Reply to MCPS report cards -- how common is ES?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]Sorry, I called BS. That was not a nice way to make my point. I understand what you are saying. I agree that in elementary school teachers should make a bigger effort to find out what the child actually knows, not just what they are willing to demonstrate at a point in time, and that in middle school, kids are assumed to put forth effort to demonstrate knowledge. IME, it actually happens very little that the elementary school teacher goes the extra mile to see what a child who isn't performing in one situation actually knows. IMO, the new report card really doesn't measure kids better than the old one. Even in the old curriculum/report card, teachers were using a variety of graded situations to assess whether a child "knew" the skill or not. Yes, there were "formal" tests,[b] but there was no need to switch to a new curriculum or report card format just to show that a child "IS" proficient in a concept. The old system was capable of assessing that as well. If MCPS wanted to de-emphasize the importance of one test as a measure of "proficiency" they could have done that just by changing the weighted value of a test in the broad cross-section of graded work in a particular unit.[/b]

BTW, if a middle school teacher thinks a child is not demonstrating proficiency but really does know the material, it is absolutely his/her moral obligation to get to the bottom of why rather than just letting that child fail and slip through the cracks. [/quote]

Point taken, and I understand your perspective.  FYI, MCPS is required by law to update the curriculum every 10 years, thus the main reason for the new curriculum.  Even if the old system was perfect, a new one was required.  Unfortunately, the change appears to be quite drastic, and parents and teachers are left to iron out all the wrinkles.

As for your middle school example, I agree the teacher would be obligated to investigate why the student was under-performing (I used failure as an extreme example), but would not be expected to alter the assessment used to determine the grade.  In elementary school, teachers are expected to do just that.[/quote]

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