How are high schoolers finding the grading changes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I admit I don’t use the Z in my gradebook. To my knowledge the Z is supposed to be a placeholder that says a student didn’t turn in an assignment but still can until the deadline. I avoid that by not syncing my grades until the deadline passes. If you did it the grade shows, if you didn’t its a zero. I basically sync the grades from canvas to synergy every week using this because there is always an assignment that reached its deadline every week. Longest you ever wait to see your grade is one week after you hopefully turned it in.

Jerk move. Teachers who do this are trying to lighten their load by having fewer late assignments come in. This is why no one respects teaching anymore.

OR... kids could turn in assignments on the due date. Teachers should not be expected to continue going back and grading things and updating the gradebook because we are too lame to hold kids accountable. What do you think kids did in the 70s?

How would I know? I can ask my boomer mom who was in high school in the 70s. Why would what my child’s grandma experienced in high school over 50 years ago be the data point you think is relevant?

You know she was required to wear a skirt. In a public school. Times have changed.

[Anonymous]

I have a 10th grader. What's the deal with deadlines and due dates? My kid hasn't intimated that there's been any change in those. She seems to know when stuff is due, and does it before it's due. When her grades dip, it's because the online grading system puts a zero as placemarker, and she knows it's not her real grade. No stress.

This is NOT hard for regular kids, people. And the grading is much more fair than it was before. Stop whining. How are your kids going to function in life if they can't deal with K-12 grading?

If your kid has an IEP, and grading policies appear to be muddled up for that group, then maybe advocacy with the PTA, and the various SN parenting groups that exist MCPS-wide, might be helpful. My SN kiddo with extended time and an IEP was able to survive high school during the pandemic, when MCPS started using *multiple* platforms for high schoolers, that each had to be consulted every day to check on assignments and due dates. It was HELL, until he got the hang of it. I'm sure this current system isn't as bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I admit I don’t use the Z in my gradebook. To my knowledge the Z is supposed to be a placeholder that says a student didn’t turn in an assignment but still can until the deadline. I avoid that by not syncing my grades until the deadline passes. If you did it the grade shows, if you didn’t its a zero. I basically sync the grades from canvas to synergy every week using this because there is always an assignment that reached its deadline every week. Longest you ever wait to see your grade is one week after you hopefully turned it in.

Jerk move. Teachers who do this are trying to lighten their load by having fewer late assignments come in. This is why no one respects teaching anymore.

OR... kids could turn in assignments on the due date. Teachers should not be expected to continue going back and grading things and updating the gradebook because we are too lame to hold kids accountable. What do you think kids did in the 70s?

How would I know? I can ask my boomer mom who was in high school in the 70s. Why would what my child’s grandma experienced in high school over 50 years ago be the data point you think is relevant?

It's relevant because kids were able to manage their work without mom and without a computer. We are instilling learned helplessness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s been an awful transition for kids on IEPs with extra time because they’ve been used to a lot of flexibility and now there is no uniformity to when their due date actually is. There are due dates and deadlines and whatever is in the system is usually not the time and a half allotted (but sometimes is!!) so it’s now up to the kids to keep deadlines straight and then follow up with the teacher to override the system nearly every time.

All of this. And if you bug the teacher for these dates, the administrator tells you that the teacher has to announce them in class, but isn't required to post them to parents (it would be too burdensome). The executive functioning burden on IEP and 504 kids to keep up with this is absurd.

My coteacher and I put all the due dates and deadlines for regular students and extended time in the assignment title so there is zero confusion

For example:

Enders Game Close Read 2 due date 4/20(ext. time 4/21) deadline 4/27(ext. time 4/28)

Thats how it looks in canvas and parentvue and nobody can claim we didn’t go over it in class(which we do anyway in the daily agenda slide)

We have a couple teachers that do this and I LOVE it. Thank you! Wish more teachers were just clear and transparent about stuff. I’ve actually never seen a teacher give an extension on the deadline for those with IEPs though. Do you also post the due date on the canvas calendar? And if the kid doesn’t turn it in, does it post with a Z in Gradebook? If so, you might be my dream teacher!

jj

I was on the grading and reporting workgroup, where central office made clear that both the due date and deadline should shift for students who get extended time. If they get 1.5 time, then it shifts forward by; if 100% then it doubles.

Example - for kids without accommodations, an assignment due in 4 days, deadline is in 6 days. For kids with 1.5 time, the due date is in 6 days, and the deadline is in 9 days. Kids with 2.0 would have due date in 8 days and deadline in 12 days.

My high school told us the opposite so clearly central office sucks at communication.

Central office does suck at communication. But they are trying to make clear in the updated reg, which is up for comment here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19cDQr7J7LodmaYl2hkqHTFsrtbGxBML4/view

On page 12/23, where it says: "Students with the Extended Time accommodation will be given their Extended Time Due Date and Deadline according to the specifications outlined in their EML/IEP/504 plan."

I don’t know what to tell you. The due date/deadline issue for IEP students has been an ongoing issue at my school for the last few years. Finally we had an all staff meeting where administration clarified that deadline applies to all students. IEP/504 students get extended time based off the due date but there is no reason to change the deadline for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a 10th grader. What's the deal with deadlines and due dates? My kid hasn't intimated that there's been any change in those. She seems to know when stuff is due, and does it before it's due. When her grades dip, it's because the online grading system puts a zero as placemarker, and she knows it's not her real grade. No stress.

This is NOT hard for regular kids, people. And the grading is much more fair than it was before. Stop whining. How are your kids going to function in life if they can't deal with K-12 grading?

If your kid has an IEP, and grading policies appear to be muddled up for that group, then maybe advocacy with the PTA, and the various SN parenting groups that exist MCPS-wide, might be helpful. My SN kiddo with extended time and an IEP was able to survive high school during the pandemic, when MCPS started using *multiple* platforms for high schoolers, that each had to be consulted every day to check on assignments and due dates. It was HELL, until he got the hang of it. I'm sure this current system isn't as bad.

Gold ⭐️ star for you and yours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I admit I don’t use the Z in my gradebook. To my knowledge the Z is supposed to be a placeholder that says a student didn’t turn in an assignment but still can until the deadline. I avoid that by not syncing my grades until the deadline passes. If you did it the grade shows, if you didn’t its a zero. I basically sync the grades from canvas to synergy every week using this because there is always an assignment that reached its deadline every week. Longest you ever wait to see your grade is one week after you hopefully turned it in.

Jerk move. Teachers who do this are trying to lighten their load by having fewer late assignments come in. This is why no one respects teaching anymore.

OR... kids could turn in assignments on the due date. Teachers should not be expected to continue going back and grading things and updating the gradebook because we are too lame to hold kids accountable. What do you think kids did in the 70s?

How would I know? I can ask my boomer mom who was in high school in the 70s. Why would what my child’s grandma experienced in high school over 50 years ago be the data point you think is relevant?

It's relevant because kids were able to manage their work without mom and without a computer. We are instilling learned helplessness.

There's another difference from when we were kids. Parents have access to grades immediately and yet parents don't know the ins and outs of what's happening at school. Over the years, there have been dozens of times when i've seen zeroes or other alarming grades in ParentVue, and gotten on the case of the kid only to see it resolved a few days later. In some cases, it's surely that the teacher accepted late work. I think it's often due leeway given after absences that extends much longer than I would anticipate. Sometimes it's because teachers have the system set up in a funny way (maybe an incorrect due date that shows a zero in parentvue before the assignment is actually submitted). A few teachers have Canvas automatcially grade multiple choice questions but they hand grade essays, and so the score from a half-graded assignment shows up for parents to see. A couple of times, I contacted the teacher about the problems I was seeing and the teacher has told me everything was submitted and I shouldn't worry about it-- parentvue will catch up (echoing what my kid said but I hadn't believed). This last spring, one of my kid's teachers did all kind of bizarre assignment substitutes that even the kid never really figured out-- it was the teacher's way of giving students individualized assignments to prep for their personal weaknesses and needs for the AP exam but from the long, anxiety-ridden descriptions from my kid, my guess is that even the teacher couldn't track all of the grade changes and substitutions.

My point is that back in the day, the kid would work it out with the teacher and parents wouldn't be the wiser as long as the two resolved it before report cards. Now, a good chunk of kids have alarmist parents (like me) who jump on them the day something looks awry in Parentvue. Which is 1000% more stressful for kids than we had it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Definitely adding some extra stress here for the 4th quarter to maintain all As. But I guess that was part of the point.

This is how my kid is finding it. Currently has all As in Canvas, but is stressed out that one bad test (her BC Calc has a test scheduled for the last week of school, for instance), will bring her semester grade down.

I mean, this is how it should work, I guess. But her older siblings would be relaxing by this point in the semester. Doing the work and aiming for quarter As. But not stressing out about it. The fact that most grades early in the quarter were toughly-graded AP practice tests makes it worse. The last month has been trying to dig out of a ditch from those tough grades.