It Just May Not Make the Grade : L.A. schools revise the grading system--but is it for the better?

It looks as if the proverbial train already has left the station, so parents of children in the Los Angeles Unified School District just have to hope the new grading system works out.

But we have some serious doubts that it will.

The new system, approved unanimously in the spring by the Board of Education, was recommended by a committee of parents, teachers and administrators who worked for two years to revamp the elementary school grading system. Proponents of change said the old system was too broad and only listed general types of study; the new report card will be more specific and will focus on basic performance in course work.

The result is likely to be more high marks for more students, since in the past many teachers reserved their highest grades for those who outperformed expectations; now, teachers will be instructed to give the highest marks to students who have mastered a subject as expected at their grade level.

Maybe we’re old-fashioned, but this doesn’t sit too well. It doesn’t sound as if there’s much of a way for a teacher to indicate if a student is doing truly exceptional work, only if he or she is meeting basic expectations. Sounds minimalist to us.

Maybe the system just needs more explaining. But if what happened at Hazeltine Avenue School in Van Nuys is any indication, we’re not alone in our confusion. Hazeltine was one of the schools that has participated for the last two years in a pilot program trying out the new grading system. According to principal Pat Abney, the overwhelming majority of her teachers didn’t like the new system. For one thing, it apparently takes a lot longer to fill out each card. Worse yet, teachers found the new system was not understandable to parents. Some parents didn’t understand the explanatory handbook, either. So parent-teacher conferences were taken up explaining that “No, we no longer say Outstanding, Good, Satisfactory, Needs Improvement; now we say S--Area of Strength, G--Growth, N-Needs Improvement.”

Well, at least “Needs Improvement” is something we can understand. It just may apply to this grading system.