{"id":77,"date":"2014-07-24T14:17:05","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T14:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/?p=77"},"modified":"2014-07-30T01:28:30","modified_gmt":"2014-07-30T01:28:30","slug":"new-mcps-report-cards-good-ideas-sign-of-the-time-much-room-for-improvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/?p=77","title":{"rendered":"New MCPS Report Cards \u2013Good Ideas, Sign of the Times, Room for Improvement by Phil Piety"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes education seems like the place where good ideas do not come to die, but rather to find out how complex the problems they are trying to solve really are.\u00a0 One they run into the difficult realities of educational practice they rarely die quickly even if their authors hope they do.\u00a0 The new Montgomery County Public School (MCPS) report cards featuring\u00a0 the letters I for \u201cin progress\u201d, P for \u201cproficient,\u201d and ES for \u201cexceeds standards\u201d is another great idea that is based on a sound logic, but that has run into difficult implementation. I actually don\u2019t think the new MCPS report cards should die, but neither do I think they should live on in their current form.<\/p>\n

The design of these new report cards is based on what is called standards-based grading (SBG) where the information delivered to parents is about what the students know or don\u2019t know based on the standards they are to be taught to. Historically letter grades have been considered too broad to be useful in diagnosing problems with learning.\u00a0 A student receives a B, but what is it that he or she needs to learn to make an A?\u00a0 Traditional grades are also known to be subjective.\u00a0 A student may have mastered the content, but didn\u2019t look like they were learning or have the attitude the teacher wanted could get a B while another student who didn\u2019t show as much achievement but made tremendous efforts could get an A.\u00a0 Research has shown that traditional grading practices vary from teacher to teacher. <\/a>\u00a0Many teachers communicate much more than achievement through traditional grades and SBG is an effort to standardize grading around what students should be learning.<\/p>\n

I think SBG is a good idea and MCPS\u2019s use of it admirable.\u00a0 As a parent of kids in MCPS, however, I have found the results less than useful.\u00a0 I find what Washington Post Education Writer Donna St. George called the Plethora of Ps<\/a> difficult to use. \u00a0I have found it difficult to match the proficiency mark in one area difficult to reconcile with other parts of the report card and what we see coming home.\u00a0\u00a0 After two years of experience with this new SBG report card and hearing many stories of frustration from other parents, I can see four issues that are worth considering.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Producing proficiency (Ps) is now considered a primary responsibility of a teacher.<\/strong>\u00a0 This focus on standards proficiency is the result of the standards-based accountability that has been going on since before No Child Left Behind (NCLB).\u00a0 While many educators think this is over emphasized in comparison to other areas of social and emotional development, the reality today is that proficiency counts.\u00a0 In the past many teachers felt that grades should be distributed across the different letters with a certain percentage getting As and another percentage Bs, etc.\u00a0 Many teachers then distributed grades accordingly and sometimes the reason a student got one grade versus another seemed arbitrary yo fit that pattern.\u00a0 In today\u2019s climate there is belief that a teacher\u2019s job is to get all kids to academic proficiency and so for many a report card that has many Ps in it shows teachers did their job. This means in the world of educators and teachers there is a built-in implicit incentive to produce Ps.<\/li>\n
  2. There are disconnected data points<\/strong>.\u00a0 One of the biggest problems with the MCPS SBG approach is that standards in the report card are presented without some important context.\u00a0 In the area of elementary math, for example, there are many many standards shown and each is given an individual evaluation.\u00a0 However, the way the new CCSS math standards are designed is around what are called \u201clearning trajectories\u201d that string different standards together into these sequences of proficiency.\u00a0 These areas, such as \u201cNumber and Operations in Base Ten\u201d have many individual standards across multiple grades.\u00a0 The MCPS report cards read like an inventory of the standards that are intended to be taught at a given grade (ex: grade 3) and don\u2019t show the larger trajectories with related standards at lower\/higher grades.\u00a0 In reality many students can perform in areas outside of their assigned grades.\u00a0 Including this multi-grade context (with a meaningful graphic representation) will probably help everyone make sense out of the data points.\u00a0 Without some better information organization, parents see an ocean of P\u2019s, I\u2019s, and rarely ES\u2019s, but the overall picture of learning is lost.In addition, most of the standards in the MCPS report cards are summary standards that are actually composed of many more detailed sub-standards.\u00a0 For example, a fourth grade standard to \u201cunderstand place value\u201d is defined as three different kinds of understandings and to know whether a student actually has mastered one of these sub-standards would usually require multiple tasks.\u00a0 So each I on a report card should be represented by Is, Ps, and\/or ESs on the sub-standards.<\/li>\n
  3. The new report cards dropped important information that was valuable for parents and students.<\/strong>\u00a0 The shift from traditional to SBG seems to have been abrupt and important teacher comments and other information that would help parents understand the classroom environment and how they child is doing omitted.\u00a0 Even if that \u201clegacy\u201d information can be replaced in the future, phasing it out slowly and giving parents a chance to learn how to use the new report cards is probably a good idea.<\/li>\n
  4. SBG reports can still be subjective.<\/strong>\u00a0 While the shift from traditional letter grades to SBG is intended to put the focus on what students have actually learned as opposed to teacher perceptions, the reality is that the much of this assessment of achievement is still largely subjective.\u00a0 The tools MCPS uses such as MAP-R and MAP-M do not produce detailed analysis by standard of what students know or don\u2019t know.\u00a0 Until we reach a point where every score from I to P to ES (or whatever other coding system is used) can be backed up by examples of student work and where students can achieve a P or ES by multiple means then these report cards are not much better than traditional letter grades, although they can give the impression that they are.\u00a0 Because there is no mark for \u201cuncertain\u201d there may be cases where when teachers are in doubt they assign a P or an I rather than indicate the true assessment of not sure, which adds to the confusion parents are experiencing.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In summary, the new MCPS report cards are based on a good idea of SBG or standards-based grading that is intended to shift the focus on what students have learned rather than a subjective evaluation of the teacher. In reality, they don\u2019t quite achieve that goal yet. They are like many ideas to improve education\u2014including evaluating teachers based on how much students learn (value added modeling) or holding school accountable for making sure that no child is left behind\u2014that seem quite reasonable at first, but are much more complex and difficult to do well in practice.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0MCPS intentions should be commended for being out in front of this effort and trying SBG well before the rest of the country.\u00a0 At the same time, being on the bleeding edge<\/em> when there is so little research and a big learning curve for parents and educators alike is risky.\u00a0 Focusing on how to improve this area should be a priority for both the school system and parents who should make their information needs known. Without some advocacy for better information in the future, the next several years may see parents continuing to struggle to make good use of the reports that come home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Sometimes education seems like the place where good ideas do not come to die, but rather to find out how complex the problems they are trying to solve really are.\u00a0 One they run into the difficult realities of educational practice they rarely die quickly even if their authors hope they do.\u00a0 The new Montgomery County […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}