The Reading local of the Pennsylvania State Education Association is bringing its district up on charges of falsifying student grades. (Hat tip to Kathy B)  Good for them.  The recent blog discussion of  how grades and test scores don’t match up alluded to the fact that grades are easier to “pencil whip” than test scores, and this lawsuit puts the issue right on the table.  It's one of the reasons why I believe we need to focus on and improve, rather than abandon, standardized testing.  This is a belief born of experience.

Several weeks into one spring semester, I was given a new assignment – a tenth grade world history class, for students who had failed the class in Fall Semester and were well on the way to failing again in the Spring.  My previous experience with emotionally disturbed kids was, I think, supposed to help me get these kids on track. With three weeks until the end of the first marking period, I told the class that their grade would be based largely on what they accomplished in the time left.  These were some of the wildest classes I ever taught.

The students thought they’d already run one teacher out and that this was a bit of sport.  Calls to parents did not help as they should--one kid even stopped coming to class in an effort to punish me and his parents.  I was leery of sending kids to the administrator for discipline, since one of the implied missions I had in this assignment was to get the class under control (i.e out of the administrator's hair). So, when the end of the marking period arrived, 21 of the 24 kids failed.  In fact, I gave several of them grades of “40.”  My supervisor said, “You can’t do that.”  I explained to her that I was fighting for my life in there, and that if I was going to get things turned around, I needed to send a very clear message as to the consequences of the kids’ behavior.  I was able to hold my ground, but the experience taught me a lesson about how the politics of accountability can interfere with your ability to carry out your professional responsibility.

As for the kids, they still were a rough bunch. But the message got through to most of them, with help from some parents who took the failing grades as a wake up call.  Classroom demeanor improved. I was able to get them to settle and engage in the curriculum.  By the time we got to colonialism and then into WWI, there was some real learning going on.  Unfortunately, it was too little, too late.  The students didn’t do well on their city-wide exams (which at the time weren’t even that rigorous), and I had to send plenty of them to summer school.  In this respect, this class was still a defeat. But it would have been a lot worse if I hadn’t had the professional freedom to show them the consequences of their actions.