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Grading Reform - Should it happen?
39 Plays4 years ago
Should we have grading reform? The system has worked for over 100 years, or has it? What read should change? Where do philosophies come in to play? Listen to the host’s point of view and see if you agree, or can take an idea and make it work for you. Listen and follow along as you will benefit from engaging with the hosts discuss different ideas and viewpoints on all educational topics as they provide their insight and “perspective” in hopes of having a greater understanding of their profession. Join administrator Robert Hinchliffe and teacher Abigail Peterson as they examine different educational topics from various points of view. Take the challenge of looking at a topic from another side and see if your opinion may change. In the end, no matter what side you are on, it’s all about perspective. What’s yours?
In this episode:
Connect with Abbie and Robert
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ItsAllAboutPerspective2021
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Its-All-About-Perspective-102961565105781
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ItsAllAboutPer2
Abbie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kindergarten_chaos/’
Robert on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pryncypalwithay/
Robert on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobertHCCS
In this episode:
- Does the grading system need a change?
- Should there be a “minimum F” for kids that do not do the work?
- Should students get the change to retake a summative assessment? How many times?
- Where do learner behaviors come into play?
- Can you make grades completely objective?
Connect with Abbie and Robert
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ItsAllAboutPerspective2021
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Its-All-About-Perspective-102961565105781
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ItsAllAboutPer2
Abbie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kindergarten_chaos/’
Robert on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pryncypalwithay/
Robert on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobertHCCS
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Overview
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome! You are listening to It's All About Perspective with your hosts, Abigail Peterson from Kindergarten Chaos and Principal Robert Henscliffe. Join us as we discuss education from various points of view. Take the challenge of listening to see if your opinion changes. But no matter where you stand on the issues, remember, it's all about perspective.
Listener Engagement & Gratitude
00:00:33
Speaker
Welcome back to It's All About Perspective podcast with me, Abby from Kindergarten Chaos, and my co-host. And I am Robert from Thompson Elementary School, and we are glad to be back. Yes. We're sorry that we were not here last week. We didn't release an episode last week, but we're back. We're back and ready to chat.
00:00:57
Speaker
Absolutely. We are thankful because we just had a thousand downloads, so thank you very much. We appreciate that. Yay. Thank you. I know, a thousand. It's amazing. Make sure you hit download before you listen. Absolutely. That is helpful. Always, if you can, leave a review. It just helps us. It just boosts us a little bit. This is just something that we love to do. We love to talk about it. We're both pretty passionate about education and just talking about the topics and coming up
What is Grading Reform?
00:01:25
Speaker
with
00:01:25
Speaker
personal resolutions from our perspectives so anyways I think today something that's been in the paper a lot here in Las Vegas and I see on our school district Facebook pages is grading reform and I saw a post actually today that somebody said that the expectation over the summer is that you'll watch PD on the new grading reform system but
00:01:54
Speaker
There's the expectation is that you'll do it on your own time. So I'd love to know what you as a principal, if you can explain to our listeners about the new grading reform here in our district and then what your thoughts are on it.
00:02:09
Speaker
So the main highlights of grading reform as I see it are essentially there is now a
Key Changes in Grading Policies
00:02:17
Speaker
minimum F. The district has drawn a line. You must have a minimum F and you cannot give a grade less than 50% in the grade book.
00:02:26
Speaker
That's been debated for years. It's really very philosophical, I think, on when you grew up and how you grew up, honestly. But that's one change. Another change is no extra credit, which I am completely on board for because, you know, why don't we get the credit that you should get rather than extra credit?
00:02:45
Speaker
Those are the two main ones that I see. Another thing is the opportunity to retake summative assessments. So if you bomb a summative, then you have the opportunity to retake it no matter what.
00:03:03
Speaker
You do or you don't? You do. Every school has to offer that option for students so that if they have one bad test, they can retake it to show if they do have mastery of a standard. Okay, so let me ask you about that one. How many attempts do you get?
Challenges & Inconsistencies in Grading Reform
00:03:24
Speaker
I think they have left leeway to where every school can make up their own policy.
00:03:29
Speaker
You're joking, right? No, no, no. Now, they might come out with some more information and everything's changing all the time in Clark County. So my understanding in the meeting that I was at was that there is going to be guidance for each school to come up with a policy, which
00:03:45
Speaker
There's a lot of ways we can go on this podcast on this. There are some good changes in this policy. However, I think there's a lot of gray area as well. For example, the retake policy, do you let them take it two times, three times, four times, that stuff like that. And I think that's one of the problems I have is that if you want to make a grading policy, make one so that the district has the exact same standards for grading, no matter what school you go to.
00:04:14
Speaker
I thought that was the that was partially the point of assessments is common assessments so that you know we can see if a first grade student is is reading on an adequate first grade level where if you have some schools that are saying oh you only need to
Subjectivity in Grading Practices
00:04:32
Speaker
you know, read five sentences in Europe, you've mastered first grade reading, or you have another school that says no, you have to read, you know, a Junie B. Jones book in order to have mastery. That just, that just doesn't make sense to me if there's not a standard assessment. So one of my big
00:04:51
Speaker
things about grading is that no matter how much you try to make it objective, it's never going to be 100% objective. There's always going to be subjectivity to it. I guarantee you that elementary school at least
00:05:07
Speaker
an A at Thompson is not an A at another school or another school or another school because there's so many differences in how teachers grade, what assessments are used, the level of rigor and the assessments. Then also, we have Infinite Campus where you do your grades. Their subjective can be 80, 90, 100% of your grade
00:05:31
Speaker
I'm sorry, summatives, not subjective. Summatives can be 80, 90, or 100% of your grade, and then formatives can be 20, 10%, or 0%. So they left that gray area as well.
00:05:44
Speaker
So if I have 0% of formatives counting at Thompson and then I go down the road to the school next to us and 20% of their formatives are counting for a grade, then that changes the whole dynamics as well.
Impact of Grading on Scores & Funding
00:05:58
Speaker
So they made a policy, but they also left some gray area in there. And I think that maybe they're going to move to getting everybody on board. But right now, I think it is still going to have the effect of a grade is not the same at each school.
00:06:14
Speaker
And then ultimately, as we've discussed in previous episodes, unfortunately, as it stands right now, the scores or the assessments of the school as a whole is depending on the amount of money that you get.
00:06:33
Speaker
And so I just think that is a very slippery slope, you know, when you when you have such variation in schools getting to choose between formative and summative
00:06:47
Speaker
in the percentage wise because if you you know like you said um if if a school has zero percent informative assessments and you're just going off of the summative assessments maybe those uh maybe that school will have lower scores overall and receive more money but then you have a school that believes more informative assessments
00:07:10
Speaker
And maybe their scores are higher and you receive less money. I don't know. It just seems like it's a slippery slope.
Why Eliminate Extra Credit?
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah, I don't worry so much about the money because money is more based upon aspects and things of that nature.
00:07:25
Speaker
So again, the things I want to put out there that I think are positive are no more extra credit. For example, I have an eighth grader and she has like 104% in a class. There's no extra credit. You either know the standard or you don't know the standard. It's pretty simple in terms of that if you think of it that way. Now, to be fair, I think, or just honest, I think middle school and high school are the areas that are going to struggle most with this.
00:07:52
Speaker
And again, just saying this as elementary person, having a middle school and high school children. From what I've seen, some, not all, teachers are very old school. You're going to take the test. You get one shot. You get this much time. If you know it, great. If you don't, that's your problem. Oh, well, then I'll give you extra credit for writing your name or something like that. I don't know that that's it. Just because I don't want too many F's in my class, so I'm going to give extra credit.
00:08:22
Speaker
I think the no extra credit rule is excellent, but I think it's going to hurt kids in middle school and high school who are using the extra credit just to get caught up, my opinion only. We don't have extra credit at our school. We never had it at Smith. So I think the extra credit thing is a really good thing. I think that the retaking of tests is going to bug a lot of people because we didn't grow up that way.
00:08:48
Speaker
your spelling tests in 1985 was on Friday morning, you were gonna take that spelling test and if you got a 10% or a 20 or whatever, that's what you got. You didn't know the words. So the retake is going to bug people. The analogy that the district is using, which I think is a good one, is if you go and you take your driver's test and you fail, what do you do?
00:09:14
Speaker
And if you fail again, what do you do? You retake it. And in the end, you pass, you have your driver's license. So in the end, you have the exact same driver's license as everybody else. It just took you a few other times. But you showed that you understand how to drive a car and follow the rules and the laws. So I think that's a very good analogy in terms of grading.
Benefits & Challenges of Standards-Based Assessments
00:09:34
Speaker
Where the rub comes for a lot of the elementary people that I have talked to is how many times can they retake the test?
00:09:44
Speaker
That's something we will have to decide. A teacher at Thompson made a really, really good point, and I've been thinking about this a lot. I hope it's right along with my thought. Go ahead. I don't know if it's going to be. You can bring yours up. But she said, here's my problem with this. Grade level is technically a C average. The test of our envisions
00:10:09
Speaker
are written at grade level. So if a kid gets 100% on a test written for the grade level, aren't they technically average? Okay. So when you throw that thought in there,
00:10:24
Speaker
it throws everything into a tornado because then you're like, well, what is an A? What is a B? And furthermore, if you're trying to move towards being just standards-based where you're graded based upon your mastery of a standard, well, then why don't we go to a standards-based report card? We're not. We're staying with the old report card, at least as of now. So again, the policy has some good changes, but there's still a lot of ambiguity to it.
00:10:51
Speaker
And what I was gonna bring up is on the opportunity to retake an assessment. As a classroom teacher, let me ask you, what about the time?
00:11:02
Speaker
What about the time? It becomes a time issue for me. Typically, in the classroom, you have built-in time for an assessment. Okay, I know it's going to take my students a half hour to complete this assessment, and you might have those one or two that maybe need a few extra minutes, and those early finishers, you have early finisher tubs for them or what have you.
Traditional vs. Standards-Based Grading
00:11:25
Speaker
Well, okay, so then I take those assessments home and I grade them, or if it's a computerized test, it's automatically hopefully done for them, and you get the results, and then you give them out. And so then the student says, oh, wait, I got a 76, but I want to try it again. So where do you fit that in? Where does it stop? Where does it stop?
00:11:45
Speaker
you're going to have to develop a policy for your school that has outlines of how many times you can take it, some criteria to retake it. I don't think you could just be like, I got 76. Oh, I need to retake it tomorrow, Mrs. Peterson. And then you get 77. Oh, I need to retake it tomorrow, Mrs. Pearson. I think there's going to have to be some steps outlined so that kids put the time in to show that they have tried to learn
00:12:10
Speaker
the concept more and go on, but you're exactly right. Where is the time from? And then also think about it, kids can make up stuff the whole semester. So you know what's going to happen come December is all of a sudden a whole bunch of kids are going to want to make up assessments from October, November,
00:12:29
Speaker
And the poor teacher is going to have to then grade and copy and somehow figure all this madness out so that kids can retake every test that they have put the time and effort into. And I think it's a logistical nightmare for teachers until we get a good policy figured out. Well, you brought up something that I would love to talk about and address because of how our grading is here at kindergarten, and that is standards based.
00:12:56
Speaker
grading. So can you explain to our listeners just quickly a quick little synopsis of standard-based assessments and then I would love to hear your opinion on it and if that is something that you would like to see all of for instance elementary school go to and I'll give you my opinion on it.
00:13:18
Speaker
So when I think about standards-based assessments, so you have your Common Core State Standards, you would give an assessment that covers some of the standards, hopefully more than one on each test. I don't think you have enough time to just give a test for each standard. Hopefully people aren't doing that.
00:13:35
Speaker
So you give an assessment on a standard and then basically you would grade their percent of mastery on that standard. If a report card was standards based, it would have all the standards listed and you would basically move a scale over to how far they have met the standard based upon your assessments. So maybe you move the scale over clear to mastery for some, maybe as a beginner for other standards, but then you would have
00:14:04
Speaker
an outline of what standards each kid knows and has mastered. And then you could also watch growth slide as well. So when you compared two standards together over time, you can see have they learned this one? Have they learned that one? Have they grown on these? So I didn't used to be, but I am much more now a proponent of standards-based
Evolving Educational Expectations
00:14:26
Speaker
report cards because I think you can show growth
00:14:31
Speaker
in all areas much more clearly. Agreed. That's my opinion. Okay, so when I first started teaching kindergarten in our district, our report cards for kindergarten, they've never been A, B, C, and D like traditional report cards. But when I first started, it was one, two, three, and four.
00:14:54
Speaker
So it was an exceeds, it was meets, it was approaches, and it was, I'm drawing a blank on the last one, but needs improvement is basically what it was. They haven't met the standard. And so it was that way for a long time.
00:15:12
Speaker
And very much like you said, it was at scale. So you would put on there 50 sight words, if they knew 50 sight words, then they would have mastered, they would have a three. If they knew more than 50 sight words, then they would have a four. If they only knew 25 sight words, then it would be a two.
00:15:34
Speaker
And so then they moved the kindergarten grading to ones and twos. And when I first was dealing with the ones and twos, I was really frustrated because a one is
00:15:53
Speaker
anywhere from 0 to 99%. And a 2 is a 100% is essentially how I view it, because it's in either you know it or you don't know it. And then to try to explain to parents, I would say just because they received a 1,
00:16:10
Speaker
in fluently add and subtract within five doesn't mean that they don't know how. It's just that they haven't mastered it completely. They still are missing some. It is a little bit of, like you said, it is subjective to the teacher because I know some kindergarten teachers would say, well, if they got eight out of 10, then they considered that mastery. But I will say that
00:16:35
Speaker
I personally liked having the ones and twos rather than ABCs and Ds because we get so hung up on the ABCs and Ds of our generation.
00:16:48
Speaker
that it panics parents and they're so focused in on that A or that B. And so when you take those alphabet letters away and you give them a number, it changes it a little bit. Even if it's just almost the same thing, it has changed their perspective a little bit.
00:17:10
Speaker
So let me play devil's advocate, which is just a fancy way of saying, I'm going to give a different perspective. Yeah. Yeah. You and I are, you know, in our forties when we were younger, if you didn't do it, you got a zero. Yeah, that's it. You didn't do it. There's zero. Uh, if you don't go to work, all of your whole bunch of listeners are out there. Well, if I don't do my job, I don't get 50% of my paycheck.
00:17:37
Speaker
Okay, yes, I understand that philosophy. That's how we grew up. So it's ingrained in our brains.
00:17:45
Speaker
I hate to let people know this, but kids today are different. Absolutely. The world is different. In a way, everybody gets a trophy. The system that worked for 100 years isn't working now. So do we keep with the system or do we change it? So I mean, give CCSD a little bit of credit for trying to change it. However, parents are not going to like it because they're not going to understand minimum F's if they even pay attention.
00:18:13
Speaker
You're getting so many philosophical issues.
Impact of Societal Changes on Education
00:18:17
Speaker
Oh, you can't grade homework either, which should never be graded anyways. But we are fighting the whole perception.
00:18:29
Speaker
When I was at Smith, we tried to take away spelling tests, and I think I convinced enough people to get rid of them. And when we did that, so many parents were like, why isn't there a spelling test on Friday? And I'm like, spelling tests don't really tell you anything, like cat, C-A-T, cat. Why don't you make it a vocab test where you're like an animal that is black and you think about them on Halloween? Oh, cat. Then they write cat. It's more vocabulary based.
00:18:54
Speaker
But people are so stuck in their ways with how we grew up that when they hear the idea of grading reform, it scares them. So a guy in the RJ who writes a lot about education and a lot of people don't like him for it, he said also, well, why is there any consequences to not doing your work?
00:19:17
Speaker
And him being in the RJ, of course, he has deadlines. He has to meet those deadlines. He doesn't get to publish or get credit for 50% of his article if he doesn't turn it in. The world has deadlines, and that's just the way it is. So the argument against that is, well, the deadline is not part of the standard.
00:19:37
Speaker
So then we have what's called learner behaviors where you would get an N in responsibility or an N in meeting deadlines or however you want to say it. So many people out there cannot differentiate mastery towards a standard and mastery towards a learner behavior. If a kid doesn't turn any work in, but their IQ is a 180 and they just are so far above,
00:20:02
Speaker
And they can take one test and show mastery, but they turn no work in. Are we going to give them all Fs because they only turned one assignment in? No, we're going to say they have mastery of the standard, but we'll give them an N in the learner behavior of responsibility. That is a very hard thing for parents to understand. To understand.
00:20:24
Speaker
and to embrace, and to embrace exactly because of, like you said, the way that our school age was and how we were brought up with A's, B's, C's, D's and F's. And then you had your E's, S's and N's. And now, you know, we were calling for change and we're calling for revolutionizing education and bringing it more into the 21st century, but then we have to do so also with the grading.
00:20:52
Speaker
It can't just be, you know, grading stuck from the 70s and 80s and our curriculum has changed. It doesn't match. And that's what
Debating Weighted GPAs & Educational Value
00:21:02
Speaker
we're trying to do. And we are seeing some changes in curriculum. We are seeing, you know, some evolution. And even parents, I remember
00:21:10
Speaker
when I my very first year of teaching was in 2006. And that I was teaching second grade. And that was still we were we had not yet moved to Common Core. But I remember when I came back to teach kindergarten, the uproar of
00:21:30
Speaker
You know, going to common core and parents are, I mean, even, even now, think of all the memes in the last year of parents saying, Oh, well, I have no idea how to do this common core math. It's so foreign to me. I tried to show my student, you know, how to borrow and carry over. And this, they say this is not how you're supposed to do it, you know?
00:21:49
Speaker
And so we do, we get stuck in our ways and it's hard to make those changes. But change does need to happen because I think it's sticking to the old system has errors.
00:22:04
Speaker
It's hard. Yeah, I mean, it's hard on me to again, growing up, this is how it was. You didn't do your work, you got zero, you didn't do your work, you didn't get paid, whatever. You know, like another thing that I personally don't understand, this is a little bit off topic, are weighted GPAs.
00:22:19
Speaker
Well, it's my, okay, so this is an interesting topic because I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were talking about how, you know, this person that was the host was saying, man, I was like one of the top students in my school and I only ever had a 4.0. I could never go higher. And he was like, please explain to me. And, you know, they were having this conversation about how if you take honors classes, that that gives you this higher GPA weight because you are taking this more accelerated, you know, content.
Alternative Educational Paths & Traditional Grades
00:22:48
Speaker
So I think it's really interesting. As somebody who my oldest has graduated, I have this love-hate relationship with education. As a teacher, obviously, I have this love for education and for teaching students and for educating our future, so to speak. But as somebody who my oldest son, very smart kid,
00:23:15
Speaker
But it got a scholarship but chose not to go into college right out of high school. He's decided to go to trade school. And is that okay? That's okay. And one thing I tell him is
00:23:32
Speaker
when he went to go apply to, um, you know, trade school, they didn't care what he got in middle school. And so, like I said, I have this love heat relationship because we want our kids, you know, we seem to be stuck on these grades are so important and have so much value, but do they really? Yeah. You know, like there's so much passion over grades when reality strikes that
00:23:57
Speaker
Grades don't matter until ninth grade when you start figuring out GPAs for college. Some people would say eighth grade because you gotta get into certain classes in high school. Or if you're taking accelerated classes that count for college.
Individualized Learning Approaches
00:24:13
Speaker
But again, is this a lot of fuss about something that doesn't matter in the end? Does it matter if you have a C in third grade?
00:24:25
Speaker
No, it doesn't. Well, it just made me, it just, a thought came to my mind and it made me chuckle because it becomes the parents' identity. It becomes you as the parents, you know, feeling this, oh my goodness, my kid was the straight A student. Whoop-de-doo. What if your kid isn't the straight A, what if your kid isn't the straight A student? And I have the privilege of raising three kids that are all very different.
00:24:54
Speaker
And my one child who's already graduated, like I said, he was a people pleaser and he would be the extra credit kid. And he would be the one that would go and do the extra effort. And then I have my middle one who works really hard and is very average. And she works really hard and does her best, but she's very average. And then I have my youngest who doesn't care. He doesn't care.
00:25:19
Speaker
And he spends more time figuring out how he can skirt the system to get the very minimum. And he doesn't care. And he has the same parents. And I had to take, I had to remove my identity and say, these are just my three kids. And I can't force them to be fit in these little graded boxes.
00:25:43
Speaker
So when you look at the grading reform for your three kids, the people pleaser is going to struggle a little bit more now because there's no extra credit.
00:25:55
Speaker
The one that doesn't care is going to do less work because he's going to calculate. Don't worry, he already does less work. He's going to calculate that I only need to do four assignments and get a 75, and then I throw my minimum Fs in there and voila, I have a C, which is average. Right.
00:26:16
Speaker
Right. And here is what I would like to see as a parent, like, especially with my one who doesn't really care. I would love to have a standards-based report card because I want to know if he's learned the content. Really, that's it. Because he struggles, you know, he loves the classes where he's having conversation and he's actually doing things. But if you ask him to read a book and report back to you on it, he is not going to.
00:26:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think the majority of elementary people, again, would prefer a standards-based report card because you could then better grade a student, the whole child, not just a strand or a certain standard. I think most elementary people would now, or at least the ones that understand the concept. Middle and high school, I don't know what they would want. And I don't know if any middle or high school people listen to us.
00:27:12
Speaker
I'm not entirely sure what they would want in middle school. I don't know. I know I've had the experience of having some teachers who are more than willing to help students out who miss things. I have a student, one of mine, Abby, that she doesn't turn things in all the time on time, although she's getting better.
00:27:30
Speaker
That's a good thing. But you know, like even I look at my kids, I mean, it's not going to harm them because I mean, there's not much difference. Actually, there is no difference between a 95 and 103% in grading. But I get I get back to it, you're like, parents, if you're listening, grades are important if
00:27:50
Speaker
in my opinion, they're below average because then you know that they're not learning something that they might need in the future. But if your kid is average or you have a B or an A, that's great. Again, if they get a C in first grade, it's okay. They're average. It's just like, it's just, again, it's just- But that's hard. That's hard for parents because everybody wants to be above average. Everybody wants to be the exception to the rule. Everybody wants to be the celebrity.
00:28:17
Speaker
There's a bell curve for a reason. And I think this is turning into a parenting podcast, but I think you just kind of have to embrace. And that's one of the things that I have loved about actually being like in the, you know, in a kindergarten classroom and dealing with parents is being that voice of reason and that voice of, you know, just saying like, it's okay, your child is doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. I am very proud of where they're at.
00:28:46
Speaker
and not and not and kind of calming down that panic of, oh, my goodness, you know, you you had a student once that had ease in art.
00:29:00
Speaker
And PE, but had an S, I think, in music. Something like that, something like that. And the parent was like, oh, my kid doesn't have... And I'm like, not everybody is a Picasso and a Mozart and a Michael Jordan wrapped into one. Right, right. Not everybody is that. So again, just relax.
00:29:21
Speaker
But educators, I mean, you're out there, you know, parents are wrapped up in grades.
Resistance to Grading Reform
00:29:26
Speaker
And again, I keep I keep coming back to like, is it really is the reform going to really change anything? Probably not. We'll see. But is it worth people getting so fired up about that they're like having fights or like arguing with people? No, I don't think so either. I think in the end, it'll just be
00:29:46
Speaker
Another thing we'll all get used to, we'll all move on, and then eventually they'll change it again because we have to adjust the times.
00:29:56
Speaker
But just to the expectations, I mean, and if you think about it, for instance, when I went to kindergarten in 1985, the expectations were, I'll never forget this, we all had ribbons hanging on the wall. And when you learn to tie your shoes, you got a little shoe that you stapled on the ribbon. When you learned your address, you got a little house that was stapled on the ribbon.
00:30:22
Speaker
those were the standards that's not the standards anymore the expectations are much higher and so sometimes we're comparing again our experiences as a student to where our children are as students and it's completely different
00:30:37
Speaker
They didn't have robotics when I went to school. They didn't have. We didn't have robots. Wait, okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You speak for yourself in the seventies. Um, I think we had Teddy Rupp's rough skin. He wasn't a robot.
00:30:54
Speaker
You know what's interesting too, I just had a thought is how many parents are going to be upset because now they have someone who's a senior that struggled with the old grading system and now an eighth grader that's going in that might not struggle and they're upset because something happened there. Like you have parents all the time that compare their kids. Well, my kid needs to be straight A's because his older brother was. And if parents just don't understand that every kid's different, you just don't.
00:31:24
Speaker
Yeah. Parenting advice number 643 of this episode, and that is don't do that. Don't do that. Please don't do that. And as a teacher, as an educator, and as a parent myself, every student, every child is their own person.
00:31:42
Speaker
I have had students come in after I had a sibling and the parent would say, oh, they're nothing like so and so. And then that child is standing there listening and it's not fair to them. Let them be their own. Let them be their own. And my own personal child that is the one that just really doesn't care about school, we're like, he's going to be the one that ends up with his own business because he is, you know, they just think differently and that's okay. We need to accept that.
00:32:12
Speaker
but that's one of the downsides of the old system is everybody looks at A's, B's, and C's. If you had a standards-based report card,
00:32:18
Speaker
then you can see the positives of this child and this child and this child. And this one knows their facts and this one knows their sounds and this one knows their letters. That one didn't know the letters, but this one does. Oh, that's great. You know, again, there's so many more categories that you could positively reinforce with a kid if you went standard space, but the A, B, C, D, F system. Why did this get to you? I never understood that. But the A, B, C, D, F system
00:32:49
Speaker
It's just, it's kind of archaic and antiquated and the change would be good if they got rid of it. It's an interesting topic, grading reform has happened all across the country. I can't help but wonder if it was
00:33:05
Speaker
because there's a lot of hurt feelings out there and that's why we have to change it. They'll say there's a lot of research behind it. I would love to hear from other teachers that are in other districts and places across our country to chime in.
00:33:19
Speaker
and leave comments on our Instagram posts and let us know what you think, you know, are you in a standards-based, you know, school or district? Tell us what you think because as we know...
Conclusion & Call for Listener Perspectives
00:33:31
Speaker
In the end, it's all about perspective. Every time. Thanks for joining us today and we'll see.
00:33:47
Speaker
Thanks for listening to today's podcast. We would love to hear your perspective on this episode. Head over to our Instagram page. It's all about Perspective 2021 or our Facebook and Twitter page and share your opinion. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review on whatever platform you're listening to this podcast. And one last thing. Remember, it's all about perspective.