Reply to 50% rule question - do different schools interpret it different?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "50% rule question - do different schools interpret it different?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The 50% rule officially reads: The following grading practices are prohibited: Assigning a grade lower than 50 percent to a task/assessment. However, if a student does no work on the task/assessment, the teacher will assign a zero. If a teacher determines the student did not attempt to meet the basic requirements of the task/assessment or the student engaged in academic dishonesty, the teacher may assign a zero.

I have taught at schools where we could never give below a 50%.  Others that say that we can give a zero if we had two way communication with the parents about a missing assignment.

https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/policy/pdf/ikara.pdf [/quote]

What is written above is the official BOE policy. A few years back, Central Office staff decided that parents should be contacted if a student is to receive a zero. That is when the rule of two way communication was started. However, this was not an official MCPS policy as dictated by the BOE. It was a "rule" decided upon by the Central Office staff who cannot actually make policy without the BOE's consent. As a result, different schools and even departments within a school have different procedures in place.

I do wonder -- is there a difference in passing rates, student engagement, student achievement, etc between schools giving zeros and schools with the mandatory 50%?[/quote]

Can I ask a very basic question? I don’t recall any teachers contacting my parents about any assignments ever. Yes this was 30 years ago and in my case I am sure I turned in all assignments on time. But why do teachers need to involve parents in two-way communication? Can’t they just speak directly to the students? It’s much more efficient to stay on top of grading, and post in the portal if parents are interested in knowing. If the students are chronically absent, then obviously the school should be in touch to determine root causes/barriers. But why on earth would a teacher need to notify parents about every missing assignment? That’s so much extra paperwork. [/quote]

And by the way, that is time spent on kids who don’t do the work, vs time the teacher could be spending giving meaningful feedback to the kids who actually bother to complete the assignments. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics