Reply to The most desirable elementary/ms/hs boundary neighborhoods and schools for motivated kids?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PP the better private schools in this area do give grades.

It would be OK not to give grades and only give feedback but then you have to really not give grades. MCPS gives out a grading scale N, I, P and ES but there is nothing consistent or equal in how these grades are derived. A motivated kid that does everything on a rubric may or may not get an ES. They may get an ES for no reason at all. They usually all get Ps whether they work hard or do the bare minimum. This is demoralizing to students who are very motivated....its sending them the message that learning doesn't matter or that assessments are inherently unfair.

[/quote]

Under the old report card, half of the grades now getting P/I/N got O/S/N (was it N? was it I? I don't remember). How, specifically, is O/S/N motivating and consistent, but P/I/N isn't?

And under the old report cards, were the A/B/Cs always consistent everywhere? Every teacher gave exactly the same grade for exactly the same thing, everywhere in every school in MCPS? That's not my experience of it.

I also want to know how everybody knows that everybody gets Ps in everything. And how the kids in my elementary school managed to learn anything (and even like school!), given that we didn't get any grades.

And, finally, extrinsically-motivated kids may do things for grades. But extrinsic motivation is not the only kind. Nor is it the kind I want to encourage among elementary school students at school. In the long run, intrinsic motivation serves people a lot better.[/quote]

Not the pp you're quoting, but I agree with that PP wholeheartedly.  I'll give you an example.  Unit tests.  It used to be that, after learning a certain amount of work in math, a unit test was given.  The test was graded and a report was sent home.  It said, for example, 15 out of 17 correct in computation; 13 out of 15 correct in algebraic functions, etc.  It was very specific and very clear.  The student knew exactly where he stood, as did the parents.  Now, unit tests are gone.  In their place, a few questions might be asked during class and the teacher decided whether or not the child "gets" the concept.  Talk about subjective - to say nothing of the lack of testing retained knowledge and performing in a testing environment.  Let's take the letter grades out of the argument.  Something fishy is going on with the new way of grading in MCPS -- it simply appears that the schools do not want he students to be tested and graded accordingly.  If I thought that they had some effective alternative, I might be able to buy in to what they are doing.  But, a rational alternative hasn't been suggested.  Instead, we have murky, subjective grading that simply looks like hide-the-ball.  [/quote]

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