I was told that I had to give grades to the students, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing.
Merce Cunningham
This week we learned about grading and student evaluations. The first part of the chapter talked about how we can come up with a letter grade system. Most American schools have the standard A-F system, but often these letter grades are based on various percentiles. The teachers are the ones who decide if an A is a 90-100, a 94-100, etc. It was pointed out in the chapter that often teachers working at the same school often do not use the same grading system. I think that it is important for teachers at the same institution to be on the same page when it comes to grading. This will help the students better understand what constitutes an A, B, etc.
The second part of the chapter talked about different alternatives to letter grades. This is why I chose the above quote. Though most teachers can give various other types of feedback to students, in the end we still have to assign letter grades to all of our students. A lot of teachers find it hard to assign grades to ELLs and SPED students. A lot of the regular teachers just do not find it fair to assign an A to a student who is not performing at grade level even though the student is trying hard and doing the best he or she can with limited English or some sort of a disability. When dealing with ELLs and SPED students, I often tend to grade based more on effort and motivation than on the correct answers.
There are cultural issues also involved in assigning letter grades. A lot of cultures do not see the value of a letter grade. It is also hard for a student to care about their grades if their parents do not even care. We only had three of our sheltered students' parents show up during our last parent-teacher conference. Transportation and work issues can be part of the reasons why so few parents showed up. One year when I was teaching, one of the parents wanted to see me because I mildly scolded her daughter but she did not care to see me about the fact that her daughter was failing my class every quarter. There are also some ELLs and SPED students who do not put forth any effort but believe that they should pass just because of their special population status.
I agree with what you mentioned in the first paragraph. Teachers in the same school, even in the same department do not always use the same grading system. Grading is something that administrators and teachers alike take for granted that everyone knows how to do fairly and accurately. This is not, however, the case.
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