KIDS, PARENTS PROTEST FOR GRADES

Some in Vista Unified district want letter grade option over pass/fail

VISTA

Parents and students staged a drive-up protest on Tuesday against the grading policy for Vista Unified School District, arguing that the district’s plan to issue credit/no credit marks instead of letter grades this semester will hurt students’ college applications.

About 50 carloads of families drove by the district offices on Arcadia Avenue, honking horns and bearing signs that read “VUSD hear us,” “We want choice” and “Save our grades.” They then headed in a caravan to Rancho Buena Vista High School, where they stopped in the parking lot for several minutes.

Families object to the district’s policy of issuing only credit for the spring semester, and want students to have the choice whether to take credit, or receive letter grades instead. Vista parents said students who show only credit on their transcripts will be at a disadvantage when submitting college applications, because universities may prefer students with full transcripts.

“Every single college we talked to said we prefer data to no data,” said Seema Burke, mother of a junior at Vista High School and an organizer of the protest.

Districts throughout the state have adopted various grading systems as they moved to remote learning systems, trying to balance the need to evaluate classwork with the recognition that students have varying home circumstances and online access, and won’t be equally able to complete remote learning

assignments.

Some districts are issuing only credit, others are requiring students to continue classwork for grades, and some are freezing grades as of March 13, the date before school closures took effect. In some cases, districts are allowing students to work toward improving their grades, but won’t mark them down for missed work

following the closures.

Vista parents said they’re asking the district to allow students to choose credit only, or accept the grade they had at the time of the school closures in March.

“It’s not one or the other, it’s an option,” Burke said.

Blanca Gonzalez, mother of a sophomore at Rancho Buena Vista High School, said the credit/no credit grading policy is a misguided attempt to protect disadvantaged students, including Hispanic students and English learners.

“They’re blaming this on the Hispanic community,”

she said. “They automatically assume that these students don’t work hard enough; that they don’t want to go to college.”

Parents said they asked the district to consider the grading system at its board meeting Thursday, but said the district declined. However, they plan to address the issue in public comments at the meeting.

deborah.brennan @sduniontribune.com