Reply to More skills based grading at madison hs

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There was talk this week that Madison might be considering grading all assignments again at least to some low stakes level and just having exit tickets and some in class practice not count towards grading. That would be a step in the right direction and help keep better connection and purpose for all assignments and assessments. I'm pleased at least this change might be happening. There was also talk about making the rubrics for the assignment and assessment grading and feedback more visible to the students and parents pre and post assessment. It's still a lot of unnecessary grading work on assessments to me and I still don't agree with the grade revisions over retakes, but if the staff think it will better streamline how their standards are measured in assessments, I guess it will have some benefit for teachers to make sure all standards are covered.[/quote]

Sorry I don’t understand this - are the PTA notes posted? What I’d like the school admin to see is how my child received “A”s on practices that the teachers don’t bother to actually grade and then much lower grade on the assessments. So my child is thinking that they know the material when in fact they don’t - the teacher just entered a default A because the practice is not for grading. What a mess. [/quote]

I obviously know nothing about your child or how their teachers operate, but this happens a lot in my classroom—especially with lower level classes.

Most of my assignments are self checking. The math problems loop through each other to form a circuit, the graphed functions overlap the problem numbers, the answer to the equations matches an answer bank that solves the riddle, or even just good old fashioned “here are the answers, check your work.” Between answer banks and friends and photomath, just about every single classwork assignment I get is correct. But I have no idea why it’s correct—is it because the student knew what they were doing? Or because their seat mate walked them through it? Or because they took it home and googled and then copied the answers? I grade those assignments to guilt kids into doing them, but they are worth 1 point each while assessments are 100 points (so it ends up with their final grade being ~95% assessments).

Parents get mad that their kid has an A in homework but an F on the test and why can’t their homework be worth more but it just can’t. It’s not an accurate reflection of what the kid knows. It’s fluff points. The only thing that has a major impact on grades in my room are independent assignments done without access to phone/computer/friends, within the walls of my classroom.[/quote]

This isn’t madison. No fluff grades. Classwork in the confines of a classroom counts for nothing. At jmhs, classwork, homework, could look like a grade in SIS, but in a few weeks they all come out as they are not for grading. That’s different from your class and that is one complaint. Your students who have a 92% from tests end up with a 97% with the extra graded assignments, for an A. Jmhs students do not get this. This trickles all the way down until we get to the kids who were getting Fs and ds and now those grades boost up a smidge because assignments they got zeros on for not doing them, disappear. Hence, grades are smushed in the middle, the top kids are hurt, and the bottom are hurt. Admin can claim it’s a success because there are less Fs. How great is this!?[/quote]

Agree.  At Madison, this is not just in the lower level classes. This is in honors and AP classes.  It is not unusual to have grades go from A to D then back up to a B then swing back to a C or D as “practices” cycle in and out of SIS.  It is ridiculous to expect 14 year olds to keep up with this when most of the parents and teachers are confused. [/quote]

This is why I have stopped even looking at SIS. It’s meaningless. Some teachers include practice until the end of the unit, others don’t. The grade book is a roller coaster.  My DC even has one teacher including good practice grades and temporarily removing assessments with low class averages so senior mid year reports are higher (yes, she has directly stated this in class). She’ll return things to “normal” in 3rd quarter, which is probably going to be a big shock for some students. [/quote]

I love this teacher. This is a very kind thing to do to help out the seniors who have had to put up with this for a few years now. I wish more teachers would work around the system like this. [/quote]

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