SCHENECTADY — The Schenectady Board of Education unanimously approved the district’s new grading policy during its Wednesday night meeting at Mont Pleasant Middle School, with the district wide policy set to switch grading from a numerical to alphabetical grading system and to remove attendance and behavioral considerations from a students’ course grade.
The district, which did not previously have a codified grading policy, aims to reduce bias in grading with the new system while emphasizing student growth over the course of a grading period.
“One of the major fundamental pieces of this is to remove some biases and not allow one teacher to use one thing differently than another teacher,” Schenectady City Schools Superintendent Anibal Soler, Jr. said on Friday. “The other piece was to also bring some consistency as a whole and for us to be able to know that when a kid earns an A, that they truly know the information to be successful in any type of assessment in that class — whether it’s Regents or local assessment.”
With the policy approved after the school year was already underway, Soler said that the new guidelines will be rolled out throughout the rest of the 2023-2024 school year.
“I think there are things we can do right now in terms of educating teachers and principals,” he said. “That’s the process we’re going to take now that this board policy has been adopted, we’re going to bring it to our principals next and educate them on the language and what the policy says and doesn’t say. Then talk about procedures and regulations. Our hope is that by January, the entire system is aware of this policy.”
Soler added that he believes the bigger challenge will be educating students and parents about the new district grading policy.
Going forward, district report cards will include three indicators — overall grades for each class as well as notes for attendance and student behavior.
During Wednesday’s meeting, school board member Vivian Parsons presented an amendment to the grading policy that gained majority support of the board, with the added language reading, “Teachers may require students to complete prior missing assignments before students are able to retake an assessment for a new grade.”
Soler said during the meeting that he was neutral on the proposed amendment, but added that the district’s policy would be stricter than the state, which allows students to sign up to take state assessments without even passing a course in a particular subject. The amendment will give Schenectady teachers the discretion to require students in their classroom to hand in missing assignments before taking a test in the class.
“What is the point of giving assignments if they’re not going to mean anything after they’ve been given or they have not been completed?” Parsons asked during the meeting.
Parsons, Board of Education President Bernice Rivera, Board Vice President Nohelani Etienne and school board members Amanda Sponable-Pantalone supported the approved amendment, with school board members Erica Brockmyer Cathy Lewis and Jamaica Miles opposing the addition.
Following the amendment vote, Miles thanked the district staff that had been working on the grading policy for over a decade.
“We did all of that work and in the end we threw in a little bias in a policy to address bias,” she said of the amendment.
“When you are a hammer, everything to you is a nail,” Parsons replied. “Operating under the assumption of looming potential bias from the very teachers that we respect, honor and trust is entirely unfair all across the board. Just because we want to call something biased, does not mean that it actually is biased.”
Rivera compared the amendment to a soccer player who missed practice who would be required to run suicide sprints before participating in the next game.
“With that one amendment, I see it as giving the student and the teacher the opportunity to provide that practice that is given to other students to give them that practice so that then they can take the assessment again,” she said during the meeting.
Earlier in the Wednesday meeting, Sponable-Pantalone presented three policy amendments for board consideration that were each defeated, with the board member requesting that language be added to the grading policy that would include penalties for students handing in assignments late.
“The point of that is to really hold the students accountable while still giving them support to help them at every step of the way and to make sure that they are as close to that deadline as possible,” she said during the meeting.
The approved grading policy does not penalize students for turning in an individual assignment late, but pupils will not be able to hand in assignments past the end of a given 10-week grading period. If the assignment is not completed by that time frame, the student will be given a failing grade for the work that has not been done. “I’m so worried that just having a separate note on a report card that says, ‘Johnny didn’t get any of his assignments in on time,’ what impact does that really have?” Sponable-Pantalone asked during the meeting.