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New Grading Policy for the 2019/2020 School Year

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The Governing Board has approved a temporary change to the District grading policy for the spring 2020 semester. Students will receive grades of A, B, C, credit or no credit, with the option to choose “credit” in place of a letter grade. In this video, Superintendent Mike Kuhlman gives more details on the new grading policy.

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Hi everybody, I'm Dave Caldwell, Public Relations Officer for the William S. Hart Union High School District and I'm joined by the superintendent of the district, Mr. Mike Kuhlman. The purpose of our message today is to explain the need for temporary grading modifications that was passed by the Governing Board on May 6th. Mr. Kuhlman can you introduce this policy and tell us why this decision was made? - I can I want to say thank you Mr. Caldwell, and thank you to our parents and families. I know this is an important topic for which you have been waiting for clarification so thanks for taking little time with us here today. Briefly I want to introduce the policy that was adopted on May 6th. This temporary policy involves the assignment of marks of A, B, C, Credit and No Credit. Students will have the option of selecting Credit in lieu of letter grades and we're restricting the number of students who can earn No Credit to those students who were previously failing on March 20th. when we began this process. I want to spend just a brief opportunity to share with you why we have started down this road to consider alternate grading practices. I am so very proud of the work of our teachers and our students and our families during this very challenging time. In a matter of 3 business days we've transitioned from having all of our students on campus in classrooms with teachers to a distance learning model. And not every school district across the state of California made that change, indeed it took some several weeks to get the point where we were on March 18th. Every week I learn about some of the creative and resilient ways that teachers and students are adapting to this very challenging time and I'm so very proud of the work that they've done however I think it's important for all of us to face the fact that this is NOT a replacement for good teachers working together with students caring teachers working together with students supporting them in a classroom environment. It's less-than-ideal and despite our best efforts the results of this rapid transition to distance learning is that some students will be disproportionately negatively affected by this process. And let me give you an example of what I mean by that. We have learned through this process that some of our students have family members who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 some students themselves have been diagnosed with COVID-19. We know that families across our community have parents that have been suddenly thrust out of work and what comes with that is the accompanying anxiety over how are we going to pay our bills how are we going to put food on the table. We have many students for which technology is -- access to technology is much more inconsistent than others and despite heroic efforts to put over 4,000 Chromebooks in students hands that the simple fact is that some students do not have the same access that others do that are required for them to be successful in this distance learning experiment. And again our teachers are working as hard as they can and doing some pretty amazing things, but the truth is that it's there are inconsistencies from classroom to classroom from teacher to teacher from student to student such that the system itself that was actually forced upon us has resulted in some students being impacted -- being negatively impacted. That requires us ethically to look at the assignment of grades because we don't want to assign a grade that could negatively impact a student for something that's outside of their control. So that's a little bit of the background of why we begin looking at alternate grading practices. - Is the Hart District making this decision on its own? - Neither the District staff nor the Hart District Governing Board worked unilaterally to make this decision or decided unilaterally to come up with an alternate grading policy. Rather, the California Department of Education the LA County Office of Education State Board of Education and the Governor of California all have called upon all districts throughout the state of California to come up with alternate grading practices to consider ways to ensure that students aren't harmed by this process. So this process of us looking at alternate grading practices began with the state telling us you should consider this option. - So, can you tell us how you made this decision? - Yes, we can talk a little bit about this is a big decision for which people have a lot of different opinions and in order for us to narrow down into something we think was the best for the most students we identified four things that we could all agree upon. The first is that we agree as a district that from the closure to the end of school that we were going to continue teaching and learning because we believe that there is value in the engagement between students and teachers, between the fact they are checking in on a regular basis for which there is a schedule for them to move forward. Not every District started that way back many of them were a several weeks of exploratory extra credit type assignment before return to the essential standards which is something that we've endeavored to focus on from day one. Second, our guiding principle is that we wanted the best of our effort to hold students harmless for things that are outside of their control. In some cases we may know that students have been given their best effort but in other cases we don't and when we don't know that it's really unethical for us to be assigning a penalty grade for a student for something that we actually, we can't be sure was entirely in their control. So we want to do everything we can to hold students harmless. We believe we need to minimize student failures, especially when we recognize and believe that some of those failures maybe a result of something outside of students control. Finally, we need to put together an intervention plan because regardless of what grades or final marks are assigned, this process is imperfect, and there will be gaps in learning that need to be filled as we move forward. I'm thinking of math classes for example where certain concepts build sequentially one piece on another and if students don't master certain concepts they can't move on to the next course. And so, in the months -- in the weeks and months to come we're going to be coming up with a plan to fill in those gaps as we move forward to make sure the students can continue moving on and be successful in the Hart District. - On Wednesday May 6th the Governing Board passed a resolution on this grading policy. Can you tell us what is the decision of the Board? - Yes, I introduced it earlier but I want to talk in a little bit more detail. The alternate grading marks are A, B, C, Credit and No Credit. A student assigned Credit indicates that they have fulfilled that classes graduation requirements and student who receive no credit is not quite the same as a fail. A fail indicates that they're assigned in the class, and they didn't learn the appropriate concepts or didn't do the necessary work for them to actually pass the class. In this particular case No Credit simply means they haven't filled their graduation requirements and they may have to go back and actually fill that in in a Summer School class, or by Potentially retaking the class sometime next year. Students have he option of selecting Credit versus grades in this is important because when a student selects Credit they fulfilled graduation requirements, but it does not weigh into their GPA to the positive or the negative. So if the students working really hard for which is the GPA is very important and this process is such that maybe they didn't have the ability to check in with the teacher in the same way that they would have if they were in a normal school environment and their grade has dropped. Earning credit means that they successfully passed the class I can move, on but it's something that won't negatively impact their GPA. We've assigned this No Credit as safety net for only students that were failing on March 20th. The idea there is that we want to limit the potential number of students who may receive No Credit to those who were on the road there on March 20th when we began this journey. Those same students have every opportunity to raise their grade but only those students who were on that path on March 20th are eligible for receiving No Credit. We've also given a directive to our school sites that there will be no Final Exams, No cumulative Final Exams, because it doesn't make sense to do so in this current environment. Final Exams usually are a cumulative assessment of all that's been learned throughout a specific period of instruction, and because there's so much inconsistency in what's going on we thought it made no sense for us to offer a cumulative Final Exam in a way that might unfairly penalize students in terms of their grades moving forward. Finally we've come up with this new concept of a Flexible Finish Line. What that means is within the last 2 weeks of school we have asked our teachers to ONLY be assigning work that can help a student's grade and for some classes, depending upon the teacher's choice, they may decide to say that a particular students actually has fulfilled their requirements and can be done a little bit early, can actually accept either Credit or the grades that they've completed. That enables the teacher than to focus on a smaller group of students to help those that need to get over the bar into the credit category or for those students that are really working hard to raise their grade. Other teachers those, again who might be teaching math, might need to teach those concepts to the very end on June 4th, as long as they do so in a way that includes assignments that actually don't lower a student's grades. So this concept of a Flexible Finish Line is a two-week period where individual teachers are going to be working with students and the concept here is that both teachers and students will be able to work together to put students in the best possible position to raise their grade and get kids over into that Credit Category. So that's a summary of the revised grading plan for this Quarter 3, Semester 2. - Certainly this was a big decision, can you tell us who was involved in making this decision? - Yes this is a big decision and one for which people have many opinions and so as the result we've ensured that we have involved multiple stakeholders in this process. We've gone to extraordinary efforts to make sure that we're listening to all different groups. We have dozens of meetings that we scheduled between students parents and principals and teachers and the Governing Board, and through that process I believe we we refined this down to something that I think, while imperfect, because it's not possible to come up with a perfect solution in this environment, I think this is a very good one for the students of our community and for the Hart District. - Are we the only district that has made this decision? - All school districts throughout the state of California are grappling with this issue indeed I would share that all all school districts throughout the United States are grappling with this issue. And the overwhelming majority of districts in the state of California have adopted similar policies with similar components to that which was adopted by the Governing Board on May 6th here in the Hart District. Indeed, just this morning I took a quick survey of some of the Union High School Districts in the state of California, those are the districts that have primarily high schools or junior highs and high schools, and all of these for example the quick survey indicated that they have again have similar components to that which were adopting Hart District. Antelope Valley, Natomas, Whittier, San Diegito, El Monte, San Mateo, Campbell, Escondido, Petaluma, and Placer County among others. And one very important piece for families to understand is that the UC system and the CSU systems themselves have also recognized the need for us to adjust our grading systems during this temporary pandemic emergency The UCs and CSUs put out official statements where they have temporarily changed their acceptance policies where they are accepting Credit in lieu of grades for A through G courses being taken by students in high school throughout California. So the UCs and the CSUs, along with several many other colleges throughout California have adopted their their policies to accommodate for the changes that are taking place throughout California, similar to the ones that we've described. - We have over 22,000 students in the Hart District in this new policy affects every single one of them so what do parents and students need to do next? - Parents and students need to give their best effort between now and June 4th to continue checking in according to your schedule, turning in all the work that you can making contact with your teachers, because the decision about whether you want to accept a credit versus a grade does not have to happen before the end of the school year. Teachers are going to teach to the end or going to be a signing their grades and then sometime soon thereafter we will actually make the changes that we're talking about for Credit versus grades, The process for families and students to select Credit in lieu of grades is something that we've established a committee, now that the board has made this decision, the committee will be putting together a streamlined process as efficient as possible that we will roll out to parents in the next several weeks. We want you to understand the policy doesn't require any change on your part you continue working as hard as you can free now and the end of the school year, working together with us to help our students succeed. - Well, thank you for giving us this explanation today Mr. Kuhlman, is there anything further that you would like to add? - I just want to say thanks for everybody that's been a part of this. Thanks to our Governing Board who had, we had some some outstanding conversations to refine this policy down to one that I think we all feel confident in. Thanks all the stakeholders groups and thank you to our parents and students for working with us, for your patience throughout this process, it's certainly a challenging year for the Hart District, challenging year for all of us for all the reasons that we already know, and I'm just so thankful that we are working through this together I'm confident that with these revisions that we're on the right track, and I look forward to the time when hopefully soon we'll be able to welcome students and teachers back on campus and restore a sense of the way things used to be to the Hart District. In the meantime, thanks for your work and I appreciate working together with you during this difficult time. - Well, thank you for your time today Mr. Kuhlman and thank you for joining us today to hear this explanation on the Hart District grading policy that will only be in effect for this 4th Quarter, Second Semester of the 2019-2020 school year. Have a good rest of your day.

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