Too Many Fs? : Mr. Brown’s Fight for the Right to Fail

To Larry Brown, the matter seemed uncomplicated.

His eighth-grade earth science students at Blennerhassett Junior High School wouldn’t do their homework or study for tests, so he wouldn’t give them passing grades. If he didn’t maintain standards, where would the kids learn them? So what if 60% of his students drew a D or an F? Who could object?

As it happens, plenty of people. The tumult has been going on here now for 18 months.

The school principal, Steve Summers, criticized Brown’s grade distribution in several written evaluations and finally gave him a sub-par rating. Summers also issued an “improvement plan” that called for Brown to “either change his expectations or lower his grade scale” and to limit the proportion of Ds and Fs to no more than 25% of his students.

Stand Drew Criticism

The majority of Brown’s teaching colleagues have lined up with the principal. In February, they wrote a letter defending their school’s “high standards” and denouncing the “one-sided, isolated views of one faculty member.”

Brown, in turn, has filed a grievance, forced two state hearings, and aroused an outcry of support for his stand. Newspaper editorials have rallied to his cause. Dozens and dozens of encouraging letters from teachers and others across the country have filled his mailbox.

Stick to your guns, the letters say over and over in one way or another. You are not alone. We have gone through the same experience. The same thing has happened to us.

It is fair to say that Larry Brown, right or wrong, has struck a sensitive nerve. The grades dispute here highlights emotional issues about the state of public schools, the performance of students and the responsibility of teachers.

Report Cited ‘Mediocrity’

These are concerns that were placed under a strong spotlight in 1983, in the National Commission on Excellence in Education’s report, “A Nation at Risk.” The report on public schools noted a “rising tide of mediocrity” and a “quite shocking collapse in student performance.” It called for longer school hours and “far more” homework, and it spawned all manner of regional reports, state legislative action, local commissions and tough reforms.

In Parkersburg, however, the debate has taken a decidedly different form.

The low grades of Larry Brown’s students, the principal and many teachers suggest, reflect more on Brown than on the students.

“We believe that teachers and students have a joint responsibility for learning,” wrote 27 of the school’s 39 teachers in their open letter. “Student achievement is directly related to instructional practices. . . . A teacher must find a method that works, instead of shifting all responsibility for learning to the student.”

Not so, Brown replied.

“The implication is that it is up to me for each student to succeed,” he said, “but there are too many factors out of my control for that to be true. I cannot force 100 students to take the textbook home at night. Students must have inner motivations and family guidance. In recent times we have seen students coming along who are not expected to do work, who do not do work, and they have been allowed to get away with that at home and elsewhere.”

Whatever one might think of Brown, most would agree that he is intensely involved in teaching.

On one recent afternoon, after a full day of classes, he drove six hours round trip to southern West Virginia to deliver a five-minute speech to 35 state delegates at a regional teachers’ union meeting. He is president of the Wood County Education Assn., and was then running for president of the statewide organization.

Talks With Students

He started out late for the journey, he said, because this was report card day and a number of students wanted to stay after school to discuss their grades. Most are from middle-class families, a good number are college-bound, and more of them come from outlying rural areas than from the town of Parkersburg.

“The kids were upset,” Brown said. “One boy couldn’t understand how he went from a C three weeks ago to an F today. Well, he didn’t turn in his exercise book, with all his class paper work for the six-week period. That’s a zero. That pulls the average down. I really believe if students try, they can get passing grades. They get Ds and Fs because they don’t do the work.”

As he drove, Brown continued talking. Now 40 and married with three children, he has taught in the area for 17 years, the last 12 in his current post.

The whole nature of students’ relationships to teachers and schools is changing, he said. Only four of 18 in one class turned in a homework assignment that was mostly multiple choice and matching questions. Three students turned up the last period without textbooks. Two had left them in their lockers, and one hadn’t had his book for three weeks.

Resistance to Work

Some students won’t take the book home even if they are told they will be tested on specific pages. They come in the next day, score 14 out of 50 points, then ask why they’re getting a D. Suggest to some that they do something and they stare at you like you’re a blank wall, or they talk back: “Why should I? I don’t have to.”

Brown uses all the visual materials and demonstrations he can, he said. He drives his car up and down the school’s curving front driveway, honking the horn to illustrate the Doppler effect--but he also insists on teaching the vocabulary of science.

Words mean more than just words. A meteoroid is a particle out in space; a meteor is the same thing in the atmosphere; a meteorite is one that has fallen to earth. Language expands a kid’s world, but his students just complain that he uses too many big words.

What can he do? he asked. He’d like to see higher grades in his classes--for one thing, it would take the heat off him--but he won’t just inflate grades for appearance’s sake.

“It doesn’t mean anything if the student does nothing and gets a B,” Brown said. “He knows it. He develops a sense (that) maybe I can do even less the next six weeks.”

Praise From Colleague

A few here regard Brown as a heroic crusader. Charles Keitch, a health instructor who conducts classes across the hall from Brown, said he sometimes can hear Brown’s lectures. Keitch admires the amount of information Brown tries to give his students. He thinks Brown makes a tremendous effort to get kids to learn. He cannot understand how anyone would dispute the notion that a student who fails to do his homework should get a D or an F.

“Larry just won’t compromise,” Keitch said. “He holds a set of standards, keeps to them absolutely. He’s a person who goes out and does what he believes in. He’s a man who feels strongly, tries to get things done.”

The majority of his colleagues simply avoid the subject of Brown’s teaching, however. They do not have much to say about him. When pressed, they sometimes use descriptive terms such as confrontational and strident , and some hint that Brown has a problem dealing with students. Questions on why Brown is taking such a strong stand often are met with shrugs. “I don’t know,” more than one said, without elaboration.

In the community at large, there has in fact been little debate of the issues Brown has tried to raise. But for a few quiet complaints to the principal and one or two expressions of support for Brown’s stand on homework, the parents have remained silent.

Some suggest that the extremity of Brown’s position caused him to be ignored from the start. The word aberrant is regularly invoked to describe his grading pattern, but mostly, the lack of reaction seems to suggest that people here are not even aware of the dispute. After all, it is said, the local paper carried only a few lines of the story, and most readers go straight to the sports anyway. This is just not a big deal locally.

“Parents I’ve talked to don’t want to get into this,” said Summers, the principal. “They tell me they’ll just leave it to my judgment. I wouldn’t want you to think they don’t get involved--I have over 500 coming to our sports banquet, where we honor the year’s athletic teams. I have good support. They just haven’t chosen to get involved in this debate.”

Brown may have lifted his arms, a private person campaigning for public standards, but the heavens have not opened.

Parkersburg is a conservative community of about 40,000 people in West Virginia’s northwestern corner. The community, settled in 1773, sees itself as something apart from the poverty that colors the rest of the state, and for good reason. There is not a coal mine within miles. The region is a center of more than 100 industries, including glass, chemical and metal plants, that provide a wealth of both white-collar and blue-collar jobs. Just beyond the plants are acre after acre of rolling green farmland, another source of many jobs.

Blennerhassett Junior High, built just a dozen years ago to accommodate the growing population, is a clean complex of modern, glass-walled classrooms and bright open spaces. People here take pride in having the nicest school in Wood County, and they don’t hesitate to suggest that it is one of the nicest in all of West Virginia. They point with pride to the 812-seat auditorium with carpeting and upholstered seats, the fully equipped gymnasium and the school’s central air conditioning.

People also take pride in the students’ accomplishments. Conversations about the Brown conflict often drift toward mention of the school’s state science fair winner or the county journalism awards or the above-average percentiles the student body scored in the latest standardized tests.

In this setting, Brown’s revolt ended up being played out not in the arena of public opinion, but in the extended bureaucracy of the state educational system.

There the debate quickly shifted from grades and academic standards to something far different. The argument became a legal one between the school board and the teacher’s union about a school’s right to consider grade distribution in evaluating a teacher’s performance.

System Became the Issue

“Larry Brown as an individual is not the important issue,” said William Staats, Wood County superintendent of education, over breakfast recently. “The issue is the right of authorities to evaluate teachers and take corrective action. The large issue is the state teachers’ union. The thing is not Brown.”

The conflict began when Summers drafted his annual written evaluation of Brown in May, 1984.

To the principal, by most accounts a soft-spoken and mild-mannered administrator, the matter seemed clear: Something had to be wrong with Brown’s approach if he kept giving so many low grades term after term.

The other teachers’ classes averaged only 22% Ds and Fs. When students get poor grades, they aren’t receiving rewards for their efforts in class. They get discouraged and don’t try as hard. Then it’s difficult to get the kids to do things like homework. If you set standards for students, it becomes your job to help them reach those standards. You can’t just set the high-jump bar at 12 feet, you’ve got to show them how to get over it.

Standards were getting confused with grades, Summers reasoned. He cared about standards, but he didn’t view this as a standards issue. This was about the need to do fair things for the kids, to help them to reach higher levels. He would not ask Brown to water down his course material. He would merely ask him to change his philosophy about grading, to teach the same thing but pass out a different type of reward.

In his 1984 evaluation, the principal wrote that Brown has “a good, probing, questioning and thoughtful interaction with his students. He uses a variety of activities during the class period to keep the students’ interest and to occupy them with meaningful work. Larry has a good working relationship with his students, other teachers and the school administration.”

But Summers had a suggestion: “I recommend that he evaluate his distribution of grades or difficulty of tests that govern his grade distribution, whichever is applicable.”

Summers would repeat that written suggestion three more times over the next two years. By the second time, Brown was annoyed enough to offer a written response, for the record. He wanted it known that he had, indeed, examined his grading method. In fact, he had done some math.

If his students had simply turned in assigned homework, 143 who got Ds would have received Cs--more than 20% of all the grades he issued. And 114 of the Fs would have been Ds--more than 16%.

“It is my conclusion,” he wrote, “that the majority of the low grades are the result of the students’ failure to do assigned work and not some opportunity that I, as the teacher, may control without the wholesale scaling (up) of grades.”

In May, 1986, the principal gave Brown a “does not meet performance standards” in one category of his annual evaluation--the one labeled “monitors student progress toward learning outcomes.”

In a “plan for improvement” attached to the evaluation, Summers wrote: “Mr. Brown must improve his grade distribution. It should be more in line with grade distributions of other teachers of the same level courses. The number of Ds and Fs should be no more than 25% of total grades assigned. (I) will continue to encourage Mr. Brown to either change his expectations of students or lower his grade scale in order for Mr. Brown to be more in line with other teachers at BJHS.”

The formal grievance Brown promptly filed worked itself unsuccessfully through a local Wood County hearing and ended up in a second hearing last January before state examiner Nedra Koval.

Koval could not help but notice that some of the other Blennerhassett teachers’ grade distributions suggested a pattern that was just the reverse of Brown’s. They seemed to give as many A’s and Bs as Brown gave Ds and Fs. This was particularly so in the case of one English teacher. No, it emerged during questioning, that English teacher had not been placed on a plan of improvement. Nor had that teacher been ordered to limit the ratio of A’s and Bs in his classes to 25%.

Koval also noticed something else. The test scores of Brown’s students who had done their homework assignments still were very low. The six students with the best homework records had received D or F on their tests. Some received Ds for their final course grade. I will just note that, Koval said.

As all parties waited for the examiner’s decision in the days following the hearing, the general indifference to the Brown dispute suddenly gave way to a particularly intense response. It came not from the general community, though. It came from Brown’s fellow teachers.

Other Teachers Miffed

It had not occurred to Brown that his statements might offend his colleagues, but it was not surprising that they did. The unavoidable implication of Brown’s position, after all, was that the other teachers were not upholding standards--that they were softening grades, perhaps in the face of administrative pressure.

That is how it seemed to Steve Barksdale, a social studies teacher for 16 years. The notion seemed to him false and unwarranted. That it was given any currency at all left him deeply upset. Barksdale put his signature first on the letter that had started circulating among teachers after the state hearing. Twenty-six other teachers on the faculty of 39 added their names, and the letter was mailed to local newspaper editors in February.

The letter read: “We have never been forced or even encouraged by the principal to ‘lower our standards’. . . . Teachers at Blennerhassett Junior High set high standards for student achievement. Most students achieve. When some do not, we take appropriate measures--both student-wise and teacher-wise--to improve.”

So, in time, there was a debate of sorts. A couple of West Virginia newspaper editorialists--not at the local daily--cleared their throats. Incredible, they said. The educational Establishment is demanding mediocrity from an intense teacher who tried to instill superior learning. What is wrong with a teacher who wants his students to complete their homework assignments on time?

Most striking and telling of all, though, were the dozens of letters that flowed in from other parts of the country. Teachers, parents, lawyers, businessmen, innkeepers, laborers--all with much the same message.

They admired and were refreshed by Brown’s courage. They wanted to encourage him, to urge him not to cave in. The country is disintegrating because nothing is expected or required of students. Young people are being taught that they can move through life without making much effort. Teachers from everywhere--Maine, California, Indiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Delaware, Wisconsin, Idaho--reported having experiences similar to Brown’s.

One guidance counselor at a high school in Florida reported that 58% of her 9th and 10th graders carried a grade-point average below 2.0, and many of them, flat out, won’t do school work.

An innkeeper in New England, a former teacher who gave up in disgust, offered Brown a free weekend sojourn.

A retired schoolteacher from New Jersey, a stranger, drove here just to meet Brown.

Perhaps because of this outpouring of support, Brown was not entirely prepared for the decision that the West Virginia Education Employees Grievance Board finally made on May 6.

Examiner Koval denied Brown’s grievance and upheld Summers’ evaluation. After all was said and done, this had been a question for the educational bureaucracy, and the decision clearly hinged on matters particular to that system.

Koval ruled that state board of education policy permits the inclusion of indicators such as a teacher’s grading patterns in preparing evaluations. School officials are permitted some latitude in the evaluation of a teacher, as long as the evaluation is open, honest and not arbitrary. The grievance board should not intrude into evaluations unless there is evidence of abuse of discretion. Only the plan for improvement had to be revised, since the 25% limit on Ds and Fs did violate official Wood County school policy.

For a time, it seemed the uprising of Larry Brown was over.

He felt devastated. His wife was increasingly distressed. Some rebels end up as heroes, but Brown found himself increasingly cast as an isolated oddity, at best. It might be said that a person who tilts alone against a system must be more stubborn and self-righteous than heroic, but Brown was not sure it was worth all the hassle.

Then, one morning recently, he rose in the classroom to collect a homework assignment. Only 10 of the 18 students had anything to offer.

How can I be held accountable for an aberrant grade distribution, Brown told himself, as long as students keep that up? It would be very bad now to back away from principles. In reality, we teach more by what we do than what we say.

He could not participate in drafting a revised improvement plan, he decided, since he did not see the need for one. He would instead appeal the examiner’s ruling to the county circuit court in Charleston, the state capital. His revolt would continue.

“I can’t see capitulation unless I can be convinced I’m absolutely wrong,” Brown said one recent afternoon.

“No one has convinced me yet.”