Reply to New FCPS report cards - no letter grades?!?

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[quote=Anonymous]I am a teacher (MS), and I like this new system, although we aren't seeing it yet across the board in middle school (although I believe it will only be a matter of time).  IMO, letter grades are often misleading and do not tell the parent if a student has a B because they are struggling with x but great at doing y...and that is what these new report cards are trying to do.  Many benchmarks are covered every quarter, and just labelling your child with a B or C for all of them is misleading.  Wouldn't you rather know which ones your child is struggling with, vs which ones he/she is proficient in?  For the pp who stated a "c" isn't acceptable in your house, fair enough, but this way, your child will be able to work with you and the teacher on the he/she really struggles with, rather than everything that was taught that quarter or on a test.  So from a teacher's viewpoint (at least this teacher), it allows us to pinpoint with better accuracy where the issues are with children.  For example, if little Johnny isn't proficient in benchmark x on a test that covered benchmark x,y, and z, he only really needs to focus on x and master x, rather than being re-taught all 3 of the benchmarks.  During parent conferences, I can give accurate descriptions of how your child is doing-little Johnny really excelled at understanding the differences between a plant and animal cell, but he needs to work on understanding the importance of the levels of tissue organization.  Now, both of those benchmarks are including in the same unit, covered on the same test.  If little Johnny got a B, I wouldn't know at a glance WHY.  And as the many wonderful, involved parents are constantly asking me how their child can improve, I can literally point to what I have seen and give them concrete examples to improve upon before a re-test or a larger end of unit test.

Here is another reason why I like this: teacher and student accountablility together.  Usually, tests cover multiple benchmarks, and the student is taught and given work on all of them.  Then the test is given.  Here is the problem-it is possible that the student will fail to be proficient on several benchmarks, but since they only make up a small percentage of the test, technically they "pass" with a D or higher.  Some teachers even write tests deliberately skewed so that the more "difficult" benchmarks make up such a small percentage of tests that most of their kids will pass the test (even while failing these benchmarks).  Clearly this is a distorted version of what is going on.

If you as a parent are longing for As, Bs, Cs, etc, realize that if your child shows "always demonstrates mastery" for most of the benchmarks, that is the same as an A, and even more descriptive.  If they are not showing that, at least now you know which ones he/she need to work on.

FWIW, the math department in my middle school has already moved to benchmark grading, even though they still have to give letter grades.  This hybrid system is actually the worst...all the teachers who are dealing with it would prefer to just have regular benchmark grading.

Food for thought![/quote]

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