School Board Again Eyes Break From Letter Grades

By: Alex Scofield
Published: 03/05/10

The Bourne school district this week took a step forward in its plans to do away with letter grades, and instead, implement standards-based reporting.

The school committee this week approved an agreement with the Bourne Educators Association that would next year replace letter grades with what administrators consider a more accurate and informative reporting system.

Through the standards-based system, teachers would send home a more detailed picture of the child’s ability to meet academic standards, which had been determined by the middle school’s faculty.

Under the new system, instead of sending home report cards with the traditional As, Bs and Cs, teachers would send parents a rubric that would rank a student’s ability to grasp concepts on a scale that ranged from “warning” to “advanced.”

The new grading system was supposed to have been implemented in the second grading semester of this school year, but was held up by parents who said they thought the process was being pushed through too quickly.

Parents said they had not been given enough time to weigh in on what they considered a drastic change to the middle school’s grading system.

They also argued that the grading system was too vague, and without the opportunity to earn an ‘A,’ their children would lose motivation.

School Committee Chairman Richard A. Lavoie this week said that through a series of meetings between administrators, teachers and parents, most of the concerns about the new system had been addressed.

“There have been many meetings with administrators, the teachers union and parents,” Mr. Lavoie said. “Everybody understands what’s going on now.”

School committee member Jay O’Hara said the next step toward implementing standards-based reporting at the school would be for the school committee and the Bourne Educators Association to both approve the actual standards-based report card.

He said the card will be up for review by the school committee’s curriculum subcommittee later this month.

1 Responses to "School Board Again Eyes Break From Letter Grades"

1. dch.2@netzero.net says: 03/12/10
   

   Congratulations are due those parents in Bourne who object to the departure from the grading system that more accurately measures acedemic performance. The no grade approach is an attempt by progressive/ socialist acedemia to dumb down performance standard measurements. Perhaps they have seen through the smoke and mirrors to the real agenda. That agenda is the need to restructure performance measurement to lessen the impact on alleged fragile sensibilities (self esteem) while sacrificing the accurate measurement and recognition of those who achieve acedemic excellence. It is more of the same garbage that accepts the idea of scoring a competitive game is not politically correct and could be offensive to a moron. School committees continue to buy into socialistic/progressive educational systems designed to promote mediocrity and denigrate superior acedemic performance. If you believe that government education is for or about educating children as it's primary thrust you are incorrect. It is all about tenure, mediocrity, political correctness, and a promotion of an agenda that is destructive to any sense of national identity by the corruption of historical facts. A private school education is the only reasonable alternative if a parent is interested in acedemic achievment. Don C. Hayward Monument Beach