Hrihaan Bhutani is already fascinated about college. The Dublin High School freshman is taking 4 Advanced Placement courses next 12 months and has packed his schedule with extracurricular activities to enhance his possibilities of moving into an Ivy League school.
But a change at the highschool aimed toward making students less focused on grades has had the alternative effect. Suddenly, A's in some classes are almost unattainable unless you get 100%. And there are not any Fs. For high-achieving students like Bhutani, the pressure to be perfect is much more stressful.
“I feel more stressed … now with this new system,” said Bhutani, who is especially sweating in his biology class, one in every of dozens trying out various latest rating scales as a part of a two-year experiment. “Even if you are at 99, you will be downgraded to 85,” he explained, which translates to “a.” End of the world b.
Dublin Unified's latest grading policy will come into effect for all grades 6-12 next 12 months and is an element of a nationwide shift to “equal grading” – a controversial concept that departs from traditional grading to raised measure how well students understand what they’re being taught.
The goal is to scale back the impact of things that skew grades — extra credit, class attendance and homework — while making it easier for lower-performing students to get better from failure.
Several Bay Area school districts have explored similar ideas, including Oakland Unified, Pleasanton Unified, Santa Clara Unified and most recently Palo Alto Unified. However, the best way districts are implementing the change varies. Some are selecting to eliminate D and F grades, while others are moving away from zero grades or eliminating late penalties.
Equity grading was first coined by Joe Feldman in his 2018 book “Grading for Equity,” which has turn out to be the textbook for greater than 200 schools across the country. Feldman said he’s working with 25 districts and schools in California to guide them through the transition.
Liliana Castrellon, an assistant professor within the education department at San Jose State University whose research focuses on equity in education, said equitable grading practices have turn out to be more common in class districts following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If anything, we’ve learned during the pandemic that our traditional education system doesn’t work for everyone,” Castrellon said. “So there's been a lot of conversation about … how can we reimagine and reimagine practices that are more equitable and benefit all students?”
A task force at Dublin Unified first discussed revising the grading guidelines in 2021. The following 12 months, 28 teachers began testing latest methods for measuring student performance.
Dublin Unified Superintendent Chris Funk explained at a board meeting last 12 months that the district's grading system was not consistent across schools, which had led to problems within the classroom.
“There is no question that the current evaluation system is an unfair practice. Much of the grading involved does not assess a person's mastery of subject content,” he said on the meeting. “Zeros in a grading system do not accurately reflect a student’s ability. Assigning zeros as discipline is not an appropriate consequence as they can be nearly impossible to recover from.”
However, the gradual changes led to widespread opposition from parents, students and teachers – leading to a Change.org petition to finish the practice and a WhatsApp group with greater than 400 parents opposing the policy change.
Next 12 months, the district will limit all letter grades to the ten% range and eliminate the practice of awarding zero points for assignments so long as they were “reasonably attempted.” The latest policy also eliminates additional credits and bonus points that increased grades and provides students multiple opportunities to make up missed or failed assignments, minimizing the impact of homework on a student's grade.
Some parents and teachers said they fear the changes will encourage students to slack off and leave them unprepared for school.
“I think dumbing down the curriculum will cause our kids to fail in college because they won't be prepared to the same level as kids from other counties and other states,” said Olena Stadnyuk, a Dublin mother.
Skeptics say school districts are implementing zero-zero policies and eliminating failing letter grades to spice up graduation rates as they struggle to get better from learning losses attributable to the pandemic.
“It will graduate more kids, it will increase their numbers,” said Laurie Sargent, an eighth-grade English teacher at Cottonwood Creek, a TK-Eighth grade school in Dublin. “You'll have fewer kids failing, and then things will look good. It’s strategic.”
Some schools have modified their grading policies in response to the University of California and California State University's “A to G” requirements, which require students to earn a C or higher in 15 of their highschool courses to qualify to qualify for admission.
“Almost all children in California graduate from high school, but only about half of graduates are eligible to apply to UC or CSU schools,” said Alix Gallagher, director of strategic partnerships at Policy Analysis for California Education . “In California, grades are the only determining factor…Grades are a gatekeeper for children.”
Dela Antoinette, mother of a sophomore at Dublin High School, said she fears fair grading will harm high-achieving students who do well in the present system.
“Rather than pushing this agenda, we are focused on nurturing this particular group and bringing them up to the level of other outstanding students,” she said. “Don’t lower standards, don’t change the entire system for everyone.”
Bhutani and his biology classmate Bhuvan Krishnamohan, who’re ending their first 12 months of highschool, are already fascinated about transferring to a college that doesn't use fair grading.
“I think the system favors the people who are not doing so well and want to do well, rather than the people who are doing really well and want to keep doing it,” Krishnamohan said.
Sargent, the English teacher, said Dublin Unified's latest grading system doesn't prepare students for achievement in the true world.
“We want to prepare our students for college and careers,” Sargent said. “Nowhere in college do you get 50% for doing nothing. Nowhere within the working world do you get 50% for doing nothing…If I don't show as much as work, they don't pay me 50% of my salary, even when I made an inexpensive try to get there.”
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