At this month's board meeting, I'll be sharing some plans with the school
board about some changes we'll be making at the secondary building
with respect to our grading policies and practices, and about providing a
significant intervention resource for students.
First, the adjustments we plan on making to our grading policies and
practices. At a recent student council meeting, the council members
endorsed the change in our grading scale this year, saying they thought it
had worked well. We had raised the bar for what it takes to earn an A, a
B, a C, etcetera and their opinion was that students rose to meet this
challenge.
I'll be proposing a policy change in our handbook that increases the
emphasis on the learning that occurs when a student does an assignment,
and focuses less on the common practice of having only one chance to
demonstrate learning. In this new policy, students can work with their
teachers to re-do assignments or re-take tests if they want to earn a better
grade.
Second, if a teacher assigns work for students to complete for class, they
assign it because it's important. If it's important, then every student must
complete it. But not every student completes every assignment,
correct? So, which approach better supports student achievement: A)
giving the student a zero and moving on, or B) requiring the student to
complete that assignment right away?
The correct answer is B, of course. To make sure this happens, we are
building a two-part system into our day next year. Part One is to provide
an additional period during the day in which all teachers are available to
help students who need it, and to supervise this time so that all students
have at least 25 minutes to do school work. Part Two is to create a
system that alerts teachers to students who have not completed their work
and require those students to be in a structured study hall where their
only task is to finish what's been assigned to them.
What will this look like in real life? Well, if I'm a student with decent
grades and my work is all turned in, then I spend those 25 minutes with
my classmates in the lunchroom or the library, for example. We might
be doing homework in small groups, visiting with one another, or
catching up on e-mails.
If I'm a student with D's and F's or my work is not turned in, then I'm in a
very small, structured study hall where my only job is to complete the
work I don't have finished.
This resource time is becoming a more common element in schools
across the state, and across the nation, as some students become busier in
their after school activities and need more time to keep up with their
studies, while other students fall further and further behind due to factors
such as uninvolved parents and a lack of motivation.
Please let me know your thoughts on these ideas. I would love to hear them
and talk through our students' learning together.
