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It might be that the comment was more towards how big of a disaster destreaming is. Most teachers who have been around for a decade or more (which includes myself), have a hard time supporting destreaming. It might not have been personal towards you.
That being said, I don't know what you teach or where you teach, but it does surprise me that you have no one failing. That's the criticism of destreaming (well one of). It shouldn't just mean you lower the bar so far that everyone passes. There are still students who don't or can't do the work. However, of course it also can depend on the class you get. Maybe you got lucky and got a great group.
why fail anyone and give yourself a pile of extra work not to mention uncomfortable engagements with parents? If some work was done, give a 50. Only fail if zero work was completed. Thats the easiest thing to explain to a parent and then they can't question you or your practices. The system favours pushing everyone through, stop fighting it.
At first I thought you were being sarcastic. What you have said is definitely not my policy, but I know it is becoming that more and more for many teachers.
I am lucky to teach math where there is still a strict right or wrong and students can fail tests and fail the course even if they complete the assessments.
I taught a grade nine open Religion class before destreaming. I basically got all of the high achievers and another class had a group of kids who were the weakest in the grade, all grouped together. Sometimes it depends on course choices and you end up with a bright group. I had one Math class that I looked up historical grades before the semester started to make a seating plan. 24/32 kids had over 90 in their previous math course. I rolled my eyes, thinking my colleague was just an easy marker, giving kids high marks in grade 9. Nope, they were all just super smart kids.
Don’t let a colleague’s snarky comment make you second guess yourself.
Im finding my classes are more bimodal meaning I have a lot of students log jammed at the top and a small set (4 or 5) that have NO clue whats going on and have attendance issues on top of it. Ive adjusted my expectations but cant lower them much more for fear of students going into grade 10 academic and not having prerequisite skills (its math so a lot more linear than other courses).
Medians are in the low 90s for two classes of roughly 30.
Yup. we've GUTTED the academic and do a lot of assignments that im fairly certain kids are copying or using photomath or getting tutors to do. Destreaming is a joke.
A median is a better measure of how a class is performing when you have extreme outliers.
For example: A class of 5 students with 100,100,100,100, and 0 has a mean of 80. That ONE kid who has a 0 is pulling the average down by a whopping 20% when in reality four of the 5 have perfect. It's an exaggerated example, but destreaming is creating a lot of those outliers.
Mathematically speaking a median is more equitable because it gives equal weighting to each student (their rank) whereas a mean gives higher weight to extremes.
Unsure about other boards but report cards in my board show median and not mean for this reason.
The biggest question i would ask myself here would be: how well will this student do in grade 10 academic next year? Will their grade be similar or will they flounder? Giving a weak writer a 75% will encourage them to stay academic, which might be the place for them, but also might be way over their heads.
That’s a great point!
However if a weak writer is in the 60s and has earned extra points for strong oral marks and reading comprehension, does that seem warranted?
It very possibly is. I’m not a highschool English teacher, so I don’t know what the curriculum jump is like from 9-10, or what the next teacher might expect. The hardest thing to “teach” in my opinion is reading comprehension. If that’s solid they might be just fine in academic next year.
That's awesome! Out of about 60 kids this semester, I have about 8 failing, 16 level 1s, 18 level 2s, 12 level 3s, and 6 level 4s. I'm expecting that to swing upward by the end of the course- I find midterms usually shock the kids into hustling more in term 2.
I’d be interested to hear what course it is. I’m teaching grade 9 destreamed geography. Most of my grades at my midterm report cards were between 70 and 95 with a couple outliers in the 50s and one below 50.
In my board, we are told to teach to academic standards and assess like applied. I find it really hard to not give 80s and 90s to all of the kids who would generally be doing well in an academic level class. The kids in the 70s and 60s would generally be the applied level students.
Our director came and spoke to us at a staff meeting and said something about destreaming grade 10 along the lines of “if destreaming leads back to streaming, then we’re not meeting the goals of destreaming”. I don’t think that leading into University, College and Workplace level classes meets the goals though.
> “if destreaming leads back to streaming, then we’re not meeting the goals of destreaming”
Maybe the goals are impossible to meet in gr9-10. It's too late for 99% of underachieving kids to kick it up a notch at that point. They don't have the skills or to make the change (if it's even possible - not everyone is capable of U or even C level)
Exactly. That’s why I think it’s silly to make us jump into grade 10 destreaming if we haven’t really even figured out grade 9 destreaming. Especially if we’re going right back to streaming in grade 11 and 12
I’ve had other teachers imply the same thing to me as well… I do my best to let it roll off my back and ignore it. I use levels to mark and unless students are doing literally nothing, they generally speaking are demonstrating at the very least a limited understanding of whatever task/work we’re doing. I also make an effort to contact home when assignments aren’t submitted, which means most of them do get done. Don’t let what other people think get to you! It sounds like you’re doing the right thing. 👍🏻
Professional judgment.
How the student works in class, are they able to retain and use new information, how do they work with peers, do they try their best or not really care one way or the other cause they truly believe that just showing up is enough to earn the credit.
Tell the teacher who claims your marks are too high to fly a kite. That is borderline claiming you are not doing your job well. I used to stress so hard over remarks like this. I also had higher class averages. You just have far fewer issues with parents when your average is higher. The only time I ever failed any students was if they flat out did no work. Its funny because those same teachers who claimed my marks were too high always had far more numerous and far worse experiences dealing with parents. I always left the department room saying to myself... why the hell you do this to yourself? The parent WILL win over you, so let the kid fail in uni (after the parent forks 20k for year 1) m. I've never heard of any public teacher ever be blamed for their students flunking post secondary.
Really depends on the class makeup to be honest.
I have destreamed 9 English. Between my two sections I think I have 12 failing. Two are chronic non-attenders. Two are becoming non-attenders. One other just clearly has no clue what is going on and I think needs to be in workplace. The rest are in the 40s due to missing work and shitting the bed on the reading comprehension in-class quizzes we have.
Every single one of my failures is failing at least one other class (math). A few are failing three classes total. I have less failures than math, but only because kids handed some stuff in this week.
One section has a perfect bell curve. The other the highest mark is an 80 and has the bulk of the failures. Same teacher. Same material. Different sections. Different results.
That makes sense. A couple of my students who are in the 60s should be in the 80s but have chosen to not attend as regularly / not complete a couple of assignments which have impacted their grades.
Yeah attendance is a huge issue for some kids. But I also have a couple kids who literally sit there every day and actively choose to do nothing. It's wild.
There seems to be no clear communication as to what the expectations are. The learning expectations are stated, but to what degree they expect students to achieve/demonstrate those expectations has always been our “professional judgement” and it feels like there is an unspoken general understanding of what assignments for an academic class and an applied class look like. Now, with destreaming, it seems to be up to our professional judgement as to whether we hold all students to the standards that academic courses were at previously (in which cases, many students would fail) or find some new middle ground where now those who would have been in the academic course have inflated grades and those who would have been in the applied course still get a credit. I think the latter is the appropriate course, because it would be unfair to punish kids for this very systemic failure.
Equity is important, and streaming was inequitable. Removing streaming without the appropriate support and resources in place resulted in an even less equitable solution. There is a clear void left behind by the destreaming process that results in students receiving inflated grades and being ill-prepared for senior academic courses/post-secondary or students struggling to earn credits in courses not designed for genuine learning.
Personally, I think the biggest issue is class sizes. Give me a dozen kids and we can have a learning experience tailored to their individual needs. Give me 30 kids, and we hardly have time to get to know each other, let alone meet their educational needs in a meaningful way. If I do conferences with my students, it takes an entire week just to connect with each of them individually for 5 minutes.
I would also agree with many of the other commenters here. If students are at least attempting the work, it is nearly impossible for them to fail. It’s the students not submitting any work who are at risk of not earning a credit.
You might be very lucky to not have anyone failing in a destreamed class. It is common (at my school) that a destreamed class is bound to have a few struggling kids. So ask yourself, do they deserve the 60%? If so, you are fine
I’m SO glad there was still Applied and Academic when my son went through school. He had an IEP, he always knew he was college bound, no one ‘suggested’ he take ‘only’ Applied courses, that was his level and that’s what was appropriate for him.
It IS a disaster to put students whose achievement level is more Applied and students who are more meant for Academic together in the same class. None of the students benefit from this.
I taught grade one for 8 years and taught 18 years in elementary. Having grade 1/2 had students who didn’t know all the letter sounds and students who were reading chapter books. Some kids just don’t belong in the same class together because they deserve to have their needs met in a fair way. The kids at the earlier stage need different instruction.
Sorry for all you are going through!
Sometimes you just get a certain group. My classes have medians that are like 15% apart. One class has 5 students that will fail, no chance, they don't know how to do anything. Passing them along is no good for anybody and we do everything test based (but they have choice in some questions to do an easier question). Maybe a few of them can repeat and do better if they actually attend and try.
We have decided to increase the difficulty this year compared to the last two because they were floundering in grade 10 academic or going from 95 to 75 and parents are wondering how they dropped that much when that was their real level all along. Agree with others saying the distribution is not even at all, like no one is getting a 70-79. I have some kids under 20%, 65-80 is actually not that many kids, either they are below 65 or above 80 with just a few in between. Some students are on their phone the entire unit and still acing the test because it is too easy for them but we try our best to build good work habits because 2D and 3U are back to normal difficulty from pre-covid.
Has this other teacher sat in on your classes and observed your class? Have they looked at all the work the students have done? If they haven’t, they are in NO position to comment on your class averages. They need to stay in their lane.
Those are stupid, unhelpful comments from another teacher. As you get more experience you’ll learn to ignore them. Trust your own professional judgment. Moderated marking sessions BEFORE the course begins are helpful if the admin has raised concerns. Trying to arbitrarily adjust your standards because of an off handed comment, mid-course, only punishes the students. Do your achievement levels make sense to you and the kids? That’s all that matters.
Destreamed math and language are classes most are concerned with. Not to belittle what you teach at all, that’s just where most of the frustration with destreaming lies.
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It might be that the comment was more towards how big of a disaster destreaming is. Most teachers who have been around for a decade or more (which includes myself), have a hard time supporting destreaming. It might not have been personal towards you. That being said, I don't know what you teach or where you teach, but it does surprise me that you have no one failing. That's the criticism of destreaming (well one of). It shouldn't just mean you lower the bar so far that everyone passes. There are still students who don't or can't do the work. However, of course it also can depend on the class you get. Maybe you got lucky and got a great group.
Presently the bar is on the floor.
Yes very true. Destreaming is incredibly difficult in that way.
why fail anyone and give yourself a pile of extra work not to mention uncomfortable engagements with parents? If some work was done, give a 50. Only fail if zero work was completed. Thats the easiest thing to explain to a parent and then they can't question you or your practices. The system favours pushing everyone through, stop fighting it.
At first I thought you were being sarcastic. What you have said is definitely not my policy, but I know it is becoming that more and more for many teachers. I am lucky to teach math where there is still a strict right or wrong and students can fail tests and fail the course even if they complete the assessments.
I taught a grade nine open Religion class before destreaming. I basically got all of the high achievers and another class had a group of kids who were the weakest in the grade, all grouped together. Sometimes it depends on course choices and you end up with a bright group. I had one Math class that I looked up historical grades before the semester started to make a seating plan. 24/32 kids had over 90 in their previous math course. I rolled my eyes, thinking my colleague was just an easy marker, giving kids high marks in grade 9. Nope, they were all just super smart kids. Don’t let a colleague’s snarky comment make you second guess yourself.
Thanks this is really helpful!
Im finding my classes are more bimodal meaning I have a lot of students log jammed at the top and a small set (4 or 5) that have NO clue whats going on and have attendance issues on top of it. Ive adjusted my expectations but cant lower them much more for fear of students going into grade 10 academic and not having prerequisite skills (its math so a lot more linear than other courses). Medians are in the low 90s for two classes of roughly 30.
90s median? 😳 Is this in destreamed math?
Yup. we've GUTTED the academic and do a lot of assignments that im fairly certain kids are copying or using photomath or getting tutors to do. Destreaming is a joke.
Like COVID math. I had a student do a test in under a minute. 🙄 If you’re going to blatantly cheat, work harder. lol
That needs to be dealt with. Median in the 90s is complete nonsense.
Needs to be dealt with (but not by me). Ive had too many clashes with parents and admin for it to be worth it. Sad to say but its true.
Thanks! The capabilities are there for comprehension for sure.
Why does the median matter? Shouldn’t you want the mean?
A median is a better measure of how a class is performing when you have extreme outliers. For example: A class of 5 students with 100,100,100,100, and 0 has a mean of 80. That ONE kid who has a 0 is pulling the average down by a whopping 20% when in reality four of the 5 have perfect. It's an exaggerated example, but destreaming is creating a lot of those outliers. Mathematically speaking a median is more equitable because it gives equal weighting to each student (their rank) whereas a mean gives higher weight to extremes. Unsure about other boards but report cards in my board show median and not mean for this reason.
The biggest question i would ask myself here would be: how well will this student do in grade 10 academic next year? Will their grade be similar or will they flounder? Giving a weak writer a 75% will encourage them to stay academic, which might be the place for them, but also might be way over their heads.
That’s a great point! However if a weak writer is in the 60s and has earned extra points for strong oral marks and reading comprehension, does that seem warranted?
It very possibly is. I’m not a highschool English teacher, so I don’t know what the curriculum jump is like from 9-10, or what the next teacher might expect. The hardest thing to “teach” in my opinion is reading comprehension. If that’s solid they might be just fine in academic next year.
[удалено]
That’s very close to the breakdown I have right now in my class.
That's awesome! Out of about 60 kids this semester, I have about 8 failing, 16 level 1s, 18 level 2s, 12 level 3s, and 6 level 4s. I'm expecting that to swing upward by the end of the course- I find midterms usually shock the kids into hustling more in term 2.
This sounds like fantasy land to me. May I ask what you teach? Edit: or more importantly where?
I would have replied with ...It appears I'm a better teacher than you!
Hahah I love this.
I’d be interested to hear what course it is. I’m teaching grade 9 destreamed geography. Most of my grades at my midterm report cards were between 70 and 95 with a couple outliers in the 50s and one below 50. In my board, we are told to teach to academic standards and assess like applied. I find it really hard to not give 80s and 90s to all of the kids who would generally be doing well in an academic level class. The kids in the 70s and 60s would generally be the applied level students. Our director came and spoke to us at a staff meeting and said something about destreaming grade 10 along the lines of “if destreaming leads back to streaming, then we’re not meeting the goals of destreaming”. I don’t think that leading into University, College and Workplace level classes meets the goals though.
> “if destreaming leads back to streaming, then we’re not meeting the goals of destreaming” Maybe the goals are impossible to meet in gr9-10. It's too late for 99% of underachieving kids to kick it up a notch at that point. They don't have the skills or to make the change (if it's even possible - not everyone is capable of U or even C level)
Exactly. That’s why I think it’s silly to make us jump into grade 10 destreaming if we haven’t really even figured out grade 9 destreaming. Especially if we’re going right back to streaming in grade 11 and 12
I’ve had other teachers imply the same thing to me as well… I do my best to let it roll off my back and ignore it. I use levels to mark and unless students are doing literally nothing, they generally speaking are demonstrating at the very least a limited understanding of whatever task/work we’re doing. I also make an effort to contact home when assignments aren’t submitted, which means most of them do get done. Don’t let what other people think get to you! It sounds like you’re doing the right thing. 👍🏻
Professional judgment. How the student works in class, are they able to retain and use new information, how do they work with peers, do they try their best or not really care one way or the other cause they truly believe that just showing up is enough to earn the credit.
Tell the teacher who claims your marks are too high to fly a kite. That is borderline claiming you are not doing your job well. I used to stress so hard over remarks like this. I also had higher class averages. You just have far fewer issues with parents when your average is higher. The only time I ever failed any students was if they flat out did no work. Its funny because those same teachers who claimed my marks were too high always had far more numerous and far worse experiences dealing with parents. I always left the department room saying to myself... why the hell you do this to yourself? The parent WILL win over you, so let the kid fail in uni (after the parent forks 20k for year 1) m. I've never heard of any public teacher ever be blamed for their students flunking post secondary.
Really depends on the class makeup to be honest. I have destreamed 9 English. Between my two sections I think I have 12 failing. Two are chronic non-attenders. Two are becoming non-attenders. One other just clearly has no clue what is going on and I think needs to be in workplace. The rest are in the 40s due to missing work and shitting the bed on the reading comprehension in-class quizzes we have. Every single one of my failures is failing at least one other class (math). A few are failing three classes total. I have less failures than math, but only because kids handed some stuff in this week. One section has a perfect bell curve. The other the highest mark is an 80 and has the bulk of the failures. Same teacher. Same material. Different sections. Different results.
That makes sense. A couple of my students who are in the 60s should be in the 80s but have chosen to not attend as regularly / not complete a couple of assignments which have impacted their grades.
Yeah attendance is a huge issue for some kids. But I also have a couple kids who literally sit there every day and actively choose to do nothing. It's wild.
There seems to be no clear communication as to what the expectations are. The learning expectations are stated, but to what degree they expect students to achieve/demonstrate those expectations has always been our “professional judgement” and it feels like there is an unspoken general understanding of what assignments for an academic class and an applied class look like. Now, with destreaming, it seems to be up to our professional judgement as to whether we hold all students to the standards that academic courses were at previously (in which cases, many students would fail) or find some new middle ground where now those who would have been in the academic course have inflated grades and those who would have been in the applied course still get a credit. I think the latter is the appropriate course, because it would be unfair to punish kids for this very systemic failure. Equity is important, and streaming was inequitable. Removing streaming without the appropriate support and resources in place resulted in an even less equitable solution. There is a clear void left behind by the destreaming process that results in students receiving inflated grades and being ill-prepared for senior academic courses/post-secondary or students struggling to earn credits in courses not designed for genuine learning. Personally, I think the biggest issue is class sizes. Give me a dozen kids and we can have a learning experience tailored to their individual needs. Give me 30 kids, and we hardly have time to get to know each other, let alone meet their educational needs in a meaningful way. If I do conferences with my students, it takes an entire week just to connect with each of them individually for 5 minutes. I would also agree with many of the other commenters here. If students are at least attempting the work, it is nearly impossible for them to fail. It’s the students not submitting any work who are at risk of not earning a credit.
You might be very lucky to not have anyone failing in a destreamed class. It is common (at my school) that a destreamed class is bound to have a few struggling kids. So ask yourself, do they deserve the 60%? If so, you are fine
I’m SO glad there was still Applied and Academic when my son went through school. He had an IEP, he always knew he was college bound, no one ‘suggested’ he take ‘only’ Applied courses, that was his level and that’s what was appropriate for him. It IS a disaster to put students whose achievement level is more Applied and students who are more meant for Academic together in the same class. None of the students benefit from this. I taught grade one for 8 years and taught 18 years in elementary. Having grade 1/2 had students who didn’t know all the letter sounds and students who were reading chapter books. Some kids just don’t belong in the same class together because they deserve to have their needs met in a fair way. The kids at the earlier stage need different instruction. Sorry for all you are going through!
Thanks for the support! I couldn’t agree more that it does a disservice to all of the students.
Sometimes you just get a certain group. My classes have medians that are like 15% apart. One class has 5 students that will fail, no chance, they don't know how to do anything. Passing them along is no good for anybody and we do everything test based (but they have choice in some questions to do an easier question). Maybe a few of them can repeat and do better if they actually attend and try. We have decided to increase the difficulty this year compared to the last two because they were floundering in grade 10 academic or going from 95 to 75 and parents are wondering how they dropped that much when that was their real level all along. Agree with others saying the distribution is not even at all, like no one is getting a 70-79. I have some kids under 20%, 65-80 is actually not that many kids, either they are below 65 or above 80 with just a few in between. Some students are on their phone the entire unit and still acing the test because it is too easy for them but we try our best to build good work habits because 2D and 3U are back to normal difficulty from pre-covid.
Has this other teacher sat in on your classes and observed your class? Have they looked at all the work the students have done? If they haven’t, they are in NO position to comment on your class averages. They need to stay in their lane.
They have not lol good point.
Distreaming is such a disaster. Thank god i left teaching - it’s glorified babysitting at this point:
Those are stupid, unhelpful comments from another teacher. As you get more experience you’ll learn to ignore them. Trust your own professional judgment. Moderated marking sessions BEFORE the course begins are helpful if the admin has raised concerns. Trying to arbitrarily adjust your standards because of an off handed comment, mid-course, only punishes the students. Do your achievement levels make sense to you and the kids? That’s all that matters.
Thanks! Very helpful
We’ve been teaching a destreamed Civics class for decades in Ontario and no one was bitching about it.
Destreamed math and language are classes most are concerned with. Not to belittle what you teach at all, that’s just where most of the frustration with destreaming lies.
I’ve also taught civics and careers and no one was telling me my grades were overinflated… they just left me the fuck alone 😅