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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

That’s a good answer and I didn’t understand “insufficient evidence” until just now. Sounds like this needs some work. Thanks for posting this.[/quote]

IMO, the SBG categories are just as useless as the current "comments" categories where teachers indicate "meets, exceeds" etc. in various categories such as responsibility (what does that mean?), etc.  I really don't understand the point of SBG when the more detailed information about how a student is doing - their strengths and weaknesses - can just as easily be explained alongside an overall letter grade. It just seems to me, that in theory, SBG is the same as our current system only without the actual numerical system and letter grades.[/quote]

I pulled a kid out of APS and into Catholic school and one of the things I'm most pleased about is that the teacher comments are actually meaningful. The way APS does report cards is nonsensical. Catholic schools also use letter grades. And if you don't turn in an assignment you get a zero. I wish APS would return to a more traditional approach to these things![/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