New grading scale causes frustration

New grading method replaces letter grades with numbers on a scale of 1 to 5

Students, parents, teachers and school supporters are frustrated with a new grading scale for Lorain City Schools’ elementary students, according to speakers at school meetings in November.

This school year, Lorain City Schools implemented a new standards based grading method that replaces letter grades with numbers on a scale of 1 to 5.

A grade of 1 indicates a student is performing at a limited level of understanding about a subject, while 5 shows an advanced level of understanding, according to the parent handbook posted on lorainschools.org.

But three months into the school year, parents, community members and school board members said they are hearing about problems with the transition to number grades.

The public discussions took place at least twice, at the Nov. 28 Town Hall Meeting with school district CEO David Hardy Jr. and at the Nov. 5 meeting of the Lorain City School Board of Education.

A grade of 1 indicates a student is performing at a limited level of understanding about a subject, while 5 shows an advanced level of understanding,

In the Town Hall, Hardy agreed Lorain teachers should have been better trained about the system before the school year started.

The district in October also published a new Parent Mini-Handbook on the standards based grading.

Time for calibration

At the Nov. 28 meeting, Kenan Bishop, chief equity and achievement officer for Lorain Schools, cited Stevan Dohanos and Helen Steiner Rice elementaries as schools using the grade scale where leaders celebrate student success.

But the administration recognizes this also is a time for calibration, Bishop said.

“We’re hearing from our teachers, we’re hearing from our parents,” Bishop said. “I want to be able to know that at school number one, is proficient the same thing as at school number two?

“And we know that that’s not happening right now.”

The schools also need to clarify the understanding about grading student effort and behavior, Bishop said.

Teachers received additional training and the district has a plan for more work on the grading scales after Jan. 3, he said.

“We really want to be as clear as we possibly can,” Bishop said.

The district is not using letters and percentages, but will focus on student mastery, he said.

“But it’s new, it’s hard, it’s a constant conversation,” Bishop said. “We are rolling up our sleeves, we’ve got to take things back, we’ve got to adjust it in real time.”

He added he is pleased with the work the district is doing collaboratively on the grading method.

Guessing game

But it appears Lorain students are being used for a guessing game about what will work, said Courtney Nazario, a Lorain parent who spoke Nov. 28 at the Town Hall Meeting.

“I am all for change if it’s going to be better,” Nazario said. “But the problem I have is, we’re guessing at what’s going to be better.”

However, the teachers did not get the training about standards based grading that the they needed before school started, she said.

Nazario asked how the teachers were supposed to catch that up.

She said she has reviewed the standard based grading method with her children, but at the school level, they have not been told anything about it.

“The kids don’t understand the standards based grading,” Nazario said. “I feel that has a big, important part of it.”

Other school districts not using the method also post good test scores and high academic achievement, she said.

It was during Nazario’s comments that Hardy agreed the teachers needed more, earlier training.

“If standard based grading is the answer, I’m all for it,” she said. “But I haven’t been shown.”

School board response

In the Nov. 5 Lorain City Schools board of education meeting, members and a resident there also leveled criticism about the standards based grading.

At the beginning of the school year, teachers received an informational packet about the grade scale, said Bobby Sergent, a school district resident who has worked with Titan booster programs.

“This was the teacher training, this packet here,” said Sergent, who also read from a school document about the system. “I guess I’m now qualified to be a teacher in Lorain City Schools, once I read this packet and finish it.

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard of.”

Sergent read from the standards that teachers were to use to grade students, and asked what ever happened to things like presenting information and quizzing students on it.

Standards based grading also is troubling because current seventh and eighth graders soon will enter high school with no working grade point average, Sergent said.

Board members Tony Dimacchia, Mark Ballard, Yvonne Johnson, Bill Sturgill and Tim Williams largely agreed with Sergent’s comments.

Dimacchia said this fall, a teacher’s conference for his own child was a waste of time because the teacher was not trained on the grading scale.

Although the standards based grading method uses a scale of 1 to 5, teachers apparently are not yet awarding grades 4 or 5 to students, he said.

“There’s a lack of clarity and understanding across the board,” said Williams, who added that he had not talked to any teachers who were satisfied with standards based grading.

Lorain Schools’ approach was not fair to whoever created the standards based grading, he said.

“We don’t know if this could have been an effective way of grading,” Williams said. “I don’t know. I don’t know what districts use it.

“Somebody’s done some research and created it, but our folks never had a fighting chance of making it work.”