Arcadia board discusses move to standards based grading

The Arcadia school board had further conversations about the implementation of standard based grading at its regular meeting last week Monday. 

The conversation began in July when the board approved a handbook had language containing information about standards based grading, though the district continues to provide letter grades. Last week, the conversation came up as part of the district’s continued improvement plan. 

Standards based grading is different from a traditional grading system in that it typically does not utilize letter grades, and instead intends to focus on levels of proficiency. 

“We are going to continue our work in standards based grading the middle school is implementing, we determined the letter conversion quickly,” Carmen Lee, director of curriculum instruction and assessment, said. “High school will be starting on Friday to learn and do some of the behavior steps of standard-based grading during in-services and staff meetings throughout the year.”

Board member Tonya Rebhahn voiced two of her concerns. 

The first of which was the question of how sports eligibility or disqualification will be handled. Superintendent Lance Bagstad responded by saying it is something that will need to be converted, and will be similar to letter grading in terms of the various levels of disqualification in sports. He then stated his concern for the student’s learning experience.

“We just have to look at what it is to be eligible for a sport while not discouraging kids from continuing to push themselves to learn the material,” Bagstad said.  “How are we going to encourage kids to learn, but make sure were still dealing with the eligibility piece?”

Rebhahn addressed the Arcadia High School leadership present at the meeting, saying she believed the decision to move to standards based grading should not have been made at the high school level. She said she felt as though it is something that should have been brought before the school board for a vote, and shared her experience with parents expressing their discomfort with the concept of this grading system. 

“Despite how you feel, you still have to consider how the community feels,” Rebhahn said. 

Board president Paul Servais responded saying that they were getting off topic. 

Votes to increase pay for district employees were postponed until the board’s October meeting. 

At the end of the meeting, the board heard of Bagstad’s plans to retire at the end of the school year.