How are high schoolers finding the grading changes?

[Anonymous]

Definitely adding some extra stress here for the 4th quarter to maintain all As. But I guess that was part of the point.

[Anonymous]

I haven't heard much

[Anonymous]

I can tell you that summer school is going to be a lot more crowded than it was in recent years

[Anonymous]

They changed their changing grading policy. So the changed changing policy is probably going to result in changes to the data that has been changed for so many years.

[Anonymous]

Kids either give up and are satisfied with the previous quarter grade or work hard to improve/maintain it. It really depends on the kid.

I just wish teachers would abide by the ten school day rule on assignments. We only have one teacher like this but the class is English where three papers haven’t been graded.

[Anonymous]

My kid is working to keep up her grade. I think she's learning more in the second and fourth quarters because she is putting in more effort to maintain her grades.

[Anonymous]

It’s been an awful transition for kids on IEPs with extra time because they’ve been used to a lot of flexibility and now there is no uniformity to when their due date actually is. There are due dates and deadlines and whatever is in the system is usually not the time and a half allotted (but sometimes is!!) so it’s now up to the kids to keep deadlines straight and then follow up with the teacher to override the system nearly every time.

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the real world.

[Anonymous]

Teacher here: More or less the same situation as previous years, but we have a lot of seniors who are at risk of failing core classes/not graduating. Many of them have been enrolled in Edmentum for credit recovery (for their 3rd AND 4th quarter classes). It's alarming to think about how much money is being spent on these Edmentum courses, especially at a time when we're facing budget constraints. Many students will likely complete the courses unsupervised with ChatGPT.

It raises the question of whether those funds would be better spent elsewhere and whether we're doing enough to teach accountability before students reach this point. Between edmentum and changing course in grading for MP4 seniors... big yikes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kids either give up and are satisfied with the previous quarter grade or work hard to improve/maintain it. It really depends on the kid.

I just wish teachers would abide by the ten school day rule on assignments. We only have one teacher like this but the class is English where three papers haven’t been graded.

We also have an English teacher like this. Grade is a complete mystery. And we have a math teacher who has only given a few assessments in MP4 (30 possible all task points total so far) so every minor slip up carries weight. Oh and the teacher who only allows one retake on a specific submission but won’t tell you what grade you earned on the original version you turned in. That’s a new one. This grading policy has been a total nail biter for my two kids who normally get straight As and would have earned that this semester under the old policy but are definitely fighting off some potential Bs with a lot of risk and uncertainty.

[Anonymous]

It's not making a huge difference for my kids. One gets A+s in everything either way. The other one specialized in getting like an 89 each quarter, so always ended up with the B anyway. I'm actually hoping other kids grades come down so that he looks better. Both of my kids would do better with a percentage system, where it would show that the one kid has a 98% in the class, and the other kid has an 89% in the class.

I do really really really really wish that teachers could get the assignments graded on time. There are so many classes where we've had nothing graded since early May. Or if you are sick and have to do a makeup, that makeup grade doesn't get input until the very last day of the semester. It's all well and good to say that kids should be accountable, but they definitely notice that the accountability only runs one way.

My second wish for MCPS HS teachers is that they would put deadlines into the canvass calendar so it was easier to track and more transparent when assignments were due. It seems like maybe half our teachers do that. That doesn't seem that hard to me -- everyone uses electronic calendars for everything in life. It seems kind of perverse to refuse to use it here, where it would be so helpful.

[Anonymous]

I don't think %s should be on a transcript, but WHY doesn't MCPS use +/- for grades??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s been an awful transition for kids on IEPs with extra time because they’ve been used to a lot of flexibility and now there is no uniformity to when their due date actually is. There are due dates and deadlines and whatever is in the system is usually not the time and a half allotted (but sometimes is!!) so it’s now up to the kids to keep deadlines straight and then follow up with the teacher to override the system nearly every time.

All of this. And if you bug the teacher for these dates, the administrator tells you that the teacher has to announce them in class, but isn't required to post them to parents (it would be too burdensome). The executive functioning burden on IEP and 504 kids to keep up with this is absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s been an awful transition for kids on IEPs with extra time because they’ve been used to a lot of flexibility and now there is no uniformity to when their due date actually is. There are due dates and deadlines and whatever is in the system is usually not the time and a half allotted (but sometimes is!!) so it’s now up to the kids to keep deadlines straight and then follow up with the teacher to override the system nearly every time.

All of this. And if you bug the teacher for these dates, the administrator tells you that the teacher has to announce them in class, but isn't required to post them to parents (it would be too burdensome). The executive functioning burden on IEP and 504 kids to keep up with this is absurd.

My coteacher and I put all the due dates and deadlines for regular students and extended time in the assignment title so there is zero confusion

For example:

Enders Game Close Read 2 due date 4/20(ext. time 4/21) deadline 4/27(ext. time 4/28)

Thats how it looks in canvas and parentvue and nobody can claim we didn’t go over it in class(which we do anyway in the daily agenda slide)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s been an awful transition for kids on IEPs with extra time because they’ve been used to a lot of flexibility and now there is no uniformity to when their due date actually is. There are due dates and deadlines and whatever is in the system is usually not the time and a half allotted (but sometimes is!!) so it’s now up to the kids to keep deadlines straight and then follow up with the teacher to override the system nearly every time.

All of this. And if you bug the teacher for these dates, the administrator tells you that the teacher has to announce them in class, but isn't required to post them to parents (it would be too burdensome). The executive functioning burden on IEP and 504 kids to keep up with this is absurd.

My coteacher and I put all the due dates and deadlines for regular students and extended time in the assignment title so there is zero confusion

For example:

Enders Game Close Read 2 due date 4/20(ext. time 4/21) deadline 4/27(ext. time 4/28)

Thats how it looks in canvas and parentvue and nobody can claim we didn’t go over it in class(which we do anyway in the daily agenda slide)

This is PP. If I were to request or suggest or request this of any of my kids' teachers or administrators, you realize they would take offense, right? It wouldn't matter how nicely I asked. But yes, your convention should be standard across the board.