Anonymous
Post 02/26/2013 19:00     Subject: What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:
They matter to goal oriented individuals who see rewards or recognition for hard work and high quality work.
The last thing you want to "teach" someone who is motivated is that "nothing matters".


How many eight-year-olds think to themselves, "I want to get an A, so I will work hard and do high-quality work"? How many six-year-olds think to themselves, "I'm getting a P anyway, so I guess there's no need for me to learn any more"?

What I want to teach someone who is motivated is that learning is its own reward, not something you do for a grade.
Anonymous
Post 02/26/2013 00:52     Subject: What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:why have 4 grades each with plusses and minuses when you can have 2 or 3? and put 80% of the students in the middle bucket. Makes life sooooo easy and equal.



Exactly. And don't get me started on those categories where they can all get P at. To one of the PPs, a P is definitely not an A.


In an attempt to address the two grading systems...

PIN have absolutely no correlation to ABCDE at all... ZERO!

P for a particular skill area states that you are proficent in that skill
A as a grade simply means you got 90% of the material thrown at you correct irregardless of what skill areas were being assessed.

So just for an example if you get 90% on a test you could hypothetically have failed a given skill set (10 problems out of 100 were of that skill set) and still get a grade of A (excellent) because A does not distinguish between content areas. Its just a raw score based on percentages.

Like wise you could get a B and be proficient in all areas but simply getting 1 or 2 incorrect in in various skill sets drops your grade.

Now you can interpret this in many different ways depending on your perspective, each system with its pluses and minuses but if you are trying to correlate one grading system to the other you are confusing yourself.


I think we're correlating helpful, insightful grading, with pure blanket statement laziness grading aiming for mediocrity.
Btw, what happens to the kids who get to proficiency and mastery in 1 or 2 weeks? They just sit there and flatline at P for months of boring drills on the same thing?
Anonymous
Post 02/26/2013 00:47     Subject: What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:why have 4 grades each with plusses and minuses when you can have 2 or 3? and put 80% of the students in the middle bucket. Makes life sooooo easy and equal.



Exactly. And don't get me started on those categories where they can all get P at. To one of the PPs, a P is definitely not an A.


How much do grades matter in elementary school?


They matter to goal oriented individuals who see rewards or recognition for hard work and high quality work.
The last thing you want to "teach" someone who is motivated is that "nothing matters".
Anonymous
Post 02/25/2013 16:25     Subject: Re:What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:


The new assessments allow bad teachers to get away with too much.





How would this have been different with letter grades?

Exactly...
it has always been subjective
ABCD
whatever...
A bad teacher is a bad teacher whether he/she is handing out 'A' 's or "P"'s
I honestly think a lot of people have legitimate concerns in terms of understanding the current assessment system
But a whole lot of folks are just pissed they cannot figure out how to compare Little Johnny to the kid next door.
Anonymous
Post 02/25/2013 10:24     Subject: Re:What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:


The new assessments allow bad teachers to get away with too much.





How would this have been different with letter grades?
Anonymous
Post 02/25/2013 09:59     Subject: Re:What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:


The new assessments allow bad teachers to get away with too much.





I totally agree!
Anonymous
Post 02/25/2013 09:22     Subject: Re:What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
I got the report card and it said my daughter is above grade level in reading. I knew she was behind from talking with the teacher. I was relieved to see this. Then I had an IEP meeting with the school to discuss her speech and reading issues. The reading teacher was very clear to say "She is not behind Montgomery County standards. She is behind [our] Elementary School standards". If your child goes to a well-run school, they hopefully will tell you the child needs help. Judging form our experience, I think this poster's school is dropping the ball.


Here's the problem. It depends entirely on the teacher. A good assessment should provide some balance and be a tool to understand how your child is doing despite whether the teacher is inclined to address learning disabilities. Your child is young but trust my once you've had several years you will see that some teachers are amazing with kids on IEPs or 504s and some are very bad.

We had one teacher who recognized that even though my child was within range, she was not performing based on her abilities. She had more experience with certain learning disabilities and recognized what was happening. She arranged for pull out services, talked with us about things we could do at home, and took it upon herself to make accommodation in class. My child jumped several levels, her confidence rose, and she learned good skills in dealing with her disability.

We had one teacher who is just plain hostile toward accommodations. She looks at our child and says its enough to just be within range. She didn't care if my child had been stuck on the same level all year because that level was within range. She does assessments through observation only. There is nothing other than her word on any other subject to show that my child needed the accommodations that she was legally entitled to on her 504 and no way to prove that the teacher wasn't doing them. My child's word is not good enough and there are no tests or anything that we could use to push the issue. We're planning on doing tutoring this summer so she doesn't enter next year at the bottom.

The new assessments allow bad teachers to get away with too much.



Anonymous
Post 02/25/2013 08:53     Subject: What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:why have 4 grades each with plusses and minuses when you can have 2 or 3? and put 80% of the students in the middle bucket. Makes life sooooo easy and equal.



Exactly. And don't get me started on those categories where they can all get P at. To one of the PPs, a P is definitely not an A.


In an attempt to address the two grading systems...

PIN have absolutely no correlation to ABCDE at all... ZERO!

P for a particular skill area states that you are proficent in that skill
A as a grade simply means you got 90% of the material thrown at you correct irregardless of what skill areas were being assessed.

So just for an example if you get 90% on a test you could hypothetically have failed a given skill set (10 problems out of 100 were of that skill set) and still get a grade of A (excellent) because A does not distinguish between content areas. Its just a raw score based on percentages.

Like wise you could get a B and be proficient in all areas but simply getting 1 or 2 incorrect in in various skill sets drops your grade.

Now you can interpret this in many different ways depending on your perspective, each system with its pluses and minuses but if you are trying to correlate one grading system to the other you are confusing yourself.
Anonymous
Post 02/25/2013 08:17     Subject: What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:why have 4 grades each with plusses and minuses when you can have 2 or 3? and put 80% of the students in the middle bucket. Makes life sooooo easy and equal.



Exactly. And don't get me started on those categories where they can all get P at. To one of the PPs, a P is definitely not an A.


How much do grades matter in elementary school?
Anonymous
Post 02/25/2013 06:15     Subject: What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:why have 4 grades each with plusses and minuses when you can have 2 or 3? and put 80% of the students in the middle bucket. Makes life sooooo easy and equal.



Exactly. And don't get me started on those categories where they can all get P at. To one of the PPs, a P is definitely not an A.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2013 21:38     Subject: What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
why have 4 grades each with plusses and minuses when you can have 2 or 3? and put 80% of the students in the middle bucket. Makes life sooooo easy and equal.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2013 21:32     Subject: What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:
Assessments are not helpful to parents at all. I want information about how my child does against his/her peers and MCPS does everything it can to hide that information. I don't want this for bragging rights. Instead, I want to understand if and where my child needs help. I have a child that I suspected was behind in reading, but I didn't realize how far behind until we got private testing. Dropping the Terra Nova test was a mistake.


I have a Kindergartener and this hasn't been my experience. We had a Parent/Teacher conference that was very informative. I thought that, while confusing at the start, the report cards are more informative than they had been in the past. There are far more categories and assessments. I just consider a "P" to be an "A" and and "I" to be a "B". I like the little charts that have a dot to tell you if your child is on grade level.

I got the report card and it said my daughter is above grade level in reading. I knew she was behind from talking with the teacher. I was relieved to see this. Then I had an IEP meeting with the school to discuss her speech and reading issues. The reading teacher was very clear to say "She is not behind Montgomery County standards. She is behind [our] Elementary School standards". If your child goes to a well-run school, they hopefully will tell you the child needs help. Judging form our experience, I think this poster's school is dropping the ball.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2013 21:18     Subject: What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
What is wrong with a grade of P? P means that you're proficient at the stuff that you're supposed to be proficient at. That's good.

An I means you're making progress towards proficiency, but you're not proficient yet. An N means you're not making progress towards proficiency.

Whereas A, B, C in elementary school mean -- what?

MCPS has a guide for people who want to understand the report cards: http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/info/grading/report-cards.aspx
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2013 17:19     Subject: Re:What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
Anonymous wrote:Can someone please explain to me the equivalence of PIN to ABCDE? I am used to ABCDE, and have a child in kindergarten and although I understand what he is capable of just by working with him, I can't comprehend the report card.



I guess P translated to roughly ABC. D is I and F is N. No one can convince me that this is somehow more informative. What it does is to make every child similar in achievement whether they are or not. You can guess as well as I on why that is desirable.
Anonymous
Post 02/24/2013 16:32     Subject: Re:What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?
PP you are not supposed to comprehend the report card. What your child does at school is just none of your business. You made the unfortunate decision to trust your child's education solely to MCPS. He belongs to them not you. They have a lot of money riding on this deal with Pearson so don't get in the way by asking pesky questions about whether your child is learning anything or not. Teachers and principals are just trying to keep their jobs. They can't help you and they can't speak out against this nonsense.

If you don't like it move or go to private school.