Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are the tests so hard? I don't remember high school tests being so difficult, and I am not that smart

One big reason IMO is open enrollment honors/AP. Kids are taking classes they have no business signing up for because they want to for the grade bump, for their friend group, because it "looks good for college". Then they struggle. My class average is an 86%, but it's skewed way left because a handful of kids have 50s who really should never have registered for my class. Those who do belong are getting As.

My tests now compared to my tests from 20 years ago are night and day. The current ones are half as long, much simpler. I actually found some old copies cleaning out a filing cabinet yesterday on the work day and was blown away what I used to expect kids to do.

Perhaps the handful of kids who have lower grades have them because of the one test that they have taken so far that is counting for 70% of their grade. While I do agree that maybe some of the kids do not belong in the higher level classes, most are qualified and should be encouraged if they work hard and put in the effort.
After attending many college info sessions for my know senior. Every single school said they are looking for rigor with HNs,APs and IBs this even from seemingly “easier” admits for state schools(VA). So the pressure is real.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are the tests so hard? I don't remember high school tests being so difficult, and I am not that smart

One big reason IMO is open enrollment honors/AP. Kids are taking classes they have no business signing up for because they want to for the grade bump, for their friend group, because it "looks good for college". Then they struggle. My class average is an 86%, but it's skewed way left because a handful of kids have 50s who really should never have registered for my class. Those who do belong are getting As.

My tests now compared to my tests from 20 years ago are night and day. The current ones are half as long, much simpler. I actually found some old copies cleaning out a filing cabinet yesterday on the work day and was blown away what I used to expect kids to do.

I believe it. But also, what were the homework and/or classwork assignments 20 years ago? Reading stamina has gone down - it also seems like "work" stamina, such as homework or classwork stamina, has also gone down in students. Fwiw, when I see the tests that my 9th grader brings home, they seem both very short and also very difficult to me. Although it's been years and years since I was in 9th grade and maybe I just don't remember. I know his classwork and homework assignments are pretty minimal but still seem reasonably well done, just less than I remember doing. And he had virtually no homework at all in middle school or elementary school.

Anonymous wrote:Why are the tests so hard? I don't remember high school tests being so difficult, and I am not that smart

One big reason IMO is open enrollment honors/AP. Kids are taking classes they have no business signing up for because they want to for the grade bump, for their friend group, because it "looks good for college". Then they struggle. My class average is an 86%, but it's skewed way left because a handful of kids have 50s who really should never have registered for my class. Those who do belong are getting As.

My tests now compared to my tests from 20 years ago are night and day. The current ones are half as long, much simpler. I actually found some old copies cleaning out a filing cabinet yesterday on the work day and was blown away what I used to expect kids to do.

Anonymous wrote:NP. I see a mismatch between formative and summative. DC has lots (10+) formative assignments with 5/5, 9/9, or the occasional 11/12, etc. and then bombs the summative with 32/65. Yes, he'll be doing the retake. But that's a big disconnect. Makes no sense.

I find that in my class, formative assignments are often open note (problem sets in class with today's notes in front of them), involve discussions with partners ("Did you also get x=5 for #3?", or have multiple rounds of students handing me things asking "is this right?" before submitting it. If the only things I put in formative were truly mini daily quizzes without any immediate feedback or peer help or notes access, the formative grades would match the summatives much more closely.

But then I suspect I would get a LOT more complaints from kids and families that their grades are too low. They want the fluff of completion work. They don't want to see Cs on daily quizzes and Cs on tests, they want participation points and homework grades and things kids get 100% on because they work hard, not because they necessarily master the material. That brings their Cs on tests up to a B for the year.

Right now our gradebook is caught in the inbetween land. It's not "kids who work hard will get As" and it's not "really smart kids can get As without any busy work". We can't go to the 90/10 that I would personally like (assessment vs. practice), because then no one will do the practice and therefore no one will pass the tests, so this is as close as I suspect we will get.

Why are the tests so hard? I don't remember high school tests being so difficult, and I am not that smart

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In a few of my kids' classes (particularly foreign language and English) there seems to be a mismatch between how long an assignment takes and what it is worth. In foreign language, there have been about 10 of these less than 5 minute assignments like an edpuzzle. But then randomly there have been 2 or 3 that have taken hours and hours to do. I'm not clear on why the longer, weightier assignments aren't summatives. The kids aren't stupid and they can see the time suck of the longer assignments and then just won't do them. In English, it is even worse, there has been a firehose of random quizzes (that have no relation to the only one summative!) and take home assignments, with the take home assignments taking 4-5 hours to complete and then these aren't even graded. While these random quizzes are. Is there any kind of oversight of the teachers and what they are assigning? I've been forcing my kids to do all the work, but they tell me most of their friends are no longer doing the assignments that don't count and I've heard from other parents that their kids just don't do homework. Is this a thing? Should I lighten up on having them do their assignments?

This is us too. My son spends hours on what is basically only going to be a formative assignment. It’s nuts. Then it barely makes a dent in their grade. I finally sat down and explained to him how the 30%/70% works. He could finally see how little the formative assignments count. My only hope is that by doing all the formative assignments, it will help in doing well on the summative assignments and I think that is somewhat holding true. Even though the formative work takes hours (think history), it seems to be paying off when it comes to summatives. My kid has straight As.

This is exactly right-- doing well on formative and upgraded practice will help students do better on summatives.

The parents who think their children shouldn't do the work unless there is a big grade attached are sending a terrible message to their children and are setting their children up for failure as adults. It's very bad parenting.

It's not necessarily very bad parenting. My DD is a perfectionist and somewhat inattentive. If I let her she will spend forever on very small assignments. There are many other things that she does that also need her time (keeping her room tidy, instrument practice, practice for her specialized position in her sport that has to happen outside of team practice). She does need to learn to allocate the right amount of work to each task. That doesn't mean she should blow things off, but some kids will go crazy.

And look at pp's kid, who has diligently done a ton of assignments that count for almost nothing, and he still doesnt know the material - a 70 on a retake is not good.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In a few of my kids' classes (particularly foreign language and English) there seems to be a mismatch between how long an assignment takes and what it is worth. In foreign language, there have been about 10 of these less than 5 minute assignments like an edpuzzle. But then randomly there have been 2 or 3 that have taken hours and hours to do. I'm not clear on why the longer, weightier assignments aren't summatives. The kids aren't stupid and they can see the time suck of the longer assignments and then just won't do them. In English, it is even worse, there has been a firehose of random quizzes (that have no relation to the only one summative!) and take home assignments, with the take home assignments taking 4-5 hours to complete and then these aren't even graded. While these random quizzes are. Is there any kind of oversight of the teachers and what they are assigning? I've been forcing my kids to do all the work, but they tell me most of their friends are no longer doing the assignments that don't count and I've heard from other parents that their kids just don't do homework. Is this a thing? Should I lighten up on having them do their assignments?

This is us too. My son spends hours on what is basically only going to be a formative assignment. It’s nuts. Then it barely makes a dent in their grade. I finally sat down and explained to him how the 30%/70% works. He could finally see how little the formative assignments count. My only hope is that by doing all the formative assignments, it will help in doing well on the summative assignments and I think that is somewhat holding true. Even though the formative work takes hours (think history), it seems to be paying off when it comes to summatives. My kid has straight As.

This is exactly right-- doing well on formative and upgraded practice will help students do better on summatives.

The parents who think their children shouldn't do the work unless there is a big grade attached are sending a terrible message to their children and are setting their children up for failure as adults. It's very bad parenting.

It's not necessarily very bad parenting. My DD is a perfectionist and somewhat inattentive. If I let her she will spend forever on very small assignments. There are many other things that she does that also need her time (keeping her room tidy, instrument practice, practice for her specialized position in her sport that has to happen outside of team practice). She does need to learn to allocate the right amount of work to each task. That doesn't mean she should blow things off, but some kids will go crazy.

I don’t think there is always a connection between the formative and summative assignments. That is, the summative is much much harder and all encompassing— no formative really prepares them for that. Then the student’s grade drops from an A to a C- from one summative. Of course the student feels incentive to do a re-take bc they just watched their grade plummet. After the re-take, the grade yo-yo’s right back up. In the meantime, there is the next unit test to do which they may or may not do well on.

I think since the formative assignments barely count for anything, the teachers have decided its pointless to grade them and just consider it all basically study aids for the test. So all the kids are getting great formative grades b/c they aren't actually being graded.

Anonymous wrote:We just got an email that my dc failed her first AP world history test.

The teacher said it is eligible for a retake after completing an "extensive remediation packet" but he encourages students to not retake and focus on the next unit, says when students try and retake they fall behind and then do poorly on the next test as well.

Any advice?

Ugh. A system that encourages retakes and teachers strongly discouraging retakes. So a kid who follows the teacher's advice is going to have worse grades than the kids who do as many retakes as they can. A kid who diligently does his homework will get no credit. And "extensive remediation packets" are frankly, punishments.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We just got an email that my dc failed her first AP world history test.

The teacher said it is eligible for a retake after completing an "extensive remediation packet" but he encourages students to not retake and focus on the next unit, says when students try and retake they fall behind and then do poorly on the next test as well.

Any advice?

Drop down to honors.

just curious, would the grade go with the student or would she start fresh in Honors?

NP. I see a mismatch between formative and summative. DC has lots (10+) formative assignments with 5/5, 9/9, or the occasional 11/12, etc. and then bombs the summative with 32/65. Yes, he'll be doing the retake. But that's a big disconnect. Makes no sense.

Anonymous wrote:We just got an email that my dc failed her first AP world history test.

The teacher said it is eligible for a retake after completing an "extensive remediation packet" but he encourages students to not retake and focus on the next unit, says when students try and retake they fall behind and then do poorly on the next test as well.

Any advice?

Drop down to honors.

We just got an email that my dc failed her first AP world history test.

The teacher said it is eligible for a retake after completing an "extensive remediation packet" but he encourages students to not retake and focus on the next unit, says when students try and retake they fall behind and then do poorly on the next test as well.

Any advice?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, one of my kids has done so much work for his language class. Just tons and tons of assignments, all with almost perfect scores. I just counted up 46 assignments in the gradebook so far.

They have taken one test, which has has a 70 on. His grade is a C. ALl of those other assignments didn't seem to count AND also didn't seem to help him learn the subject matter so he could score higher on the test.

Is he going to do a retake?

That was the retake . The first test was more like 60. Its for French 3. I think we do need to get a tutor. I don't know why its not sticking. The class has so much homework.

My guess is the homework is not correct but no one is actually correcting it. He’s not learning from it. I would get a tutor asap.