Baltimore City student misses first 140 school days, marked present and passes classes

BALTIMORE (WBFF) — Another scandal hits Baltimore City Public Schools, as Project Baltimore exposes how a student missed the first 140 days of school but was somehow marked as present and passing classes.

“I’m excited for him,” said Latasha Phillips, as her son prepared for his first day of eleventh grade on the 141st day of the school year. “I’m just glad he’s not sitting here all day, not being productive.”

Her son, Qwantay Spearman, has physical disabilities. He attends ConneXions, a charter school in West Baltimore, where he’s thrived, earning a 3.7 grade point average, until this year.

Qwantay missed the first 140 days of school because Baltimore City Schools could not provide him with a nurse, which is required under his federally mandated IEP or Individualized Education Program...

https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-student-misses-first-140-school-days-marked-as-present-and-passes-classes?fbclid=IwAR1kUiskjAphZiUQ25RiCfGtXI2UGmpilkeUUmLHb6N8dXFcv5pOlByp6J8

Letter grades get erased from school, with little consensus on how to replace them

Not long after the novel coronavirus shut down schools in Maryland and sent them scrambling to set up remote learning, Anand Chitnis turned his focus to grades. A high school junior looking ahead to college applications, he was stressed by the uncertainty.

“That was one of the first things I thought about,” the Rockville teenager said.

More than a month later, the issue is still being debated in suburban Montgomery County, as leaders in the state’s largest school system — like leaders across the region and country — grapple with how grades fit into the unprecedented and imperfect world of online education.

There’s little consensus beyond the need to abandon the status quo. Some districts have ditched traditional letter grades for at least the fourth quarter. Some have opted for credit or no credit. Some say any grades given during remote learning should only boost a student’s academic standing, not diminish it...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/montgomery-county-grades-coronavirus/2020/04/25/7bbfd8ce-7b3d-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html?fbclid=IwAR3NOu-HS1ry4grol9MXQrgzDkplApyhNygyprmsTgfbpRYN3niQyZ9JCyU

Some employees in a large Maryland school system see signs of grade tampering

As Maryland orders an investigation into whether grades were manipulated to drive up graduation rates in Prince George’s County, employees at several of the district’s high schools say they have encountered signs of grade tampering and pressure to pass their students.

Eight employees, based in six of the county’s 22 high schools, described in interviews with The Washington Post grading incidents they found troubling after allegations emerged of corruption in the school system. Gov. Larry Hogan (R) asked for an investigation on June 25, and the state board of education voted to pursue it two days later...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/some-employees-in-a-large-maryland-school-system-see-signs-of-grade-tampering/2017/07/01/02a4ee76-56c8-11e7-b38e-35fd8e0c288f_story.html?utm_term=.ade02cb3283c

An easy A? Under new rules, these high school students could see grades soar

Maryland’s largest school system just made it easier for high school students to get A’s.
Just months after deciding to eliminate traditional final exams, Montgomery County has announced significant changes to its method of calculating grades starting in the 2016-2017 school year, most notably that final course grades will be rounded up after a student’s two quarterly grades are averaged. If a student gets, say, an A for the first quarter in geometry and then a B for the second quarter, the student’s semester course grade would be an A. If a student gets an A in one quarter and then a D in the next quarter, they would end up with a B.
The move is a departure from the county’s previous grading scheme, which generally relied on a student’s two quarter grades and a final exam grade. When a course had no final, the grading trendline prevailed, so that if students slumped from an A in one quarter to a B in the next, their semester grade fell to a B. No longer...

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/an-easy-a-under-new-rules-these-high-school-students-could-see-grades-soar/2016/05/11/6f3e2a5a-16f2-11e6-9e16-2e5a123aac62_story.html

...today in MCPS, it is almost impossible not to graduate.

Weak standards inflate graduation rate success

Out in Left Field: Aiming for mediocrity - On MCPS' Elementary Grading System

Aiming for mediocrity
The largest school district in Maryland, the Montgomery County Public Schools, has unrolled a new grading system for elementary school. The scale now runs from N to ES:
At one school, officials explained the new system via the following analogy: 

N: Not yet making progress or making minimal progress toward meeting the grade-level standard  

I: In progress toward meeting the grade-level standard  

P: Meets the grade-level standard by demonstrating proficiency of the content or processes for the measurement topic   

ES: Exceptional at the grade-level standard

N - cannot ride a bike  

I - rides a bike with training wheels  

P - rides a bike with two wheels  

ES - rides a Pogo stick

 - See more at: http://oilf.blogspot.com/2014/02/aiming-for-mediocrity.html#sthash.cj3tkyDX.dpuf

700 student records subpeonaed by State's Attorney in Churchill HS investigation

The Washington Post:  Montgomery County state's attorney probing grade changes at Potomac school

...School officials said an investigation determined that the grades of 54 students at Winston Churchill High School were improperly altered in the first semester of this school year. Almost 700 families at the school were notified last week that their students' grade records had been turned over to the state's attorney's office. The state's attorney subpoenaed all records related to the school's own investigation into the incident. Eight students were identified as the ringleaders, and three of them are no longer enrolled at the school, according to a letter sent to parents Wednesday from Churchill Principal Joan C. Benz. Disciplinary action against the remaining five is "ongoing," she said in the letter...

March 3, 2010

The story of grade changing at one MCPS high school

An appeal to the Maryland State Board of Education details how grades were changed at one MCPS high school.

Read the decision of the Administrative Law Judge beginning on page 6 of this document for insight into how grades are calculated, input, and changed at MCPS high schools.

Discipline for Churchill student hackers kept private

Gazette:  Principal confirms eight youths changed grades
by Andre L. Taylor
Staff Writer

...Benz declined to release disciplinary details because the students are juveniles and instead urged parents to consult the student handbook for disciplinary protocols. But that explanation wasn't enough for the irate parents...
 
...As parents bickered with Benz for more than an hour about how the eight students connected to the breach are hurting the school's name, Laura Siegel sat quietly, front and center at the meeting. Siegel, the volunteer coordinator for the Churchill Cluster, said if other students knew what the consequences were, they could be deterred from repeating the act.

"Hacking into a big school system deserves expulsion," said Siegel, who has a son in his senior year at the school. "That's pretty serious."