Despite a backlash from scores of families, Novato Unified School District will switch from letter grades to credit/no credit grading for middle and high school students this spring to offset remote learning struggles during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Moving to a credit/no credit system is a kind choice at a time when our society needs kindness,” Kris Cosca, the district superintendent, wrote in a letter to school families on Thursday. “It gives grace to our students, many of whom are struggling through circumstances most of us cannot understand and they cannot control. It gives grace to our teachers who know they aren’t providing all of the interventions our students need.”
Novato Unified is Marin’s largest school district, with about 7,600 students, of which about 40% are low-income, Cosca said. The challenges of internet connectivity and remote learning for low-income families during the virus crisis threaten to “grow the achievement gap” even larger between them and high-achieving NUSD students who have technology in place and are more at ease with remote instruction, Cosca said.
“This is the biggest equity issue in schools right now,” he said.
Novato High School parent Jen Storey said she didn’t understand why Cosca was not considering a student choice option as recommended by Mary Jane Burke, Marin County superintendent of schools.
Burke suggested this week that each student be given the choice of a letter grade as of March 16, the last day of in-person school before the shelter-in-place order, or credit/no credit.
“Why are you abandoning coordinating with the other Marin public schools and seemingly going against the direction of Marin’s own superintendent?” Storey wrote in an email to Cosca this week.
Marin’s two other largest districts — San Rafael City Schools and the Tamalpais Union High School District — have not made a decision on grading. San Rafael trustees are expected to decide at their April 27 board meeting.
Storey’s comments were among scores of letters, chat posts and questions this week to Cosca, who talked about grading, remote learning and other topics in an online session Tuesday. Cosca said he received more than 200 emails with questions for the session.
“There’s no perfect answer,” Cosca said Thursday. “We’ve explored them all.”
Cosca said he has done extensive research with colleges — including those in the University of California system, Harvard and Stanford — all of which said they are prepared to accept credit/no credit grades with no harm to any student. They did not have the same reaction to the “student choice” option, he said.
“We found only one option that could potentially have a negative impact on students’ applications,” Cosca said in his letter to parents. “This was a grading methodology wherein students had a choice to retain their grade at the date of closure or choose credit/no credit.”
Cosca said he was “strongly considering that option” until “we got feedback from a University of California, Berkeley admissions officer that this option could possibly harm our students’ applications as it would be more challenging for them to understand and implement fairly.”
Cosca said he and other district officials are also researching whether dropping letter grades diminishes students’ motivation.
Ultimately, Cosca said, his preference would have been for California education officials to copy the state of Oregon. It is requiring high schools to move from letter grades to pass/incomplete for freshmen, sophomores and juniors for the rest of the academic year. Seniors who were on track to graduate in March will be allowed to graduate as normal.
California education officials have not given a blanket statewide requirement. Instead, they are saying that it is a local decision on specifics — but that districts must guarantee that all students should be “held harmless” for the rest of the current term.
That is leaving room for all sorts of options — including giving every child an “A,” a plan being considered in San Francisco public schools. San Diego public schools are keeping letter grades but are guaranteeing that no child’s grade would go down from the level it was when schools closed in March.
Cosca said giving everyone an “A” might risk “cheapening” the grades so that they become meaningless.
As to elementary grading, Cosca said the district and teachers have agreed that elementary students will not be receiving a traditional “report card” at the end of the year. The actual form of evaluations is still to be decided, he said.
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April 17, 2020 at 07:07AM
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Novato schools scrap letter grading during pandemic - Marin Independent Journal
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