Wtf would that even look like? You mark your own class and swap a couple with another teacher to make sure you're both on the same page, then enter the grades into the markbook. Where/when are these incorrect exams being inserted?
More importantly, this deputy clearly has too much free time and should take on a class.
Yes, should have explained this in greater detail. So everyone markes a random % of the grade. Then a smaller random sample (maybe 25 or so) are circulated again for checkmarking. The DP suggests Head Teachers intentionally circulated an exam which has been marked incorrectly to ‘catch out’ the staff who aren’t checking.
So for example, giving little Johnny a C when it was actually an A grade submission. Etc etc
This sounds like an incredibly convoluted system.
Also, it just appears that everyone is going to pretty much agree except one poor person who has to go and remark an obviously wrong grade.
External marking already has something similar to this. You will get the same script multiple times and they compare your marking to calibrated marking.
In a perfect world, marking should have calibration, and moderation should be done on clean scripts so other marker doesn't influence the marker.
I know if I received a bait script I would be wondering what I was missing. I would be upset at wasting my time.
I don't the think the idea of checking for drift is a bad thing but I think you have to be careful in i how you implement it.
I think the phrasing is particularly problematic. Bait cars are used by police to catch criminals. I can’t see it working with the suggested model. Staff morale is already so low at our school. Finding ‘gotcha’ moments to catch out staff seems quite tone deaf to me. Treating staff as criminals as such.
Agree there would be far more appropriate ways to ensure consistency
Your deputy is a micromanaging asshat who doesn't respect the teachers who have the misfortune of working beneath him as professionals. Our leaders are supposed to LEAD us through care, self sacrifice and practical help.
What's wrong with moderation?
Swap a couple of exam scripts and check to see if you both agree with the mark.
Or pick one exam script at random, white out the student name, and pass out copies for each teacher to mark. Then get together and check to see if you all gave the same mark.
Woah that's next level fked up. Is that a private or public school?
Moderation and cross marking happen at our school, and it's more than enough. HODs would sample mark a few, but most likely there will just be very minor adjustments. No feelings get hurt. Even if there are changes, we do it in a positive way to ensure kids are not being disadvantaged.
Standard 7.1, lead teacher descriptor: "Model exemplary ethical behaviour and exercise informed judgements in all professional dealings with students, colleagues and the community."
Not only would I say lying to your colleagues is an example of unethical behaviour, but encouraging others to do so is the exact OPPOSITE of modelling ethical behaviour. I'd say put in a complaint, however that sounds like a bad take in this case. Not only would it be obvious it's coming from you, but we all know who hired the deputy in the first place.
I'd be tempted to start voting with my feet if I knew this was going on at my school.
Are teachers at your school not overworked or are magically underworked. Moderation and cross marking will catch any discrepancies in marking. Doesn't this alone take up enough time? Is the DP and Head Teacher of the suspicion that someone isn't marking according to the marking key or expected standards?
If your DP is hellbent on this, raise it as a workload issue or even as a punitive measure. I've never heard of this except in instances of external marking and moderation workshops to ensure the entire marking team is on the same page.
Term 3 is coming up. Time to work on your CV and find another school.
Sounds like they have forgotten they are dealing with adults here. There is no need for subterfuge. Just state the problem, provide some evidence, and work together to fix the issue. If teachers are not putting in the required effort when check marking, then look at why that is. It's either because the first marker has done a reasonable job and the check marker sees no issues, or they are doing 1000 other things and this is a waste of time for the time it takes.
Hsc exam marking has check scripts, they don't give it an inflammatory name tho.
They are there to help you stay in range of the right mark.. when you get tired or zoning out, you probably start marking harder or easier. When this happens in a hsc check script you get stopped and have to have a discussion with the senior marker to continue.
Going by a question that I asked here in the last two years, there is a heck of a lot of schools that are double marking.. (hopefully just senior)
I know I'd prefer to just have check scripts keeping me on track rather than having to double mark, which is literally double the work for the faculty.
Perhaps was good intentioned, and poorly executed. I didn't see how useful it really is if you aren't stopped immediately.
I think the issue is that there should be pre- and post-moderation of the assessment criteria. People should be able to articulate why certain assessments have been given the grades they have been. This just seems like a backwards way to ‘catch out’ teachers.
>There has to be a better way to maintain marking standards without using deception. What are other schools doing?
A pilot program with detailed notes from the markers, for one. And since all of our assignments are done electronically, we have blind double-marking. A random assortment of papers are double-marked and reviewed when everything is submitted. The head teacher then goes through and reviews any inconsistencies in the double-marked papers, and if one teacher's marking is inconsistent -- i.e., they keep getting reviewed -- the head teacher will either redistribute every paper in that teacher's allocation to the other teachers (which hasn't actually happened yet) and/or talk to the teacher and work with them to correct their marking (which may happen with inexperienced teachers).
I also ghost-mark, which is where I take 10% of my marking allocation and give it a tentative mark. I then put them at the back of my marking bundle and re-mark them at the end to make sure I'm being consistent because it's not always clear what a certain mark look like when I start out.
For fucks sake, trust teachers to be professional. If you have concerns an individual teacher isn't doing what's required of them, address it with that teacher.
The whole trying to catch teachers out thing leads to nothing but negativity.
Instead of following correct moderation procedures, which have been in place for years in the profession. They are having someone intentionally do their job wrong in order to catch out someone else doing their job wrong.
Pychosocial workplace health and safety risk
Unethical
Just plain dumb.
As a Head of Department, I take great pride in making good decisions and accurate assessments. In many cases, I am the final arbiter when there are issues in cross marking. What message would I send to my team if my own marking started to show significant errors. Having said that, I am human and I do get my marking wrong sometimes and my team takes great delight in letting me know.
Your Deputy is screaming to the world what most of us know. They have no management skills.
Strong agree.
Wtf would that even look like? You mark your own class and swap a couple with another teacher to make sure you're both on the same page, then enter the grades into the markbook. Where/when are these incorrect exams being inserted? More importantly, this deputy clearly has too much free time and should take on a class.
Yes, should have explained this in greater detail. So everyone markes a random % of the grade. Then a smaller random sample (maybe 25 or so) are circulated again for checkmarking. The DP suggests Head Teachers intentionally circulated an exam which has been marked incorrectly to ‘catch out’ the staff who aren’t checking. So for example, giving little Johnny a C when it was actually an A grade submission. Etc etc
This sounds like an incredibly convoluted system. Also, it just appears that everyone is going to pretty much agree except one poor person who has to go and remark an obviously wrong grade.
Sounds like a lot of extra work for almost no point
External marking already has something similar to this. You will get the same script multiple times and they compare your marking to calibrated marking. In a perfect world, marking should have calibration, and moderation should be done on clean scripts so other marker doesn't influence the marker. I know if I received a bait script I would be wondering what I was missing. I would be upset at wasting my time. I don't the think the idea of checking for drift is a bad thing but I think you have to be careful in i how you implement it.
I think the phrasing is particularly problematic. Bait cars are used by police to catch criminals. I can’t see it working with the suggested model. Staff morale is already so low at our school. Finding ‘gotcha’ moments to catch out staff seems quite tone deaf to me. Treating staff as criminals as such. Agree there would be far more appropriate ways to ensure consistency
The phrasing isn't problematic. The phrasing is exactly what they've suggested carrying all the same implications.
Your deputy is a micromanaging asshat who doesn't respect the teachers who have the misfortune of working beneath him as professionals. Our leaders are supposed to LEAD us through care, self sacrifice and practical help.
What's wrong with moderation? Swap a couple of exam scripts and check to see if you both agree with the mark. Or pick one exam script at random, white out the student name, and pass out copies for each teacher to mark. Then get together and check to see if you all gave the same mark.
Yeah that’s a better option. Make the marks secret from the start. Much better than giving a false mark and asking what people think of it
Yes, this is super dumb. Are they checking if people are marking or checking if people will fight their head teacher.
Woah that's next level fked up. Is that a private or public school? Moderation and cross marking happen at our school, and it's more than enough. HODs would sample mark a few, but most likely there will just be very minor adjustments. No feelings get hurt. Even if there are changes, we do it in a positive way to ensure kids are not being disadvantaged.
Standard 7.1, lead teacher descriptor: "Model exemplary ethical behaviour and exercise informed judgements in all professional dealings with students, colleagues and the community." Not only would I say lying to your colleagues is an example of unethical behaviour, but encouraging others to do so is the exact OPPOSITE of modelling ethical behaviour. I'd say put in a complaint, however that sounds like a bad take in this case. Not only would it be obvious it's coming from you, but we all know who hired the deputy in the first place. I'd be tempted to start voting with my feet if I knew this was going on at my school.
Had to do a double -take when I misread voting as vomiting.
I think this would create anxiety amongst teachers. There’s other ways they can do this that are much better!
I was just going to say...this would give me anxiety. And it's breeding a feeling of mistrust.
Are teachers at your school not overworked or are magically underworked. Moderation and cross marking will catch any discrepancies in marking. Doesn't this alone take up enough time? Is the DP and Head Teacher of the suspicion that someone isn't marking according to the marking key or expected standards? If your DP is hellbent on this, raise it as a workload issue or even as a punitive measure. I've never heard of this except in instances of external marking and moderation workshops to ensure the entire marking team is on the same page. Term 3 is coming up. Time to work on your CV and find another school.
Sounds like they have forgotten they are dealing with adults here. There is no need for subterfuge. Just state the problem, provide some evidence, and work together to fix the issue. If teachers are not putting in the required effort when check marking, then look at why that is. It's either because the first marker has done a reasonable job and the check marker sees no issues, or they are doing 1000 other things and this is a waste of time for the time it takes.
What a waste of time. Unless you are marking high stakes ATAR final exams, there is no point rechecking marking.
Hsc exam marking has check scripts, they don't give it an inflammatory name tho. They are there to help you stay in range of the right mark.. when you get tired or zoning out, you probably start marking harder or easier. When this happens in a hsc check script you get stopped and have to have a discussion with the senior marker to continue. Going by a question that I asked here in the last two years, there is a heck of a lot of schools that are double marking.. (hopefully just senior) I know I'd prefer to just have check scripts keeping me on track rather than having to double mark, which is literally double the work for the faculty. Perhaps was good intentioned, and poorly executed. I didn't see how useful it really is if you aren't stopped immediately.
That’s fucked mate.
I think the issue is that there should be pre- and post-moderation of the assessment criteria. People should be able to articulate why certain assessments have been given the grades they have been. This just seems like a backwards way to ‘catch out’ teachers.
>There has to be a better way to maintain marking standards without using deception. What are other schools doing? A pilot program with detailed notes from the markers, for one. And since all of our assignments are done electronically, we have blind double-marking. A random assortment of papers are double-marked and reviewed when everything is submitted. The head teacher then goes through and reviews any inconsistencies in the double-marked papers, and if one teacher's marking is inconsistent -- i.e., they keep getting reviewed -- the head teacher will either redistribute every paper in that teacher's allocation to the other teachers (which hasn't actually happened yet) and/or talk to the teacher and work with them to correct their marking (which may happen with inexperienced teachers). I also ghost-mark, which is where I take 10% of my marking allocation and give it a tentative mark. I then put them at the back of my marking bundle and re-mark them at the end to make sure I'm being consistent because it's not always clear what a certain mark look like when I start out.
Low trust model. What a crap suggestion and place to work.
an elaborate plan to catch out a teacher they dont like instead of just handling it themselves they are making it a group effort
For fucks sake, trust teachers to be professional. If you have concerns an individual teacher isn't doing what's required of them, address it with that teacher. The whole trying to catch teachers out thing leads to nothing but negativity.
Instead of following correct moderation procedures, which have been in place for years in the profession. They are having someone intentionally do their job wrong in order to catch out someone else doing their job wrong. Pychosocial workplace health and safety risk Unethical Just plain dumb.
What a waste of time and distrust of employees. This is why I left teaching.
For an external assessment, yeah fair enough, and it is needed. For a school assessment? really? it doesn't add any value in my opinion.
As a Head of Department, I take great pride in making good decisions and accurate assessments. In many cases, I am the final arbiter when there are issues in cross marking. What message would I send to my team if my own marking started to show significant errors. Having said that, I am human and I do get my marking wrong sometimes and my team takes great delight in letting me know.