San Benito High School District’s goal to reduce students’ frequency of “F” scores comes with good intentions – and has potential to improve some individuals’ academic achievement – but officials should heed the response from teachers concerned that the means to an end may lead to grade inflation and an artificial appearance of overall improvement.
The district also should incorporate this program into a broader, three-pronged approach that targets the failure rate by not only improving communication with teachers who most frequently give out the “F” grades, but also with students who most frequently fail and parents of those kids.
The district recently implemented the new policy as a strategy to reduce the failure rate by 40 percent. It means teachers who give 15 percent or more “F” grades during a grading period must meet with district administrators to justify the marks and identify strategies to increase improve students’ scores.
Cutting back on the number of failing grades is a positive and necessary goal for the district to continually pursue.
In implementing the policy, high school officials should address concerns that some teachers may feel intimidated into giving higher scores by making the program’s expectations clear: that this isn’t a signal to give out higher, unearned grades just to reach the 40 percent goal; that it isn’t a reprimand against teachers; and that it’s merely a strategy to improve the learning environment.
District trustees acknowledged there’s a danger that some grades might be unjustly inflated, and high school administrators should be ultra-conscious of that as this change proceeds.
“I think it’s important that you look at the failure rates along with everything else, because if you’re failing a lot of kids, you’re not doing something right,” Trustee Steve DeLay said in last week’s Free Lance story.
He’s right.
But it’s a hard line to substantiate. Because on an individual basis, the opposite is possible, too, that some teachers might not be giving out enough “F” grades.
After all, if a kid passes and doesn’t learn what he or she is intended to, that’s even less productive than failing a student who’s on the fence.
The brunt of the focus, ultimately, should be on the students who habitually fail and the parents who aren’t doing enough to get involved in their children’s academic lives.
To its credit, the district has made strides toward cutting back on habitual truancy – one of the primary reasons for habitual failure – and increasing opportunities for parents to stay up-to-date on their kids’ progress, or lack there of. The school’s two electronic systems – one for automatic, multiple phone calls to parents when their kids miss classes and another that allows parents easy online access to their students’ grades – both should help to that end.
But if the district wants to target failure at its core – that being the level of one’s comprehension, and not as much the letter grade given out to gauge it – pressure needs to be increased on parents of poorly performing students, and the students themselves must learn to take more responsibility for their insufficient work.
