New grading system for county teachers - Anyone here ever use AIM or hear of it?

New grading system for county teachers
Critics say tool, known as AIM, is cumbersome, not useful


Baltimore County school administrators have ordered all teachers to begin using a grading system next month that will require them to judge whether each of their students has mastered more than 100 specific skills.

The decision, which was made by top administrators last week and communicated to teachers by their principals last Thursday and Friday, is opposed by the teachers union and dozens of teachers who say it is cumbersome and time-consuming and will not be a useful tool.

The system, known as Articulated Instruction Module or AIM, was designed by a longtime school system employee and had been implemented sporadically in the past several months, although it was supposed to be mandatory throughout the county. Barbara Dezmon, assistant to the superintendent for equity and assurance and AIM's inventor, said top administrators decided to require each teacher to comply with using the system by the end of the second marking period in late January.

"We finally tell students and parents what they know and what they don't know," Dezmon said. Students will continue to receive their report cards every quarter, but the AIM report will provide precise information on what skills each student either has not learned, is in the process of learning or has learned. Teachers must give students an A (needs Acceleration, or remedial help), I (needs further Instruction) or M (has Mastered) for each category.


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.co.aim27dec27,0,802633.story

Anwers spawned of big bureacracies and administrators. Teachers, (and I'm not one) are now at the bottom of a slippery slope. Whatever happened to internal policy or grass roots fixes? This one size fits all approach is b.s. both for the student and the teacher. In this instance, I believe everybody thinks they have the answer, while no answer is better than any.

:shrug:

nt

>>>>The decision, which was made by top administrators last week and communicated to teachers >>>>>>>

... to know it's a bad idea.

Stupid busywork with no real goal for improvement.

Usually tied in with a Tier system intended to designate a specific student's rate of learning and need for intervention. Generally related to a system called Response to Intervention. Also tied in with Title I reading support.

Its not a bad thing but the process is very cumbersome and not exactly parent friendly.

and a similar scoring system, next year.

Not "AIM;" it's been developed by district teachers themselves. I spent some of last summer working on the secondary report card; my contribution was to convince the district that teachers wouldn't back the new report card without an online "grade" book that would be user friendly and efficient, and helping to design just such a grade book for next September's kick-off.

I'm ambivalent about the report card itself. I've never been a supporter of the traditional A-F percentage grading system, and have used other, better, systems. I'm not sure a standards-based report card is the way to go. We're only using a small fraction of the standards on the report card: those chosen by teachers as "power standards." I worry, though, that it could open the door to keep adding more, and more.....

Marzano's research indicates that if we were to truly teach every standard on the books, we'd have to increase public education from K-12 to K-21.

I taught in a system in the 90s that did not issue report cards. Every student on campus had an individual learning plan, and we conferenced with families 5 times a year to go over that plan, check progress, make adjustments, etc., focusing on strengths and goals.

It wasn't "standards-based." We liked that system, but it went away when the "standards and accountability" movement kicked in in
California, prior to going federal with NCLB.

It's not the reporting system, it's the grading system, the way that the teachers are to teach and grade. I don't know if I like the new way of doing things more than the old way or not. Both have really great advantages and both suck equally. I think that one suits the ideology of many education specialists more than the other, but that's a sucky reason for reform. Yeah, research says it's better, but better in what way and better for what? Often I disagree with the goals researchers set for education so I find their findings pointless.

Old style: You teach--you lecture ("direct instruction"), then you run through examples, you drill the students and give them practice. Crucially, what they *can* learn may not be unbounded but is still fairly large. The textbook contains far more information than needed for passing the course, even with an A+. Good students learn more, bad students learn less, the average student learns an average amount. Average is C.

New style: You teach multimodally, then have guided and independent practice as you encourage groups and individuals to construct knowledge. This is good, or at least not bad. They have access to explicit instruction as to what the educational goals are; they are limited, and to be achievable by every student. I agree with this--minimum requirements for a minimum grade, but that's not how it's put. Tests--and grades--are to be criterion based, explicitly linked to the explicit goals. If a student doesn't achieve the goals it's assumed that either the teacher wasn't clear or that the teacher didn't motivate the students. Mastery of all the goals is expected of all students. But to keep things simple, you don't have additional or tiered goals. The system of expectations is flattened: Mastery, mastery absent but achievable, or not currently able to achieve mastery. You set the criteria and teach to them. Job done.

In the new style, where does the old grade A fit in? Grade C? It means that the exceptional students in an average class need to have additional work assigned--work that can't properly be graded, because if it's graded it'll be above and beyond 'mastery', and there's nothing beyond 'mastery'. Or you put them in 'mastery absent' when they've long since mastered what's required.

Now, the old style was great if you "got it"--if you could figure out what to learn, if you learned lots of stuff, if you were a good student. It was okay if you weren't mortally offended at not being a hyper-extra-special superstar for just producing CO2. In other words, it's generally judged to be a tool of fascist racist classist nativist oppression these days, even though it basically meant the sky was the limit. With grade inflation, as "average" crept up to B and B+ work, this system was less and less useful. Still, it was a way of separating good students from average students. It was a sorting system that also served to indicate mastery, but ultimately just compared students in a small cohort--in a class--to each other. But that leads, or can lead, to "false" As (where students average system-wide get As because the class sucks) and even competition. So it has problems.

The new style is great if you're not in the top 30% of students. It means that you can see what you need to learn--no more wasting time on stuff that won't be on the test. No more trying to compete with people who have advantages that you don't have (even if that just means greater intelligence or more discipline). It's maximally explicit and fair, absolutely even-handed. "Do x1, x2, x3. . . xn, get good grade." And it indicates not comparison within a group, but comparison with a set standard--if you have explicit rubrics for everything across a school district then it can indicate mastery of a set of information (or skills) better than the A-F system. Still, if you're in the top 30% of students it's not a great system because the grading scale is flattened. Those who would stick out can't.