Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 10:30 PMBy: Joe Linehan In the News: Wednesday, March 10 Today was progress report day at our school and I had one of my top students come to me after school crushed because he received an F in social studies. I looked at his progress report and sure enough his F in social studies stuck out in a sea of A and B grades. I immediately wrote a note on his progress report informing his parents that he should have received an A. I went to the computer and I checked what happened. A rather large assignment was due the last day for progress report grades and I needed to mark the assignment and record it before I left school if I wanted it on the progress reports.

A new student had just arrived in the class last week and when I copied his grade onto the grade sheet to enter it into the CPS software, the number of lines had changed and I accidentally gave the new student credit for his assignment and marked the other student with a 0 on the assignment. It was easily remedied, but problems like this happen all the time. It’s called human error. I entered 448 correct grades into the computer and 1 wrong one.

When the news broke today about Hyde Park Academy changing an enormous number of grades last year I wasn’t surprised, but as a member of the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) I was surprised to hear nobody from the union step forward and defend the teachers or at least to explain what was going on.

2,000 grades were raised last year and 1,100 grades were lowered. If it was just a matter of raising grades, I could see a clear pattern of grade inflation, but I think there’s a far more likely answer and that is that Chicago rolled out a new grading program called GRADEBOOK. The program works well enough, but it isn’t very user friendly. Teachers unfamiliar with the system or without adequate preparation time now that end of the quarter days that used to be reserved for grading have rapidly filled up with professional development made a good deal of mistakes last year. A teacher who accidentally missed a line like I did in on the progress reports would conceivably have a whole class with the wrong grade.

We also have the issue of high schools that still aren’t fully staffed until after the first quarter is more than halfway over. Before then they have substitute teachers most of whom serve primarily as warm bodies. You can’t just expect a history major with substitute credentials to do a credible job when placed in a high school physics classroom. The principal decided to give all students who were in five classrooms who had a long string of subs first quarter last year the benefit of the doubt and gave them all A grades. I do not think punishing these students for a problematic board policy that could cost them college acceptance or a scholarship is a fair solution.

Finally, there was apparently pressure from administration on teachers to raise grades. Last year’s union delegate John Kugler told the Sun-Times that six separate teachers had complained to him about being coerced to change grades. A veteran teacher can with the protection of tenure possibly refuse such pressure, but most younger teachers wouldn’t dare.

It’s time to stop scapegoating teachers for things that are largely beyond their control. Whether it be overpriced computer software, administrative pressure, or CPS’s constant failure to properly staff classrooms in the beginning of the school year, it would behoove any investigation of the grade changes to look at those issues. Every year, CPS spends a lot of money reminding students that even the first day of school is important. They should show it by properly staffing classrooms before the middle of October. It would be nice if our union also would look at these issues and show some support for its membership.

Joe Linehan
Core

Thu Mar 11, 2010 at 12:44 PMBy: Jim Cavallero In the News: Wednesday, March 10 Grade inflation, if this is the cause for the grade changes written about, is a terrible thing. However, it frustrates me that the Sun-Times and the other media gloss over the fact that "the school was given too few teachers, and had to add five teachers sometime between Oct. 19 and Nov. 9." This is the real tragedy in CPS. Why was Hyde Park not given the appropriate number of teachers? Because CPS refuses to fully staff schools until the 20th day of instruction. Therefore, five classes went for 2 to 2 1/2 months without an assigned teacher. Ridiculous! This would never happen in the suburbs. It's time for CPS to rescind the 20th day rule and properly staff its schools from the beginning of school. We need a "First Day Rule" in CPS.

Jim Cavallero
CORE

Thu Mar 11, 2010 at 7:02 PMBy: think about this In the News: Wednesday, March 10 Why did HYHS get all those new students at the beginin of that schl year? BECAUSE students were kicked out of Harper--thanks to Dr. death Don Frynd and the kick out of Calumet students. Shame on frynd and Arne!