Reply to Madison H.S. Parents - Principal Survey and Skills-Based Grading

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]The end of term assessments determine the grade in a purely objective fashion.[/quote]

But that's not what's really happening. At Madison, content only counts as one "skill" and it gets replaced throughout the year which makes no sense to me. Just because a student gets an A on a test, it doesn’t mean the student understood the previous material, and it doesn’t mean the student will get an A in the future. You can say the focus is on skills, but there is also content. The content should be tested every single time for every single unit and the content grade should stay in the grade book. I don't understand how skills-based grading reflects what a student knows in science and math and "a purely objective fashion" would mean that none of the skills grades are dropped and replaced.

[/quote]

This isn't correct.  There are multiple units that each have a "final" skill grade.  Your grade on Unit 1 isn't replaced by your grade on Unit 7!  You get a final grade on Unit 1 and it is calculated into the grade as the year goes along.  It's not like you can just do the last test of the year, ace it, and get an A.  Does Not Work Like That.[/quote]

It's different for every class which is part of the problem.  But for most classes, if you show an upward trend in a skill, the grade gets replaced.  [/quote]

There’s also the issue of students who are consistent on (practice) formatives and do markedly differently on the single summarize assessment for a skill. A kid doing well who has a bad day for the assessment gets a grade lower grade despite probably having actually learned the skill as demonstrated by As in practice, while a kid who gets a s in praybut gets lucky on the summaries gets a mastery grade they don’t really deserve.

Assessments are uneven. One section gets five short answer questions, another teacher requires sixteen four part answers not a single student was able to complete in the time allotted.

And then there’s the teacher who gave an assessment in 1st quarter and just decided last week that it wasn’t a good evaluation of the standard (and that she couldn’t effectively assess the standard at all) so she pulled the grade entirely. Kids who had done well saw their grades go down, kids who hadn’t done well benefited from the change.

It’s a poorly understood and horribly implemented nightmare for the students and as a parent, it’s stressful to watch my kid have to navigate it. My 2021 graduate had a far better academic experience at Madison even with a virtual senior year. [/quote]

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