Friday, March 29, 2024

Baltimore City looks into charges of grade changing

-

Cheating comes in many forms. Teachers can erase students’ answers on standardized tests and change them to the right answers, as allegedly happened in Atlanta and Baltimore. Teachers can tell students the answers to test questions, as long as no one who might report this activity is watching too closely as they administer the test to students. Or, teachers can wait until the scores come back and then just log in to the computer system and change student grades.

It’s that last method of cheating that officials in Baltimore City Public Schools are thinking might have taken place with some student records at Booker T Washington Middle School. In an excellent article in the Baltimore Sun, Erica Green reports that several teachers told the paper that “dozens of the grades they issued of 50 percent, the lowest possible, were later changed to 90 percent.”

If that indeed happened, it’d be an egregious abuse of authority and a disservice to students. It appears some students who never even came to class received higher scores than students who came to class and did the work. With a grade of 90 percent, they can be promoted to the next grade, but with a grade of 50 percent, they would most likely be held back in the same grade in which they spent the 2012-13 school year.

If that’s what happened, we would have to condemn the cheating. But however the investigation turns out, Ms Green then made a statement that caught our eye. She wrote:

A decades-old debate has brewed in the school system about the district’s grading policies and standards for promoting students to the next grade. As recently as 2011, the policies have been tweaked in an attempt to decrease subjectivity. Research shows that holding students back multiple times can be detrimental to their academic careers.

Research? As far as I know, the research is equivocal on this question, depending on what you consider “detrimental” to students’ academic careers.

A closer look at this ‘research’

As of this writing, about a dozen states have laws that require students to be held back in third grade if they fail to demonstrate the ability to read at a third-grade level, and an estimated 10 percent of the nation’s third- through eighth-graders have been held back at least once.

Opponents of policies like this point to a huge body of research that seems to suggest retained students achieve at lower levels, are more likely to drop out of high school, and have worse social-emotional outcomes than similar students who are promoted. In addition, many education policy experts have likened the practice to imprisonment and say it disproportionately affects poor minority students.

“Another educational reform policy, like imprisonment, is based on a punishment-oriented way of thinking, not a humane and research-based way of thinking. This is the policy to retain children in grade who are not performing at the level deemed appropriate,” writes David Berliner on the Schools Matter Blog, here.

“Research informs us that this policy is wrong for the overwhelming majority of the youth who we do leave back,” he writes. “Research is quite clear that on average, students left back do not improve as much as do students who are allowed to advance to a higher grade with their age mates. Furthermore, retention policies throughout the nation are biased against both boys and poor minority youth. Moreover, the retained students are likely to drop out of school at higher rates than do their academic peers who were advanced to the next grade.”

Here’s another writer who cites “research” and enlightens us as to what we should do about it. It’s too bad, because in my heart, I want to agree with Mr Berliner. But there is some more critical and objective research that suggests retaining third graders may be a good thing for those kids.

Future Reading Scores vs. 3rd-Grade Scores in Florida, Relative to Cutoff
Retention of 3rd graders may cause an increase in performance in subsequent years.
(Students scoring below the cutoff were much more likely to be retained in 3rd grade.)

This research, out of Harvard University, looks at data from Florida, where third graders who fail to demonstrate grade-level proficiency in reading have been retained and then tracked through high school since 2003.

Although conventional estimates suggest negative effects of retention on achievement, this research shows that a different type of analysis indicates positive effects of up to a half standard deviation on achievement and a reduced probability of retention in subsequent years for students who are retained in third grade.

The gains fade over time, though, and are statistically insignificant after six years. Furthermore, it’s a significant issue with this research that it failed to consider future effects of students who had been retained besides reading or math scores. Most research that examines retention at least tries to connect it to high school graduation, eventual socioeconomic status, and so on. Because of the existence of so many variables over the years, however, inferring any causation at all from this research is next to impossible and not advised. The current study isn’t much better in that regard, but at least it only tries to show an effect three or four years beyond the retention in third grade.

For about three years—i.e., until about sixth grade—students who were retained in third grade because they failed to demonstrate reading proficiency and who received remedial services performed better in reading and math than students who were allowed to advance to fourth grade despite a reading score that showed they weren’t reading at grade level. Keep in mind that retention in Florida isn’t mandatory, since there are numerous exemptions students and their families may request.

The actual decision to retain a student is typically made based on subtle considerations involving ability, maturity, and parental involvement, wrote Martin W West in a report for the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institute, here. These factors may muddy the waters of research that has been previously reported because the researchers were unable to incorporate them into their models. The disappointing outcomes of retained students, therefore, may have been a stronger indication of the reasons they were held back in the first place than of the consequences of being retained.

Paul Katulahttps://news.schoolsdo.org
Paul Katula is the executive editor of the Voxitatis Research Foundation, which publishes this blog. For more information, see the About page.

Recent Posts

Star Sportsmanship on a Wis. Cross-Country Track

0
Two cross-country runners displayed great sportsmanship at a Wis. meet as they stopped short of the finish line to help a competitor.

Old Chicago School Buildings Brace for Heat

Wildfires in Hawaii Kill at Least 93

Illinois Bans Book Bans