Student Evaluation System Frustrates Teachers, Parents

A new four-point grading system linking student evaluations to state standards is causing consternation among many Los Angeles elementary school teachers and parents who complain that it has been poorly implemented and makes excessive demands, especially on the youngest students.

Teachers and parents seem generally positive about the overall goal of tying grades to the new state standards. But delays in the distribution of materials, inadequate training and the consequent inability of teachers and parents to come to grips with what the new marks mean have created problems.

The complaints are not universal, but have come from many different parts of the district. One of the areas in which parents and teachers have been most vocal in their discontent is the Eagle Rock neighborhood northeast of downtown Los Angeles.

“We are very uncomfortable,” said Janet Davis, a mentor teacher at Toland Way School in Eagle Rock. “The parents are confused. The teachers were upset because the parents were upset. It’s like giving them Ds and they don’t deserve them.”

The dismay centers on complicated scoring guides that lead teachers through the differences between 4s and 3s, which are passing grades, and 2s and 1s, which are not.

In theory, the guides are supposed to spell out what skills a student must have mastered to receive a 3 and which additional skills must have been learned to garner a 4.

But some teachers say that they received the guides too late, and received too little training. Moreover, the district has not yet spelled out how much of each skill must have been mastered by the first progress reports, now being handed out at many schools, and how much can come later in the year.

“I’m concerned about the differences between schools,” said Lyne Avignone, a pre-kindergarten teacher at Toland Way. “Some said these are benchmarks for June; no way they are there now, so no one receives a 4. Other schools decided let’s look at where they are now. They did give 4s. We’re right back to the same subjectiveness where we were before.”

District officials say that they are solving this problem by developing a standards pacing plan. A draft version lists each standard with a monthly schedule showing when it should be studied, mastered and reviewed. It also suggests tests to measure the students’ progress.

“It is a magnificent document,” said Robert Collins, director of curriculum and assessment for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “It just doesn’t exist anywhere else in the state as far as I know.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t yet exist in Los Angeles, either. Collins said the plan will be completed by mid-January, after which teachers will receive more thorough training.

At the school level, frustrated teachers and parents wonder why the help won’t be coming until the middle of the school year.

“It’s something the district should have done for us ahead of time,” said Sandy Bradley, a teacher trainer at Crestwood Street School in San Pedro.

Beyond that confusion, some parents think the standards are too hard and that their children will be scarred by receiving failing grades at an early age.

“They want him to be able to do algebra and read paragraphs--a kindergartner!” said Alan Young, whose son attends Toland Way. “They should be playing. It looks to me like we’re going to be tagging a lot of kids.”

District officials concede that there have been rough spots in preparing and distributing the new grading materials, but they promise to have those worked out for the second grading cycle when poor marks will actually count.

The district adopted a new elementary school report card as part of its program to end social promotion. Officials said the switch from the traditional A-through-F system to a point system with only four levels would eliminate the ambiguity of the C, which they said was a catchall passing grade for students who weren’t meeting the standard.

Some teachers have found the new system helpful and credit it for changing the way parents look at their children’s work.

“I think this system is making the child more accountable, and the parent too,” said Cynthia Delameter, who teaches at Leland Street School in San Pedro. “Every parent was very eager to know what their child needed to do to make a 3 or a 4. I found it positive in that sense.”

But the complicated scoring guide left many baffled.

For each area of study it lists several standards, with slightly different wording for each level of proficiency.

In kindergarten, for example, there are six standards in history/social sciences. One of them specifies that a student receiving a 4 “matches complex descriptions of work that people do and the names of those jobs with examples from the school, local community, and historical accounts.”

For a 3, the student only needs to make “simple descriptions.” A 2 requires “some of the descriptions. The student who receives a 1 “does not match.”

Some teachers thought this standard was altogether too demanding for a kindergartner.

Other teachers and parents object that the printed explanations handed to parents don’t match the detail the teachers use.

“The scoring guide shows that fourth-grade students in math should add, subtract, multiply and divide whole numbers and use concepts of negative numbers correctly,” said Gail Ivens, PTA president at Eagle Rock School. “The parent information doesn’t say anything about negative numbers. To my knowledge, that is not necessarily part of what fourth-graders are taught.”

The new standards are also taxing teachers to spend time developing their own curriculum.

“There is a lot to cover,” said Cheri Pratt, a teacher at Canoga Park School. “No, we don’t have all the materials.”

Pratt and teachers at several other schools said they get the materials they need from diverse sources, including school libraries and the Internet, and sometimes they purchase them at educational materials stores.

“You can’t let the textbook drive the curriculum,” said Bradley of Crestwood School. “You do have to search out other materials to teach that with.”