Reply to What are your thoughts on Blair NON-Magnet?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm surprised that no one has commented on the real differences between being in a low vs high performing school. Its grading.

It is incredibly difficult for ANY teacher to not be influenced by the psychological bell curve when applying a grading rubric. You don't want to give every single kid an A and you also don't want a situation where none or get kids ever get an A. You will either consciously or subconsciously adjust your expectations against the rubric to match the population. If you applied the standard used in the non-Magnet at Blair with Whitman every single kid going through you class at Whitman would get straight As. If you applied the standard used in Whitman with Blair non-magnet every single kid in your class would either fail or be getting low Bs at best.

This is how the peer group self re-enforces high performance. The academic quality of the peer group influences not just group projects and discussions but it strongly influences the teacher's application of the grading rubric. This happens as early as elementary school so the students coming up with a strong peer group are being held to much higher standards even though the curriculum is the same. In any curriculum for any assignment that isn't a basic multiple choice scanned form, a grading rubric with qualitative assessments is involved. [/quote]

That might make sense on paper (if you cleaned up your sentences :P), but it really doesn't apply at Blair.  First, MCPS doesn't allow curve grading or extra credit, for exactly these reasons.  The rubric needs to be set to the material, not the population, and not adjusted after the fact.  Second, of course that is still an imperfect system, but although Blair is not a homogenous school and the numbers are large enough that there are peer groups at all ability levels.  E.g., all magnet students have to take 9th grade honors English, and they'll be in class with regular population who are honors track.  By senior year AP English, there are magnet and CAP and regular population students in the sections.  There is a critical mass of hard working, capable students in these classes, just like there would be at Whitman, so no reason to expect the grading to be compromised.  Same for math and science, neither of my DCs has taken a magnet class so far, but they've been held to high standards at Blair.  Finally there's more than one way for grade inflation to take root, it can be low expectations, but it can also be from parental interference.  If you do have a homogeneous population like Whitman, there are more emails demanding a remedy with each deviation from expectations--that wears on teachers, too--and ultimately everyone is in honors, everyone gets an A. It's not automatic that grading gets harder.

I have no experience with Whitman, but I really don't think swapping exams would be as clear cut as you imagine.  Just compare AP results across the schools, and, no, don't bother eliminating magnet students from the counts.  Your argument is that there aren't enough quality students at Blair to keep up standards, but you can't have it both ways.  If there are enough magnet/CAP students to prop up AP results, there are also enough to maintain rigorous grading standards day-to-day.[/quote]

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