Reply to Arl Dems Caucus Endorsement - School Board

Forum Index » VA Public Schools other than FCPS

Reply to "Arl Dems Caucus Endorsement - School Board - In the Candidates' Words"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]So here is Turner's answer on this question, which strikes me as a reasonable one:

As a parent of an elementary student, I would like to know if you support standards-based grading. For my high school students, I would also like to know whether you support the recently adopted homework policy stating high school students cannot be given more than “a maximum of a total of 60 minutes per week per course.”

Turner: Certainly I support grading that is based on standards. However, as a parent of two APS students at a school that has adopted standards-based grading, I have concerns with the practice as it’s currently being implemented. First, the terminology is confusing and a student’s level is not easily intuited from the scale. “Approaching mastery,” for example, sounds in some ways like a higher ranking than “meets standard,” but it isn’t. “Insufficient evidence” makes it sound simply like a student hasn’t yet done any work that can be evaluated, but apparently it’s meant to be the lowest end of a four-tier scale. While there is no magic to a traditional “A through E” letter-grade scale, or a numeric scale, it is important that parents and students be able to derive some meaning from their grade, and SBG seems to lack that quality. In addition, while this is a problem for many parents, I have particularly heard some parents in the Hispanic community express confusion and concern that they are not able to tell how their children are doing in school. This is a barrier to full engagement with the education of one’s child, and seemingly a needless one.

Second, the scale lacks an option to reflect that a student may be exceeding whatever standard applies to a particular skill. It’s just as important for parents to understand areas in which their student excels as it is areas where their student may struggle, in order to appreciate a child’s talents and encourage them to thrive. [/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