By ARCHIE MOUNTAIN
NEWPORT — There will be no changes made to the grading system at Newport High School for the remainder of the current school year.
“We have to be consistent this year,” said School Board member Virginia Irwin.
However, before a competency based honor roll is considered at the high school there needs to be more planning along with more discussion.
That was the conclusion of the Newport School Board at its Feb. 22nd meeting after listening to comments from two parents.
Parent Chrissy Fratzel said in December she emailed a communication to all five school board members about concerns she had based on her son’s experience in the Middle School.
She asked the board which colleges accept competency assessments when considering admission. Fratzel said she was also upset when only one of the five school board members responded to her earlier email listing her concerns.
Superintendent of Schools Cindy Gallagher said it was protocol for the school board chairperson only to respond to group emails. She said if board members acted in concert online it could be construed as a meeting. Gallagher suggested Fratzel address emails to each board member if she seeks each one’s individual response.
A second parent, Lauri Wilkinson, suggested that competency-based education encourages mediocrity, especially when the report card information is confusing.
According to minutes of the meeting, Gallagher agreed that there should be consistent policies throughout the school, such as those for reassessment and expectations for inclusion in the National Honor Society.
High School Principal Shannon Martin said the competency issue has been a dilemma for teachers as well.
In the past, teachers reported on three or four grades, they now assess as many as 25 competencies she related. “The impact of these assessments on the calculation of the honor roll was not fully understood when the transition took place,” Martin related.
School Board member Virginia Irwin asked how the district should address honor roll accolades within the context of the new competency-based education assessment system that includes year-long progress toward proficiency
The draft minutes of the Feb. 22 session also included the following remarks:
“Parents and middle school students have expressed that students do not feel recognized for their efforts within the new paradigm. Students who earned high honors under the old grading system no longer earn high honors under the competency-based system. The ensuing discussion centered on how to recognize students who are challenging themselves.”
School Board member Tim Renner commented that there is a general sense among many parents that the district is underserving its higher-level students, and that the district has not provided opportunities for students to go above and beyond.
In her email to school board members, Fratzel had some forceful comments.
“I have watched my son’s class be the guinea pig class for quite some time. We went through these same problems last year. We’ve been asked to be patient. My patience has run out.
“I am 18 months from him entering high school, and I have zero faith that my patience will win out in the end. So now, I come to you, my elected officials, and beg you to listen. I beg you to see the human side of this. I implore you to pay attention to this small group of children that you are letting down.
“My son has a gift. His gift is not athletics, it’s not art, it’s not band, it’s academic. In the past, he has been rewarded for his gift. In your minds, it might just be a breakfast each quarter or his name on a plaque, but it was a reward for a gift that he shares with only one other classmate.
“You gave him the reward, and then you took away any chance of him receiving it again. With this new grading system (scores of 1, 2, 3, or 4), you have effectively told him he doesn’t have a gift; he is just one of the crowd now.
“And by crowd, I mean the honor roll crowd. I am in no way, shape, or form saying honor roll isn’t worthy of distinction. However, when you take the top two students in the class and put them with honor roll, you have told them there isn’t anything special about them.
Fratzel said her son wants to go to Duke University. “Kids that move on to esteemed colleges and universities are not part of the crowd; they are the top level students. Duke isn’t going to accept an average honor roll student. They’re just not going to, regardless of what fluff you try to sell me, we all know it’s not going to happen. So, now we are faced with choices:
We can argue with you about this for the next 18 months until my son reaches high school and get nowhere.
We can work together and make positive and real changes. I thought I was doing that by going to a round table discussion about the grading a month ago…that was a question and answer period. It wasn’t a session to brainstorm and make any progress what-so-ever.
I can pull my child out of school at his freshman year and send him to a private school.
“I challenge you to come up with a way to single these kids out. Do not let them down. Do not let them be part of the crowd. When you do that, you lose them. A piece of them disappears.” Fratzel concluded in her message to the school board members.
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