A New Grading System

An article titled "‘Standards-based growth report’ may replace grades" speaks about Buffalo New York's new grading system. Instead of receiving a traditional report card including grades like A, B, or C, the students are evaluated on 54 "academic areas." It gives students and parents an in-depth, factual look at the skills students are strong and weak in. For English, students are measured on 19 points, including:

• “Identifies meaning by analyzing word structure.”
• “Decodes unfamiliar words.”
• “Uses details from text to make predictions, draw conclusions and support interpretations.”

Some people feel that parents are going to want a grade because Americans are so used to looking at a grade to evaluate themselves. Others believe that “This new model brings us from the minor leagues to the major leagues,” said Michael J. O’Brien, principal of Pfc. Williams J. Grabiarz School of Excellence and a member of the report card committee."

I believe that this model is much better than the traditional report card. After all, grades like A, B, or C are subjective and only reflect the teacher's interpretation of the student's learning. If a student does not receive that many grades and one of the grades is poor, then the student is going to get a lower grade than he or she may expect. However, with the new system, students are evaluated matter-of-factly. “It doesn’t say: ‘Very good job,’ ” Battaglia said. “It’s all about the skills. It’s neutral. It doesn’t praise or blame. It says: ‘This is what is.’ ”

One of the best parts of it is that the skills students are evalated on are the same skills by which we create the educational standards on the Regents Examination. So, if students see what skills they are strong or weak in, they can improve so that they can do better on the Regents exam.

I believe this idea focuses on Renee Hobb's definition of a critical education. If students are learning about media literacy, it is very difficult to grade a student with an A, B, or C because interpretations are all going to be different. Rather, if students are evaluated based on if they can or cannot interpret and analyze information, then they can better work on these extremely important skills. Hobbs believes media literacy is an important tool to make students better thinkers and users of the resources around them. If students are shown that they may be weak in the analyzing skill or reflection skill, then they can become even better by working on those skills.

source: http://www.buffalonews.com/258/story/49829.html