Reply to 50% rule fading away a bit…

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "50% rule fading away a bit…"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Teacher here. Last year, for any missing assignment, we had to assign 50%. Then, if we had two-way communication, meaning we actually reached the parent, and the assignment still wasn't turned in, we could assign a zero. Most teachers, including myself, just gave the 50% because 1) there are not enough hours in the day to call home for every missing assignment and 2) it essentially rewards students whose parent do not respond to you, and punishes those whose do.

This year, they are acting as though they have really become more strict, and given us a lot more ability to give a zero. The only change is, we do not have to have two-way communication, so we can issue a zero even if we do not hear back from parents. [b]However, we have to make three documented attempts, per assignment, and bulk emails through Canvas or Synergy do not count. [/b]Essentially what this means is that for every missing assignment, in order to give a zero, we need to send a direct email 1-2 times, and also call home 1-2 times, depending on how many emails we sent. This is per student, per assignment. I can tell you in my "on level" classes, I can have 30+ students across different class periods not turn in one assignment. This becomes 90 contacts to assign a zero for ONE assignment for all those students. I think the county knows this is not even possible for a teacher to keep up with, so while they act like they're giving us more power, they expect we will just continue giving 50% because we can't keep up with the communication requirement. [/quote]
At my HS we were told that what was important is that the full story of attempted contacts is documented in Synergy (so that admin knows what happened) when a "Z" is changed to a 0 at the deadline. This very specific example was provided:
attempt #1 - Bulk email through Canvas (for each missing item) with opportunity time(s) for make-up and deadline.
attempt #2 - Bulk email through Synergy (for each missing item) with opportunity times(s) for make-up and deadline.
&lt;teacher also keeps track of any conversations and agreements with the student that weren't followed through on&gt;
attempt #3 - direct email to parents and student with list of all missing assignments and final chance information.

At deadline, assign 0s and create a Synergy comment for documentation with a summary of bulk email attempts, conversations with student, and attempted contact with parent.

To me, I think this is reasonable. Between the bulk emails and periodic in-class make-up days, most students get their late work in. I am typically left with at most a couple of students per class missing a lot of work, but these are also most often students with high absences. In normal years, I would have been emailing parents/admin/counseling about them anyway.

Last year was ridiculous and a whole lot more kids with missing work, but that was mostly because of the overly flexible policies of unexcused absences not causing automatic failures (E3) and taking late work at the end of the quarter. These flexible policies backfired BTW, which is why they are going back to more accountability. I had more failures than ever (as in 1/4 of my students, all with high absences). Kids didn't get that when they skipped class more than half the time, they didn't learn any of the content. So even when I let them make-up assignments and quizzes at the end of the quarter, they had no idea what they were doing and still didn't earn better than the 50% I had already put in the gradebook. Even if I was generous for poor work and gave a 70% C, 2 or 3 completed assignments out of 10 still isn't passing.

I think this year will be much better, especially after a reality check for many in the 1st quarter.[/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