Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought MCPS’s current system was supposedly standards-based, and I haven’t been impressed.

The whole point of grading is to communicate with parents, and other interested parties a rough idea of what a child is learning. No system is perfect, but I think what people understand best is a traditional grading system, where grading was based on a percentage. I want work to actually be graded and not just checked for completion. I want tests without automatic retests for poor scores and finals. I don’t want to give kids a minimum of 50%, but do support the restoration of extra credit, where they can do extra work to bring their grade up, hopefully learning along the way, or even as an incentive to explore the richness of a subject.

And this is why standards based grading will never catch on, even though it better communicates exactly where students are in their learning progression.

MCPS's current system is curriculum that instructs to the standards for each course. But letter grades really have no meaning because ultimately it is teacher dependent on exactly what and how they assess mastery and how they assign grades.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes,I would absolutely support standards based grading. I would also want Teachers to create rubrics for assignments that aligned with the standards. Also the district to indicate which standards had to be Mastered vs a different level in order to be printed to the next grade.

If we did this the data would clearly indicate where students were in their learning, which is the point of K-12 education(or at the least K-8). Also, if a kid was just passed along we could just look back to see what standards they hadn’t mastered to show where the problem started and how it continued.

ES school has this in some respects as each subject area is broken into content areas.

You are naive. This is just another method to hide disparate outcomes and to reduce our ability to identify and encourage academic achievement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes,I would absolutely support standards based grading. I would also want Teachers to create rubrics for assignments that aligned with the standards. Also the district to indicate which standards had to be Mastered vs a different level in order to be printed to the next grade.

If we did this the data would clearly indicate where students were in their learning, which is the point of K-12 education(or at the least K-8). Also, if a kid was just passed along we could just look back to see what standards they hadn’t mastered to show where the problem started and how it continued.

ES school has this in some respects as each subject area is broken into content areas.

You are naive. This is just another method to hide disparate outcomes and to reduce our ability to identify and encourage academic achievement.

Anonymous wrote:Standards based grading, when done true to the intent, doesn't keep track of the scores along the way, to put it simply -as long as a student shows mastery at some point, they receive the grade of mastery- a student could not turn assignments in, or do them poorly, as long as they show mastery on a set number of assignments.

Elementary theoretically had standards based grading for several years until about 4 years ago. It's really not that "new", more like it was innovative about 10 years ago and never really caught on. Personally, I don't think parents ever fully understood how it was different and many teachers weren't well trained on implementing or communicating with parents.

This page gives a good overview of SBG: https://www.teacherease.com/standards-based-grading.aspx

Anonymous wrote:Yes,I would absolutely support standards based grading. I would also want Teachers to create rubrics for assignments that aligned with the standards. Also the district to indicate which standards had to be Mastered vs a different level in order to be printed to the next grade.

If we did this the data would clearly indicate where students were in their learning, which is the point of K-12 education(or at the least K-8). Also, if a kid was just passed along we could just look back to see what standards they hadn’t mastered to show where the problem started and how it continued.

ES school has this in some respects as each subject area is broken into content areas.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think the homework is excessive but yes they need to get rid to the 50%.

Which 50% ? The poor kids? That would make for a bette school system but those kids would just fill up the jails later

You don't even know the discussion and want an opinion. It makes it a nightmare as a parent to track assignments as it makes assignments appear turned in when they are not. It has noting to do with "poor" but you'd probably consider us "poor" and your kids would never attend the schools our kids attend.

Better is making sure all kids get a quality education.

Anonymous wrote:I'd rather we don't subject our children to more unproven experiments in education and maybe stick with proven methods like the 50% rule which is working fine.

Anonymous wrote:I thought MCPS’s current system was supposedly standards-based, and I haven’t been impressed.

The whole point of grading is to communicate with parents, and other interested parties a rough idea of what a child is learning. No system is perfect, but I think what people understand best is a traditional grading system, where grading was based on a percentage. I want work to actually be graded and not just checked for completion. I want tests without automatic retests for poor scores and finals. I don’t want to give kids a minimum of 50%, but do support the restoration of extra credit, where they can do extra work to bring their grade up, hopefully learning along the way, or even as an incentive to explore the richness of a subject.