New Grading System in Battle River Schools

[Maccalus]

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/mobil...655/story.html

Under Battle River’s model, a student is graded at one of four levels — beginning, developing, achieving or excelling. In high school, those levels are tied to percentage grades because Alberta Education requires numbers, as do post-secondary institutions.
A student scoring between zero and 50 per cent would be at the “beginning” level. “Developing” is from 51 to 66 per cent, “achieving” is from 67 to 83, and excelling” ranges from 84 to 100.

To me this seems like adding an unecessary step that leads to rounding errors. The rounding errors could affect a students application to post secondary.

I would like to hear more from other people before commenting more.

[Cheese]

well we dont want to hurt the feelings of these poor students do we?
I think we should have just 2 ratings...
1. Showed Up
2. AWOL

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Maccalus

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/mobil...655/story.html



To me this seems like adding an unecessary step that leads to rounding errors. The rounding errors could affect a students application to post secondary.

I would like to hear more from other people before commenting more.

How do rounding errors come into play.
If a kid gets 78% on a test the get "achieving", if he gets an 85% then he's "Excelling".

It's not like every test is just going to be given one of those 4 grades, it's just a stupid unnecessary naming convention that the school is adding.

[worth]

Group students by abilities, not age!!!

[CaptainCrunch]

Kind of removes the reality of the situation.

Look ma I'm beginning, that's not so bad. or developing.

How about a little honesty.

Beginning = your gonna flunk
Developing - Your going to DeVry
Achieving - Tech school to university
Excelling - Whatever the hell you want to do, take the weekend off, who's awesome? You are.

[REDVAN]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Kind of removes the reality of the situation.

Look ma I'm beginning, that's not so bad. or developing.

How about a little honesty.

Beginning = your gonna flunk
Developing - Your going to DeVry
Achieving - Tech school to university
Excelling - Whatever the hell you want to do, take the weekend off, who's awesome? You are.

Yeah why label something with a word that's already labeled with numbers?

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Your going to DeVry

Indeed. New Devry slogan perhaps?

[Rathji]

Unless I am totally misunderstanding the article, the numerical grade is still provided in high school as it is required by both the province and post-secondary institutions.

No way any applications for post-secondary get impacted.

[Ace]

Which letter did they just remove?

A
B
C
D
F

I think D Replaced F, and F get's bumped...you can't fail.

[octothorp]

To me it's a poor system for the fact that it attempts to apply meaning to grades that may not be accurate. If a regular excelling student slacks off, they may go from excelling to developing, when developing is exactly the opposite of what's actually happening.

I say this as someone who won the 'most improved' award in my grade several years running, for the fact that I slacked off early in the year and and put in a lot of effort late in the year, and I'd see improvements in my grade from B- to A every year. I was essentially being rewarded for my own bad habits.

Keep it at percentage marks, or at the most, at letter grades. Trying to apply more qualitative words to these grades is simply misleading, suggesting that more analysis is being put into their performance than what is actually happening.

[redforever]

It's just a further step towards the dumbing down of our society.

[PsYcNeT]

Pretty sure this isn't the way to fix it, but the schooling system as is is definitely broke.

[blankall]

Honestly, this makes sense.

In non-multiple choice/1 answer situations, it's often totally arbitrary why one student would get an 83 and another an 87. Those 4 points could mean the difference between getting into a university program or not, and could dictate the entire student's life.

Throwing students into broader categories (AKA letter grades) makes more sense. Not sure why they need the euphanisms though. The ABCD system looks just fine to me.

[MarchHare]

Next thing you know students will be getting a crocodile in spelling.

[Maccalus]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

How do rounding errors come into play.
If a kid gets 78% on a test the get "achieving", if he gets an 85% then he's "Excelling".

It's not like every test is just going to be given one of those 4 grades, it's just a stupid unnecessary naming convention that the school is adding.

Apparently this is more than just a filter to be viewed through. They do mark some assigments using this grading scale and then enter the mark as either a 1, 2, 3, or 4 which then gets run through a computer to get the final mark

A student scoring between zero and 50 per cent would be at the “beginning” level. “Developing” is from 51 to 66 per cent, “achieving” is from 67 to 83, and excelling” ranges from 84 to 100.
Teachers must enter those levels into the school district computer system as a whole number — 1, 2, 3 or 4 — and the computer calculates a percentage grade. Critics say that percentage mark is not necessarily accurate because it can vary up to eight points on either side of the mark a student truly deserves

[evman150]

A student scoring between zero and 50 per cent would be at the “beginning” level. “Developing” is from 51 to 66 per cent, “achieving” is from 67 to 83, and excelling” ranges from 84 to 100.
Teachers must enter those levels into the school district computer system as a whole number — 1, 2, 3 or 4 — and the computer calculates a percentage grade. Critics say that percentage mark is not necessarily accurate because it can vary up to eight points on either side of the mark a student truly deserves

This is pretty bad. So you could get 85 on every assignment/test, and get 100% as a final grade. In my day, those marks would get you a B.

[CaramonLS]

The skill gap between someone who has 83 and someone who has 67 is absolutely massive. Yet, they get the same grade?

Makes zero sense.

[Regorium]

Link doesn't work.

But, does an "excelling" student get an 84 or a 100 for an actual percentage grade?

Obviously an 84 is garbage when you're trying to apply to a top school, but a 100 might be worth a look.

Then, if you DO get a 100, for an 84's worth of work, that's absolutely unfair. Same with doing 100-level work, but getting an 84.

[ma-skis.com]

meh, it's just another way to hide the term failing and ease up on the idea of excelling. Might be useful at lower grades, but seems unnecessary in older.

[skins]

Originally Posted by Cheese

well we dont want to hurt the feelings of these poor students do we?
I think we should have just 2 ratings...
1. Showed Up
2. AWOL

George Michael Bluth: Um, will this go towards my grade?
Donnie Richter: We dont have grades here. A student either learns and gets an "L" or they fluctuate in their learning.
George Michael Bluth: What do we get for that?
Donnie Richter: An "F".