MCPS Teachers Not Checking or Providing Feedback on Homework - How Common is this Practice?

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure how anyone with 150 students could possibly be expected to check, grade and provide meaningful feedback for all students every day. Or should they just assign homework once a week?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure how anyone with 150 students could possibly be expected to check, grade and provide meaningful feedback for all students every day. Or should they just assign homework once a week?

With so many students, they cannot prep for class and provide meaningful feedback on every assignment. In high school, homework can be reviewed in class so that the teacher does not have to provide extensive comments on graded homework. It is important for students to get guidance on key written assignments so that they can learn how to research and write papers. Perhaps one or two papers a semester can be graded closely by the teacher with extensive comments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure how anyone with 150 students could possibly be expected to check, grade and provide meaningful feedback for all students every day. Or should they just assign homework once a week?

With so many students, they cannot prep for class and provide meaningful feedback on every assignment. In high school, homework can be reviewed in class so that the teacher does not have to provide extensive comments on graded homework. It is important for students to get guidance on key written assignments so that they can learn how to research and write papers. Perhaps one or two papers a semester can be graded closely by the teacher with extensive comments.

I don't buy the argument that teachers don't have time to provide feedback and teach. Great teachers seem to make the time and school administrators should be weeding out the bad teachers that are shirking their responsibilities. Homework is a pointless exercise if nothing is done to help a child understand his or her mistakes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't buy the argument that teachers don't have time to provide feedback and teach. Great teachers seem to make the time and school administrators should be weeding out the bad teachers that are shirking their responsibilities. Homework is a pointless exercise if nothing is done to help a child understand his or her mistakes.

Do the math! Say it takes 3 minutes to read and provide feedback for each child's HW. 450 minutes...7 1/2 hours. Where will all that time come from multiple days per week?

Incidentally, 3 minutes is low estimate of how long it takes to thoroughly read and comment upon a child's work. I'm sure you've never taught a day in your life, otherwise you'd know better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't buy the argument that teachers don't have time to provide feedback and teach. Great teachers seem to make the time and school administrators should be weeding out the bad teachers that are shirking their responsibilities. Homework is a pointless exercise if nothing is done to help a child understand his or her mistakes.

Do the math! Say it takes 3 minutes to read and provide feedback for each child's HW. 450 minutes...7 1/2 hours. Where will all that time come from multiple days per week?

Incidentally, 3 minutes is low estimate of how long it takes to thoroughly read and comment upon a child's work. I'm sure you've never taught a day in your life, otherwise you'd know better.

Here are some best teaching practices that some teachers use to check work and provide feedback:

Classwork time - walk around and see what the kids are doing. Are they on topic and on task? Are they struggling? Help then can be provided before the whole assignment is practiced wrong.

Ex. Math - reserve the last 10 minutes of class, which can be done if notes are given or posted on Edline. See who is struggling and reteach. If many kids are in the same boat, a small group re-teaching opportunity can be utilized. If whole class, then something in the lesson did not hit the mark so a class reteach or homework modification may be in order. The point is that you can save time and effort by doing a small observation and check before the kids are dismissed.

Ex. English - give the kids graphic organizers a quick check to see if kids are on topic and meeting the key objectives.

Also for English, there are only a couple of major written assignments per marking period so the 7 1/2 hours it takes to spend the 3 minutes per child is spread over a couple of weeks. Surely there is enough time to provide feedback on a rough draft when there is only about one paper per month? Is this what your planning periods are for and aren't you still on the clock after the kids are dismissed?

[Anonymous]

My children only get peer review on rough drafts and check marks on a form for the final grade indicating their scores for different parts of the ruberic. They get specific comments on the paper maybe 1 time per quarter in English. This is HS and MS.

[Anonymous]

My children only get peer review on rough drafts and check marks on a form for the final grade indicating their scores for different parts of the ruberic. They get specific comments on the paper maybe 1 time per quarter in English. This is HS and MS.

This is ridiculous. If you can't provide feedback on assignments and bother to grade them because you have only one teacher and 150 students then guess what - you might as well not be holding school at all.

I agree with the teachers posting that with 150 students they can't logistically grade and provide comments. This doesn't mean that its OK for MCPS to offer fake instruction!

Its completely ridiculous that MCPS pisses money down the drain all the time at the expense of class sizes. Starr seems to think that as long kids in higher performing school score well enough on one standardized test (which he can add points and inflate the grades anyway!) then its fine to pack as many bodies as possible into a room.

If MCPS isn't going to teach, then we should just shut down the whole system not pretend its something it isn't. Take the 2 billion dollars and give every student a voucher to go elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My children only get peer review on rough drafts and check marks on a form for the final grade indicating their scores for different parts of the ruberic. They get specific comments on the paper maybe 1 time per quarter in English. This is HS and MS.

This is ridiculous. I am very sympathetic to the amount of time it takes to grade 150 papers but our MS and HS students need feedback and comments from a trained professional. They have to learn how to research and write papers. Ideally, teachers would provide this kind of detailed feedback once every 4-6 weeks. There is no getting around the fact that teaching writing is labor intensive- there are no short cuts. I would be fine with the teacher cutting back on other grading if this frees up time to help students learn how to write well before they head to college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My children only get peer review on rough drafts and check marks on a form for the final grade indicating their scores for different parts of the ruberic. They get specific comments on the paper maybe 1 time per quarter in English. This is HS and MS.

This is ridiculous. I am very sympathetic to the amount of time it takes to grade 150 papers but our MS and HS students need feedback and comments from a trained professional. They have to learn how to research and write papers. Ideally, teachers would provide this kind of detailed feedback once every 4-6 weeks. There is no getting around the fact that teaching writing is labor intensive- there are no short cuts. I would be fine with the teacher cutting back on other grading if this frees up time to help students learn how to write well before they head to college.

Unfortunately, the mandatory minimum grading policies that many local districts have in place do not allow teachers this type of flexibility to focus on a few in-depth assignments. While your proposed ideas would allow more feedback, class sizes still make timely, in-depth feedback challenging. Smaller class sizes and more flexibility in grading policies would expose poor teachers and allow great teachers to prosper and give that feedback students deserve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I would either make time to review the homework with her, or hire a tutor. High school is a big deal.

My son is still in elementary school, so my post may not be very helpful to you. However, I did notice that only 1 out of 5 teachers he has had over the years has ever written useful and timely feedback and corrections on his homework! The others would return the homework several weeks after it was handed in (a young child has time to forget all that he wrote in that timeframe), most of the time without comments, but there was just a check mark on the front page to indicate that the homework had been completed.

Teachers obviously have leeway in how they handle this, and most are too busy to bother. The homework is supposed to be reviewed in class, however verbal explanations are not the same as written comments. My son has ADHD and can't follow rapid discussions in class, so the verbal review is lost on him. But even for the average student, written feedback is permanent and undisputable.

That's what happens when teachers are underpaid and not trained properly.

And there we go. 2nd post of the thread: get a tutor. Aka - our public schools suck but if you pay $70/hr for someone to help, you can help pacify the bad teachers and curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Or is the teacher going over the homework assignments in class, posting the answers on the Promethean board expecting the students to check their work and ask questions, and your daughter is not participating? Homework assignments are typically meant to reinforce whatever was taught that day in class- seems like it would waste a great deal of time (and delay the process) if a teacher were to collect it up and mark it for 130-150 students daily, right?

This is what I do AND I post the flipchart to Google classroom as a PDF, but students rarely look at them. For my subject, roughly 90% of HW assigned is prep for instruction and roughly 50% is subjective. However, our dept head won't let us include it in the calculation of grades so we check for completion and move on. Obviously, it is a flawed system, but if I spend 2 hours at home grading HW for accuracy, then I have two hours less for grading things that count for credit (on which I DO comment) and planning. My planning periods are filled with useless meetings and I offer individual help during lunch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I feel really badly for the teachers in MCPS. They are handed a crap curriculum, forced to use it and then have to face the parents.

I too think children should take notes, but I understand the PP"s point. In her point she is using high school as an example, in my college 20 years ago, we had the ability to print out presentations the night before and take notes on the presentations.

I think the kids should have a TEXTBOOK for God's sakes, my son in Fifth grade has never had a textbook. I remember going home and looking at a sample problem and reading text to solve math problems.

The pp has given us valuable insight into the major disconnect between the central office and staff.

+1

The curriculum is severely flawed. Pre-2.0 I attended a curriculum meeting on the reading curriculum for elementary students. They explained that teachers were given explicit instructions not to correct all errors on a students paper because it would overwhelm the students and damage their confidence. Instead the teachers were supposed to pick one or two areas to focus on. I was appalled because if a child gets back a "corrected" paper and something isn't marked it would seem natural to conclude that it was correct, reinforcing bad habits.

Yes, kids need textbooks. It wasn't until my child reached Math A that she got her first textbook. She was amazed when I showed her that there were explanations available before every problem set. Then I got to show her the joys of a glossary and index. Frankly, if MCPS is so concerned about reducing the achievement gap this seems like a good place to start.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

In fifth grade? I don't remember a math textbook until Algebra I.

This will blow your mind. Starting in 1st grade we had math textbooks. In fact, in elementary we had textbooks for many subjects. For 5th grade I also remember books for Reading (basal reader, accompanying workbook, Spelling book and Grammar book), Art (it was the first time we had an Art book), History, and Health. Oddly enough, I don't remember a Science textbook. Usually the first day of school was devoted to issuing textbooks to students, checking them for damage or breaking in new ones and covering them with paper covers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In fifth grade? I don't remember a math textbook until Algebra I.

This will blow your mind. Starting in 1st grade we had math textbooks. In fact, in elementary we had textbooks for many subjects. For 5th grade I also remember books for Reading (basal reader, accompanying workbook, Spelling book and Grammar book), Art (it was the first time we had an Art book), History, and Health. Oddly enough, I don't remember a Science textbook. Usually the first day of school was devoted to issuing textbooks to students, checking them for damage or breaking in new ones and covering them with paper covers.

Pp here. I need to correct something. While we did have books for math class and reading class every year the art book was actually for 6th grade (which was our last year in elementary). I don't remember if we had history books before then, but I'm pretty sure we did have health books earlier. Sorry for the mistake - it was a long time ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I feel really badly for the teachers in MCPS. They are handed a crap curriculum, forced to use it and then have to face the parents.

I too think children should take notes, but I understand the PP"s point. In her point she is using high school as an example, in my college 20 years ago, we had the ability to print out presentations the night before and take notes on the presentations.

I think the kids should have a TEXTBOOK for God's sakes, my son in Fifth grade has never had a textbook. I remember going home and looking at a sample problem and reading text to solve math problems.

The pp has given us valuable insight into the major disconnect between the central office and staff.

+1

The curriculum is severely flawed. Pre-2.0 I attended a curriculum meeting on the reading curriculum for elementary students. They explained that teachers were given explicit instructions not to correct all errors on a students paper because it would overwhelm the students and damage their confidence. Instead the teachers were supposed to pick one or two areas to focus on. I was appalled because if a child gets back a "corrected" paper and something isn't marked it would seem natural to conclude that it was correct, reinforcing bad habits.

Yes, kids need textbooks. It wasn't until my child reached Math A that she got her first textbook. She was amazed when I showed her that there were explanations available before every problem set. Then I got to show her the joys of a glossary and index. Frankly, if MCPS is so concerned about reducing the achievement gap this seems like a good place to start.

My child had a school IEP meeting a few weeks ago where they concluded nothing was wrong because he is an A/B student. However, the writing example they provided would have been a "sea of red" if the teacher had marked all the errors. We were told that teachers don't correct all the mistakes because it would damage the child's self esteem. A load of crap. They sit there and say my child is passing and therefore they won't do an evaluation but he is advancing in middle school despite lack of basic writing skills.