@H0llyw00d I am in TX. Official word from the TEA was that it was up to the districts. This morning I read on an unofficial site for our district that the 5th and 6th grading period grades would be only allowed to improve the GPA but I can’t find that anywhere else. That would probably be good for D21 because she slumped some in her 4th grading period. There’s so much uncertainty. I wish in TX the grading policy would be uniform at least for our juniors since class rank at the end of this year is used to determine eligibility for auto-admit to the state schools.
@evergreen5 I agree that states might change their mandates but kids in Illinois have been “in school” online this whole time unless they had a spring break (and, in our district, they even cancelled that and kept on with the distance learning). Not having any type of school for five weeks is unconscionable.
Our district had a system set up for snow days, etc., where remote learning continued and they’ve just instituted that system in a long term way so these “remote days” count as school days.
@mm5678 I agree, TX needs a state wide decision of how they are handling grading for rank. Our district hasn’t said anything about grades yet.
Is Texas the only state that does auto admits to state schools based on rank? This has to be so stressful - even more so during this crazy time. No matter what the state decides, there will be kids who won’t like the answer. What if a student needed this semester’s grades to move up in rank? I can’t imagine a fair way to do this. Maybe they can wait, do pass/fail for this semester, and consider first semester senior year (or first quarter if schools do quarters?) before making the final rankings. I understand that means waiting longer for answers but ugh.
i have no idea what they will do. It is really a frustrating situation. I feel badly for other kids at the same school who don’t even have dual enrollment courses to at least be keeping busy and learning something. To be honest, though, this is better than what they were proposing at first, which was just ending the semester and having the kids’ current grades be their final grades. That just seemed crazy to me.
In Texas here too, and our district announced the grading plan for the remainder of the year. We were just about finished with the 3rd quarter when this all started, so students were given last week to turn in anything that had been assigned prior to Spring break. So, third quarter grades stand as earned. Online learning for the fourth quarter began this week and grades will be pass/fail. At the end of the quarter, those with passing marks will be given a 100 and those failing will receive a 69. Those two numbers will be averaged. There will be no semester finals.
D21 feels relieved by this plan. She has been diligently working but feels she is definitely missing out on the in class instruction. Only one teacher has recorded two audio lectures. Everything else is a list of work given at the beginning of the week. To be fair, all teachers have been extremely responsive to emails and the math teachers are offering live time tutoring.
My D is not in the top 10 percent, so there are no concerns there in regards to how this will affect her rank. I think this can only help her- particularly at the larger state schools she is considering that really only look at numbers.
My high schoolers go to two different private schools and both have been doing online learning from day one of school closures here, which was 3/16. However, I was talking with my neighbor the other day (I was walking my dog and he was far away doing yard work). His daughter is a sophomore in our public school, while his son goes to the same school as my son. Apparently the public schools have been “off” since 3/16 while the get their online system up and running. They are starting Monday, so three full weeks they have been off. I have no idea what the plans are for making up that time.
My two high schoolers both have long spring breaks. D23’s starts today and goes all the way through 4/15. S21 starts 4/9 and goes all the way through 4/19. I wish they would just cancel and keep them going with schoolwork because they are otherwise relatively bored since there isn’t much else to do. S19 had an extended spring break (his break started 3/13 and classes just began last Monday). He was totally bored and wanted to start class just to give him something to do, so I foresee my younger two having similar feelings after having a few days of break.
Therein is the problem. 95% of those kids will receive an A grade, so schools that do not have such a policy will be at a disadvantage. I bet all college admissions officers just throw these grades out and judge kids as of Jan 2020, including for class rank.
There is no perfect solution to this. A chunk of kids will be hurt; a different chunk of kids will be helped.
So many schools, so many districts - so many different decisions. None of them wrong. The people making these decisions are not trying to hurt anyone, but it’s going to happen.
Even within the same parameters of “do no harm” to grades, the different departments at my kids’ high school are doing things differently. Now that the initial Act of God days are over and it’s clear that e-learning will continue for at least most (all?) of the rest of the year, they are going to have to get on the same page.
Each department (it seems) has decided to do things differently, sometimes even teachers within departments are doing things differently. Looking at the current grades, some are just marking things “collected” in the grade book (no grades), some are grading things but marking everything exempt (you can see what the grades would be, but they don’t count), some are grading some things and universally exempting others - even if it would raise the grade, and some grading everything, just exempting anything that would bring the grade down. It’s bizarre. Apparently there is a meeting of department heads on Monday regarding grading. Hopefully it will bring some consistency. Maybe they were trying each scenario in order to examine how it is affecting grades and then pick the one they like best for going forward.
I can understand each and every grading scenario described above - all fit withing the parameters and all are appropriate options. I can see any school in the country doing any one of these grading scenarios - each would hurt some kids and help others. And that is what is going to be so confusing for kids, admissions officers, etc. for the next two to three years.
We received the school plan last night.
Q3 grades will be issued based on grades as of 3/13 (when school was closed) even though it technically ended yesterday. Students will have until 4/15 to make up any missing work through 3/13 or work with teachers to bring up grades with alternate assignments. Very helpful for those students who were working hard to show upward trajectory and weren’t expecting the hard stop.
Q4 will be Credit/No Credit. Every individual assignment will be marked P or X. School here still is technically scheduled to return in early May although everyone is highly doubtful that will happen. Even if it happens, we will not go back to grades for the quarter. A decision about finals would be made only in the event that school is re-opened.
All teachers will send out weekly plans on Monday but only one subject will be the “in-person” focus each day for the whole school based on the school’s 7-day schedule. So English classes one day, Math classes the next day, Science and so forth. Teachers are available for office hours every day though. Allows teachers time to plan and look at student work every day and relieves student pressure and hours of “screen-time” each day and provides flexibility as to when they do what.
The school also included a very reassuring note about how colleges are looking at the variances in how high schools are approaching these challenges.
We are in California at a small private school with Easter-oriented spring break ahead. My DS has been pounded by the teachers with work for the last three weeks. The school is adjusting to more of an instruction based, shorter deadline system due to feedback.
While he’s getting hammered and hopefully good exposure to the material and AP prep, I worry that he has no time to volunteer, explore colleges online, learn something new/start a new project, start essay / apps, and do ACT prep for summer testing. Anyone else in this boat?
In the summer he will probably be taking online classes but I guess we can get going on all of that during the online phase in June. We plan to apply early, maybe even do an ED.
To be honest, my S21 was pounded w work before online instruction started and had little time for volunteering, college search, or test prep. Definitely no time for new projects.
Now that the AP content has been dialed back, his teachers have eased back a bit, and his commitments for student council and soccer are gone, so he has more time for all that other stuff. Except volunteering - those interactions are in hold.
@SammoJ I agree. Even though school has remained fairly stressful and time consuming, D has no ECs so she’s got time on her hands. So far, it has mostly gone towards doing barre classes, working out, going for walks, and reading “for fun”. A couple of days ago, she picked up my H’s guitar and started learning how to play with some free online lessons. She wasn’t going to get to anything college related until after school was out anyway. Common app essay will be started in AP Lang as planned but I expect she will be massaging that essay over the summer. She will start supplements as soon as she confirms what they are. She’s put off any more test prep until we hear that the June SAT is a go.
So, the only things the virus affected were cancelled SATs and in-person visits. She’s doing virtual ones every day now though!
Our North Texas school district hasn’t made any official decisions about grading either yet. There are some rumors floating around but nothing official yet. We only have two 9 week grading periods in a semester. The first 9 weeks ended on March 13th, and then the next week was Spring Break. Report cards and updated class rank should have been released by now but so far nothing. S21 was doing really well this spring semester and was counting on the grades to beef up his GPA and class rank.
Interesting. He doesn’t have tennis or his lessons but the school work goes into Saturdays - much is still due at midnight Sat. They do take Sunday off. I have a plan to have him volunteer over spring break, but I’m kind of relieved that some others are not doing apps and prep right now, as I’ve heard some podcasters advocate for that recently. We’ve done quite a few tours already thankfully.
For us, schoolwork has been spotty for the last three weeks. There have been no consistent rules for individual teachers (and certainly no virtual classrooms) while the school board figured out a response. We are a poor county and the school system is funded locally at the minimum level required by the state. Many students have no reliable internet capability (this is exacerbated by the many hills and mountains we live in). My D’s teachers for English, math and physics have piled on work but there have been moderate to no assignments in other classes.
Starting Monday, though, all teachers will be required to post a week’s worth of assignments online every Monday and students must submit assignments by Sunday night. Students with no reliable internet access must pick up /drop off learning packets at school every Monday. Looks like grading will still occur, but I have a feeling that either grading will be easy (based more on completion than accuracy/quality) or that we will move to pass/fail.
We have four nine-week grading periods in a year. School was shut down just days before the end of the third marking period. At that time D had a little below an A in AP English (her hardest-grading teacher) and it would have been her first B ever. She lucked out…the first assignments given to do at home were graded and included in the 3rd grading period (which is just now being posted…no one knew if there would be 3rd grading period grades at all) and D’s rounded up to an A …by the skin of her teeth! Had she averaged just .10 lower she would have gotten a B. So, whether we go pass/fail or not for the last grading period she is in a good place.
My main concern for her is SAT math. I feel her ERW score is too good for her to “waste” going test optional but her math scores are not enough for some of the schools she’s eyeing now. She’s starting to drool a bit over U Richmond (though I don’t know if it’s the best social fit or if our finances will weather the situation enough to make it affordable). D resisted taking College board’s online practice tests…for some reason she prefers the paper and pencil tests…but now that CB is talking about the possibility of online at-home tests I think all students should do both kinds of practice tests to be ready. She did an hour of Khan math today and promised to do a whole online practice test Monday. She’s not happy with the fact that you have to do an entire test online (as opposed to a single section). I’m also waiting for our Amazon shipment of the CB study guide with official paper practice tests.
@inthegarden that sounds like a reasonable compromise for the last quarter of the year. When you live in flat, midwest suburbia like I do where internet access is ubiquitous and strong you forget that something as benign as terrain can affect whether one person can participate online and another cannot. But a week’s worth of assignments at a time is good - just one trip to school a week to pick up/drop off, so not too burdensome.
@NateandAllisMom Your son is working from 8:00am - 11:00 pm every weekday and then Saturdays all day? See, our D’s schedule looks like that normally but not now. All of her volunteering, dance practice, yearbook meetings are cancelled. Now, she’s got school (usually virtual with assignments due by 4:00) for M-F. Instead of all classes meeting every day, she only has four classes a day with homework time built in so she’s working from 8:00-4:00 and that’s it. Leaves a lot of time she wouldn’t normally have.
On a regular day, she would have all classes then ECs after school until about 6:00, dinner and then homework until 11:30 or so.
Luckily her AP classes finished the material in March and were just planning “extra activities” like essays in AP Lang or debates in APUSH so she’s pretty much ready for those tests.
Can’t really “do” college apps yet. It’s too soon. She’s not even decided where to apply and we don’t know the supplements yet.
As for SAT prep, it makes no sense to prep week after week after week when the next test could be August. If we find out that June SAT is on, she will start up with that again. If it’s cancelled, I’ll probably want until school is over in mid-May and then have her start dipping back into it.
I’m sure your son will be just fine! He’s not behind.
@homerdog he’s generally working on this own schedule - the teachers are not coordinated like at my daughter’s public school, which planned for 3 weeks since we shut down early and they had break. Son’a high school is shifting to some work being due during the week and more live instruction (there was barely any at first). He’s in the top 10% and I gather others had trouble finishing. They also sent a survey last week so they will probably continue to tweak it. Could he be frittering time on the internet? Probably but he’s pretty motivated. IDK. In his religion class it did seem like a lot of busywork was assigned.
@inthegarden we are in the exact same boat with you on the SAT. We will probably submit SAT at his likely schools and maybe a few lower targets. Then he will take the ACT July (hopefully) and Aug/Sept (maybe sectional). My son did NOT enjoy Kahn Academy for math since of course, it hit all of his problem areas exclusively after we linked it to the PSAT. I think that is a good point you made about practicing in the online format if that is the way they will have to test. BTW, our local cable company stepped up to provide free internet to students in need. Sounds tricky where you are.
Wow that crazy the amount of school work some kids have. S never has more than an hr of HW. He does have a lot of projects that are due 2 weeks out. We are on a block schedule so maybe that makes it easier to handle the HW.