old man winter says "not quite yet". What a tease the past couple days have been. In fact, yesterday I went to pick up the Madster at the bus stop & it was a mid 50s pleasant. When left I for work an hour later -no jacket on, right?- the temp had dropped at least 15 degrees & it was overcast. Foolish me for believing that Spring had arrived. This season is just all about the cold. Brrrrrr.
Have I mentioned that Fi is completely potty trained? Not one accident in about a month. I've been holding my breath b/c, you know, it's almost inevitable that there be at least one accident. I guess I can exhale now. One down, one more to go. Lib has absolutely no interest in the quest for "big girl" status, so I may be waiting a while to take diapers completely off the budget.
Madster got a 4 out of 4 on her city expo project. She was so stressed out she nearly made herself sick the last couple days b4 it was due. It's 3rd grade for cryin' out loud. And it was worth a whopping 4 points. Well, I guess it would break down to a 3 being a "B", etc etc. Oh, but we have this new grading system in Denver now. We no longer have letter grade, but a 4 point system.
Some numbskull thinks it's easier for parent & kids to understand. Really? Is it really necessary to spend our already limited education budget on a district wide grading system overhaul? The report card is friggin' 4 pages long. FOUR FRIGGIN' PAGES. IN 3rd GRADE!!!!! I mean, c'mon now. Do you really think the teacher with 24 kids in her charge has time to accurately assess each & every one of those student on a list of 100 items?!?!?! And then to break it down to a FOUR point system. In my eyes, it's the same as a letter grade. Look, is it really that more difficult to understand A B C D than it is 4 3 2 1???? WTF. If I truly wanted to know EXACTLY how my kid's doing in school, shouldn't the grading system be broken down into actual percentage points? You know, out of 100 points Mad scored 100 on her city expo? If the project has 7 or 8 items to be covered & a child misses just one of those, does that bring the grade down at all? Or when exactly does it become worth 3 points versus 4? I suppose if the number of items is divisible by 4, then it works out; but then isn't it worth the same effort if the child covers only 7 items instead of 8? And does that cheapen my own child's effort b/c she could have gotten the same grade had she done less work?
So there's my rant for the day.
Oh & don't even let me get started on the whole topic of who really did the work on some of those projects I saw -some of them, certainly not "just" the 3rd grader. And the fact that it was yet another chaotic school event with kids running amok. Or how 'bout the fact that Mad's teacher emailed "some" of the students over xmas break & then apologized that she thought she had everyone's emails but didn't. That looks like favoritism or at the least an unfair advantage when everyone else -including us- didn't get the project specs until 9 Jan. And one more thing today, CSAP testing started today & I'll just let that one go for another day's post as well.
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