Pages

Friday, May 29, 2020

School's out for the summer...Three Weeks Early


From parent AJ Campbell.

This COVID canceled semester has been a disaster, but now three weeks early, it is over. But let's face it the entire 4th quarter has been over before it even began.



Thrust on to nonexistent online learning environments, without a lifeline or follow up, some students, like my daughter, have not done well. She has been struggling. I have sent pleading emails to the teachers at her high school who have not bothered to answer me. Now that the school board has enacted its no-fail policy towards grading, she will finish off the semester with an A even though she is currently getting a D. Pencils down kids, school is officially over, and you did great! 



Please let me disavow you of any notion that MCPS is teaching my kid at all. Worksheets are dumped into an online system, and my kid has to go figure out how to complete them. There have not been online classes as you or I might think of them but rather "office hours," where the teacher sits on an open zoom line, and kids ask questions or usually sit there and do nothing. It is entirely possible that this is just my kid's experience and that others are having a fantastic time full of enrichment and support. However, my kid was dropped off a cliff, Wylie E. Coyote style with an anvil to follow.



 We asked the kids to keep working and hope that their efforts matched their grades. For my special ed kid, it has been even more stringent. MPCPS unilaterally rewrote her IEP then told me to agree to it. Not even a phone call to give me a heads up or to let me know what is going on. The IEP looked ok on paper, but to the best of my knowledge, nothing has been done on it. It exists as a document in theory, not in practice.



With no IEP and no teaching going on, it is not surprising that there are problems. My kid spends her time looking up resources and teaching herself unaided by MCPS teachers.  



When I complain to MCPS, they historically and, in this case, ignore my complaints. When teachers do respond, I am asked to have a little "grace" and give the school time to cope. Usually, I would extend whatever courtesy is needed as long as it did not impact my child's grades. No one puts Baby in a corner, and no one messes up my kid's GPA.  



My daughter's 10th-grade year grades are essential to her college success. I am a divorced mom who has an ex-husband who has already told me, the lawyers and the court, that he is refusing to pay a penny towards college. Sincerely, he wrote it into the separation agreement. I couldn't force him to anyway as it is not a requirement, but he wanted to make sure he would not be contributing to her 529 plan.  



Scholarships will be the only way she will go if my college-bound rising 10th grader is going to any college. Even if her father agrees to give his financial information for the FAFSA program and our financial contribution is $10,000, I will be on the hook for all of it. He can spend it on a sportscar or hair plugs, I guess.



You will excuse me then for making her grades matter so much. The shifting sands of the MCPS grading system have made me very uncomfortable. I had a sneaking suspicion that MCPS would find a way to grade on a curve so the school system would make it so kids could not fail.  



Fretting over her 3rd marking period grades paid off big time. In the regular scheme of MCPS grading, they round up to the advantage of the student. If a child gets a B in the third quarter and an A in the 4th quarter the child does not get an A- or a B+ they get an A. MCPS doesn't give + or - grades just A, B, C, D, E (the new fail).



Under Condition COVID, things have changed. Now it doesn't matter how she did in the 4th quarter. If she got a B in the 3rd quarter, she would still get an A even if she barely checked in and did little or no work. With the "hump bump," as it is less than affectionately called, a C becomes a B, and a B becomes an A so that kids are motivated to show up and do something. But now, even if she does nothing, she will still retain her third-quarter grade with the bump.


If your student had a D or a Fail (E) in the third quarter and your kid has not passed the fourth quarter, they will get an incomplete. It is an utterly no-fail environment for MCPS, less so for the students.  

The message to all MCPS students is: school is out for summer. See you in the fall, stay cool.  

Note: I reached out to Shebra Evans, Stephen Austin, Sunil Dasgupta, and Lynne Harris for their positions on the new grading systems, and none were provided.

Traditional Grading Scheme

No Letter Grades it's Pass/Fail

MCPS gives up and gives grades away
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/publicinfo/community/school-year-2019-2020/coronavirus-update-20200523.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

If your comment does not appear in 24 hours, please send your comment directly to our e-mail address:
parentscoalitionmc AT outlook.com