This post has been updated with new information and brought forward. If you have it linked anywhere, please check your link as it has changed.

A Fremont petitioner reports that a warrant article requesting that the school district return to a letter grading report card system passes, but Fremont school board Chair say the District won’t pay attention to the parents and voters who supported it.

A petitioned warrant article to return to using “letter” grades rather than reporting based on the state standards, passed overwhelmingly. But according to Chairman Rowell, this was just a referendum, and the board will proceed with implementing the standards-based grading program.

According to a survey of parents, 60% were not happy with abandoning the use of letter grades. According to CNHT Directors who are teachers, the new system is very watered down and subjective. Grades based on performance measured in more specific terms including but not limited to numerical test grades are less subjective and more useful.

The new system would state whether children were performing ‘below, at, above, or were exceeding’ grade level expectations.

We never cease to be amazed at the arrogance of local school boards who, once they have made up their minds about something, charge full speed ahead, preferring the influence of paid consultants, reformers, and snake-oil salesmen, to whom they gladly fork over millions of our tax dollars for the privilege of having said outsiders meddle in what should only have been the business of the parents and taxpayers.

Fremont – Article 7, March 10, 2009
“To see if the Fremont School District voters are in favor of having the School Board SUPPORT AND IMPLEMENT a Traditional Letter Grade System of:

90% – 100%= A
80% – 89% = B
70% – 79% = C
60% – 69% = D
< 60% = F for report cards at Ellis School and STOP the use of the ‘Standards-Based Reporting System’ EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY"

Note: Moultonborough has had similar problems with their school board who does not seem to welcome suggestions from the voters and was accused of misleading the public.

Related: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1: New Grading Scale to Measure Student ‘Competencies’

“A new grading scale at Concord High School in New Hampshire is just one result of a trend affecting students across New England and the nation. The New Hampshire Department of Education has overseen a state-sponsored effort to move toward “competencies,” which proponents have described as having more to do with “what students can do,” as opposed to “what students know.” This approach to education attempts to promote and measure such areas as “ability to get along with others” and “self-management,” which are two of the ten competencies New Hampshire officials want students to master. So far, at least 30 New Hampshire schools have signed up as Competency-Based Assessment Schools.

The competency-based assessment movement affects other states, as well. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), a regional accrediting association, has urged New England schools to move away from traditional academic standards and toward competencies. New Hampshire’s state-sponsored effort is just one response to NEASC’s promotion of this educational trend.”

In one state that is undergoing these radical changes, this parent says:

This is a first step towards getting rid of all letter grades and using ‘authentic’ assessments and portfolios. (Check www.illinoisloop.org/lingo.html for an explanation of terms)

This parent complains that he attended a curriculum meeting several years ago where the deputy superintendent of instruction made it clear that she would like to get rid of all letter grades and grade point averages. She did acknowledge that it would not be attainable because universities still use GPA’s for admittance.

Letter grades start in 4th grade and they plan to move that to 9th grade as soon as they can figure out how to do it without a major uproar. Each year the report cards get longer, with less substance. At some time, the grades will disappear beneath the mounds of 1s, 2s, and 3s.

Teacher conferences are now student-led. They cannot occur without the student present. The student shows a portfolio of work that takes up the whole allotted time. A special request must be made to talk with the teacher without the student present. His conferences have also had the principal present since he’s been targeted as someone who questions the new system.

The state is 100% behind using portfolios for assessment rather than any form of standardized testing.

This is the typical dumbed-down, “inmates -running-the-asylum” approach to educational grading that is contributory to the destruction of our system. First, good teachers are required to use methods that do not let them teach or know what the students know, then they are required to complete lengthy complicated report cards. Anyone who has been a teacher and experienced this might think it is being done on purpose….

Worcester Telegram – Embrace reform that works
Excerpt:

“By the 1980s, progressive education had absorbed trendy new doctrines of multiculturalism and dogmas that objective facts don’t exist. Hirsch demonstrated the destructiveness of these instructional approaches. The idea that schools could starve children of factual knowledge, yet somehow encourage them to be “critical thinkers” and teach them to “learn how to learn,” defied common sense.”