MISD takes no action on scale for grades
By TOM BERRY
Staff Writer
If Murray High School students want to get an ‘A' on their report card, they will have to earn a 94 or above.
The Murray Independent Board of Education took no action on a proposal by parent Tony Vilardo and supporters to change the district's current grading scale to a national “alpha scale” following a second public forum Thursday night.
The board took no official action concerning the proposal; however Board Chairman Richard Crouch said he could not support the change.
“I don't know of a good reason to change our grading scale. I think we need to keep it where it is,” Crouch said.
“If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” commented board member Donnie Winchester in agreement. The board was unanimous in supporting Crouch's assessment.
Board member Mark Vinson said he also could not support the change because it would seem to allow students to obtain the highest possible grade with less effort. “I don't want kids thinking that ‘I don't have to work as hard now and still get an ‘A,'” he said.
Vilardo has petitioned for a change in the scale. He told the Murray board again last night that the current scale is a detriment to MHS students that have to compete with peers across the state and the nation for college scholarships.
He's proposed what is known as the “alpha” grading scale in which an A is obtained by scoring 90 to 100 points; a B by scoring 80 to 89; C by scoring 70 to 79; a D by scoring 60 to 69. Below 60 points is an F.
During the forum, attended by about a dozen teachers, administrators and a few parents, teachers that spoke in opposition to the changes primarily objected on the grounds that the new scale would be similar to grading on the curve and lowering expectations and that grades should be awarded based on the result of a student's effort and not the effort itself.
Teacher and parent Amy McDowell, who presented a survey of opinions from 21 MHS teachers to the board on the issue, said 18 of those surveyed were against the change.
“I like our scale the way it is. If we are trying to help our students achieve benchmarks on their ACT, we must continue to expect more from them. If we lower our expectations, we are not preparing them for their future...which is our job,” she said in a prepared statement containing opinions of other teachers. “As we know, the benchmarks are already high. If a student knows they can do less to achieve the grade they desire, then I'm afraid those benchmarks will be even harder to reach.”
Vilardo had presented the proposed change to the board because, in his opinion, scales now used by MISD and other school districts in Kentucky do not allow students to compete for scholarships on a fair playing field when their peers are measured by the national “alpha scale” standard. He says the lack of a uniform grading scale leads to the loss of college scholarship money for students that have to work harder to get an ‘A' that students in other districts in Kentucky and across the nation.
Most colleges, he says, utilize the alpha scale and high schools should do the same.
However during the forum, Justin Scott, an MHS math teacher, presented statistics to the board concerning how MHS's students compare to the 50 top schools in academic achievement in Kentucky that have set grading scales and how MHS students stack up in obtaining KEES funding, funds awarded to students by the state to pay for college based on grade point averages.
According to Scott's figures, obtained from the KHEAA and The Student Loan People 2007 Report, districts that set obtaining an A at 94 points had the highest average number of students eligible to receive KEES dollars and the second highest total average. He noted that MHS is already exceeding in the KEES dollar race.
“When looking at the average rankings, the ‘95' group's (those that set obtaining an A at 95 points) average rank was 19th in the state, while the 90 group's average rank was 32nd in the state,” he said. “When looking at the top 50 schools in order of highest to lowest percent of students eligible to receive KEES dollars, MHS ranked 13th for the 2006-07 school year.”
He noted that MHS students also ranked 8th in averaged amounts funding per student.
In a final statement to the board, Vilardo told the group he was not proposing the lowering of academic standards, but was primarily interested in providing students an equal opportunity to succeed in college that is currently enjoyed by students in other districts in Kentucky.
“I have not asked any of these teachers to change the things that they do. I have not asked them to change the curriculum. I have not asked them to change the way they teach. I have not asked them to change their testing and I have not asked them to lower their standards,” he said. “ All I have asked them to do, is that when you assign a student a grade at the end of the year, let it be indicative of the effort some of these students have put in and what they have done.”
Vilardo said a student that has put up a supreme effort to obtain an A but only scores a 92 under MHS's current standard could feel cheated by the system. He said he was not as concerned as much about students obtaining KEES funds as he was how Kentucky students would compete with other districts across the state if they have to work harder to get an ‘A' and obtain college scholarships than their peers.
“We are at a disadvantage when it comes to KEES money and we are at a disadvantage nationally,” he said. “I'm just saying that the 90 percent or the 99 percent of the kids out there that get up a 5 in the morning to get to school early and then spend eight hours in school and three or four hours playing softball or baseball or basketball or football or whatever they do, and then they come home and those kids sit at their desk from 6 or 7 at night till 11 or 12 o'clock in the morning, every day, five days a week and sometimes on the weekend...you cannot deny them the grade they deserve for their effort if they score only a 92.”
In other business during the regularly-scheduled meeting, the board chose to adopt a recommendation from MHS's Site-Based Decision Making Council to change the number of credits a student is required to achieve to obtain any of four types of high school diplomas.
Under the proposed system, students would be required to obtain 24 out of a possible 28 credit hours to obtain a standard degree in 2009 and 25 credits beginning with the class of 2010. However students would be required to obtain 25 credit hours in 2009 to obtain either a comprehensive, advanced or ‘commonwealth' degree and 26 credit hours in 2010 and beyond.
The board tabled a vote on the proposal until they could get input from the council regarding what system would be utilized to rank students according to their grades; the results of which would help to determine whether or not a student would qualify as class valedictorian and salutatorian.
The board also agreed to file a BG-2 application with the Kentucky Department of Education for approval of design work on repaving and installing new drainage systems during construction of a new parking lot at MHS.
Story created Mar 14, 2008 - 11:50:49 EDT.
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