Reply to HS Teachers, I'm curious-- do this semester's grade distributions look different from prior years?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]First year teacher here so i cant compare to previous years but 40% of my 9th graders failed semester 1 of Honors English 9[/quote]

??? Are you in a low-income neighborhood? [/quote]

I am outside the Beltway.  That is all i will say[/quote]

That's unusually low. If it's in-line with your school's previous achievement, it's not you. If it's not, it's you. Be prepared to document how you did things.[/quote]

It was because of zeros.  We had 12 AT assignments and 12 PP assignments in Q2.  24 assignments.  The kids who failed on average had 18 missing assignments.  I even disobeyed the grading policy and had unlimited deadlines.  Nothing.  Even the [/quote]

I hope you reached out to your team lead or department head to assist you in managing this. You have terrible or even catastrophic stats and really need to figure out how to work through this if you expect to keep your job. I’m not a teacher but it seems like there have to be strategies beyond extending due dates to get kids to a passing level. [/quote]

Teacher here at a different school. This is not that unusual actually. Assuming that the previous teacher is at a low income/high immigrant school, you will be shocked at how appalling attendance can be. Two years ago, I had a kid who attended 5 days of school out of a full year and administrators pressured me to pass her so she could graduate. That stuff is harder to pull off now - as it should be. [/quote]

You're right that I am shocked.  It doesn't surprise me that some kids have bad attendance and, probably in most cases, consequently bad grades.  But the numbers are what shock me.  Especially given that it's an honors course.  I don't understand why kids who have poor attendance would even be signing up for honors classes.  Regardless, at this point, though, I would think that at least some of that would be weeded out by the attendance policy that calls for disenrollment after a certain number of absences - which actually happened to one of my kids who had to be out for medical reasons.  [/quote]

You mention that part of what shocks you is that this is an Honors Course.  I am also a 9th grade English teacher in MCPS.  Keep in mind that, at the majority of schools, Honors English is the only course offered.  I've been teaching in MCPS for 28 years.  I started in middle school, and for the first decade of my teaching career, the material I was teaching to 7th and 8th grade honors students was significantly more challenging than the current "honors" 9th grade curriculum.  High achieving students are at such a disadvantage under the current system because there is such a wide disparity in the abilities of students that we are practically teaching the "honors" course at a remedial level.

The powers that be would tell you that "differentiation is key", but in a class of 30 students, you cannot possibly teach anyone at a level that is truly honors.  In a given section, I might have half a dozen students who are diligent, high achieving students.  In addition, I might have 6-8 IEP students, 3-4 ESL (English as a second language - remember these kids are being put directly into our English classes for the most part), and a handful of 504 students.  Over half the class has some set of accommodations that I am legally bound to meet, along with others who probably need accommodations but have yet to be identified as such.  Trust me when I say that it is the bright, capable students who want to be challenged that are falling through the cracks.  If you are the parent of such a student, I highly recommend having them take as many AP courses as possible because they are the only "real" honors classes being offered in many cases.

And have you seen the literature on the new English curriculum?  The novel choices in Quarter 1 include All American Boys, A Separate Peace, and a graphic novel.  While the subjects may be appropriate for 9th graders, the reading level of these books is about 6th grade or so.  Compare this to the literary quality of books like To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, and Of Mice and Men.

[/quote]

And no one is reading A Separate Peace. It's ridiculous.

The new curriculum for MS is harder than the 9th grade English curriculum for "honors" courses. Pathetic.[/quote]

We gave our 9th graders the option to read A Separate Peace and 100% of them chose to read the graphic novel The Magic Fish instead[/quote]

Well of course (most) kids aren't going to choose to read A Separate Peace over a graphic novel on their own!  That's why there are teachers to assign them books.[/quote]

Agree - why would teachers give kids this option?

The inmates are running the asylum.[/quote]

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