School Grading – Expectations

Here in the school district my kids are in they have a grading practice that I just don’t get as a parent and as a teacher (especially as a teacher).

The grading scale works as follows:

• 4.0 – perfect score – A+
• 3.5 – very good – A
• 3.0 – fine – B
• 2.0 – could be better – C
• 1.0 – not good – D (I think)

And pretty much everything is graded on this scale.

Here is the thing, 90% of your grade is based on “experience” work and 10% on “practice” work. So, what does this mean? In many of my older kids classes this means exams are what is considered experience work and the 10% is everything else (homework, in class work, participation, quizzes, etc.). That means 90% of the grade is dependent on students doing well at the time of an exam. The learning time is worth next to nothing.

Early in the semester this drove me pretty crazy in my kids math class because they had 1 exam during the first 8 weeks (first quarter) of class. That implied to me that there would only be 2 exams the entire semester that it would account for 90% of the grade. That irritated me as a teacher. How does that show proof of knowledge. And the exams were designed with 7 questions that went like: Three 2 point questions, Two 3 point questions, One 3.5 question and One 4 point question. If you didn’t get them all right you couldn’t earn a perfect score, OK. But if you missed a 2 point question you couldn’t get anything better than a 3, what is with that? If you made a little mistake on a 2 point question it cost you a lot even if you showed proficiency on the rest of the questions. There was little to no partial credit – something I really don’t understand. As the semester went on there were more exams and makeup exams as well, and the teacher realized that making the homework worth nothing meant students weren’t doing it at all (well, my kid was). So things got better in that class.

In other classes it seems like the homework and in class work is worth something towards more than just the 10% of “practice” points. And most teachers seem open to doing makeup work. So that is a positive.

Then this week I heard that one teacher award my child a 2 on an exam. There is a makeup later in the week. I asked what had happened, and my kid told me that they didn’t supply full enough explanation on ONE of the 2 point questions (similar setup to the math exam with multiple 2 point questions, some 3 point and then culminating in one 4 point question), and as a result the teacher immediately stops grading the exam and gives that score. They won’t look at the rest of the exam for proficiency because, in the words of the teacher, “If you can’t show proficiency at the basic level then you can’t show it at a higher level.” What is with that? I asked what my child did wrong and the answer was that they didn’t use specific enough examples in their explanation, even though the correctly explained why they answer was right. It was just that the teacher wanted the students to use exact value from a question rather than giving a correct generalized answer to the question. I would argue that a generalized answer shows a deeper understanding of the topic than an answer that applies only to one situation if you are asking about how you know something, because then you can explain it in all situations rather than just one situation, but I am not that teacher. But to not look at subsequent questions to see if a student shows understanding on harder questions because they missed an “easy” question seems very odd to me as a teacher. Maybe those later questions will show that a student understands the material in the way the teacher wants it to be understood that the student messed up slightly on an earlier question. Sometimes students make mistakes on easy things – I know I do sometimes. Does that mean I can’t do harder things? Does that mean I have to start over and try again? Oh, and you can’t earn full credit the second time around and can only get up to a 3 since the makeup doesn’t ask any level 4 questions in this class, so you can’t ever show mastery to the teacher on this topic if you have to do a makeup exam. That also seems odd to me. I would want to know if my students fully understand the material. I understand not giving full credit on a makeup exam. But not allowing for an average, or at least the ability to show mastery would be a good thing to me. But again, I am not the teacher.

I just don’t get this grading model. It is the standard here in the school district my kids are in so they will just have to get used to it. I haven’t seen a model this strict since I was in college, and I thought it was messed up then as well. I would never place that much weight on exams. All that teaches a student is how to cram for exams, build up stress, and place ones worth on instant knowledge not learning and applying knowledge.

Sorry for the rant / ramble.