Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't really understand the push to centralize the exams. Exams were always (and in college, too) personal to the class and teacher. Different teachers emphasize/value different aspects of learning - ESPECIALLY in topics like history and English - and a centralized exam cannot really reflect whether the student has learned the content. It also does not reward students for studying/paying attention to the teacher's style and ideology, which is critical to success in college. Centralized tests become more about regurgitation of memorized facts rather than critical thought/debate. Very unfortunate.

new to the thread and stopped here. MCPS has centralized finals in HS in the early 80s. I had the same opinion.

what?

I've been in the system since the early 90s. We WROTE our own exams.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So sorry for you poor people that have to go to public school...mcps...what a mess. Gladly moving on to a private next year. You all should consider it too if you can swing it financially. I would be very concerned about my child in this school system right now.

funny thing?

I have quite a few friends with children who attended privates from K-12. Many - if not the majority - couldn't get into UMCP.

Funny, I had to look up your acronym, cause who cares! Most, if not all, didn't even consider that school when so many better ones are open to them. Just jealous you can't afford decent schooling, eh?

You're too stupid for an explanation.

Reading comprehension/making inferences - F

MCPS has move to centralized curriculum and centralized testing. Teachers are all given the same curriculum and tests that they can use. Then, MCPS can claim all schools teach the same thing and they are equal. The reality is that even within the same school two teachers can teach the same curriculum with one being significantly better than the other.

Anonymous wrote:Somewhere along the way we have abandoned a rigorous focus on reading writing arithmetic to cater to the feelings of certain demographics.

Yes we have, and good. There is a lot more to education than reading, writing, and arithmetic. (Or even reading, writing, and math in general.)

Anonymous wrote:I don't really understand the push to centralize the exams. Exams were always (and in college, too) personal to the class and teacher. Different teachers emphasize/value different aspects of learning - ESPECIALLY in topics like history and English - and a centralized exam cannot really reflect whether the student has learned the content. It also does not reward students for studying/paying attention to the teacher's style and ideology, which is critical to success in college. Centralized tests become more about regurgitation of memorized facts rather than critical thought/debate. Very unfortunate.

new to the thread and stopped here. MCPS has centralized finals in HS in the early 80s. I had the same opinion.

Children dont like to get up early, so now the school start has been moved later.

Children dont like final exams so now we dont have finals.

Learning math and english is hard so we will dumb it down to make it easy.

Some people are offended by gosh… an american flag or a gun picture… none of those pictures will be allowed on any child's t-shirt.

Girls want to be boys and boys want to be girls so they can use the bathroom of their choice (oops that only in Fairfax country).

Do you notice a pattern hear?

Somewhere along the way we have abandoned a rigorous focus on reading writing arithmetic to cater to the feelings of certain demographics.

I vote we return to parents raising their there kids they way they see fit, not who the school board sees fit, that way the schools can return to educating in reading writing and arithmetic.

Anonymous wrote:When your test scores are plummeting and many middle school kids now don't understand enough English, it looks better from a business standpoint to just get rid of them

+1

Are these tests from MCPS or is it a state test for classes like Algebra?

With the elimination of high school exams, please explain what 6,7 &8th graders will take for classes like Algebra, Geometry and Foreign Language classes. Will there be the county provided final for end of second or fourth marking period for any classes?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:in other words- dumb it down so we can shrink the gap. Then when all the families with top students flee or eschew MoCo the gap will really become non-existent.

This is really what seems to be happening. I'm waiting to hear more, but instead of all this focus on closing the achievement gap, the US as a whole needs to just focus on improvement FOR ALL STUDENTS. Kids who are doing well, kids who are meeting benchmarks, kids who need extra help. MCPS needs to show that kids are improving as they progress through the school system. All kids.

Bingo.

Anonymous wrote:It sounded like the first semester will be ok and then there are no more exams for any high school courses. Part of the reasoning? Because the Algebra 1 scores were too low. I can't support removing testing, dumbing down requirements (and a whole lot of other bad insider things I know are in the pipeline). In other words, MCPS just lost another really dedicated, high-quality teacher.

Flame away, but I do have standards. They have been slowly whittled away at, but this is really the final straw at indicating that they wish to have unqualified technicians, not educators. They want to make sure everyone "feels" successful vs. actually making them successful.

I am sorry, teacher, but thank you for sharing.

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like all high school exams will be replaced with centrally created assessments. This is the end of quality instruction, folks. Central office will make high school students who will be unable to perform in college.

http://www.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/9Y733R706C81/$file/Assessment%20Strategy.pdf

The memo is painful to read. No wonder our kids can't write!

Did you people even read the article?

They are talking about getting rid of middle school final exams, which at my kid's middle school are only given to 8th graders, and second semester Algebra and English 10 final exams.

The first semester Algebra exam will still be taken for kids to fail. The achievement gap is usually measured by MSA and now PARCC, which is going to be embarrassing for all of our children.

If any of you actually had kids in middle or high school you would understand how much class time gets eaten up prepping kids for HSAs, taking the PARCC slowly grade by grade because there are only enough chrome books for one grade to test at a time, then final exams.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So sorry for you poor people that have to go to public school...mcps...what a mess. Gladly moving on to a private next year. You all should consider it too if you can swing it financially. I would be very concerned about my child in this school system right now.

funny thing?

I have quite a few friends with children who attended privates from K-12. Many - if not the majority - couldn't get into UMCP.

Funny, I had to look up your acronym, cause who cares! Most, if not all, didn't even consider that school when so many better ones are open to them. Just jealous you can't afford decent schooling, eh?

When your test scores are plummeting and many middle school kids now don't understand enough English, it looks better from a business standpoint to just get rid of them