Do you care about how semester grades will show up on your kids' transcript? Email the BOE ASAP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right, so just give Credit/No Credit or Pass/Incomplete for the 2nd Semester and call it over. HYP will understand.

Of course, they will. Harvard did the same thing basically: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/03/harvard-college-adopts-temporary-grading-policy-for-spring-term/

Peer institutions, such as Dartmouth, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , have moved to similar grading policies for their spring terms. Factoring equity as a prime motivator, Gay said: “[F]or some students the challenges have been more severe. Some have seen parent job losses, or have had to take over child care and other household responsibilities, as health care and other essential workers in their families continue to provide critical support or have become ill themselves. Those who relied on the public library for internet access are struggling to find other ways to join their classmates online, as public buildings are ordered closed. Students in a time zone 12 hours away from us are feeling remote and closed off by time, and by closed borders.”

Yes, all this happened after the schools shut down or are happening now. Didn’t impact Q3 grades and shouldn’t mean they are not used. Give kids a choice.

So did a good bit of Q3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Give kids choice. 3rd quarter grade or Pass/Fail. How is that unfair to anyone? My straight A kid got B 3rd quarter was expecting to pull up 4th quarter as has done before. So I am not suggesting option to benefit my own kid. I am just not understanding how giving the kids a choice would disadvantage anyone. It seems to me that saying after the fact that the 3rd quarter grades do not count is a bad call. No problem telling now for 4th quarter that it is Pass/Fail, not opposed to either method but do not like the after the fact component of 3rd quarter. The whole thing seems like a no brainer.

Kids got 3rd quarter grades. They are hyper inflated, but they got them. It’s 4th quarter that won’t have a grade. I’d like there to be a choice for 4th quarter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Give kids choice. 3rd quarter grade or Pass/Fail. How is that unfair to anyone? My straight A kid got B 3rd quarter was expecting to pull up 4th quarter as has done before. So I am not suggesting option to benefit my own kid. I am just not understanding how giving the kids a choice would disadvantage anyone. It seems to me that saying after the fact that the 3rd quarter grades do not count is a bad call. No problem telling now for 4th quarter that it is Pass/Fail, not opposed to either method but do not like the after the fact component of 3rd quarter. The whole thing seems like a no brainer.

Kids got 3rd quarter grades. They are hyper inflated, but they got them. It’s 4th quarter that won’t have a grade. I’d like there to be a choice for 4th quarter.

You are missing the point. 3rd qtr grades would not count if semester is pass fail. So retroactively you are making an entire quarter of work/grades meaningless. I don’t have a problem with your suggestion either, choice of grade for 4th quarter. That would benefit my kid the most. But my problem is that the kids who did the work at home have the same outcome as the kids who didn’t and are not being told that until after they did the work. The the semester grades are pass/fail my kid did a big disservice to himself by working to get grades up instead of spending all that time studying for AP Exams. It just bothers me that the information is not provided timely for students. If semester grades were not going to count, this should have been communicated sooner than 5 weeks and after the end of quarter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't they use the 3rd quarter grades as they were when schools closed? Wouldn't that be fair?

Why would that be any more fair?

I thought the concern was that kids couldn't tune in once schools closed. So the grades they had before closure could work. Why wouldn't they?

wasn't the quarter almost over anyway??

"Almost" is the operative word. There were quizzes tests forthcoming that kids were preparing for that did not happen. Instead stuff got switched to online, and there were winners and losers in the online 3rd quarter quiz game.

right. so to my point - why not use the grades as they were before things went online.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't they use the 3rd quarter grades as they were when schools closed? Wouldn't that be fair?

Why would that be any more fair?

I thought the concern was that kids couldn't tune in once schools closed. So the grades they had before closure could work. Why wouldn't they?

wasn't the quarter almost over anyway??

"Almost" is the operative word. There were quizzes tests forthcoming that kids were preparing for that did not happen. Instead stuff got switched to online, and there were winners and losers in the online 3rd quarter quiz game.

right. so to my point - why not use the grades as they were before things went online.

It's a parallel thing: some kids were screwed because they were given difficult quizzes after school had been out for 4 weeks, and the parallel is that some grades were cancelled altogether so some kids lost an opportunity to get grades up with quizzes based on material taught by the teacher that had been planned during the quarter. No one got the whole quarter they were expecting, so tall students were screwed in some way.

[Anonymous]

*all not tall!

[Anonymous]

I apologize in advance if this was already mentioned. I read that Howard Co Public Schools will consider "Pass" an A in calculation of the semester grade. This is far from perfect, but for those students that worked hard on their 3rd quarter grades this seems the most fair. For the majority of 3rd quarter, students were in school so I feel these grades should be considered in the semester grades. Another option, if allow students to chose to have their 3rd quarter grades reflected as their semester grade (if they received "Pass" marks on the 4th quarter report card).

[Anonymous]

I am not happy with the preferred option to have no final grades for second semester. Kids should have the option of having their 3rd Q grades count for final grades. At the very least, they should have the option to have 3rd quarter grades appear on their transcripts even if not in the GPA.

[Anonymous]

Why isn't the state providing guidance to the Districts so there is at least some uniformity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why isn't the state providing guidance to the Districts so there is at least some uniformity?

Because we have locally controlled schools. There has never been "uniformity" of grading policy across the state. Why do we care now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why isn't the state providing guidance to the Districts so there is at least some uniformity?

Because we have locally controlled schools. There has never been "uniformity" of grading policy across the state. Why do we care now?

This. What the ZpP really means is “Why hasn’t the state told MCPS to do what I want?”

[Anonymous]

Have they said when they will announce the decision?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have they said when they will announce the decision?

BOE Meeting on 5/12.

[Anonymous]

As usual MCPS is operating reactively with no planning. If you are not going to have semester grade, why have a Q3 grade? Why were teachers told to give ample opportunities to get grades up after the shutdown? What was the point of it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why isn't the state providing guidance to the Districts so there is at least some uniformity?

Because we have locally controlled schools. There has never been "uniformity" of grading policy across the state. Why do we care now?

This. What the ZpP really means is “Why hasn’t the state told MCPS to do what I want?”

Not at all but thanks anyway.