So Trustees Thomsen and Sarver are disappointed that some students value their grades, and don't want to see their hard work devalued? When is the next school board election - they've got to go.

I would not encourage or reward any teen to work 11 hours a day for a handful of letters that will only get the most cursory attention of college admissions staff.

Value your time, students, and consider all the other possible uses.

@ohnono welcome to the world of high-achieving students who have become convinced (right or wrong) that the path to a successful future goes through a highly-selective college.

It seems to me there are 2 issues here. One is students who hope to graduate from high school, possibly continue at community college. They could be given a CHOICE of a letter grade or pass/fail. The second issue involves students who are headed to higher education so would certainly want a letter grade. We forget that some students will be the first in the family to complete high school. We want to encourage that and encourage further study. Hence the choice. One writer was right on in pointing out our schools don't serve a one-size-fits-all community. I support choices in every situation possible.

The current letter grading system in all schools is a terrible way to assess student progress. It's arbitrary, highly subjective, easily manipulated gy social factors, and meaningless in highly competitive schools where angry parents will try to get a teacher fired if their child gets a anything lower than a B.

However, I am not in favor of using the virus crisis as the excuse to address this terrible system. Meaningful student assessment should requires study, exploration of alternatives, coordination across the district and grade levels, and communication with colleges. Meanwhile, letting graduating seniors (whenever graduation occurs) choose letters or Pass/Fail seems to me to be a reasonable way to go, but all subjects or none. and the transcripts for all students should include a disclaimer that explains that Pass/Fail or letter grades are an option, Pass could equate to anything from an A+ to a D-, how much instruction happened virtually vs on-campus, and any other information the schools wishes to include about how the school addressed the CORONA virus shutdown, academic continuity, and assessment practices.

I'm writing this as someone who's older kid graduated from a Sequoia Union high school and then went to Stanford, and who's younger kid is in high school now. So I am certainly aware of and concerned with grades and the impact on college admissions.

Having said that, I'm in favor of either the mandatory pass/fail or hold harmless options the district is considering. There is simply too big a difference in home environments and tool availability to make letter grading fair. Two equally smart and studious kids could get very different outcomes because one is stuck in a 2 bedroom apartment with siblings and two parents who are suddenly unemployed, while the other has their own bedroom and office to work from and two parents who are working from home and have no economic worries.

As a parent of an M-A, college bound junior, I would prefer across the board credit/no credit. If it's a choice, obviously colleges will give preference to those who chose a grade. The pretense of offering an option which none can 'afford' to take is worse than not offering it in the first place, imho. I'm sure few parents will agree with me. I'm in the minority in my belief that grades are a poor motivator of learning in the first place.

Trustee Chris Thomsen said it was disappointing to hear that many students felt the purpose of their education was to earn good grades so they can be accepted into good colleges.

“The larger message says that we have a school system that isn’t focused on getting students excited about learning,” he said. With the current at-home distance learning situation, he worries teachers will ultimately be grading students based on what their home life is like.

Board Vice President Alan Sarver agreed with Thomsen, noting that he is “disturbed” by the value students are putting on their grades.

This! This is what the conversation should be focused on. This is the part that matters the most. It is important to consider which voices were really heard in these input gathering sessions.

I have a junior at M-A and my student and I voted for the hold harmless approach. In a perfect world, I would love nothing more than high school be about getting students of all circumstances to sample subjects and get excited about learning, and then applying that curiosity into higher education. Unfortunately, reality is nowhere close. Until colleges and universities stop emphasizing GPA and test scores, high school students will continue to care about their letter grades. Yes, I know there is a school for everyone who successfully completes high school. But students who want more options, or have a specific area of focus, do need to work toward higher letter grades and take harder classes to stand out. We as parents can help our students by not emphasizing certain locations, encouraging them to find the right fit for THEM, and reinforcing that who they are today will continue to evolve no matter where they end up. In the current rules of the college game, that is the most control we have (and by the way, this process is further propagated by companies naming colleges and universities in their job requirements). Forcing Pass/Fail on all students with the argument that it's more fair to the greater population ignores the fact that it's a small group of students who are not participating in remote learning. M-A offered computers and hotspots to students who don't have one or both. In that group, there are certainly students who have checked out for whatever reason, including the need to support their families. But I believe it's a small percentage and therefore should not be the reason to take away the letter grades from the larger population of students who want them. The hold harmless approach is a fair way to address those who continue to work at their classes and those whose circumstances have led them to not participate. 

Unfortunately the "hold harmless" option will result in meaningless grades. A student who had an 'A' before the switch to distance learning can completely stop attending and still end up with an 'A'. The grade will have zero reflection on what content the student mastered. Same for students with B's, C's, etc. The pass/fail option is the only option that requires continued engagement but at the same time acknowledges that our public high schools are not set up for distance learning and as a result any sort of letter grade will be meaningless. Colleges will simply have to adjust their GPA cut-offs. They already will have to consider students without SAT/ACT scores, and also adjust for differently administered AP exams (at home, lol, like there is even the slightest way to prevent cheating in that environment).

I’ve been working from home for five years and now have been joined by my two HS kids. I can see my own performance being impacted negatively by increased noise, much slower internet and constant interruptions. How do we expect kids who are new at this even under the best of circumstances to go on like nothing has changed? Really shocked at some parents who keep chanting about grades like we all have perfect WiFi and no economic stress etc.

This is incorrect reporting. Palo Alto was first to announce Credit/No Credit and had not thought through the specific impacts to students' GPAs. The superintendent made the decision unilaterally through emergency powers without a board vote or parent input. In particular, this policy absolutely impacts sophomores and juniors whose S2 grades factor into their college admissions. UC has confirmed they will only use letter grades in their GPA calculations. And neither UCs nor Palo Alto admin have been able to clarify how exactly they make this GPA neutral. Palo Alto students have just lost all their honors/AP weight points for this semester. This is absolutely not GPA neutral for half of our high school population. Palo Alto students are opting into private and online alternatives to get grades. It also puts C/NC districts behind other districts who are moving towards figuring out how to assess work and provide grades through distance learning which looks to be a necessity until 2021. A very clearly laid out model is in South Pasadena: Web Link

This is incorrect reporting. Palo Alto was first to announce Credit/No Credit and had not thought through the specific impacts to students' GPAs. The superintendent made the decision unilaterally through emergency powers without a board vote or parent input. In particular, this policy absolutely impacts sophomores and juniors whose S2 grades factor into their college admissions. UC has confirmed they will only use letter grades in their GPA calculations. And neither UCs nor Palo Alto admin have been able to clarify how exactly they make this GPA neutral. Palo Alto students have just lost all their honors/AP weight points for this semester. This is absolutely not GPA neutral for half of our high school population. Palo Alto students are opting into private and online alternatives to get grades. It also puts C/NC districts behind other districts who are moving towards figuring out how to assess work and provide grades through distance learning which looks to be a necessity until 2021. A very clearly laid out model is in South Pasadena.

@bemused: I agree with your assessment but unfortunately SUHSD only offered hold harmless and pass/fail as options to vote for, so anyone who wants letter grades is forced to vote that direction. Hold harmless also addresses the issues faced by all income levels, in their various forms: some students don't learn well in this format, bandwidth issues, greater things to worry about, etc. I do believe motivated students will continue to work at their classes and those taking AP classes certainly have to keep up to perform well on the AP tests in May.

The South Pasadena approach (thank you for sharing, @parent/@member) is interesting with a choice of C/NC by May 27 and weighting the second semester grades differently by third and fourth quarter. Granted, South Pas probably has a less diverse population and the high school is only 1400+ students. I wonder if options like this were considered by the SUHSD board? My real vote would have been to provide some option of choice but assumed the board was not willing to do that for logistical reasons.

How did the district vote last night?
Numerous California state districts have announced they will issue final semester letter grades. Most of these are establishing “hold harmless” policies, wherein final semester grades will be no lower than third quarter. Districts giving semester grades include the three largest districts in the state (Los Angeles Unified, San Diego Unified, and Fresno Unified), plus numerous others such as Los Gatos/Saratoga, Alameda, Sacramento City Unified, Santa Rosa City Schools, Corona-Norco and more. South Pasadena is offering students a choice of letter grades as default or C/NC, and Jefferson Unified (Daly City) is offering either letter grade (for an A, B, or C) or Pass (for a D or F).

@Concernedparent a story is forthcoming, but the board voted to move to credit/no credit.

Angela,

Do you have an email address and if so, what is it?

@MP parent aswartz@almanacnews.com

@Concernedparent, I was able to 'zoom' into last nights meeting and listen to the discussion. I hope it is available by video because I think a lot of points were raised on both sides that I was not aware of or had not given a lot of thought to. It was also great to hear some students speak. I did think P/NP was the best option going in, but I understand now better exactly how much anxiety the lack of grades will cause many students, especially those who were trying to hit a GPA goal for college admissions. Today SUHSD sent an email to parents with summary of reasons for the board's decision. The vote was 3-2, so I think it was clear to everyone there was no perfect solution, P/NP just seems like the better of two flawed options.

Carlmont High School parent here. Just found out about this today from my daughter who is a Senior up for a merit scholarship. We received NO notification via email or voicemail that there was even a discussion going on about changing traditional grading to Pass/Fail. How does this happen? Also, why does the District get to decide there is only 2 options and traditional grading is not one of them. This decision is all about protecting the few at the cost of many. Are some kids disadvantaged and maybe don't have a laptop at home. Quite possibly instead of making everyone Pass/Fail, why not take into account that over 65% want traditional grades and that includes kids and parents and make exceptions for those with limited computer access or sick families at home. If one person in a community is sick, we treat that one person with appropriate care and medicine. We don't have to give everyone the same medicine or treatment if they don't need it. I am sure many parents who are well off would be happy to contribute to a GoFundMe page to buy laptops for those that need them and be OK with them choosing Pass/Fail based on their difficult circumstances. Forcing everyone to go Pass/Fail wether they have difficult home situations or not isn't the way we should go. I will happily contribute money to that fund. Speaking of which, what happened to the $250,000 the school already got to do this? Please clarify where those funds went. Also, lastly, I find it hard to believe that parents don't have wifi at home when they pay hundreds of dollars a month for cable TV and most likely an internet connectivity as well. Get the kids laptops and treat each student as an individual. Just like the government isn't giving every business a free loan, we should verify the true needs of our students and fulfill it rather than a one-size-fits-all policy that clearly doesn't work for everyone.

@Michael Craig, I received emails, not voicemails, starting April 5 from both SUHSD (communications@seq.org) and Menlo-Atherton admin about discussions regarding grading for spring semester, including the option to participate in a survey and notification that the board would be making a decision on this last night. I would definitely try to track down why you are not receiving emails from SUHSD as I imagine other important information will continue to be sent from them. I can't speak to what information San Carlos provided to parents.

As for the P/NP option being chosen, since you're just hearing about it, I'm sure it's a shock. The question of equity is definitely a piece of that decision, but it's more complex than that. Another, equally important consideration is the degree to which grades will be meaningful given that faculty are trying to adjust an in-school curriculum to distance learning. So even if there were no disadvantaged students to consider, I believe many would still have come to the conclusion that P/NP was still the best option at this time. JMHO. I know this is an extremely stressful situation for students and parents. I have a junior at M-A and her GPA will be significantly affected without the contribution of the AP classes she's taking this semester.

None of the options are very good here. The school district doesn't get the option of "best", they this is a case of "which of these three options is the least bad?"

Regular grading doesn't take into account MANY changes in circumstances - of students, teachers, and families. It also doesn't take into account that there are HUGE differences in teachers' abilities to teach a distance class they didn't plan to teach as a distance class.

"Hold Harmless" is complicated - some classes are heavily weighted towards grades early in the semester, some late, some teachers grade quickly and some grade slowly. It also has significant potential for gaming by both teachers and students.

Pass / No Credit puts everybody on a more even footing, is harder to game than "hold harmless", and takes into account the changes in circumstances that are hitting everybody. It's also a lot simpler, and there's quite a bit of value in that given how many moving parts the whole remote transition has.