacher and yes we do the reading in class. PDF and Audiobook versions of the book are available on Canvas for students to follow along at home but it's not required. Sadly, we don't actually require the students to read the entire book but rather selected close reading passages. If they choose to read the rest of the book that's on them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First year teacher here so i cant compare to previous years but 40% of my 9th graders failed semester 1 of Honors English 9

??? Are you in a low-income neighborhood?

I am outside the Beltway. That is all i will say

That's unusually low. If it's in-line with your school's previous achievement, it's not you. If it's not, it's you. Be prepared to document how you did things.

It was because of zeros. We had 12 AT assignments and 12 PP assignments in Q2. 24 assignments. The kids who failed on average had 18 missing assignments. I even disobeyed the grading policy and had unlimited deadlines. Nothing. Even the

I hope you reached out to your team lead or department head to assist you in managing this. You have terrible or even catastrophic stats and really need to figure out how to work through this if you expect to keep your job. I’m not a teacher but it seems like there have to be strategies beyond extending due dates to get kids to a passing level.

Teacher here at a different school. This is not that unusual actually. Assuming that the previous teacher is at a low income/high immigrant school, you will be shocked at how appalling attendance can be. Two years ago, I had a kid who attended 5 days of school out of a full year and administrators pressured me to pass her so she could graduate. That stuff is harder to pull off now - as it should be.

You're right that I am shocked. It doesn't surprise me that some kids have bad attendance and, probably in most cases, consequently bad grades. But the numbers are what shock me. Especially given that it's an honors course. I don't understand why kids who have poor attendance would even be signing up for honors classes. Regardless, at this point, though, I would think that at least some of that would be weeded out by the attendance policy that calls for disenrollment after a certain number of absences - which actually happened to one of my kids who had to be out for medical reasons.

You mention that part of what shocks you is that this is an Honors Course. I am also a 9th grade English teacher in MCPS. Keep in mind that, at the majority of schools, Honors English is the only course offered. I've been teaching in MCPS for 28 years. I started in middle school, and for the first decade of my teaching career, the material I was teaching to 7th and 8th grade honors students was significantly more challenging than the current "honors" 9th grade curriculum. High achieving students are at such a disadvantage under the current system because there is such a wide disparity in the abilities of students that we are practically teaching the "honors" course at a remedial level.

The powers that be would tell you that "differentiation is key", but in a class of 30 students, you cannot possibly teach anyone at a level that is truly honors. In a given section, I might have half a dozen students who are diligent, high achieving students. In addition, I might have 6-8 IEP students, 3-4 ESL (English as a second language - remember these kids are being put directly into our English classes for the most part), and a handful of 504 students. Over half the class has some set of accommodations that I am legally bound to meet, along with others who probably need accommodations but have yet to be identified as such. Trust me when I say that it is the bright, capable students who want to be challenged that are falling through the cracks. If you are the parent of such a student, I highly recommend having them take as many AP courses as possible because they are the only "real" honors classes being offered in many cases.

And have you seen the literature on the new English curriculum? The novel choices in Quarter 1 include All American Boys, A Separate Peace, and a graphic novel. While the subjects may be appropriate for 9th graders, the reading level of these books is about 6th grade or so. Compare this to the literary quality of books like To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, and Of Mice and Men.

And no one is reading A Separate Peace. It's ridiculous.

The new curriculum for MS is harder than the 9th grade English curriculum for "honors" courses. Pathetic.

We gave our 9th graders the option to read A Separate Peace and 100% of them chose to read the graphic novel The Magic Fish instead

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm wondering if students' GPAs are notching downward a bit due to the changing calculation for semester grades.

I hope so. MCPS high schoolers should be held to the same standards as private school kids. Glad no more grade inflation for MCPS!