What can you deduce from these clues?

1. Kid asks if she can start staying after school with me every day of the week so I can personally fix all of her test-taking problems.

2. Work from absences three months ago is just randomly left on my keyboard-- sometimes, along with bribes of my favorite candy.

3. Parents suddenly start checking Precious's grades online every five minutes.

4. Parents have placed a call block on all numbers from the school district.

5. Parents unleash avalanches of emails questioning all 43 grades in the gradebook.

6. Parents and kids claim that they cannot comprehend my classroom website, particularly, that they can't find the list of deadlines ANYWHERE (it is under the tab called, strangely enough, DEADLINES).

7. Parents and kids start asking if kids can retake tests.

8. I start getting emails from aunts and grandmas.



Well? Have you guessed????


It's the end of the semester fast approaching!!!!

The End of Semester Boogaloo

Yes, the semester has stumbled its way to the end, and once again, the praying, the wheedling and the dealmaking with God has begun again--and that's just the teachers struggling with the crash of the servers that store our grades for only the bajillionth time. On the student side, here come the kids who suddenly want to give me assignments that are months---MONTHS!-- overdue.

Sadly, some of my students did not earn their credits and failed the class. I find this absolutely mind-blowing. I had one little darling's mother call me and begin to breathe fire all over me since she claimed that I had refused to stay after school to help her kid even though the kid had told mom she had made repeated appointments with me. It is rare to have so breathtaking an example of falsehood directed my way. I explained to the parent that I am available every day after school for at least 45 minutes, that I had asked the kid repeatedly to take advantage of this time, but she did not, and I also pointed out that I had emailed the mother herself five times with no response. Well, her kid couldn't meet with me until 4:00, the mom claimed, because she was involved in an after school activity. I then reminded Mama that I had contacted the coach and gotten the okay for the student to miss a few minutes of practice to come see me (can't play if you are not eligible due to GPA, and mine wasn't the only class in which this students was sinking) but still the young lady did not come. Still the mother claimed that I refused to stay after school to help her daughter who had BEGGED me for help, so I forwarded her on to my administrator-- who personally could vouch for the fact that I had repeatedly contacted the daughter, the coach, and the mother and had been at school for the amount of time I had stated. I did warn the poor man ahead of time that Mama would be calling. And meanwhile, let me just state that I will not be staying after school for two hours on the off-chance that this young lady might show up, given that a) I awaken at 4:30 am to be at school on time, and b) I have my own children to care for after school.

Oh well. Then another kid asked to turn in any missing assignments because otherwise MS. CORNELIUS would be the reason he didn't get into Dartmouth. Yes, me--NOT his lack of certain completed work, and the corresponding drop that then followed on his tests because he had not done the work to prepare himself for the tests.

Kid C at least asked nicely if I could check over his grades and see if I could see how close he was to an A, since he was sitting at an 89%. And I did. He was actually sitting at an 88.6 that had been rounded up to an 89. Then I went and looked at his test average, and there had not even been one test score above a 90%. So unfortunately, no, I figured the grade was pretty representative of his actual level of mastery.

You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish.

Young man approaches me before class and stands next to me as I peruse the traffic for any signs of malfeasance. He stands there a while. Finally, I ask, "hey bud, what can I do for you?"

He: "Ms. Cornelius, I gotta get my grade up in your class. I gotta be able to play tonight!"

Me: "Okay, do you have any of the work you owe me that's already due?" (He has a an IEP with extended deadlines.)

He: "No...."

Me: "Okay, well, did you get ready for the extra credit quiz I am giving on places in the news?"

He: "But I don't WATCH the news!"

Me: "Right, so that's why I told you about it on Monday and repeated it every day this week. So you could earn extra credit by watching the news."

He: But I gotta get my grade up so I can play tonight! What should I do?"

Me: (sighhhhhhhhhhhh.......)

More on the grading controversy

A commenter who is a student of Ken O'Connor's has asked how I was exposed to his work (there was lots of other interesting comments made too, so it might be helpful if you read them on this previous post.

Classroom teachers in my building were given a fifty-five minute or so presentation on Ken O'Connor's theories about "standards-based" grades during which no comments or questions were allowed until the very end. Mr. O'Connor is from Canada, but has also apparently worked in Australia. The title of the book from which this material was drawn is A Repair Kit for Grading: Fifteen Fixes for Broken Grades,which is published by Educational Testing Service.

Now let's leave aside the fact that the end of the school year is usually a frantic time for teachers, and we do not have loads of time hanging on our hands to do research on a system presented in a rapid-fire manner via fifteen or twenty PowerPoint slides before we are being asked to buy the proverbial "pig in a poke," or we could talk all day long about how this method of extracting teacher feedback could be interpreted as being designed NOT to elicit real conversation or contemplation before it is, shall we say, shoved down our throats.

There are certainly some practices that were outlined that I personally would never use, such as giving a group grade for a project to every individual in the group. I do not like group work for a plethora of very practical reasons.

But since entire books have been written on the subject or grading, let me be very brief and very specific upon ONE aspect of this presented system.

One part of the system presented that caught my eye was the idea that plagiarism or cheating should not receive a consequence upon a student's grade, since it was stated that this is a BEHAVIOR, and grades should only reflect ACHIEVEMENT. We were told that administrators would administer consequences for the behavior, but that any paper or assessment upon which there had been cheating should simply be thrown out and or redone to be included in the grade.

Here are my responses to this, and they come from a practical, experienced, and current classroom teacher's point of view, and from the get-go let me state that my response touches upon far more than grading, because assessing students is only a part of what a classroom teacher does (a consideration that anyone suggesting an overhaul such as this should keep in mind, much less respect:
1) Apparently a concern leading to "standards based" grading is that letter grades are meaningless and capricious. Unfortunately, so are the expected consequences that one can usually expect in a school that has several administrators. Already, the consequences assigned by administrators vary wildly for identical infractions and circumstances of students. The expectations of behavior we already have are not enforced anywhere near uniformly. I can only imagine the further erosion of academic and character standards were principals given the only right to assign consequences for plagiarism or other infractions against academic honesty. And my concern about academic honesty is not out of a masochistic desire to punish students-- it is because I am actually interested in my students' learning and their present as well as future success.

2) But more to the philosophical point of Mr. O'Connor's system (as presented to us), it was exclaimed repeatedly that BEHAVIORS should not be represented in grades. I find this to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what education is. A real education, which is the one that students all ultimately craft for themselves for good or for ill, is based completely upon the way in which they choose to behave, to change or not change the way that they act and interact with knowledge, skills, and opportunities that are presented to them. This is what cognitive theory is all about, and it is much neglected in an era in which it is assumed that if a student fails to achieve mastery, it is always due to some external factor. Learning is an individual process in the end. That's not a cop-out, nor is it meant to negate the very real impact that instructors, school, community,or parents can have. But the ultimate determiner of success in education is the student and his or her attitude or behavior, if you will.

3) When am I supposed to have time for all this retesting and re-evaluation of assessments that have been tainted by plagiarism or cheating? I already have forty-five minutes a day to plan (short term as well as long term), to write assessments that are meaningful, to contact parents, to grade papers, to confer with colleagues, to talk to counselors about concerns I have about students, to touch base with administrators, to enter grades, and to perhaps go to the bathroom (doesn't usually happen). Continual reassessment of papers and tests and the like due to plagiarism simply teaches students that cheating has no consequences about which they care. And that is a BEHAVIOR that this type of system would certainly enforce, to everyone's detriment.

Tell me what you think.

Another Question: What Practices Are Reinforced by Practice?

If you read through the slides about Ken O'Connor's ideas (see previous post for link) about how to fix "broken" grading systems, you might have noticed that one of the things that is suggested is that grades be based primarily upon "summative" scores (read performance events, such as tests and essays and the like for those of us in the core subjects) rather than "formative" scores (which basically means homework).

So about what is the percentage weight you assign to homework, and what is the percentage weight you assign to quizzes, tests, and the like in determining your overall grade?

Let's discuss.

Math lesson

Ahhh, finals week approacheth. Here's a snippet of today's conversation:

Kid A: Ms! I looked at my grade, and it's really low.
MC: Yes, it is. You and I have talked about that a lot.
Kid A: I don't think I'll take the final. I can't pass unless I get 100%. See, because if your final is worth 15% of my grade, and I've got a 50 now, even a hundred would only raise me to a 57.5. So, should I take the final exam?
MC: Well, you certainly won't pass if you don't.
Kid A: Well, I don't think I'm going to take it.
MC: Suit yourself. But that was mad math skillz you just showed there, bud.
Kid A: Yeah, I got a C in math!

You can tell it's approaching the end of the semester when I am thrilled that a kid who redefines the term "underachiever" at least demonstrates some math ability.

That's why it's called a grade point AVERAGE.

Like my new haircut?

I got it from the whirling blades of the latest helicopter parents to hover over my head now that the semester is inexorably subsiding like a California mudslide into the onslaught of finality which is known as "end of semester" time.

The question before us, ladies and gentlemen, is if it possible for Sugarplum to increase his semester average 8 percentage points in the next six school days. Never mind that Sugarplum has never come within sniffing distance of the grade that this parent has suddenly just plucked out of the ether as their "dream grade."

Sugarplum has come to after school help sessions 4 times over the entire year. I speak to Sugarplum every single day after class for at least five minutes-- or for as long as I can take his whining about how something is "not fair!" or his wheedling for me to increase his grade on the latest assignment because he "tried really hard"-- as I have my planning period and Sugarplum has lunch. Never mind that I have to repeat every single thing I say to Sugarplum, and yet he still tells his mom that I never told him about deadlines. I actually like Sugarplum, since if you haven't gotten to the point that you can tolerate this behavior, you would go batty as a teacher. But liking Sugarplum and buying the crock he's selling are two different things.

Then mom carped that I hadn't entered two ten point assignments and a paragraph grade. I dropped everything and put them in-- and two other grades, one of them a test and one of them an essay, that Sugarplum bombed (Lady, if you want every single grade in, that's what you're going to get, not to mention that if members of your family wouldn't eat up huge portions of my precious grading time they would have been entered already). I will not fill my remaining time with Sugarplum's class creating extra credit opportunities to drive myself insane-- I have loads of things to do besides answer your sudden blizzard of emails and forty-five minute phone calls. I am wondering if Sugarplum isn't making your life hell at home with that whining and carping and wheedling, but there is nothing I can do about that, either. You poured the bath; now you get to sit in it, even if you've developed a sudden allergy to the bubble bath.

One problem is that Sugarplum is too involved with extracurricular fluff and the Cult That is Marching Band. Another is that his strategy for studying for tests is to come in five minutes before the test and ask me to define and/or explain half the material. No joke. But the claim is that "he tries so hard!"

Sadly, even if I had seen any evidence that this is true in this particular instance, trying hard just sometimes isn't enough. But beyond that, Sugarplum's number one problem is that he has parents who are the Baskin-Robins of excuse purveyors for their child. It's always something, just like Roseanne Roseannadanna so pithily put it.

So, since the semester is already 17 weeks old, the chances of magically raising one's grade to unheard of heights for someone with a 52% test average, is, um, about as likely as my becoming a member of the Swedish Bikini Team (and imagine Jabba the Hutt instead of Princess Leia in that bikini, and you'll be in about the right neighborhood). There are 17 weeks' worth of anchor (and about forty-two grades of varying point values) holding Sugarplum's grade where it is, Ma'am, and if Sugarplum would really have liked to have had his dream grade, perhaps he should have studied more and stopped engaging in conspiracy theories about how the universe was aligned against him. And grow up a bit.

Or invent a time machine and go back in time to start over the semester afresh. Grades are not magic numbers that mysteriously evaluate your child. They are not a judgment of your child as a person. They DO represent the amount of understanding your child has demonstrated. And Sugarplum has not demonstrated the knowledge representative of that dream grade. Unfortunately, it's time to wake up. He'll be fine. You'll be fine. Your kid is not you.

But if you want something, try earning it.

You think this machine is your friend

Apparently, teachers and students weren't the only things that took a vacation over spring break in Evansville, Indiana. A whole month's worth of grades hit the road too, never to be seen again. By the way, check out the explanation from IBM engineers:

A computer malfunction wiped out a month's worth of grades at three high schools and one middle school, giving struggling students a second chance but dismaying others.

The Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp. announced on its Web site that the malfunction occurred during spring break.

Students at Harrison High had mixed reactions, depending on how the second semester was going for them, senior Ibrahim Dughaish said Monday.

"Some are really upset because they worked hard for five weeks," but others saw it as a reprieve, he said.

"My son is an honor roll student and I prefer him keep his grades. He works hard for them," said parent Teresa Hayes.

Upcoming report cards at the four schools will not be issued as scheduled. Instead, the final two weeks of the current six-week period will be combined with the final six weeks of the year into an eight- week reporting period.

Harwood Middle School Principal Mike Raisor said some of his teachers had printed out grades before spring break, but most had not.

"I think the reality set in with everyone that you couldn't do anything about it. They took it pretty well in stride," Raisor said.

The school district's announcement said IBM engineers determined the loss of data was caused by "an unfortunate and very rare combination of hardware problems and backup configuration settings."

Whattaya wanna bet that there's going to be a directive for teachers to start printing out paper copies of grades at least once every few days now? And that's probably a good thing, although it kind of defeats the purpose of the whole "paperless" idea, and creates double work for teachers-- but nothing new there, really.

And I don't know about you, but in most school districts around here, it's high-stakes testing time, and then after that, pull those kids off the fire, because they are done. So the grades that were lost really aren't replaceable in any sense.