Helping HVRHS get better grade

FALLS VILLAGE — Housatonic Valley Regional High School Principal Ian Strever said measures have been taken to make the new grading system more efficient and to reduce the number of “Not Yet Proficient” grades at the high school.

Strever spoke to the Region One Board of Education on Monday, Sept. 17, and explained further in an interview with The Lakeville Journal on Thursday, Sept. 20.

Last year the new grading system, which eliminates the letter grades D” and “F” and instead uses the “Not Yet Proficient”  (NYP) to indicate sub-par performance, resulted in a situation in which students failed to make up or complete work. There was a lot of confusion.

Strever said the grading system, which includes opportunities for students to demonstrate proficiency in areas where they have either struggled or not turned in work, ran into the reality that “teenagers are teenagers.”

“They will procrastinate.”

To discourage that, there needed to be some sort of consequence for late or missing work, which is now treated as a disciplinary matter.

This includes detentions (for the purpose of completing missing work), or getting extra help from teachers during the “flex block” portion of the daily schedule, or after school.

The exceptions to this are the college-level and Advanced Placement courses, which still operate on an A through F basis and where late work is not accepted (with some leeway given in “process writing,” i.e. essays and lab reports).

There were 148 NYP grades in core subjects at the end of the 2017-18 school year, Strever said. (Core subjects are math, science, social studies and English.)

Seniors accounted for 56 of those NYPs.

The school tried a different approach in summer school. Seventeen students attended the two-week summer school program, and 15 earned at least one credit toward graduation requirements.

Instead of teaching an entire course in a concentrated form, the students were given instruction in the specific areas where they were deficient. Some students only attended for a day or two, while others required the full two weeks.

The school’s leadership team, a group of 17 people including department chairs, developed this year’s strategy beginning last spring, Strever said.

“That’s a big change.”

Looking ahead, Strever said he thinks the grading system is going to be “an evolutionary process.

“Schools have to be nimble enough to respond to changes in society and pedagogy — so things will change.” 

 

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