New grading scale in my area PS

[Dmmetler]

 

This is the new grading scale for the PS campuses that are now part of the "Achievement School District"-IE, the ones that have perennially been low performing such that the state has turned them over to alternative management. There's a 12 slide powerpoint at http://achievementschooldistrict.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ASD-2013-14-Standards-Based-Grading-Presentation.pdf

 

What it comes down to is that they're using the same percentages deemed passing on the state test (which is cumulative over not just one but several years' content) and are going to use those as the criteria for grading day to day progress.

 

Our neighborhood school isn't performing poorly enough to be part of the ASD, yet-but I'm guessing that it won't be long before this is the standard area-wide. After all, what parent is going to accept their child's 69% being an F when it could be a C+?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[My3girls]

That's just crazy! Our ps elementary school started grading 1,2,3,4 here instead of A,B,C, etc... 1 being not progressing, 2 progressing, 3 meets standards, and 4 exceeds standards. My kids got 2's all year until the last report card then they got 3's to pass to the next grade. No one got 4's because they only test to the standard with no opportunity to show if they exceed or not. Yeah, that tells parents a whole lot about how their kids are doing, right? Just push the kids through school whether they are learning or not seems to be the common thread.

[regentrude]

Any grading scale is completely meaningless unless the exams that are being graded are standardized.

I can write a test where every student gets and A or B, and I can write a test where only the very top student barely makes a C.

Comparing grading scales without the actual exams is pointless.

[Mandy in TN]

Wow just wow I am at volleyball but when I get home I'll be looking at that PowerPoint

:/

[EKS]

John (in the PowerPoint) is behind grade level standards for math.  Using the old scale, his grade for the class would be a C (at 82%) but with the new scale it would be a B (at 76%).  I'm guessing that being behind grade level standards is considered a bad thing, so which grade is in line with that?  The C!  But now he is getting a B!  What is that about?

[Julie of KY]

I agree with Regentrude that a grading scale is meaningless as just a number. Tests/assignments, etc. can be made so that most all students do very well, or all do very poorly. A test can also be very well designed so that you HAVE to understand the material to pass, but that sort of test is difficult to craft. In my area, I know kids that do so much extra credit to bring their scores up that the tests are meaningless - the kids pull up their grades multiple levels with extra credit that has nothing to do with demonstrating mastery of the material.

[Farrar]

I agree that it's meaningless to compare unless you have at least some level of standardization for your rubric.

 

As for percentage points, I have always thought it was wrong for the school to dictate to the teachers that a certain percentage was a certain grade on individual assignments anyway.  I mean, there are some tests or assignments where the goal can be to get half of them right and others where not getting 90% of them right is a problem.

[Farrar]

By the way, I've seen districts go up and down with their grading scales.  Not sure what the current trend is, but this isn't unusual for a district to change it.

I'm sure glad I don't have to deal with education-ese every day.  It drives me crazy.  Also, this powerpoint reinforces my thoughts to not teach powerpoint myself.  This information would be better presented as a written paper, but with power point, you can get away without having very good writing skills.  Who needs transitions when you've got bullet points?

 

I'm not sure that K-8, especially, say, K-5 really need letter grades.  But if they are going to be given, perhaps we should have a conversation about what they should signify.  This "A = advanced, B = proficient, C = high basic, D = low basic" is a bit unusual.

 

[Edited]:  Oh, I get it now.  For all these poor students, 50% of their classroom grade is based on the state standardized tests, the other 50% is mixed in from their teacher.

 

Now, there is one thing I like on this slide:

 

The grades can only count "evidence of learning", not "motivational factors", such as homework and participation.

 

I like this idea that the grade should be based on what the student can prove that she knows, not bolstered by extra credit and participation boosters.

[Tiramisu]

Shrug.  How do they calculate these grades?  My district has just recently gone away from the 1/3 Behavior, 1/3 Homework Completion, 1/3 Tests&Quizzes. That was a huge joke. Students with teacher pleasing behavior would have a 95-100 average going into the Regent's Exam and walk away stunned, especially in FL,  math and science. Parents would just mutter about 'not good at taking tests'...yeah, right.  You won't test well if you don't know your material.

 

Our public middle school just moved from 70% achievement, 30% effort (which includes completed homework as effort) to 85% achievement, 15% effort (still including homework). Achievement is based on tests and other major assignments.

 

Homework gets 100% if completed and handed in on time, 50% if handed in the next day, 0 after that.

[vonfirmath]

I'm still stunned at the 93-100 used to be an A and now it is 90-100

 

When I was a kid 90-100 was an A

80-89 a B

70-79 a C

60-69 a D

Anything below 60 a F

 

[My3girls]

When I was in school...

 

95-100 an A

85-94 a B

75-84 a C

65-74 a D

below 65 a F

 

I like percentages.  Above 80 is passing and below 80 is failing is how I do it with the girls.  I assign letter grades per previous poster A(90-100), B(80-89), etc ... just because the girls like to see them.  They get all excited about those A's so I use it as a motivator for them.

[Dmmetler]

According to local parents, the schools are using the same textbooks/book-made tests as the other schools that have not been taken over (and, for the most part are operating with the same teachers/staff). ALL schools are supposed to be doing away with heavy percentages of the grade being from effort, class participation, homework completion (as opposed to correctness) and moving to standards-based assessment being the primary grading criterion, with some assessment being short quizzes to cover daily work and pick up on student understanding, and some being longer, more comprehensive tests. There are also substantial homework requirements on Study Island, IXL, and similar websites with student accounts purchased by the school/district, and those are factored into the grades, as is AR.

 

 

[kiana]

If they are doing away with heavy reliance on effort and completion grades, it makes total sense to alter the grading scale.

 

Let's say (hypothetically) that you have one where 50% is from exams and 50% is from effort (which was standard where I would have gone to high school, had I not been homeschooled). An student with 50/50 for effort would  need to make an 86% on the exams for an A on the old grading scale. 70% would earn a B. 50% would earn a C. 40% would earn a D.

 

Frankly, I would much rather have a more heavily exam/essay/research paper based grading scale with wider grade margins than something where your goal is a 95% but a lot of 'effort' gets factored in.

[jenbrdsly]

That's just crazy! Our ps elementary school started grading 1,2,3,4 here instead of A,B,C, etc... 1 being not progressing, 2 progressing, 3 meets standards, and 4 exceeds standards. My kids got 2's all year until the last report card then they got 3's to pass to the next grade. No one got 4's because they only test to the standard with no opportunity to show if they exceed or not. Yeah, that tells parents a whole lot about how their kids are doing, right? Just push the kids through school whether they are learning or not seems to be the common thread.

 

We have this scale going here too.  Even now that I'm used to it, it still confuses me. The teachers only give out a couple of 4s a year.

[linders]

Your new scale is the standard here for public and private. I also hold my DS to it - irritates them enormously, since there is no "extra credit" on my tests.

[BlsdMama]

Regentrude is right, the scale itself isn't relevant.

 

My DH and I just had this same argument over the same two scales and whether it matters in the homeschool arena.

 

He attended public school. His scale was your new one. I attended private. My scale was your PS' previous grading scale. I insist holding our daughter to the more challenging scale for figuring GPA shows she had not just As, but high As. He said it's ridiculous. I'm nit sure either of us is wrong.

 

At the end of the day it matters very little. When they are taught rigorously and test well, their grades and class rank will back up or condemn their GPA.

[happypamama]

That's just hilarious -- so they may or may not have actually found a way to improve performance, but they now suddenly have more students getting passing grades because they've widened the passing net. Fabulous. Not to mention that it strikes me as appalling that you can get just half of the questions on a test right and still pass it. I'll have to tell DH not to stress about getting his estimates right -- if he gets just half of the numbers right, that should be good enough, shouldn't it?

[mathmarm]

Scales don't mean much without calibration, something to compare them too.

I can write an exam that even I couldn't solve, I could write an exam that my Honors Calculus 3 students will all struggle to pass, I could write a test that darn near anyone could pass.

 

It sounds like a good thing that students wont be penalized (as steeply) for non academic things, such as homework (since it tends to be rather inane and dull these days, not to forget plentiful by several reports and anecdotes I've read recently. While I, as a college instructor, dread watered down primary education, I don't know know that I can condemn this change out of the gate. The point is, there are still tests and standards that will equalize the performance and reveal whats really behind a students GPA.

 

I have to add that in the syllabi that I prepare for my college level class, often have similar grade ranges, I don't think that its so horrible that elementary students should get a similar grading scale. Don't get me wrong, I still have students who fail classes even with wide grade ranges. After all, the Final exam is the day that tells us what we really know and I don't give multiple choice tests.

[Haiku]

After all, what parent is going to accept their child's 69% being an F when it could be a C+?

 

Me. When my dd was a sophomore, she scored a 69% in a class, and her school required 70% to pass. They passed her anyway. When I raised a stink about it, their response was, "If she were in a regular school, she'd have passed." Ok, but she wasn't in a regular school ... for a reason! They said, "If she fails, she'll have to repeat the class next year." I replied, "Good, because if she hasn't mastered the material, she SHOULD repeat the class." I lost and they passed her anyway. My dd went to a "good" school, one of only 7 of its kind in the state. It received all sorts of awards and praise for being such an excellent school, yet they pulled that kind of crap.

 

This whole thing is such a farce! The school is failing, but instead of fixing the problem we'll just change the grading scale so that failing kids are actually passing? Look, folks, through the magic of smoke and mirrors we fixed your school! Nothing has changed, but everything is fixed now!

 

Are people in your area actually going to accept this?

[kiana]

Would you really rather continue to have the grading scale where the students can fail the exams and pass by showing effort in daily work and getting good grades in classroom behaviour?

[Haiku]

No, but neither do I want a kid who has mastered less than half the material to pass, nor do I want the highest grade available to someone who hasn't mastered at least 90% of the material. And if homework won't be factored into the grade, then there is no point in giving it.

[kiana]

The "A" is set at 90%, so I'm not really sure what you mean there.

 

They were counting 'motivational indicators' at up to 25%.

 

At 25%, you'd need to get 35/75 on the rest of the material to pass with a D, which is barely over 50% as it is. At 10%, it's a lot closer -- you'd need 60/90. So whether this new grading scale is significantly looser really depends on whether the majority of the courses were closer to the 10% or the 25%.

 

They can still use homework, if I read correctly -- just not grades based solely on completion without paying attention to whether any of the problems correct. It has always struck me as totally bogus that a student would be able to turn in HW with every problem wrong and still get a large amount of points towards their average from it. 

[Haiku]

The "A" is set at 90%, so I'm not really sure what you mean there.

 

You're right. I conflated the original chart with the one shown in the letter that someone attached as a picture.

[Dmmetler]

Me. When my dd was a sophomore, she scored a 69% in a class, and her school required 70% to pass. They passed her anyway. When I raised a stink about it, their response was, "If she were in a regular school, she'd have passed." Ok, but she wasn't in a regular school ... for a reason! They said, "If she fails, she'll have to repeat the class next year." I replied, "Good, because if she hasn't mastered the material, she SHOULD repeat the class." I lost and they passed her anyway. My dd went to a "good" school, one of only 7 of its kind in the state. It received all sorts of awards and praise for being such an excellent school, yet they pulled that kind of crap.

 

This whole thing is such a farce! The school is failing, but instead of fixing the problem we'll just change the grading scale so that failing kids are actually passing? Look, folks, through the magic of smoke and mirrors we fixed your school! Nothing has changed, but everything is fixed now!

 

Are people in your area actually going to accept this?

I suspect most will. I taught in a low SES school (which isn't part of the ASD only because the district converted it to a middle school which started the clock over) and parents were most concerned with the honor roll status-and didn't seem to care about how much their child learned. In my middle class suburb, it's the same thing. Honor roll gives bragging rights, as, it seems, does complaining about your child's homework load and busy schedule. I suspect the main reason why the suburban schools have better test scores is that busy schedule often includes time at Kumon or Mathnasium.

 

BTW-both the original image and letter are correct based on what I'm seeing in local media-one is for high school, and one for elementary school.