Reply to Did your kid get an ES in reading? First or Second Grade?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Did your kid get an ES in reading? First or Second Grade?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Does anyone like standards based grading?  How long before a new system is adopted?[/quote]

I like standards-based grading. It's at least as clear and useful as O/S/I or A/B/C/D/E for classes, in elementary school, and I don't think that letter grades for classes belong in elementary school. The goal for elementary school students should be learning, not striving for grades.[/quote]

The reason I like letter grades, even in elementary school, is that to me they provide the clearest possible picture of exactly how much the kid has learned and grasped sufficiently to actually show in various ways that can be assessed. Typically, the letter grades correspond to specific percentages. In this way, I can see that my child who has earned a "C" grade knows between 70% and 79% of the material. To me that is not very good, because it means 20-30% of the material they do not understand. So I could ask the teacher how to help them understand more of the material, until they're closer to 85 or 90% which seems like a much more solid basis to move on to additional material.

I don't care so much that they earn "the highest grade" as I care that they "understand most if not all of the concepts/skills". It's just easier for me to tell under letter grades. In theory, standards based grading SHOULD be the best for this because it seems like it would be designed to tell me exactly what I want to know. However, maybe I just don't know enough about the grading system, because I have never understood HOW teachers determine whether a student is at the "I", "P" or "ES" level and what specifically is assessed to make that determination. I don't know that they need to get X% more points on specific kinds of problems in math, or improve their reading skills by a certain number of levels, and that will constitute having demonstrated sufficient mastery to move up a level on the grades. I think I would be satisfied with standards based grading if the standards and how they were assessed were more clear to me, however as it stands now it seems quite ambiguous and that makes it difficult for me to feel that I am being as effective as possible at helping my kids learn what they need to know.[/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