This story was reported and written by WHRO media partner Williamsburg Watch.
To stir up controversy in a community, talk about making changes to the traditional grading system, as the Williamsburg-James City County schools are doing.
The schools have been piloting a variety of new grading systems for the past two years, said Courtney Mompoint, director of secondary curriculum and instruction.
It would be a change from the current grading system, with a traditional 0-100 point grading scale that is averaged over the course of a school year. Instead, school officials said, they want to help students master subject matter in the way they are most comfortable using and give them continuous feedback on what they need to succeed.
York County schools are not looking at grading pilots, School Chair Kimberly S. Goodwin said.
Among the concepts the WJCC schools looked at:
- Standards-based grading that explains what topics students must master over time and allows them re-does until they get it right
- A 50-100 grading scale
- Allowing students to present portfolios of work in lieu of testing
- A system of rewards that takes its cues from video games
Mompoint’s boss, Superintendent Daniel F. Keever, recognizes changing grading procedures is the third rail of education and requires a lot of proselytizing.
“Sometimes people think, well, you're talking about lowering the standards…. that's absolutely not what we're interested in doing,” Keever said. “What we're interested in doing is (creating) a more consistent system whereby students that are…taking the same course, in the same school, have a similar opportunity to earn marks based on mastery of the work submitted.”
Right now different teachers have different approaches to how they grade work, he explained. Some allow students to get extra credit while another educator teaching the same course in the same grade may not, allowing one group the chance to get better grades.
Mompoint said the goal is to have consistent practices across a school so that students and their parents understand what is expected of students and how they will be measured.
They said educators’ goals should be to prepare students for careers and higher education, not try to catch them doing something wrong.
“In the world of work, usually if you make one mistake, you don't get fired,” Keever said. “You get to learn from that mistake and try to improve so you don't do it again.”
“The end goal is to ensure that you've actually mastered that standard…it gives the students an opportunity to say, you know, I might not have done it well this time, but now my teacher's given me feedback, I know how to do better the next time…if you think about the world of athletics, that's what practice is for.”
A standards-based system would eliminate traditional grades, Mompoint said. Teachers would agree on the knowledge students should master and assess the students based on whether they did so. A student who does not understand the material would be allowed to do additional work until he attains mastery.
A 50-100 grading scale would eliminate the large range between failing and passing, both educators said: even if you achieve 60 points you still get an F, while each higher grade requires only 10 more points to achieve.
“It artificially places a stronger value on failure than it does on success.” Keever said. “We want students to have the opportunity to demonstrate success.”
Gamification takes its cue from video games, allowing tokens and higher levels to encourage students to work harder. It’s not currently being pursued, Mompoint said.
The portfolio theory allows students to opt out of using a test for their grade, substituting a portfolio of work for teachers to assess.
School work groups spoke with dozens of parents, teachers and students to get their feedback on current grading practices, she said. The majority of participants agreed students should have clear goals to master, more feedback to help them improve, and a chance to retake tests or redo their work.
Parents want to know more specifically what is driving the grades, Mompoint said.
Keever acknowledged that providing more feedback can increase teacher workloads, and the schools are looking at various software systems that can help them with the task.
Students and parents aren’t the only stakeholders the schools must convince, Mompoint noted. Many teachers were initially skeptical of changing the way they grade.
Mompoint plans to continue to expand pilot programs across the school system next year. But she said no school will be forced to do a pilot. There is still a lot of discussion and education to do, she said.
“It's not a diminishing of accountability or standards, “ Keever emphasized. “It is working very diligently to hold students to a high standard as they show us in various forms what they learned.”
Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools is a member of the Hampton Roads Educational Telecommunications Association, which holds WHRO's broadcast license.
