TEACHERS: COVID CHANGING LEARNING, GRADING PARADIGM
Students in John Whaley’s freshman English class at Fairfield Warde High School will be introduced to Atticus Finch this school year when they read “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“Romeo and Juliet” remains a question mark.
In Kristen Record’s AP physics classes at Bunnell High School in Stratford, there won’t be a unit on waves and sounds. Fun to teach, but they’re not on the spring College Board test so there is no time — even though Record knows it is material students taking physics II next year will need.
At Harding High School in Bridgeport, choir teacher Sheena Graham is, at the moment, choir-less. Grouping classes, brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, has meant the Connecticut 2019 Teacher of the Year is left with only general music classes this fall.
“I definitely think that I am more aware of the challenges (students) face,” Graham said. “I do give them opportunities to retake and correct. At the same time, I still let them all know I have expectations.”
For most educating through a pandemic, how they teach, how much they teach and how they measure student growth has all changed.
How does one grade or test in such an environment?
Amy Beldotti, associate superintendent for teaching
and learning for Stamford Public Schools, calls the environment a double-edged sword that building administrators often find themselves refereeing.
“You want to be mindful of the stress students and staff are under during this time,” Beldotti said. “At the same time, you want to hold students accountable for the content and for grades to be reflective of the work done.”
There is some consolation in knowing that this is not a situation unique to Stamford, Beldotti added.
“This is a global pandemic,” she said. “It’s not just students in Stamford put at a disadvantage.”
Learning loss?
A national study released Dec. 1 by the Northwest Evaluation Association finds that last spring’s abrupt pivot to all remote learning and this fall’s hodgepodge of inperson, at home and “hybrid” learning, where students take turns being in school, has not led to a complete learning washout.
In almost all grades, the study found, most of the 4.4 million students in third through eighth grade assessed in reading and math made some gains despite the pandemic. More so in reading than in math.
In math, student achievement in fall 2020 was 5 to 10 percentile points lower than the pre-COVID-19 performance by same-grade students.
One major caveat, according to Chris Minnich, NWEA’s chief executive officer, is that a good chunk of students, perhaps an alarming 25 percent, went missing between last spring and this fall.
Disproportionately, the students MIA were minority students, the data show.
The jury is out on the long term impact.
Frustration runs deep
Ruth Terry Walden, an English teacher at Westhill High School in Stamford, can point to the shortterm impact of teaching through a pandemic. It has wiped out a decade’s worth of progress in building Project Open Doors, a diverse population of AP students in Stamford.
“It’s heart-breaking,” said Walden, who teaches in Stamford but lives in Bridgeport. “AP classes are really white again.”
Black and brown students Walden had worked to get into her AP courses, many of them at least, disappeared when the pandemic hit and classes went remote. Some, she learned, took jobs to help their families.
All the wonderful different points of views Walden said she was getting during classroom discussions evaporated.
In the spring, when things were upside down, grading and attendance standards were relaxed. Walden said she understood.
“It’s unrealistic that we are going to be able to maintain the same level of rigor in the midst of a pandemic,” Walden said.
The down side, Walden said, is that some students believed the leniency afforded in the spring would carry over to this still uncertain fall.
In Walden’s classes — AP English, two honors courses, two college prep classes and a Literature through Lens course — you need to show up and do the work to pass.
An “A” student in Walden’s book always has their hand up, is never quite comfortable and always wanted to be better.
In a remote environment, Walden concedes that is much harder for students to demonstrate.
An opportunity to refocus
Whaley, the Warde English teacher, said he sees this pause in conventional education as an opportunity.
The prospect of traditional assessments put on hold or modified is music to his ear.
“The idea that we can do this the same old way we used to is nonsensical,” Whaley said. “When, if not now, are we going to change the process?”
This fall, before getting into the curriculum, Whaley’s students — some in person, others remote — spent weeks getting to know each other. The goal was to make them feel comfortable enough to take risks.
Kids can fail Whaley’s courses, but it takes effort.
“Most of my curriculum is writing-based,” Whaley said. And discussion based.
There is a lot of journal writing, what Whaley calls a memory artifact of the pandemic. Assessment is feedback.
“I am an outlier,” Whaley said. “My goal is to make them effective communicators and lifelong learners.”
He would like nothing more than for public education to stop ranking and sorting students altogether, he said.
“Education is not a competition,” Whaley said. “The sooner we are brave enough as a public institution to take a stand against the archaic rewards and punishment system known as “grades,” the sooner our students will actually enjoy learning.”
Grading impact
Commissioner of Education Miguel Cardona would argue that student achievement scores are important as a barometer of whether curriculum and instruction are working.
“This year, we want to provide some opportunity for them to tell us what they learned or what gaps exist so we can target resources,” Cardona said in a news conference this week.
Last spring, the state — with federal blessing — suspended state assessments given in grades 3-8 and 11. This year, so far, the plan is to give both the SBAC and CT-SAT tests.
In Stamford, Beldotti said she would not cry if state’s Smarter Balance test, which takes days to administer, were put off another year, but adds that for her, there can’t be teaching and learning without assessment, at least at the local level.
She sees the value in an assessment that is common among all school districts in the state.
In Ansonia, Schools Superintendent Joe DiBacco called grading a sacred cow for teachers.
“I would love for (teachers) to be more understanding,” DiBacco said, adding “They are more understanding during the pandemic.”
DiBacco said he would hope staff would not give students a score lower than a 50.
“If you have a 50 you ... have a fighting chance (of passing the course),” DiBacco said.
In Stratford, Record said grad
ing no lower than a 50 is a policy at her school for the first marking period.
As a teacher of three Advanced Placement courses, Record tests regularly.
She has narrowed the focus of what she teaches to what she has determined is essential and important.
Everything takes longer.
“I have had to be very picky,” Record said.
There are still lab experiences, but fewer. Time is carved out for training students how to practice taking pictures of their work and uploading them, just in case the College Board AP exams are given online again next spring.
Validating work
How can she tell if students from home are doing their own work?
Record said she talks to her students about not cutting corners. Some assessments are timed. Googling answers would take too much time.
Ultimately, Record calls it an ethical decision.
Laura Donnelly, a sixth grade science teacher at Eastern Middle School in Greenwich, has a mix of in-person and remote students in her classes.
“What I’ve had to do this year is use a Google Form that I can lock,” Donnelly said. “When I send (assignments) out to kids, it locks their Chromebooks so they are not able to search other sites. That’s pretty much the max I can do. … If they have another computer by them, or their science journal open with all their notes, I can’t really see that. It’s sort of the honor system from that perspective.”
That said, Donnelly said she hasn’t had many issues. She said she knows her students and can usually detect if anything is amiss.
Her exams are different than they were pre-pandemic: less open-ended and more multiple choice. The exams are shorter and she gives them more frequently.
A path toward
Nicholas Banks, an English teacher at Trumbull High school, said in some ways teaching during a pandemic has not changed things for him.
Students still write. Only now, on Google Docs.
“I was a paper and pencil guy,” Banks said.
Students learning remotely can’t walk up to his desk with questions, but some linger online to chat after online class.
“We make sure we keep challenging students,” Banks said. “We follow curriculum. But things come up that are not normal.”
Banks has come not to assume why students sometimes disappear from his classes while learning remotely.
“One student didn’t respond in chat and I removed him from the meeting,” Banks said. “I learned later he had to step away to help his little sister with (her online learning).”
In Bridgeport, Graham said one way she has learned to help students is by being more specific about what she needs them to know.
She is making her instruction much more individualized.
“I was already headed in that direction,” Graham said. “This has pushed me to get there.”