Imagine you are the 5th grade classroom teacher and have two students in your class on IEP's. When it comes time to do report cards, your principal informs you that the grade you assign these two students should reflect their progress toward IEP goals and not how much of the in-class material they have mastered. You also cannot make any notes to indicate this in the report card because that is illegal (this is true in Idaho and maybe other states). Essentially, these two students will get A's in reading because they are making good progress, but they are unable to do 5th grade level work equal to that of most of their peers. Please explain your thoughts about this.
April- I think this is a way to show that students are successfully progressing. I think grades should reflect learning. This report card will show that the student are learning and making progress. The problem I see with this though is when you look at the report card it will look like these students are on the same level their peers. While they are progressing as they should, they are not up to their peers level. This is not helpful to other teachers or adults who need to know what to work on and help these students with. If they are using the report card to guide instruction, it will look like these students don't need help with reading.
I understand why they should be graded on their progress of how they are reaching their IEP goal, but I agree that it is difficult to know whether or not they are understanding what is happening in their learning on the level that is appropriate for their grade. As the teacher, I would not be as concerned about these two children not being able to be graded on their mastery of the in-class material. I feel that it is important that they are progressing toward their IEP goals. It will just be difficult to know what these children are learning in class.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Linzie and April. I think grading them based on their IEP is a more fair and accurate assessment of their abilities, and they aren't getting poor grades because they are not intellectually or developmentally where their classmates are. I do think it is difficult to see where they are academically if you are only focusing on IEP goals (especially since those goals do not have to be directly academically related) and so I think a better measure would be to grade their modified or accommodated work. Either way, there is a reason they are not being asked to do the same work as other students, so grading them on the work they aren't even being asked to do seems unfair and not helpful to the student at all.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everybody. April has a great point that grading this way shows that the students are successfully progressing and learning, but it won't show how they're doing in comparison with their peers. It's like one of the scenarios at the beginning of chapter 11--Amelia was being graded by her teacher based on her progress, but then her parents learned that she was only reading on the first grade level as a third grader. It later said that her good grades caused issues with the other students in her class because they knew they were reading harder books than her. They made fun of her saying she reads "baby books." This and the fact that her parents were confused are definitely issues that could likely come up with these children.
ReplyDeleteI also think of the IEP not lasting into college. If these students decide to go to college (something I think every teacher should want for their students), then they are going to be in for a rude awakening because they will not be graded on their IEP any longer, they will be graded based on their grade level. Don't get me wrong, I think it is important to track how well they are doing progressing with their IEP goals, but it's also important at some point to also assess what they are learning in their classroom.
Tara had a good point in saying that IEP goals are not always necessarily academically related. And I also agree with her that it would be more beneficial to grade them on their modified/accommodated work, especially since these modification and accommodation techniques are in place to basically help them get their feet in teach them based on the limitations due to their disability, and then the teacher starts to gradually bring them back into the level of their other classmates. This is also shown in the book when a teacher helps a student with multiple choice problems who always chooses the first one. She blacked out 2 of the answers so there were 2 showing instead of 4. She let him get the hang of that, then she gradually brought back the other two answer choices one at a time.