Anonymous wrote:To MS and HS teachers, are most students taking advantage of summative retakes? My child hates to ask and redo, but is learning how important it is to redo a summative so grades stay up. What do you tell your students regarding when they should do a retake and how to ask?

MS teacher - on average I get 2-5 kids who want to opt for a retake after every summative. Sometimes even less. One time I made everyone do the retake all together which was just revising their essays, and one student who scored the lowest just refused to do it - and I wasn’t going to force her. I don’t go out of my way to encourage retakes but I always remind them of the option, and leave a note in SIS as well so parents can see. I’m also really not strict about the 2-week cutoff, and yet still the numbers are low.

What’s interesting is the kids who need the retakes more are usually kids who are happy with anything above a 50%, and would rather not put in the effort to raise their C-. The vast majority of kids that hound me about retakes are looking to raise an A- to an A. I don’t really mind these retakes but they do feel like unnecessary busywork for both me and the student if it doesn’t even change their letter grade.

Only twice have I had students significantly turn around their grade with a retake - and I make mine really easy, like, “let’s look at exactly what you got points off for and fix that together now” easy.

To MS and HS teachers, are most students taking advantage of summative retakes? My child hates to ask and redo, but is learning how important it is to redo a summative so grades stay up. What do you tell your students regarding when they should do a retake and how to ask?

Students will get all Bs and As in my class, miss or fail one summative, and their grade immediately drops to a D or F. This disproportionately seems to affect my students that are English Learners or have IEPs (and yes, these are the grades even with every accommodation made).

Also, only the kids with really involved parents are opting for retakes. A student in my home room is failing math, I encouraged him to retake his most recent test: “Eh I don’t want to.” Meanwhile I can give a different kid an A- and they schedule a retake with me the second the grade is posted.

Math is easier to measure proficiency with, BUT FCPS has mastered the fine art of making it as difficult to take a test as possible with the ridiculous software ("Formative") they're using, which includes the step of taking a photo of their work to upload to the software. Can we agree to make math math again instead of this BS?

Anonymous wrote:Where is the (non-anecdotal) data that grades are dropping?

From my (anecdotal) view as a math teacher, grades are the same as they always are, except I have a few less Fs/few more Ds from the 60% threshold.

I do have a handful of kids who probably would have had As in the old system who now have B+ grades, because they get C+s on all tests and the formative grades pull up to a B+ instead of an A now, but as a math person that seems appropriate to me. A student who can only demonstrate proficiency on 77% of the material should not have an A, no matter how hard they work. My grade is supposed to be the % of material the student has mastered, not their work ethic. (Which I wish could be a separate score because I think that is valuable information to have/share, but not what our grades are supposed to measure)

Math is different and easier to measure proficiency using tests. There is little ambiguity and subjectivity compared with social sciences and humanities. Practice leads to better scores as success is measured in how well children do their problems. But in other subjects there is more nuance in how questions can be answered and it is harder to get an A if the grade is based on a few tests with very few questions which are easy to screw up even for a hard working and well practiced kid.

Where is the (non-anecdotal) data that grades are dropping?

From my (anecdotal) view as a math teacher, grades are the same as they always are, except I have a few less Fs/few more Ds from the 60% threshold.

I do have a handful of kids who probably would have had As in the old system who now have B+ grades, because they get C+s on all tests and the formative grades pull up to a B+ instead of an A now, but as a math person that seems appropriate to me. A student who can only demonstrate proficiency on 77% of the material should not have an A, no matter how hard they work. My grade is supposed to be the % of material the student has mastered, not their work ethic. (Which I wish could be a separate score because I think that is valuable information to have/share, but not what our grades are supposed to measure)

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Anonymous wrote:I hope not. 60/40 is far more reasonable. 70/30 is a disaster for most students.

what i don't understand is how can this be a disaster if students have numerous opportunities to retake with the possibility of scoring a 100.

then all those 100s at 70% are awesome.

also, a D now is a 60% whereas last year it was no lower than a 64%.

Everything has been done to help students earn credits and graduate on time.

It's a disaster for my sped student who is very diligent but not a good test taker. Retakes are not fixing the issue.

They're finding the help they need is being taken over by all the strivers who want their 95% to become a 98%. It's a backlog for those who need help and need their 70% to become a B or more.

Schools are only required to provide one retake opportunity to 100%. Kids who don't test well or have disabilities and extended time and are in constant catch up mode essentially have no retake opportunities. If teachers actually provide summatives in multiple modalities it's great too, but everyone defaults to as few tests as possible, which results in high stakes tests.

The high stakes tests is what's really annoying.

Last year with standards based grading schools had to put up with 100 percent summative grades and parents were told they were crazy for not going along with this and wanting more diversity of grades. That ridiculous guy from Herndon and his standard based grading is behind the push and also contrary to his belief that this is more accurate its an easier way for fcps to hide retakes and grade changes internally.

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Anonymous wrote:I hope not. 60/40 is far more reasonable. 70/30 is a disaster for most students.

what i don't understand is how can this be a disaster if students have numerous opportunities to retake with the possibility of scoring a 100.

then all those 100s at 70% are awesome.

also, a D now is a 60% whereas last year it was no lower than a 64%.

Everything has been done to help students earn credits and graduate on time.

It's a disaster for my sped student who is very diligent but not a good test taker. Retakes are not fixing the issue.

They're finding the help they need is being taken over by all the strivers who want their 95% to become a 98%. It's a backlog for those who need help and need their 70% to become a B or more.

Schools are only required to provide one retake opportunity to 100%. Kids who don't test well or have disabilities and extended time and are in constant catch up mode essentially have no retake opportunities. If teachers actually provide summatives in multiple modalities it's great too, but everyone defaults to as few tests as possible, which results in high stakes tests.

The high stakes tests is what's really annoying.

The ones where you miss one question and it drags you a grade down and there are only few tests to be able to improve. If you give one test the grade depends on (most of it) and there are 15 questions, chances of getting a high grade are vastly reduced just from math perspective alone. Might as well do heads and tails coin toss

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Anonymous wrote:I hope not. 60/40 is far more reasonable. 70/30 is a disaster for most students.

what i don't understand is how can this be a disaster if students have numerous opportunities to retake with the possibility of scoring a 100.

then all those 100s at 70% are awesome.

also, a D now is a 60% whereas last year it was no lower than a 64%.

Everything has been done to help students earn credits and graduate on time.

It's a disaster for my sped student who is very diligent but not a good test taker. Retakes are not fixing the issue.

They're finding the help they need is being taken over by all the strivers who want their 95% to become a 98%. It's a backlog for those who need help and need their 70% to become a B or more.

Schools are only required to provide one retake opportunity to 100%. Kids who don't test well or have disabilities and extended time and are in constant catch up mode essentially have no retake opportunities. If teachers actually provide summatives in multiple modalities it's great too, but everyone defaults to as few tests as possible, which results in high stakes tests.

The high stakes tests is what's really annoying.

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Anonymous wrote:I hope not. 60/40 is far more reasonable. 70/30 is a disaster for most students.

what i don't understand is how can this be a disaster if students have numerous opportunities to retake with the possibility of scoring a 100.

then all those 100s at 70% are awesome.

also, a D now is a 60% whereas last year it was no lower than a 64%.

Everything has been done to help students earn credits and graduate on time.

They are only allowed 1 retake on a summative. Retakes are not unlimited. There are no retakes on the formatives.

I do not get some parents obsession with trying to make all things the same across the entire giant county. It makes it way harder to make any changes. Things should just focus on being consistent within a given school for a given course.

Not my kids' teachers.

My kids had some rough tests early in the fall and underwent some shock, but now mysteriously and miraculously have As. I wonder if the teachers are already weighting or curving some grades due to the fallout.

Anonymous wrote:I think they'll change it. It's causing a lot more kids to get Ds or Fs, especially ESL and Special Education students and that's the opposite of what FCPS is trying to achieve.

If this is true, they need to fix it mid year.

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Anonymous wrote:I think it's good - it's motivating the kids to learn the material - either the first or second bite at the apple. This is the outcome we want, despite the whiny teachers' complaints!

Yeah, about that...

Are you familiar with the concepts of short term memory and cramming?

Yes. But the 70/30 grading, or reassessments, or whatever you think might "motivate the kids to learn the material" is not happening. Not any more now than previously.

Kids cram. And with work done on computers, textbooks online and responses online rather than written, nothing is retained. The kids aren't learning anything long term. Neither this year nor before.

but they know all the ways to get to play games on their laptops while teacher is teaching, or sneaking off into bathrooms to be texting on their phones to get their friends in other classes to meet them....

they can retain.

what they want to retain.

So retaining calculus is the same as figuring out how to sneak off to the bathrooms to text friends. Ok, that settles it.

What exactly is stopping the kids from grabbing a piece of paper and solving the problem? The kids, the kids are the ones who have not grabbed the paper.

Yeah, that’s all you need to grasp and retain calculus—grabbing a piece of paper.