2017/2018 Trimesters
progress/deficiency end of trimester
1st 10/13/17 11/17/17
2nd 1/26/18 3/9/18
3rd 3/12/18 6/14/17
Grading
I grade EVERYTHING with points, so they see the weight of it. Usually if you put effort into a project you can get 60%, a D-, but with things like tests and assignments having requirements, you can get lower. If you have to answer 40 questions and only do 4 correctly, that's 10%, and a really low F. I think the kids should SEE the difference between doing nothing, doing very little, and being almost there. Most of the high schools grade like this as well as colleges.
A 90-100%
B 80 -89%
C 70-70%
D 60-69%
F 59% or lower
Be aware many teachers do NOT grade like this and did not last year. Credit was given for missing work, sometimes as much as 50%. I do not believe in this. Others give letter grades, than convert those in the gradebook to a five point scale (0-20% F, 20 -40% D, 40-60% C, 60-80% D, 80- 100% A) and then convert that back to a letter grade. I do not understand this. If your child is suddenly getting lower grades, this might be the reason. I am trying to make my grading process as transparent as I can, and am always making adjustments to see if I can make the objectives and criteria clearer. I always welcome feedback on what would be an improvement.
If you do a bad job on something, there is ALWAYS a way to bring up the grade with effort and showing they have learned the required knowledge. For tests, any retakes will be harder than the original, as is fair. There will not always be test retake options as I am finding it is becoming rampant for the kids to put no effort into studying, fail, and just expect they can retake it. If they can prove they know it and learned it, they will be OK. Grades are always lower the first half of the trimester because, by state law, I have to inform parents in time to improve if there is any chance of failing. So, set it up so that grades always go up, but I have t covered in case a student decides to do nothing after the deficiency.
Why the focus on standards based grading is not always right. There are always good ideas to be tried and incorporated and adjusted, but a complete switchover doesn't make sense. I would just assume get rid of grades all together, which would be true standards based, but converting standards to letters doesn't do that. To do it well would mean a report card like the elementary school. Sometimes, especially in middle school, giving credit for doing the work is more important. I am all for the standards and students knowing it, but it especially hurts lower students that are not up to state standards (see state testing results) and so it does not give them credit for effort (as in independent reading and journals) and learning to work over time, which is essential to attaining the standards. This is especially important in language arts, where attaining the skills are essential for learning all content.
http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/problem-standards-based-grading
"In content-rich classes, grades that reward work are even more important because students need incentive to read outside of class, and this outside reading is especially important for English classes. In a typical high school English class, students spend roughly half of each quarter studying a major literary work, like a novel. During those weeks, most class time is spent considering details of the story as the class progresses through it, but for students to benefit from that in-class work, they need to be reading 12 - 30 pages each night (depending on the difficulty of the story and the grade level of students). Once students realize that only 5% of their final grade comes from reading quizzes and homework on reading, even students who see the value in reading will find excuses not to do it.
No, teachers should be free to use grades as they always have: to indicate skill levels, to indicate mastery of course content, and to motivate students to work. In English classes especially, grades that reward students for reading are essential for teaching literature."
http://see.ludwig.lajuntaschools.org/?p=799
"One of the big benefits of standards-based grading is its potential to replace the nonsense of numerical points and averaging and zeros with a system that pinpoints a student’s academic strengths and weaknesses in order to help them get better in those areas. This works if students and parents can see which areas are deficient and if they can use the teacher’s observations of student performance to help plan ways to improve.
What often happens, though, is that poorly-implemented standards-based reporting kills any meaningful data that a teacher might have gained from their new system of assessing by standards. . . . Unless there is an easily accessible, DETAILED collection of student assessments and performance data available for parents to see, the switch to a standards-based report card tells parents even less about their kid than your current rack-up-the-points system. At least in that sort of points system most parents can go to an online grade book and see that their kid didn’t turn in Math Content Sheet 91.1d or that they got a 78% on their last science quiz. Telling parents that their kid is partially proficient in Numeracy doesn’t really mean squat, especially if the parent only sees this judgement of their child at the end of the quarter or semester."
http://www.teachthought.com/uncategorized/standards-based-grading-solves-half-problem/
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/think-homework-can-help-your-kid-s-grade-think-again/article_12904e57-9e1f-559b-b4ca-3d0ec141b644.html
http://scientificteacher.com/2011/12/08/sbg-should-stand-for-student-based-grading/
https://mathymcmatherson.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/assessments-the-collateral-damage-of-sbg/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2015/04/13/standards_based_grading_why_schools_are_ditching_letter_grades_for_a_new.html
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2013/12/02/common-core-even-affects-letter-grades
http://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1/3572/MannixL0814.pdf?sequence=1
http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2010/04/20/grade-inflation-in-mnps
http://www.broadeducation.org/asset/1128-diploma%20to%20nowhere.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/18/students-lacking-college-_n_1606201.html
"Even high school grads who earned As and Bs in honors courses are in need of remedial coursework. A national survey showed four out of five students in college remediation had high school GPAs above a 3.0"
“There’s a dreadful misalignment between college expectations and what they teach in high school,”
http://edsource.org/2015/summer-remedial-courses-now-required-for-nearly-half-of-csu-freshman/84160
http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/improving-college-completion-reforming-remedial.aspx
http://www.highereducation.org/reports/college_readiness/gap.shtml
"In two-year colleges, . . . 75% need remedial work in English, mathematics, or both."
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article39555894.html
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/education/2014/02/19/15882/more-than-a-third-of-cal-state-freshman-ill-prepar/
"one in three freshmen entering the California State University system in fall of 2012 failed the math test that measures whether they're ready for college work. About the same proportion failed the English test."
http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2014/education/early-start/CSU-Early-Start-011414.aspx