Many Montgomery County teachers blame student study habits for the high failure rates on math exams, according to a survey that also revealed educators’ concerns about grading policies that make it possible to fail a final exam but still pass a course.
As county schools officials continue to delve into the causes of students failing some math finals at a rate of more than 50 percent, teachers say that many students choose to skimp on exam preparation and don’t know how to prepare for a test that covers material that spans several months...
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MCPS is mis-scoring the final exams. To administer countywide final exams is a fine notion, in theory. However, MCPS is suggesting that there is a level playing field and there simply is not. For there to be a level playing field MCPS must disqualify any questions where the scoring statistics would indicate that the material was not (sufficiently) covered by ANY teacher for a particular course final.
ReplyDeleteExample: My high schooler studied long and hard for the most recent final math exam. Unfortunately, my high schooler was stuck with the poorest quality math teacher for the course, the teacher who had failed to teach/cover some of the material that was on the exam. The vast majority of students who had this teacher bombed the exam while students who had the teacher who is widely known as a great math teacher at the high school generally did much better on the exam.
Students’ final exam grades should reflect a measurement of their performance on what they were taught, not a measurement of their performance on the curriculum regardless of what they were taught.