When a public school system in the San Francisco Bay Area explored the possibility of replacing traditional grading practices with a form of “standards-based grading system” aimed at eliminating bias, it sparked widespread opposition from parents. . They signed petitions and showed up forcefully at school board meetings to protest the changes.
The proposal, which Dublin Unified School District leaders began testing with a group of teachers last year, was presented as a way to shift the emphasis from earning points on tests and assignments to students’ mastery of the material, and improve equity by better supporting students. which might take a little longer to learn. Thus, it put opponents of the plan in the somewhat awkward position of openly fighting against something called “Equity Grading.”
But one after another, the parents of a July school board meeting he did precisely that.
Some complained that the change in the grading system turned their students into guinea pigs in what they considered an untested approach. Several others opposed a system in which a student can get a high grade even if she skips homework, as long as she can demonstrate that she understands the material.
As the parents wrote in their petition: “Do not take away the award for rigor, work and participation in the classroom!”
This school system is not the only one generating controversy over changes to grading systems. Even supporters of reforming school grading admit that making a change can be challenging and can be derailed if efforts are not made to educate parents and teachers about how and why to scrap the AF system that most Americans experienced when they were students. . Instead of giving a letter grade based on a percentage of points achieved, standards-based systems start with a list of competencies to achieve and then assign students a number from 1 (below standards) to 4. (exceeded standards) for each one.
Interest in improving grades has been growing slowly over the past decade, but received a boost after the COVID-19 pandemic, when many schools and teachers were more lenient with deadlines and more open to experimenting with formal systems to try to improve grades. improve grades. better address the challenges that students faced in their family life. That’s according to Matt Townsley, an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Northern Iowa, who has written books on how to change grading systems and helped schools switch to standards-based systems. After “testing” such reform, he said, “many thought it made sense to make it more permanent.”
While Townsley said there is no national data on how many schools have switched to standards-based grading, a 2021 study state survey in Wyoming by the state department of education showed that 10 percent of middle schools and 5 percent of high schools have fully implemented the approach, and that 53 percent of middle schools and 30 percent of high schools in the state have begun implementing it. The approach is more prevalent in some “zones” of the country, Townsley says, particularly New Hampshire, Maine and Wisconsinwith more recent adoptions in schools Connecticut, New Mexico and Oregon.
Even amid some opposition, many teachers and students in Dublin, California, accepted the grading changes. Katherine Hermens, who teaches biology at Dublin High School, spoke at the same school board meeting and said that before the COVID-19 pandemic, she would have rejected Equity Grading.
“What I understand is that the pandemic fundamentally changed me,” he told the school board, noting that during remote teaching he saw more clearly the struggles many students experienced in their home lives. “It changed us.”
“The old practices we cling to were born in a different time, in different circumstances,” he added. “It is time to emphasize learning over effort. Prioritizing learning is exactly what Equitable Grading is. Recognize each student’s individual journey. “Recognize that we all learn differently, at our own pace and in diverse ways.”
Opponents and champions
Cody Whitehouse was teaching social studies at Wilson College Prep High School in Phoenix when the school system implemented a standards-based grading system last year.
At first, Whitehouse liked the sound of the plan, especially the part that emphasized that students would have multiple opportunities to demonstrate what they know. “I agree that a student should have more than one opportunity,” she said. “We all have busy, crazy lives, so things happen.”
Once the system was in place, the teacher said he quickly became upset when he saw how his students responded.
A key part of the new approach, sometimes called evidence-based grading, is that assignment scores are not counted in a class’s final grade. Instead, like an athlete training for a big game, practice is considered what is needed to prepare for the final game, and what matters is what happens on game day. Game day consists of tests that measure whether students have mastered the required material.
For the students, however, the conclusion was that homework no longer mattered at all, Whitehouse said. “If you don’t grade it, the students won’t do it,” he said. “Every teacher has had students say, ‘Is this being graded?’ If not, they are not going to do it, or they are not going to do it too.”
His approach before the change was to focus on project-based assignments, but he found less engagement among those with the grade changes.
“It’s teaching to the test; testing is all that matters,” Whitehouse said. “Students will find that and game the system. Many students want to do as little as humanly possible. “They want to pass by.”
That means students missed out on a positive side effect of a stressful task.
“Completing homework and meeting deadlines are important life skills that must be
welcomed at school,” he said. “It is helpful to develop positive study habits and reliability among young people.” He has since left the school system, partly out of frustration with politics, and now teaches abroad.
However, some students have not reacted to the new grading systems as Whitehouse’s did.
Aakrisht Mehra, a junior at Dublin High School, the California district where parents protested the new grading system, said he didn’t see high-achieving kids suddenly slacking off on homework. After all, those students still wanted to do well in the exams to enter top universities. (Mehra himself said he has a 4.5 GPA.) But he said he “understands” the concern that a sudden change in the grading system could lower a student’s GPA just as they are applying to selective colleges. . “I’m very familiar with the competitive nature of high school,” he said.
He said the goal of the new system is to help students who were not doing well in the previous system. After learning more about the approach, she said, he believes it can especially help students with ADHD, dyslexia or other neurological differences. And he said the old system often led to teacher favoritism toward some types of students who were more interested in trying to score points. “I think standards-based grading simply benefits true learning,” the student argues.
In a district survey of students, the vast majority favored the new system.
Facing headwinds
Chris Funk, superintendent of Dublin Unified, led the push for the new grading system in his district.
His main motivation, he said, is to address the inequalities he sees in who performs well in the current system.
Although African-American students make up 3 percent of the district’s students, he said, 55 percent of them earned a D or F last school year.
One reason, he said, is that students who get a low grade or don’t turn in an assignment at the beginning of the semester were often statistically doomed to fail under the old system.
“In my 34 years in schools, mostly in high schools, I have seen students who got an F in the first grading period lose hope that they could get ahead and pass that class,” he said. “They see that, ‘If I get a zero on an assignment, I’ll have to get a perfect score nine times to eliminate that zero.’ “Even for our best students that is not reasonable.”
And once a student loses hope in a class, he said, “they become a behavioral problem or a chronic truant.”
So a key aspect of the new grading system was to set a minimum of 50 percent on each test or assignment, so getting an F wouldn’t be such an unbreakable anchor.
Parents who oppose the system, however, took advantage of that detail of the plan, complaining that it lowered standards by giving half points on each test for doing nothing. But Funk points out that 50 percent still fail, so it hardly gives students an incentive to turn in blank pages.
He notes that in the current system, high-performing students often find ways to improve their grades even if they don’t really master the material, doing, for example, extra-credit projects that raise their GPAs. “We call that degree inflation,” she said.
Funk said the first group that tried the grading system had gone well and that this summer he was surprised by the opposition led by what he described as “a group of 35 to 40 parents who became very active.”
At that board meeting in July, the board voted 3-2 in favor suspend the qualification pilot project at the middle school and high school level, ending the move to what was called equity-based grading.
Individual teachers are still free to choose the new system, Funk said, and many teachers in the experimental group have chosen to do so. But as a matter of policy, the status quo will largely remain in place for now.
Funk said if he had it to do over again, he would have done a better job communicating the goals and practices of the new system to parents, pointing to training given by an outside expert hired by officials who used examples that were not suitable for the Dublin system. and that confused some of the issues.
Townsley, the Iowa professor who has worked with schools to change grading systems, said he has seen similar scenarios at other schools.
“Often it’s not the ideas that get rejected, it’s the pitch, it’s the implementation,” Townsley said. “Sometimes it’s too fast and there’s not enough time to explain why we’re doing this. And there is either a lack or not enough training on what this is all about.”
