Confusion abounds over how to grade students during Kentucky COVID-19 school shutdown

Some Fayette County students, parents and teachers are unsure about how grades are determined for nontraditional instruction during the coronavirus school shutdown.

School board chairwoman Stephanie Spires said in a Facebook video that one of the most frequent questions she has received is, “Do grades matter?”

Fayette Schools Superintendent Manny Caulk is preparing to issue an update on grading policy, but it will need to be adopted by individual school councils, Spires said Thursday.

Schools make their grading policies and grades are not equitable, she said.

But she said the district and schools are trying to work together to come up with a system while in-person classes are canceled.

“I understand this is challenging,” Spires said. “I am home teaching four active elementary-aged children, while working full time and serving as Fayette school board chair. My advice to parents is ‘don’t quit.’ Our children are watching us to see how we respond. We are literally building an airplane, while flying. We will mess up. We are all learning as we go. Parents need to be honest with themselves and their children’s teachers about their struggles and successes.”

She said parent’s health, both mental and physical, should be their top priority right now.

Spires said students should do work like it’s being graded. But Spires said participation matters.

Some schools focus on participation and others on more traditional grading.

“That’s where there’s confusion,” Spires said.

Board member Christy Morris at Monday’s planning meeting shared feedback that she had heard from families. They say that some grades were based on participation, but in other cases, students were being asked to send in five or six assignments each day for grading.

Morris said some students struggling with nontraditional instruction normally don’t have problems in the classroom.

“It’s really terrible,” Morris told the Herald-Leader. “The stories I’ve heard have been heartbreaking.”

“I think we should be as lenient as possible,” Morris said.

State Education Department spokeswoman Toni Konz Tatman said local districts are responsible for and decide their grading policies.

She said the department has issued to all school districts guidance on assigning and reporting grades.

The guidance didn’t include hard and fast rules. But it included an article from Education Week that said one district plans to recommend teachers revert to previous progress grades as long as students participate. Students could potentially improve those scores, but they wouldn’t be penalized.

Fayette Schools spokeswoman Lisa Deffendall said Thursday the district wants to assure families that every effort is being made to ensure there are no punitive consequences of nontraditional instruction.

School and district leaders are working together to develop consistent guidelines about the amount of work teachers are assigning, the amount of time students are expected to be engaged, and the way work completed outside the classroom will be incorporated into grades.

Each teacher is monitoring student participation in several ways, including completion of paper packets or assignments submitted online; emails, text messages and phone calls with students and families; and evidence of participation in virtual classroom activities, such as Google Classroom, Canvas, Dojo, and Zoom, Deffendall said.

While many teachers had already incorporated online learning platforms into their classrooms, the tools are new to other teachers and students, she said. The district is also finding new ways to virtually deliver critical services, therapies, interventions to students who need those.

Deffendall said the second week of NTI was smoother than last week as teachers got into a rhythm that balances instructional time and the time required for completing assignments. There was a significant increase in the use of digital curriculum platforms, she said.

Kentucky education officials previously said 93 percent of students required to participate in NTI were doing so statewide.

Accurate data for how many Fayette students are participating in NTI is not immediately available because students who are completing paper packets need time to complete that work and return it to school, Deffendall said. That work has to be sorted and given to teachers to be assessed and entered into the district’s student information system. The district will report participation information to the Kentucky Department of Education at the end of the scheduled NTI days, Deffendall said.

This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 3:15 PM.