El Floppo
Footballguy
Curious what you all think about how schools should be responding to the pandemic in terms of grading. Pass/Fail? Keep grades? Keep grades until remote learning started, and then have the option of incorporating those? Other?
There are some complex factors in play, obviously- including the range of equity at home or in the school school to provide the means to even allow remote learning (computer/tablets/smart phones/internet/parents present or not/etc).
I'm hoping for a general discussion about this to see if there's any common thoughts. I may put up a poll once discussion begins.
Secondarily specific to my concerns....
Our kids are in 3rd and 7th grades in public schools in NYC. 4th and 7th grade state test scores and grades and are the primary factor for acceptance/placement into Middle School and High Schools. NYC has a ton of these, and acceptance can be very competitive and selective for the "best" schools. NYC cancelled state tests (I think the entire state of NY did), so grades will be the primary factor as of now.
Our 7th grader has been working his ### off with the intent of getting himself in a position to have options for High School. I'm incredibly proud of both the hard and focused work he's been doing (self-motivated... wife and I are fairly laissez faire with the work itself) and the results he's been getting. If grades are the primary factor, his hard work should pay off in meeting his intent to place himself in a good position for HS. Our 3rd grader- with nothing on the line in terms of applications to further schooling- has also challenged herself to do as well as possible and is (as are we) very proud of the results she is achieving from the work she's put in.
NYC Dept of Education will be voting this week, maybe even today. I understand they're proposing to change the entire city to a Mastery/no-Mastery binary system.
A resolution, that I'm sure will be ignored by the DOE, is asking to essentially allow students to use their best 3 of 4 marking period grades, which allows them to drop the marking period during the pandemic if their grade has suffered.
We told our kids about the DOE's proposal- they were at first heartbroken (7h grade floppinho especially) and then furious. "Why even bother!?" was their takeaway- and even though I did my best to make the point that they should always strive to do the best they're capable of doing... it was hard to answer that point. I shouldn't be surprised by how the DOE and gov agencies typically reach for the lowest common denominator- a needed benchmark in a place of 8mil people in a huge range of conditions- but this sinks way past that IMO and only helps kids who were going to fail anyways; everybody else get shafted.
There are some complex factors in play, obviously- including the range of equity at home or in the school school to provide the means to even allow remote learning (computer/tablets/smart phones/internet/parents present or not/etc).
I'm hoping for a general discussion about this to see if there's any common thoughts. I may put up a poll once discussion begins.
Secondarily specific to my concerns....
Our kids are in 3rd and 7th grades in public schools in NYC. 4th and 7th grade state test scores and grades and are the primary factor for acceptance/placement into Middle School and High Schools. NYC has a ton of these, and acceptance can be very competitive and selective for the "best" schools. NYC cancelled state tests (I think the entire state of NY did), so grades will be the primary factor as of now.
Our 7th grader has been working his ### off with the intent of getting himself in a position to have options for High School. I'm incredibly proud of both the hard and focused work he's been doing (self-motivated... wife and I are fairly laissez faire with the work itself) and the results he's been getting. If grades are the primary factor, his hard work should pay off in meeting his intent to place himself in a good position for HS. Our 3rd grader- with nothing on the line in terms of applications to further schooling- has also challenged herself to do as well as possible and is (as are we) very proud of the results she is achieving from the work she's put in.
NYC Dept of Education will be voting this week, maybe even today. I understand they're proposing to change the entire city to a Mastery/no-Mastery binary system.
A resolution, that I'm sure will be ignored by the DOE, is asking to essentially allow students to use their best 3 of 4 marking period grades, which allows them to drop the marking period during the pandemic if their grade has suffered.
We told our kids about the DOE's proposal- they were at first heartbroken (7h grade floppinho especially) and then furious. "Why even bother!?" was their takeaway- and even though I did my best to make the point that they should always strive to do the best they're capable of doing... it was hard to answer that point. I shouldn't be surprised by how the DOE and gov agencies typically reach for the lowest common denominator- a needed benchmark in a place of 8mil people in a huge range of conditions- but this sinks way past that IMO and only helps kids who were going to fail anyways; everybody else get shafted.