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Brunswick teacher Lynette Miller can see images of several
students and parents as she talks to
them on Google Meet for her daily
"office hours." Her district has stopped giving students normal
A-F
grades the rest of this school year and shifted to a Pass/Fail system
instead.
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Cleveland Plain Dealer
Schools skip A-F grades during coronavirus disruption, make classes pass/fail
Posted Apr 10, 2020
By Patrick O'Donnell
PARMA, Ohio – Parma schools Superintendent Charles Smialek thinks his
schools are doing the best they can to teach students remotely amid the
coronavirus chaos, but he’s not comfortable grading student work with
all the disruptions.
So he and the district have tossed aside normal grading practices and
will grade students on a pass/fail basis for the rest of this school
year, a practice that a growing number of districts nationwide have
added to their plans to cope with coronavirus. In most cases, districts
are issuing formal grades through the third quarter of the year, then
not grading the last quarter.
“What we are conducting right now is an experiment in a dramatically
different mode of instruction, hatched under very adverse
circumstances,” Smialek said. “We do not want to subject an indicator
as important as a student's grade-point average to such experimental
conditions."
The pandemic has disrupted normal education patterns in many ways this
spring, both for colleges and K-12 schools, which have had to shut down
in-person classes and now teach online or by handout. Since schools
have differing abilities to provide lessons and students have wildly
different chances to access them, any uniformity has become a lost
cause, educators say.
Colleges were the first to either make all grades pass/fail this
semester or let students choose that option, sometimes even at the end
of a course. Ohio State University, Oberlin College, Cleveland State
University and Case Western Reserve University are among Ohio schools
using an expanded pass/fail plan this semester, along with top-ranked
national universities like Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
With colleges going the pass/fail route, Hawken School, a private college preparatory school, made the shift late in March.
“It is driven by necessity, particularly given the challenge of grading
students accurately or fairly as we pivot to remote learning,” said D.
Scott Looney, Hawken’s Head of School, in a letter to parents. “In
addition, we feel this important adjustment will lower pressure on both
students and faculty as we all face the many obstacles resulting from
this pandemic.”
“Our students need a lot of things right now,” he added. “But grading pressure is not one of them.”
In making the announcement, Looney assured parents it would not hurt students’ chances of acceptance to college.
Though some states have recommended pass/fail grades for the final
quarter of the school year, including Connecticut and New Mexico, Ohio
has left it up to each district.
“Local school districts have the flexibility to determine how that will
be handled given that each school district has its own unique plan for
how to reach students during this time,” Ohio Department of Education
spokesperson Mandy Minick told The Plain Dealer. “There is an
expectation that educators are reaching out to students to provide some
form of feedback. We encourage educators to connect with students
remotely on a regular basis as is feasible (phone, email, video
chats/conferences – whatever works best given the necessary social
distancing guidelines).”
With the option open, several local districts have made the shift to pass/fail, including Brunswick and Kent.
The Cleveland school district is also not grading student work for the
remainder of the school year, while the Lorain schools, and several
Portage County districts, are grading high school students, but not
students in kindergarten through 8th grade.
A major concern? Hurting students’ chances at scholarships that rely on
grade-point averages or affecting eligibility for sports teams under
Ohio High School Athletic Association rules.
Chagrin Falls is keeping normal grading at his schools, both to keep
consistency and to avoid hurting students’ ability to play on teams in
the fall.
“We do not want to put something in place without completely
understanding the unintended consequences,” Superintendent Robert Hunt
said.
The OHSAA reassured schools Wednesday that pass/fail grading this semester won’t affect students.
“GPA requirement is not an OHSAA mandate (many are not aware of that),”
OHSAA Executive Director Jerry Snodgrass wrote. “While law mandates you
have one, it is not used for eligibility or ineligibility in our office
(violating a school’s GPA requirement does not result in forfeiture of
a contest).Therefore, if you are utilizing Pass/Fail options for your
students, you need not worry how that affects fall 2020 eligibility.”
Snodgrass added that the state is communicating with the NCAA to be
sure eligibility for college sports won’t be affected for high school
seniors graduating this year.
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