JAWM: Why so much variation in what homeschoolers believe constitutes a credit?

[Clemsondana]

8 hours ago, Frances said:

And it’s the same for colleges. My son took classes at the local LAC for the last two years of high school. They were on a semester system and most students took four courses per semester. His university was on quarters and he said that virtually every quarter course he took over four years at the university covered more material in more depth than any of his college classes taken during high school at the LAC. Yet all of his university quarter classes were worth less credit than the LAC semester classes. His experience was definitely not unique.

There are big difference between different schools, and the way that more condensed classes (quarters vs semesters, or summer terms and Maymesters) are handled seems to vary tremendously, too.  Sometimes you'll hear 'It's brutal to take a lit class during summer sessions because you have to read a book each week instead of every 2 weeks' and other times you'll hear 'It's great to take lit in the summer - they can't ask you to read as many books since it's shorter'.  

[Clarita]

On 11/30/2021 at 10:19 AM, cintinative said:

Where is this thought process coming from exactly?  Is this an extension of the  "they waste a lot of time in school, so we don't need to spend as many hours" philosophy?

Probably from when their kids were little. They never changed from that philosophy. In PS from K-12 you always go to school about the same amount and in the younger years you really don't need to or should fill in all that time with academics. Younger days in PS is filled with transitions and stuff. I guess those people never switched their philosophy in middle school and high school where there is less transition time even in PS.

[Roadrunner]

CA is debating plans to drop D’s and F’s in pursuit of mastery based learning. They can’t teach to read, but now they promise us they will make sure every kid masters the material.  I think they are covering up their failures. 

Edited December 6, 2021 by Roadrunner

[Arcadia]

2 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

CA is debating plans to drop D’s and F’s in pursuit of mastery based learning. They can’t teach to read, but now they promise us they will make sure every kid masters the material.  I think they are covering up their failures. 

I only saw the Oakland unified news about dropping the D and that makes sense. Locally, students do credit recovery in summer for D/F grades. 
 

Or do you mean something like this scheme in Riverside? https://www.greatschoolspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/nessc_briefing_no5-2-1.pdf

[Roadrunner]

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

I only saw the Oakland unified news about dropping the D and that makes sense. Locally, students do credit recovery in summer for D/F grades. 
 

Or do you mean something like this scheme in Riverside? https://www.greatschoolspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/nessc_briefing_no5-2-1.pdf

This is what a friend sent me:

https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2021/12/california-schools-grades-math/
 

I think this is a great way for school districts to cover up their failures. 

[Arcadia]

55 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

This is what a friend sent me:

https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2021/12/california-schools-grades-math/
 

I think this is a great way for school districts to cover up their failures. 

This sounds exactly like credit recovery just that the students get an incomplete instead of a D/F the first time round.

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/why-some-california-school-districts-are-ditching-d-and-f-grades/
“Los Angeles Unified, Oakland Unified, Sacramento City Unified, San Diego Unified and other districts are phasing out grades below a C for high school students. If a student fails a test or doesn’t complete their homework, they’ll be able to retake the test and get more time to turn in assignments. The idea is to encourage students to learn the course material and not be derailed by a low grade that could potentially disqualify them from admission to the University of California and California State University. Students who don’t learn the material, pass the final exam or finish homework by the end of the semester would earn an “incomplete.”

… The state Education Code gives teachers the authority to issue grades, but it doesn’t specify how those grades should be determined. Some teachers grade on a curve, with only a set number of students earning A’s or B’s, while others are more lax. An informal EdSource survey of about two dozen California teachers found that 57 percent rarely or never gave D.s and F’s. Only 7 percent said they did frequently.”

[Roadrunner]

49 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

This sounds exactly like credit recovery just that the students get an incomplete instead of a D/F the first time round.

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/why-some-california-school-districts-are-ditching-d-and-f-grades/
“Los Angeles Unified, Oakland Unified, Sacramento City Unified, San Diego Unified and other districts are phasing out grades below a C for high school students. If a student fails a test or doesn’t complete their homework, they’ll be able to retake the test and get more time to turn in assignments. The idea is to encourage students to learn the course material and not be derailed by a low grade that could potentially disqualify them from admission to the University of California and California State University. Students who don’t learn the material, pass the final exam or finish homework by the end of the semester would earn an “incomplete.”

… The state Education Code gives teachers the authority to issue grades, but it doesn’t specify how those grades should be determined. Some teachers grade on a curve, with only a set number of students earning A’s or B’s, while others are more lax. An informal EdSource survey of about two dozen California teachers found that 5percent rarely or never gave D.s and F’s. Only 7 percent said they did frequently.”

Actually it’s a lot more than credit recovery. They are talking about overhauling it completely. I am curious to see what emerges out of this. 
First tests were bad and grades were good. GPA is all that matters. Now grades aren’t good either because they are subjective. I don’t disagree with an article, but curious what they will devise out of this mess. 
 

““What does a grade mean? It’s a mix of things, and it’s different from teacher to teacher. It can actually be radically different,” she said. “As it’s practiced now, grading is idiosyncratic, and that’s not a good thing.”
Too often, she said, grades take on outsized importance for students, and those who get Ds or Fs become discouraged or disengage even further, never learning the material they missed to begin with.”

[Arcadia]

5 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

I don’t disagree with an article, but curious what they will devise out of this mess. 

About 51 California schools including Nuevo, Khan Lab, Castilleja, Helios

https://mastery.org/mtc-member-schools/
“Mastery Transcript Consortium® (MTC) member schools are public and private high schools from across the United States — and several are from around the world. A growing group of MTC member schools are now using the Mastery Transcript as their official school transcript.”

[Roadrunner]

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

About 51 California schools including Nuevo, Khan Lab, Castilleja, Helios

https://mastery.org/mtc-member-schools/
“Mastery Transcript Consortium® (MTC) member schools are public and private high schools from across the United States — and several are from around the world. A growing group of MTC member schools are now using the Mastery Transcript as their official school transcript.”

I would love to know how that works in practice in schools if anybody has an experience. 
i know in homeschool setting you get a paper polished until it’s acceptable. So you can do that in PS, but turnaround times have to be really quick to do that. My child’s last essay he turned in a month ago hasn’t even been looked at for it’s revision. It’s not easy with so many students. 
Or in other courses where material moves quickly… I don’t see this working out in practice well, especially since so many D’s and F’s are often associated with kids who are simply not showing up mentally, at least according to anecdotal evidence from few who teach around me. It’s mostly kids who just don’t care. Effort is really rewarded in schools. It’s impossible to fail here if you give even a 30% effort. 

Edited December 7, 2021 by Roadrunner

[Arcadia]

37 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

I would love to know how that works in practice in schools if anybody has an experience. 
i know in homeschool setting you get a paper polished until it’s acceptable. So you can do that in PS, but turnaround times have to be really quick to do that. My child’s last essay he turned in a month ago hasn’t even been looked at for it’s revision. It’s not easy with so many students. 
Or in other courses where material moves quickly… I don’t see this working out in practice well, especially since so many D’s and F’s are often associated with kids who are simply not showing up mentally, at least according to anecdotal evidence from few who teach around me. It’s mostly kids who just don’t care. Effort is really rewarded in schools. It’s impossible to fail here if you give even a 30% effort. 

This is from Jan 2020 but raised similar points. Its a long article  https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/01/31/no-more-as-and-fs-teachers-experiment-with-standards-based-grading

“Some schools, primarily Gunn and Greene Middle School, have been moving rapidly towards standards-based grading; Gunn Principal Kathie Laurence said in the fall that she wanted the school as a whole to use standards-based grading by fall 2022. Palo Alto High School's entire world language department uses standards-based grading.

….

Pennington, who's been a teacher for 32 years, now assesses her students based on a scale of zero to four. Zero means a student has not demonstrated understanding of a skill, even with help; one indicates a student is showing partial understanding; two means a student has a grasp of simpler issues but still makes errors regarding more complex concepts; three denotes that the student meets the standard with no major errors; and four, a student is able to make in-depth inferences that go beyond what is taught in class. Students receive scores in more than 20 categories, from timeliness, independence and perseverance to writing a scientific question and calculating an average.

Instead of testing students by making them define terms on an exam, Pennington lets them use notecards but asks them to use the terms in a way that supports an argument or applies to a concept. When students retake a test, she writes a new, individualized set of problems that focus on the specific areas they're struggling with.

This takes significant time and effort — something other teachers have voiced concern about. Gunn Spanish teacher Liz Matchett, who has piloted standards-based grading in her classes, said at the Jan. 14 Board of Education meeting that she's felt "overwhelmed" by the amount of time it takes to support makeup work.

English teacher Diane Ichikawa said that the district should consider hiring extra tutors or provide teachers with an extra prep period.

"I would urge you to go slowly with this," Marc Igler, Gunn English teacher and teachers union vice president, told the board. "There are some good things about standards-based grading, yet it has many drawbacks. It can confuse students, oftentimes hurting the ones it is most designed to help. It can anger parents, and it's very hard to implement across all academic fields."

… 

But she's encountered pushback from and confusion among students and parents — particularly because she still has to give letter grades for the school's transcripts. (A mix of two's, three's, and four's but mostly two's, for example, is a C in her classes.)

"They're constantly still looking at the letter," Pennington said. "They want to know what the letter is every moment."

Gunn parent Eva Dobrov said that it's stressful for students to be unclear on how the standards-based rubric translates to grades, and not all teachers interpret it in the same way.

"I don't even know what the grades mean," she said at the Jan. 14 board meeting. "The big issue, especially in high school, is transferring that data over to the transcript, which will eventually be seen by colleges."

Pennington agreed that the piecemeal rollout of standards-based grading is challenging for everyone.“

[RootAnn]

15 hours ago, Arcadia said:

If a student fails a test or doesn’t complete their homework, they’ll be able to retake the test and get more time to turn in assignments

This is what the local to me school does, from my understanding. The teachers track percentage of homework completed and the goal is 100% by the end of the year. Kids can turn homework in through the last day of school and teachers are encouraged to give them special time to do so. Tests can be retaken multiple times to get a passing grade. I am unclear on whether it is the same test or a rewritten one.

[teachermom2834]

32 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

This is what the local to me school does, from my understanding. The teachers track percentage of homework completed and the goal is 100% by the end of the year. Kids can turn homework in through the last day of school and teachers are encouraged to give them special time to do so. Tests can be retaken multiple times to get a passing grade. I am unclear on whether it is the same test or a rewritten one.

My dh is an adjunct at a community college and it is clear that his students expect this. He gets regular emails to the tune of “I didn’t do well on the midterm. Can you reopen it for me to take again?” and “I don’t understand why I have zeros in my grade for the homeworks I did not complete”. He allows alot of margin for his students and many opportunities to turn things in late with just a small penalty or else he wouldn’t have many pass. Yet, there is an expectation that tests can be retaken on request and homework and labs should be accepted for full credit as long as they are turned in by the end of the semester. I really don’t know what the local schools do but the number of these requests and the frustration when he denies them leads me to believe these students have had this treatment in the past. 

[RootAnn]

My dd#2 is taking a required for all freshmen intro to college class at the local-to-us 4 yr college. The class is designed to walk to students through how to access the learning management system, email, financial aid office, advisors, etc; where things are on campus, encourage them to get involved by requiring attendance to 2 on campus events over the semester; designing a 4 yr plan, ... 

It is supposed to be an easy A, a GPA boost. Over half her class (roughly divided into major concentrations) had a F two weeks ago. The professor is allowing the students to turn in homework up until the grading deadline in order to get as many kids to pass as possible.

Depending on the major, somewhere between 30-60% of students at the college are first generation college students. No minimum ACT for acceptance (unless you are a homeschooler). Dismal 6 yr graduation rates.

My (long) point is, these policies in high school and in college are not helping the students!

[Roadrunner]

I think it's good to be somewhat flexible, but too much flexibility just makes kids procrastinate. It's easy to keep pushing the work down the line until the pile gets so big that it's overwhelming to tackle. 

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, teachermom2834 said:

My dh is an adjunct at a community college and it is clear that his students expect this. He gets regular emails to the tune of “I didn’t do well on the midterm. Can you reopen it for me to take again?” and “I don’t understand why I have zeros in my grade for the homeworks I did not complete”. He allows alot of margin for his students and many opportunities to turn things in late with just a small penalty or else he wouldn’t have many pass. Yet, there is an expectation that tests can be retaken on request and homework and labs should be accepted for full credit as long as they are turned in by the end of the semester. I really don’t know what the local schools do but the number of these requests and the frustration when he denies them leads me to believe these students have had this treatment in the past. 

When the community college my kids attended went fully online due to the pandemic, late submissions and retakes were allowed without penalty because students had unequal access to the internet. This quarter, campus has officially reopened and the lecturers are reminding the students that assignments are locked after the late due date and will only be accepted for medical and other emergencies. 

[Clemsondana]

On 12/7/2021 at 11:51 AM, Roadrunner said:

I think it's good to be somewhat flexible, but too much flexibility just makes kids procrastinate. It's easy to keep pushing the work down the line until the pile gets so big that it's overwhelming to tackle. 

In classes that I teach, I often point out that due dates are there to help the student, not me.  It doesn't affect me if they choose to put off the homework until after the test, or save all of their work until the last week of the semester, for that matter.  But, the assignments are in a particular order for a reason, and if you do the assignments first and clarify anything that you don't understand then you will tend to do much better on quizzes or tests - at a bare minimum, they tend to build on each other.  I think people struggle with magical thinking - the work will somehow be easier another day, or that they will do well on a test despite not knowing how to do the questions in the homework.  

I once had a military veteran in a CC class tell me that he loved my class because I 'made the objectives clear so that I know what I'm supposed to do to achieve the goal'.  It seems to take more than age to get past the magical thinking, but I don't know how to get some students to switch to a 'move yourself forward' way of approaching school work.