Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No insight here but I completely agree. Thankfully my kids have connected that the homework is essential in order to do well on the tests but they also get very stressed about the tests since they're worth 90%. Taking the pressure off the homework just moved it to test stress. I would be in favor of a more balanced split as well.

PRECISELY! This policy just recreates the problem they were trying to solve in a different area.

Is that the problem they were trying to solve? I teach a private that made this shift and that had nothing to do with what we were trying to solve.

One thing to point out about the "practice/preparation" section is also sometimes called "completion". For at least some types of classes, the grade is simply did the student try all the problems, NOT did the student successfully complete the problems. The grade is often (but not always and not in every class) an "all or nothing" grade; you either tried and get full credit, or you didn't and get no credit (or half credit depending on the grading policy of the individual teacher or school; there is some debate about whether not turning in an assignment at all should get credit, with teachers generally opposed to giving half credit where no effort has been shown, while admin pushes for giving half credit. Again mileage may vary with individual teachers and schools.

So one problem with counting the practice/prep/completion as a higher percent is that might require teachers to increase the workload by actually grading the assignment. Back in the good old days, when admin let teachers teach, that was standard. But now, with hundreds of hours of "unfunded mandates" for various admin-required paperwork foisted upon teacher's time, few teachers have the time or bandwidth to grade daily assignments and get them back quickly. Hence 10%; it can AT MOST change a grade by a letter.

Think of it as simply the 10% bonus for showing the teacher on a daily/regular basis that you are at least trying.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That is how it works in most university level classes. Homework is essential to do, but worth a small percentage of grades. It makes sense to me, as tests actually measure a students ability. On homework, you expect the student gets some help.

Again, homework is not the only thing that falls under the prep/practice category. There is a good chunk of classwork (such as warm-ups) that also fall under this category.

Grades are supposed to be a measure of student understanding of content. Why should practice and preparation, even done in class, be part of the 90% category? We are grading knowledge, not behavior. In this age of everyone get a trophy, the idea that classwork is only worth doing if it “earns points” has crept into student (and parent) thinking, and it is a real problem. Students shouldn’t need an extrinsic motivation (like points) to do what they need to do to learn.

University-level courses grade based on participation, in addition to coursework, so I would challenge your claim that grades only reflect knowledge and not behavior. Are you just making things up?

Anonymous wrote:That is how it works in most university level classes. Homework is essential to do, but worth a small percentage of grades. It makes sense to me, as tests actually measure a students ability. On homework, you expect the student gets some help.

This isn't true. University-level courses actually split between prep/practice/hw, projects, assessments and class participation, which MCPS seems to completely ignore. There's way more categories of evaluation than just the two that MCPS uses.

Here's a real grading framework from an actual university course

Class Participation 10%
Individual Final Exam 25%
Study Group Case Brief Notes (4) 25%
Personal Project 40%

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That is how it works in most university level classes. Homework is essential to do, but worth a small percentage of grades. It makes sense to me, as tests actually measure a students ability. On homework, you expect the student gets some help.

Again, homework is not the only thing that falls under the prep/practice category. There is a good chunk of classwork (such as warm-ups) that also fall under this category.

Grades are supposed to be a measure of student understanding of content. Why should practice and preparation, even done in class, be part of the 90% category? We are grading knowledge, not behavior. In this age of everyone get a trophy, the idea that classwork is only worth doing if it “earns points” has crept into student (and parent) thinking, and it is a real problem. Students shouldn’t need an extrinsic motivation (like points) to do what they need to do to learn.

The biggest issue with this weighting has been that teachers will still give assignments in the All Task category that have 3 questions. So it’s essentially get them all right or fail.

Anonymous wrote:That is how it works in most university level classes. Homework is essential to do, but worth a small percentage of grades. It makes sense to me, as tests actually measure a students ability. On homework, you expect the student gets some help.

Again, homework is not the only thing that falls under the prep/practice category. There is a good chunk of classwork (such as warm-ups) that also fall under this category.

That is how it works in most university level classes. Homework is essential to do, but worth a small percentage of grades. It makes sense to me, as tests actually measure a students ability. On homework, you expect the student gets some help.

Anonymous wrote:Homework can be copied and is not a measure of student understanding of content. Weighting it more than 10% is inappropriate. All tasks does not mean only quizzes and tests. It can include many other types of tasks that demonstrate mastery.

Did you read the feedback from other posters? Homework can be copied and kids can cheat in class too with things like:

Photomath: https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/fd3xy3/photomath_is_a_scourge/

ChatGPT: https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/school-districts-blocking-chatgpt-amid-fears-of-cheating-educators-weigh-in-on-ai

Not to mention Quizlet and even good ol' fashioned Google Docs that kids share. Cheating is a UNIVERSAL problem both inside and outside the classroom that schools need to address and mitigate.

But the main point being raised here is that the 10% weight on prep/practice (which btw isn't JUST HOMEWORK) means kids don't think it's important and end up underperforming on assessments because they're not keeping up with the prep/practice work.

Homework can be copied and is not a measure of student understanding of content. Weighting it more than 10% is inappropriate. All tasks does not mean only quizzes and tests. It can include many other types of tasks that demonstrate mastery.

Anonymous wrote:One of the other problems of the 90/10 split is that some classes end up having almost all assignments practice and just a few all tasks/assessments. If a math class does a ~weekly "exit ticket" that is classified as an assessment, that is great. There are enough grades in the book to cushion. If there are just 2-3 small assessments in a quarter and then 1-2 bigger county formatives, then being a little slower to pick up a new concept can suddenly derail a grade. Teachers that classify too much as practice/prep aren't ultimately doing a student any favors. I'd much prefer a 70/30 split or (similar to what we used to have) 10% homework/20-30%classwork or formative assignments/60-70% summatives or tests)

Fantastic point.

One of the other problems of the 90/10 split is that some classes end up having almost all assignments practice and just a few all tasks/assessments. If a math class does a ~weekly "exit ticket" that is classified as an assessment, that is great. There are enough grades in the book to cushion. If there are just 2-3 small assessments in a quarter and then 1-2 bigger county formatives, then being a little slower to pick up a new concept can suddenly derail a grade. Teachers that classify too much as practice/prep aren't ultimately doing a student any favors. I'd much prefer a 70/30 split or (similar to what we used to have) 10% homework/20-30%classwork or formative assignments/60-70% summatives or tests)

Anonymous wrote:No insight here but I completely agree. Thankfully my kids have connected that the homework is essential in order to do well on the tests but they also get very stressed about the tests since they're worth 90%. Taking the pressure off the homework just moved it to test stress. I would be in favor of a more balanced split as well.

PRECISELY! This policy just recreates the problem they were trying to solve in a different area.

No insight here but I completely agree. Thankfully my kids have connected that the homework is essential in order to do well on the tests but they also get very stressed about the tests since they're worth 90%. Taking the pressure off the homework just moved it to test stress. I would be in favor of a more balanced split as well.

So at the high school level, MCPS weights All Tasks/Assessments at 90% and Practice/Prep at 10%. Not sure if this applies at MS as well.

I understand the motive behind this is to reduce the impact and influence that homework has on a student's grade, as I understand some in MCPS have come to believe that requiring homework for all students is unfair and unequitable, since not all students have the stability and support at home to do homework daily.

But 90% vs 10% seems unreasonably weighted, because if you don't practice, how can you expect to do well on assessments?

And unfortunately, the message kids receive (sometimes from teachers themselves!!!) is that they don't really need to worry about missing or skipping practice/prep assignments "since it's only 10%" of their grade. And with the automatic 50% rule, not doing those homework assignments doesn't tank their grade like if they were getting 0s for missing those assignments.

Even if I were to buy into the premise that classwork and assessments matter more than homework, the current weights seem off and self-defeating, since consistent prep and practice is key to developing and demonstrating mastery on assessments. So why not do 80% All Tasks/Assessments and 20% Prep/Practice. Or why not 70/30 split?

Just looking for context and history here behind this decision and what evidence was used to decide on the 90/10 split.