Comments | psychohist: Obfuscatory report cards

psychohist

Obfuscatory report cards

Dec 01, 2016 13:22

The kids' report cards came home this week. The grades are E for exceeding the standard, M for meeting the standard consistently, P for progressing towards standard, N for not meeting the standard, and N/A for standard not assessed this term ( Read more... )

margaret, education, duncan, somerville, family, children

Comments 6

It gets better... ext_3916326 December 1 2016, 19:43:01 UTC

Don't forget about the Es. Your children don't have any on their report cards. Does that mean they're not excelling? No. Because no assessment asks children to do more than grade level work, it is impossible for them to demonstrate that they are ahead of grade level, even if they are. No one has asked Duncan to spell a third-grade word or to read a second-grade text, so you have no idea whether he could do either, and neither does his teacher.

Obfuscation indeed.

Re: It gets better... psychohist December 1 2016, 20:56:20 UTC

Yes. According to Margaret, her teacher explicitly said she didn't give out Es, presumably for this reason. Duncan could presumably get Es if he were at a level farther along in the school year than end of first quarter.

However, we also know that at least one kid in the other 3rd grade class is being assigned homework beyond 3rd grade level. We're now worried that there may be some hidden tracking involved that is working against Margaret.

Edit: turns out Duncan's teacher doesn't give out Es either.

Re: It gets better... ext_3916326 December 2 2016, 23:32:21 UTC

"Duncan could presumably get Es if he were at a level farther along in the school year than end of first quarter."

Not if they never ask him any questions about upcoming material. And your edit shows that they probably don't.

They slipped up psychohist February 16 2017, 07:41:00 UTC

Fortunately the school slipped up and used computer adaptive tests starting in third grade. They don't affect the report card, but I was able to get results from the teacher.

Margaret's math started the year at grade level 3.5 and is 4.5 at mid year. Her reading was 2.2 at the beginning of the year and 3.2 at mid year.

Her report card shows all Ms except for one P in math, which if you remember that her teacher grades relative to end of year standards, is pretty consistent with the test.

When I talked to Margaret about the report card and tests - at her request - she immediately calculated projections for the end of the year. Then she looked thoughtful but I don't know if she was projecting going to MIT at age 13.

twe December 7 2016, 02:24:38 UTC

It's perplexing that the have an E rating, but won't use it. What's the point of having it?

We have a similar sort of ranking (Very Good, Satisfactory, Needs Improvement, Progressing with challenges) but they seem perfectly capable of assessing when kids are above grade level in things, esp. reading & math, which they have set things up in a way that grade level falls in the middle of the spectrum of possible outcomes. (for example, there's a nightly fluency reading assignment where you have your child read out loud for 1 minute and note how many words they read correctly. Grade level is in the 50-70 range, but the passages go up to 200ish words) It seems like it should be possible to assess enough to give out Es.

psychohist February 16 2017, 07:29:31 UTC

I believe the point of having it is to assess students that are ahead of grade level, to see whether they too are progressing.

I believe the point of not using it is to triage away the students that are ahead of grade level, so all resources can be used to bring students who are slightly behind grade level up to grade level to maximize the MCAS results on which the school is graded.