For Thursday, January 21, 1999 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 694 words

Making the grade

We are in the midst of final exams over at the high school. They started yesterday and will end tomorrow. It's hard to believe the year is half over.

This is when students sweat and teachers tally grades. We all have our own systems. Some use computers, some do it holistically, some use letters, some use points. Grading policies are as varied as religious sects.

Still, there are factors and concerns common to who evaluate pupil performance.

For example: Does work done in week one count as much as work done in week 17? A track star is evaluated during practice, but on the day of the big tournament, if she goes out and wins first place, she gets the gold medal. She is scored by how well she performs at the end of the course. Does it matter if she had a slow start?

I had a master teacher in Hayward whose grading policy reflected this philosophy. She told her junior English students, "Whatever you get on the final exam, that's what you get for the whole semester."

This allowed students to grow and learn, risk trial and error, over the course of the semester and test on the way out the door. The exit exam carried all the weight. It worked for some late bloomers and most of the students who worked hard all year.

However, it also allowed certain phlegmatic and/or advanced students to skip assignments, skip books, postpone effort, pour all their efforts into one final week and one big exam and come out with a big, fat A. I saw kids earn A's who had a string of zeros in the grade book, while several who did all their work came out with B's and C's.

Was the teacher grading the kids on what they had learned from life, or what they had learned from the class? How much does that matter?

If that Hayward teacher had tallied up all the grades from the first day of school and averaged them, many kids' scores would have been different. Is it fairer to gather all their performance scores together?

If we want to go back to the athletic analogy, if football teams fail too many games, they don't get to the playoffs. Their performance from the beginning of the season matters greatly. Each game is like a pass/fail exam.

However, what about the kid who learns something new each time he writes an essay? What if his early essays are terrible, but his most recent essays show real improvement? Does he get a "Most Improved" pin and an averaged score? Or is he measured as the writer he is today?

What about classroom participation? How much weight should be put on active involvement? Should quiet, shy students be marked down for not raising their hands often enough?

What about the hard-working, sincere, honest student with low skills? Do we fail a student who gives 100-percent, but only earns 50?

On Final Exams: We've been asked politely at times in the past as teachers not to put undue or excessive value on our final exams. The ghosts in the hall don't want exit exams that make or break students. Some students don’t test well. Their talents lie elsewhere, in something that perhaps a test cannot capture. In the end, however, it's our professional decision.

O.K. Here's what I do. I gather an averaged grade for the first quarter, and another for the second quarter. Together they tally up to the semester grade. However, the second quarter grade is harder to earn and worth twice as much as the first quarter. The last variable is the final exam.

Students going into the exam with a semester A grade can relax. The final will not affect their grade if they earn at least a C. Students with a semester C going in cannot fail my class, even if they fail the exam. D students who fail the exam fail the class. F students who Ace the exam pass the class.

I'm trying to design it like a vaccine -- aid the weak without damaging the strong. Give me another decade to perfect it.