Compton District Told to Scrap New Grading System

A judge on Thursday ordered the Compton Unified School District to stop using a new grading system that factors standardized test scores and a reading assessment into the marks awarded on student report cards.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs ruled that the district’s practice of altering grades given by teachers violates state regulations.

District spokesman Fausto Capobianco said the new system was established to end grade inflation, which allows too many students to graduate without mastering basic writing and math skills. He said the district will appeal the ruling.

The system weighs a teacher’s evaluation along with other measures of achievement. Forty percent of a student’s final grade is based on the teacher’s assessment, 40% on a district writing exam and 20% on a national test.

In the lawsuit, attorney Cheryl Turner argued that the state education code allows teachers’ grades to be changed only in the case of “clerical or mechanical mistake, fraud, bad faith or incompetence.” She also contended that the district’s writing exam was being improperly used as a measure of students’ achievement in other subjects, such as math and art.

Capobianco said the district is developing assessments for other subjects. In the meantime, “We feel that the matrix is a valid, objective measure of grading,” he said.