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Math problems - is allowing a re-do on homework grade inflation?


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My daughter's math program allows them to have a parent delete a problem that they got wrong.  The program gives the lesson, then shows the problem. The student compeltes the problem on paper, puts in the answer, and it gives two chances.

My daughter would like me to go in and clear 2 or 3 problems every day.  She does NOT view the solution (and the program shows me whether she did or not) before trying a third time.  (fourth time if I clear the problem)

Now, I have her homework as 50% of her grade and her tests as 50% of her grade.  I could average homework, or I could just give her 100% for the homework being done to her best ability.  

When I was in high school, most of my math teachers would walk around the room with a  grade book in hand, and we'd turn the pages quickly and show our work.  Then he or she would also call on us totally randomly to further ensure her quick check was good.  In my honors 11th and 12th grade classes it was only the top students in the school so she would just take our word for it and ask if we did it and then proceed.  If we were out due to illness or something, she would accept a few not done each year.  

So, should I continue clearing problems for my dd and just giver her 100 on her homework? Or, continue clearing, but then average her actual homework grade?  Or, should I just say I will clear up to 3 per day and that's it???  I do want her to have the chance to learn from these problems.

She is self teaching using the program (TT) and meeting with a tutor every other week to go over anything she found challenging.

For whatever reason she is finding ALgebra 2 a lot more challenging than Geometry, but still maintaining an A 

Edited by Calming Tea
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hmmm, unfortunately I have no way to record that...

unless I kept a paper notebook with a tally of how many I had to delete ...

compounding the issue is that the ones she finds most challenging are the multiple choice.  If she has two tries, then has it deleted, then has two more tries, that's now four tries and they usually have only 6 answers, sometimes less.  So I wonder if I should tell her I can't delete any multiple choice ones  ?

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Here, our schools have "CBE" - Competency Based Education, which essentially means that until the kid has learned > 85% of the tested material, (s)he doesn't advance. At the practical level (state online charter school), it means kids have virtually unlimited chances to re-try homework (not tests, though). 

We are not bound to do what the local schools do, of course, but it's informative to realize what's going on. 

For my own kids, the motivation / reason she's missing them would factor in to how many times I'd re-set the problem. If a student is using the HW problems to actually learn the material, it's not grade inflation to re-set them as many times as needed . . . that's what she needs to learn the material! If a student is re-doing HW problems until HW grades are 100% in order to off-set a lower test grade average, then that might indicate that she doesn't actually know the material, and WOULD (in my opinion) be grade inflation. (That's assuming kid doesn't have any special problems connected with testing in general.) $.02

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It is absolutely not grade inflation.  It is giving an incentive for doing the homework 

I think it is ridiculous to grade homework.  Homework is practice.  It is what you do in order to become proficient.  Therefore any grade that is partially based on how a person does at this stage of mastery is not reflecting their level of mastery of the material at the end of the process, which is what a grade should reflect. 

I give 100% for completion of homework, and all problems must be corrected.  Homework is 25% of the grade.  One would presume that a student who does all of the homework and corrects all of the problems they got wrong would do well on the tests.  Here is how much grading homework on completion actually helps various final grades:

  • A test average of 100 will get no boost from the homework grade
  • A test average of 95 will result in a final grade of 96.25
  • A test average of 90 will result in a final grade of 92.5
  • A test average of 85 will result in a final grade of 88.75
  • A test average of 80 will result in a final grade of 85
  • A test average of 75 will result in a final grade of 81.2
  • A test average of 70 will result in a final grade of 77.5
  • Etc.

So you can see that as the test average goes down, the effect of having homework graded for completion at 100% goes up.  But at the same time, if you're requiring your student to work to mastery prior to taking the tests, they should be getting scores in the A range, which gets at most a 2.5% boost.

All of that said, I would not have homework be 50% of the grade.  I would reduce it to 25% and allow her correct problems during practice as much as she needs to (and also require that she do extra problems when she has a lot of trouble).

ETA: I would give two tries on multiple choice problems.  If she need more than that, I would move offline and work with her on whatever it is so that she masters it.

Edited by EKS
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Not inherently grade inflation. Correcting ourselves is how we learn. Learning is a process. Just getting something wrong with no way to learn from it doesn't incentive learning or actually help with learning.

That said, I'm not much for a system that lets you redo a multiple choice homework answer. I think there are better ways to approach it. Though I get that you don't have control over the set up. I'm just saying that's now how I would set that up in a classroom.

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24 minutes ago, EKS said:

It is absolutely not grade inflation.  It is giving an incentive for doing the homework 

I think it is ridiculous to grade homework.  Homework is practice.  It is what you do in order to become proficient.  Therefore any grade that is partially based on how a person does at this stage of mastery is not reflecting their level of mastery of the material at the end of the process, which is what a grade should reflect. 

I give 100% for completion of homework, and all problems must be corrected.  Homework is 25% of the grade.  One would presume that a student who does all of the homework and corrects all of the problems they got wrong would do well on the tests.  Here is how much grading homework on completion actually helps various final grades:

  • A test average of 100 will get no boost from the homework grade
  • A test average of 95 will result in a final grade of 96.25
  • A test average of 90 will result in a final grade of 92.5
  • A test average of 85 will result in a final grade of 88.75
  • A test average of 80 will result in a final grade of 85
  • A test average of 75 will result in a final grade of 81.2
  • A test average of 70 will result in a final grade of 77.5
  • Etc.

So you can see that as the test average goes down, the effect of having homework weighted at 100% goes up.  But at the same time, if you're requiring your student to work to mastery prior to taking the tests, they should be getting scores in the A range, which gets at most a 2.5% boost.

All of that said, I would not have homework be 50% of the grade.  I would reduce it to 25% and allow her correct problems during practice as much as she needs to (and also require that she do extra problems when she has a lot of trouble).

ETA: I would give two tries on multiple choice problems.  If she need more than that, I would move offline and work with her on whatever it is so that she masters it.

 

This is, essentially, the effect of our local homework policy. There are no open book tests and they cannot be reworked. Only HW assignments that get a grade less than 50% can be reworked for credit too. There really does need to be an incentive/reason to TRY to learn the material the first time and/or SEEK HELP with homework before turning it in. Having zero penalties for homework and making it a big chunk of the grade is not the norm. Here, HW is 30% of the grade but late assignments cost kids 20% per day so an assignment that's a day late maxes out at 80%. HW was 25% with 100% credit until the last day of the term but they changed the policy last year to encourage timely completion and push kids to seek help.

Edited by Sneezyone
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14 minutes ago, EKS said:

I give 100% for completion of homework, and all problems must be corrected.  Homework is 25% of the grade.  One would presume that a student who does all of the homework and corrects all of the problems they got wrong would do well on the tests. 

This is what I do as well. I only grade homework for completion, and I expect all incorrect problems to be reworked to correctness. We usually go through those together because dd checks her answers in the answer key (which gives answers only, not solutions) as she goes, and generally reworks them herself if she's wrong. We only go over the ones where she can't find her error.

The curriculum we use is known for its spiral and often introduces variations on a concept in the homework exercises. So I feel that practice without undue pressure is important.

I'm not sure I'd reset multiple choice questions. More likely I'd have the student rework them on her own, assisting as necessary, and have her check her answers with me instead of the program. Assuming that's possible? I don't know how TT works. I dislike multiple choice questions for math for this reason.

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16 minutes ago, PeachyDoodle said:

This is what I do as well. I only grade homework for completion, and I expect all incorrect problems to be reworked to correctness. We usually go through those together because dd checks her answers in the answer key (which gives answers only, not solutions) as she goes, and generally reworks them herself if she's wrong. We only go over the ones where she can't find her error.

The curriculum we use is known for its spiral and often introduces variations on a concept in the homework exercises. So I feel that practice without undue pressure is important.

I'm not sure I'd reset multiple choice questions. More likely I'd have the student rework them on her own, assisting as necessary, and have her check her answers with me instead of the program. Assuming that's possible? I don't know how TT works. I dislike multiple choice questions for math for this reason.

That’s how I did things too—homework was for practice, and 25% of the grade. If they missed a problem, they reworked it in front of me, or we did it together. I’m not sure that multiple chances on multiple choice questions without seeing them work the problems would be very effective. At that point, I want to see how they are working it and where the mistake is happening.

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I count homework as only 20% of the grade, for completion only.  Tests are 80%.  They are expected to redo missed homework until they learn it and can complete new similar problems correctly.  I have always used extra materials for that.  My previous experience with TT was that there wasn't enough practice,  so I used Lial for extra problems.  We switched to DO and found the instruction and amount of practice better, but still wanted more problems occasionally.  This is why we went to Unlock Math this year.  Students have to work out the problems and enter answers (it's NOT multiple choice), and it allows students to redo assignments with new problems as many times as needed, even just as extra review for tests.

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I do homework as a completion grade, she checks it herself and if she needs help she asks.  The goal of homework is to practice the skills, so checking it herself helps *her* to figure out where she's messing up.  So far the tests reflect that its working- all tests have been 90+.   I have tests worth 2/3 of the grade, homework and a notebook are the other 1/3.

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I never graded homework.  Either I'm going to be sitting down with them and assisting with various steps as needed, or they're going to be doing that part alone.  (That's the homework.)  It's still the learning process, so it seems unfair to give them a grade for learning.  All missed problems are gone over again.  Usually their second attempt would be on their own, and after that, I'd sit with them and we'd do it together.

 Effort and completion would enter into their final grade, though.

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16 hours ago, Calming Tea said:

hmmm, unfortunately I have no way to record that...

unless I kept a paper notebook with a tally of how many I had to delete ...

compounding the issue is that the ones she finds most challenging are the multiple choice.  If she has two tries, then has it deleted, then has two more tries, that's now four tries and they usually have only 6 answers, sometimes less.  So I wonder if I should tell her I can't delete any multiple choice ones  ?

 

In my boys' community college math classes, they get a lot more than two tries to solve each problem for the online homework portion.  This is how it works:  if they miss the problem, they get another chance, if they miss it again, they get yet another chance.  If they still miss it, they get a brand new problem, with 3 tries to solve it, and then this process can be repeated one more time, so 9 trie altogether, with 3 different problems.  If they finally solve it with the 3rd try on the 3rd problem (9 attempts), they still get full credit.  Now homework usually only counts for 10 percent or so of the grade,. and I guess with the multiple attempts maybe it is felt that if the students keep trying, they'll learn something in the process.  Personally, I think 9 attempts is a little excessive, but reworking a homework problem 2 or 3 times and getting it right deserves full credit, IMO.  Homework is about learning how to do a problem, and that learning process includes making mistakes.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 9/29/2019 at 4:35 PM, HeighHo said:

yes, that is grade inflation.  the school here allows open book rework of the tests, for half credit.  so a 90 becomes a 95. inflation.

I'd suggest no grade for homework, work to mastery and re-do as needed. 

 

Here they can rework stuff once -- for a maximum possible grade of 70.

 

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My son is taking his high school math classes with a tutor online. Homework counts 35%, quizzes are 20% and tests are 45%. Homework problems are to be worked and reworked until they are correct, so students are pretty much guaranteed a 100 in that category. Quizzes are given weekly and a slightly different version can be taken a second time anytime before the end of the semester. So if the student doesn't do well on a quiz, he can wait a couple weeks until he feels he has better mastery of that concept and be re-quizzed on it. Tests are taken once every few weeks and those grades are final. I don't think it's inflation to rework homework to 100%. It encourages mastery of the material. The teacher is clear that she fully expects that they won't always do well the first time through the material, that she wants them to keep working at it and rewards that effort. 

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Here, the public schools expect you to redo the homework until it is correct. And, everyone gets 100% as long as they complete it and it is only worth a small amount of the final grade. The final grade is really based on the tests and quizzes. I do not think it is grade inflation. The point of classes is to learn. If they did not allow correcting homework, there would be no chance for learning. Then the homework would be about testing.

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