Reply to 7 Math teachers are leaving Richard Montgomerry HS

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "7 Math teachers are leaving Richard Montgomerry HS"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]"Yes, but end of the day, the student is assigned a letter grade, at which point, how badly the student failed is irrelevant."

It's only irrelevant if you only care about grades and not about how much the student is actually learning.  A student who earns a 58% is not the same as a student who earns an 8% when it comes to the percent of the course material they have mastered.

And that's my main issue with the state of the conversation here.  It seems that everyone here other than me is exclusively focused on a letter on a report card and does not care about having the grade mean something about the actual level of learning.

"Qualitatively, letter grades are a normal distribution with mean at C and tails at A and E--at least that was the original concept."

I can assure you that that's not why the 50% rule was implemented, nor why MCPS required reassessment.  Indeed, MCPS does not want a normal distribution, they want a left-skewed distribution.  They want as many students getting A's and B's as possible.

Besides, the 50% rule does not force grades into a normal distribution, contrary to your later claim.  Not even close, in fact.

"Sure, sure, but that 50% test average doesn't *help* them pass the class"

Sure it does.  If a student earns under 50% on a test, their grade would be lower than it would be with a 50%.  Gifting them 50% improves their chances of passing the class, especially for kids who consistently bomb tests.

"If a student gets a grade of 25% and they want to get back to a 75% average, the quickest way to do it would be to score 100% on the next three tests, (1*(25%) + 3*(100%))/4 = 75%"

This would be true IF a student's grade was entirely determined by tests.  But that's never the case.  Getting a 75% average in the *course* would likely not require three perfect scores.

I'll also point out that no student is entitled to whatever grade they want.  A student who earns a 25% is not entitled to be able to finish with a 75% average, any more than a student who earns a 50% is entitled to be able to finish with a 95% average.[/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