By Veronique Mintz
In the fall trimester at LREI, feelings of energy and excitement fresh off the summer break quickly nosedived into confusion and disarray when rumors of a new Standards Based Grading (SBG) system proliferated through the student body.
Manjula Nair, a math teacher, Kelly O’Shea, a science teacher, Allison Isbell, the Assistant Director, and Amanda Finigan, the high school principal, took the initiative to compile and evaluate faculty feedback on Standards Based Grading at the end of the ‘22-’23 school year. Their findings indicated that a new grading system would be beneficial to student success in the following school year. The group spent several weeks over the summer analyzing the practices that were being used and developing an expanded system to better serve the needs of students and faculty.
Members of this committee stepped in to solve these challenges by drawing upon their experiences with SBG. For example, starting in July of 2017, Nair has been leading multi-day workshops with Mark Schober, a science teacher at the Trinity School, on implementing SBG principles in the classroom. The workshops take place in conjunction with the non-profit organization, STEMteachersNYC, an organization that supports STEM teachers by promoting teacher-led professional development. Nair and Schober are instrumental figures in the movement to shift from traditional grading to more equitable grading practices nationally.
In the wake of student questions and unsubstantiated rumors, the Knightly News interviewed one of the members of the committee, Manjula Nair, to address common student questions and to give her viewpoint. Nair reported that faculty wanted more nuance in the grading system. The jump from an 8 to a 10 was too vast, so ideas began circulating on how to close this gap. Nair explains that a fundamental reason for the updated grading system at LREI is attributed to this issue: “Even if a student had grown in an area, they could see it in the comments and a teacher could see it and explain it and describe it, but it didn’t feel like it was being reflected in the numbers.” The eight bucket was simply too broad. Students felt a similar way, that students who were submitting different calibers of work were receiving the same or roughly the same grade due to the wide range that an 8 represented. The difference between an 8.7 to a 9.5 is smaller and therefore easier to see progress.
The most controversial change has been the switch from 10s to 9.5s, which caps the average grade at the end of the trimester at a 95. While all standards are assessed multiple times, students voice that this change still makes it more challenging to have an A at the end of a course. Nair emphasizes, “The reason that we changed that is because the highest grade a student can get in a class is an A, not an A+. So the range from a 92.5 to 100 was representing an A, whereas the current A range is from 92.5 to 95, [numerically] which is more like the A- range [and so on].”
A 9.5 now represents proficiency in a standard. Many students and parents were unhappy with the elimination of a “10.” One argument is that if a student achieved proficiency in all of the standards, why shouldn’t they receive a ‘perfect’ grade? A key principle of Standards Based Grading is growth, not perfection. The grading system is designed to give students multiple opportunities to show what they know and to give them credit when they demonstrate proficiency. At the same time, some students still do not understand the reasoning behind these new grading scale options which can feel arbitrary if not well explained.
To further explain, Nair states, “In the past, some teachers were taking every assessment and using every single score to calculate the final grade of that standard. So if you had ten quizzes and on every single quiz you had [the standard], Solving Linear Equations, some teachers were just taking the average of all of those scores. If it took you a while to learn something, your early scores on a standard still counted toward the final average even though you had shown proficiency multiple times [after that].” The new grading system is designed to be more fair to students. Going forward, students will not be penalized for needing more attempts to demonstrate their understanding. Lower grades at the beginning of a course will be dropped from a student’s overall grade to emphasize growth and progress.
The benefits of these changes may not be initially apparent to students, but Nair states, “If a student is assessed on a standard three times, we [should] only take two of those or one of those scores. If a student is assessed four times, we [should] only take three or fewer scores.” There is flexibility in grading calculations since different courses and subjects need different methods to comprehensively evaluate students. Teachers can still choose from highest, highest and most recent, mode, decaying average, etc. to calculate grades.
Concerns regarding changes to the grading system were magnified at the start of the school year because of the rapid spread of misinformation. Even before students returned in the fall, there were rumors about a new grading system that raised questions and concerns. On September 18th, a grade-wide meeting took place for the seniors, where faculty and administrators outlined the new grading system in a lecture format. Considering the widespread confusion that many students felt, not all questions were answered in this short period of time. Following that initial meeting, on September 22nd, the senior class was invited to another Q&A session. However, only a single student attended. Violet Wexler, a lifer and current senior, thinks, “People heard about it before there was a conversation. Students weren’t told. The idea of [a] class meeting was great but it wasn’t as collaborative as it could have been.” Some students felt that the administration was misleading about how they would be graded. Others felt that they were being “lectured,” a concept that is rare to see at LREI. Many were still confused and wondered why these changes were made without student input.
LREI is a part of a group of educators and schools called the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC). In the future, the school is considering the possibility of transitioning to a mastery transcript. Nair states, “Teachers would love to just give feedback about a standard and not have to calculate a grade at the end of it.” With this alternate system, a high school transcript would no longer display letter or number grades, but would show evidence of mastery in individual standards demonstrated through a Credit Profile of the student’s mastery credits. “The digital transcript that MTC has introduced and is using across their network of schools is a transparent and authentic tool that provides evidence of what students know and what students can do across a range of competencies over time as they evolve and grow,” cites Monica Martinez, an MTC Advisor and the Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Learning Policy Institute. Educators who are members of the MTC believe that this new transcript can showcase student skills in a way that letter grades cannot. Several schools in the tri-state area, such as The Hewitt School, Choate Rosemary Hall, and Friends Academy have already joined MTC. We have yet to see what the future holds for LREI’s push for progressive evaluation of students and the ways in which teacher autonomy can expand. This new system may be one more step on the ladder to reaching a more comprehensive and equitable grading system.