Teachers’ half-hopeful, half-terrified response

As the new school year approached, many teachers had a sense of uncertainty lingering around due to the grading reform policy. 

Not knowing whether it was going to remain the same or change, many teachers were only notified two weeks before and had to change some of their usual curriculum for classes.

“When I first heard about the grading reform, to be honest, I was angry,” Fashion teacher Levi Harbeson. “I think it’s a huge disservice to students. Students are not being trained for the real world.”

There are not only disservices to students, but teachers as well. With students now being able to retake quizzes three times and turn in assignments late, teachers have had an increase in workload. 

“Grading reform makes the process of grading, especially using Canvas, much more tedious,” Fashion teacher Levi Harbeson said. “There’s a substantial amount of set-up that has to be done to make sure that grading categories and late scores are set up correctly. Additionally, we can’t do complete/incomplete grades right now – which were handy in the hands-on tech classes.”

Although many teachers agree that this policy will be able to help students in the long-run catch up and succeed, many believe it is unfair to those who work hard on the first try. 

“It’s taking away the seriousness of it [tests],” Pharmacy teacher Cynthia Wong said. “The one thing I’m really concerned about is if students get used to, ‘Well I might stink at this one, I can take it again.’ I keep telling them it’s not easy to retake and get it right the first time so you’re happy with your grade. Students will ask me for the retake date before the quiz or test.”

Teachers, like English 11 teacher Laura Penrod, believe that the new grading reform will also decrease students’ real learning experiences. 

“The grade reform directly after the pandemic and with little to no teacher/staff/admin training is a disaster,” Penrod said. “Students are too trained to earn something for everything they do vs. doing things because it helps them with the end product regardless of the ‘grade.’ Students don’t see value in learning and don’t enjoy it for the most part, so it seems like they genuinely don’t care unless it is a 90% grade. The problem is that the 90% grade won’t be the caliber they want when they don’t take the steps they need. As I told my students today, everyone wants the “A,” but people don’t want to do the work it takes to get there.”

The five-year strategic plan states that the goals of the CCSD Board of Trustees, like having 90% of high school students college and career ready, will all be fulfilled within the next five years.

“I don’t even know the full plan, and I can already say without a doubt it is a nightmare and only foresee it getting worse, not better. As with all things with CCSD, I think it will follow through with a considerable turnover in educators and potentially losing students to Charter/Private schools even more,” Penrod said.

Programs like Pharmacy and Fashion in the professional world guarantee mostly one chance to get things right and teachers like Wong believe the new grading policy is affecting the mindset of students negatively. 

“Personally, it’s harder because if the students don’t do that well on a formative, it doesn’t really affect their grade which is great because they are learning but not great because I’m feeling like they don’t care,” Wong said. “We’re getting them ready to be out in the real world if they’re going to be healthcare providers and they don’t get do-overs and professors aren’t going to care that you had other things to study for. That’s all I am trying to tell them.”

Teachers have had a harder time prioritising the completion of students’ assignments with full effort the first time to be more successful.

“I think the grading reform is a huge disservice to students,” Harbeson said. “It is definitely going to hurt them in the long run. While I understand the reason behind the reform – allowing students more time to display understanding and mastery, removing behavior from grades- that’s not how the real world works.”

Not only are teachers left with new grading policies, but they are also left to prioritize student retakes. 

“Students not understanding the retake policy doesn’t ensure the same test or format. Students are not filling out the form in time to submit the retakes. Remediation is challenging to assign per student when there are 200 plus students for most teachers,” Penrod said. 

However, the change has not only affected the attitudes of student-teacher relationships but programs and the overall workload.

“I think the greatest difference for the program area teachers is that our timeline is much longer than in a core subject classroom,” Harbeson said. “For example, essays and speeches may take a few weeks to write. By comparison, fashion garment construction can be, and usually is, a much slower process, sometimes taking months to complete. This is not to say one is easier than the other, but to point out that the timelines make following the grading reform effectively challenging.”

Harbeson has had to deal with not just challenges to retaking summative assessments with the longer amount of time needed, but also with the fact that students aren’t caring enough about the formative assessments, because they’re not worth as much.

“I have several students who have realized that as long as they create a good final project, or they take a test well that they don’t need to complete the formative assessments, which is frustrating,” Harbeson said. “While this is definitely true mathematically, this prevents the students from gaining true mastery. Mastery requires practice, and consistent practice over long periods of time.”

The fact that students are essentially not doing work because they don’t feel they need to is significantly affecting their ability to learn and grow, according to Harbeson. 

“You can always improve, so even if you think you don’t need to do the Formative assessment because ‘you get it,’ by not completing it you are preventing yourself from continuing to grow and learn,” Harbeson said. 

There are also challenges in preparing students for the real world. As a career and technical based school, students receive CCR diplomas, meaning College and Career Ready. Some teachers, such as Harbeson, have concerns that this reform is cushioning students, and not preparing them for what life will be like in the future.

“To me, this grading reform is allowing students to develop a work ethic that will not translate into the real world,” Harbeson said. “There are deadlines and consequences in the real world, and if we fail to train students to succeed in that environment, we have truly failed the upcoming generation.”

Many teachers agree that while online learning was a disaster, the 2021-2022 school year is even more stressful.

“I was more hopeful that it would take more off my plate, and the focus could be teaching and less begging kids to care about their education. If anything, the work ethic is the worst I’ve seen in 16 years. I wasn’t necessarily excited, but I was more hopeful than I am now,” Penrod said. 

This is just the beginning of the five-year strategic plan, and who knows whether this will completely tank CCSD or make it better.