Reply to "I thought 50% for no work was okay and I was wrong"

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to ""I thought 50% for no work was okay and I was wrong""

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For those saying that their kids are receiving zeroes in FCPS.....is that class/school using a 4.0 scale?  If so, they absolutely can receive a zero.  The 50% rule only applies to those schools using a 100 point grading scale.  It is very difficult to recover from a zero when using 100 point scale.  That is a lot to overcome and will destroy any motivation to try.

Not saying this is a perfect solution but as others have said, the A students are not getting hurt by this policy and it gives the lower students a fighting chance and a reason to keep trying.

-FCPS teacher[/quote]

I honestly think it helps the A student. A smart kid can do the math and decide to skip homework that will have little impact on their grade and spend the time on essays or projects that will. That's how I dealt with a packed schedules in high school and I still managed to graduate third in my class. I think there is value to teaching kids to prioritize strategically- [b]it's a skill that they will need to learn at some point. [/b]The guaranteed 50% makes it even easier to take that approach.  [/quote]

Previous college professor...this is exactly what I am saying. But in spite of all the bellyaching, a lot of people like grading everything because 1. they don't find value in doing work unless it "counts and 2. Grading those assignments inflates grades. A student who bombs a test or essay can do better if every assignment counts for something. But that doesn't mean they have learned anything,[/quote]

High school students are not college students. They NEED the incentive of the homework “counting”
so they will actually do it and learn. This is pretty basic behavioral psychology. Making the entire grade contingent on one high-stakes test or essay also seems sort of the opposite of good pedagogy, and rewards a certain type of learner. [/quote]

Homework "counting" is an example of extrinsic motivation.  We need to move toward intrinsic motivation for students.   [/quote]

do we? lol. how about your job move towards intrinsic motivation and stop paying you?

what we actually need to do is figure out how kids gain mastery, and do that. [/quote]

Personally, I do not think that school equates to a student's "job."  I think school should be about learning and trying to instill a desire to learn.  But with all that said, ultimately, inflating grades with highly weighted homework and classwork assignments is not good educational practice.[/quote]

You’re missing the entire point. Homework is supposed to teach. It’s not supposed to be “inflating” meaningless paperwork. And the high-stakes test at the end of the semester that counts for 80% of the grade under your system is the opposite of behaviorally shaping intrinsic learning. [/quote]

Homework is supposed to teach... yes. Homework is supposed to help students gain mastery... yes. Homework is assigned... yes. But we should not expect homework to count much in the final course grade. The majority of the final grade should be summative projects, papers, assessments, etc. [/quote]

DP. Well, yes, but the problem is that you're expecting high school kids to have the maturity to recognize that they need to do the homework and the discipline to sit down and do it.  When it counts for almost nothing, a lot of kids just won't do it.  Then, they fail to learn the material and fail the assessments.  College kids are perfectly capable of handling classes where homework is simply recommended and everything rests on test performance.  High schoolers need a lot more handholding and coddling.  If having homework count as enough of the grade encourages kids to actually do it, and thus actually learn the material, it's better to handle things that way than it is to set a lot of kids up for failure.  [/quote]

Homework does count.  It counts for 10% of the overall grade.  If you do not think that is enough "encouragement," then how much do you think homework should be worth?[/quote]

If kids are given 50% even when they don't turn the homework in, then it actually counts for 5% of the grade.  5% of the grade is not enough encouragement, and a 50% free points policy is likely to cause some kids who otherwise would have done the homework to skip it, thus learning less.  [/quote]

Then those students do poorly on the test and have to relearn and retake it. Natural consequence, no? And perhaps parents should discuss and take away privileges at home for poor acaademic behavior. [b]Coddling and handholding should be in elementary and middle school, not so much in high school[/b]. [/quote]

Right there is the crux of the disagreement.  Many teens are unwise and have poor decision making skills.  They're not ready for that much freedom.

The best resolution to this would be to ask the teachers whether the students generally learned more and did better in the old system, where they were held accountable for homework, or whether they're ultimately learning more in the new system, with minimal accountability for homework and lots of retakes.  [/quote]

If teens make poor decisions, then why don't the parents do something about it? If teens have missing assignments, then parents should help their children craft a plan for making up the work in addition to meting out punishments (taking away time for phone surfing or video games) until the work is sudmitted.[/quote]

Or, here’s a crazy idea, how about the school be the entity to
impose consequences for not doing homework? Like say, a bad grade? Crazy I know!!![/quote]

Schools do impose a bad grade. They give students an F for missing work.[/quote]

Are you following the conversation? “Equitable grading” involves giving 50% even if you don’t turn it in (or never having homework count at all). [/quote]

Are you aware that 50% is an F?[/quote]

No, it's not an F. Under equitable grading, the point is that even turning in no homework, the kid can get 50% on the homework portion of the grade. Thereby enabling them to minimally pass the exam (with multiple retakes) with the goal of gettin them above F, even if they never ever do any homework. [/quote]

So the kid ends up getting a HS diploma with low Cs and Ds and goes on to be a contributing member of society. How does this harm you and your family? How does this harm others in society? Would you rather the kid drop out of high school?[/quote]

You're only focusing on the kids who would have flunked out but instead are being given a fake HS diploma.  You aren't at all considering the kids who might have been B students, but instead aren't doing their homework, aren't learning the materials, and are instead getting Cs and Ds.  They could have been much more productive members of society if they had been held more accountable in high school.

Also, passing a kid with a D rather than an F is a huge problem for sequential classes.  If the kid didn't learn the material in the first class, they're already being set up to fail in the second.[/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