Parent Recognitions

I'm frequently asked by parents how they can help to improve the school system. I speak to them about Successful Advocacy at LCPS of course, but a parent that I met last week gave me an additional idea: sponsoring recognitions for teachers and principals who are providing the kind of education that you think is important. LCPS recognizes its own in different ways, and Parent-Teacher organizations sponsor various de rigueur recognitions for teachers and staff, but I'm not aware of any Loudoun-focused school-independent groups who honor people based on exceptional performance.

The person who suggested this to me was speaking in particular about special education, a very challenging field in which parents and administrators often struggle to agree on what the needs of each child are and how to meet them. Imagine if all of the special-education advocate parents in Loudoun County nominated the principals, vice-principals, teachers and teacher assistants who demonstrated the best practices for providing special education services and recognized the best of them with awards and publicity. It would be a great way to show what success looks like, to thank the people who deserve it most, and to positively influence change throughout the county. So often people take the adversarial approach, and there is sometimes a need for that, but too many times it becomes the first approach. Once you're in adversarial mode it's tough to escalate your efforts without escalating the tension.

So if you're involved and trying to improve the way that LCPS handles a the issue that's most important to you, think about creating a county-wide recognition for the people who do it best.

You might also think about honoring your favorite School Board member. ;-)

New Grading Scale? Patience.

Momentum is building and interest is obviously running high among many LCPS parents in a new grading scale proposal branded “Fairgrade” by its advocates. A recent meeting drew quite a crowd and some press coverage as well (Loudoun Times Mirror, Leesburg Today).

I find myself in a weird “elected official bubble” here, trying hard to assess people’s feelings about an issue and knowing that the bulk of the conversation is going on out of my earshot. Conversely, there seem to be many parents who want to know my position and are going to third-party sources to find out. This blog, and my email address and phone number, are available for direct communication. If you ever want to make me aware of things, or ask me something, please use them.

First, let me state clearly my position on the 10-point grading scale proposal. Before I write something new, I’ll give you the exact words I have written to the several parents who have written directly to me on this subject:

I am very interested in the impact of a challenging LCPS grading scale and I am watching the issue closely as the conversation in Fairfax progresses. Much of the research that Fairfax County is conducting will inform us about the impact of our similar grading scale on Loudoun students. I have two secondary students of my own at LCPS, I take these concerns very seriously and I look forward to learning more. There is no official consideration of a change in the grading scale currently underway at LCPS.

I have written posts about the grading scale previously, in February with “What should a B Be?” and in April with “Following Fairfax,” you might be interested in those as well.

That’s all. There is plenty of information out there and more being generated and sent to me every day. I am reading and listening and assessing and taking no position until I feel fully informed. Please keep informing me. I don’t expect that I’ll take a position on this until well into the fall, and hopefully that is an indication to you of how closely I am listening and how seriously I take this.

There was a gathering at Potomac Falls High School on June 4th where dozens of parents (estimates to me ranged from 100 to 200) went to hear from the advocates of reforming the grading scale. I know that no school board members attended, and I know that some people were very unhappy with that. I can only speak for myself when I say that I wish I could have been there, but by the time I was made aware of the event I was already committed to two conflicting events that evening. As it turned out, this was also the day of the storm. Like many others, my house was without power and I chucked the evening’s schedule to take care of my family. I have encouraged the organizers to plan another forum after Fairfax releases its study. Given a couple of weeks’ notice, attendance will be a very high priority for me.

I won’t lay out the arguments for or against the current grading scale here. I will say that it takes a mountain of evidence to convince me to go against the recommendations of the professional educators who have built LCPS into the well-respected system that it is. These folks have dedicated their careers to studying and implementing educational best practices. They do need to provide the education that the community asks for, but the community would do well to give enormous weight to their professional judgment.

So in the meantime, while I'm listening and learning and pondering, advocates for or against a change in the grading scale should refer to my post Successful Advocacy at LCPS for the best advice I can give you on how to be most effective.

What Should a B Be?

This front page Washington Post story about the different grading systems is more than a month old now, but I held onto it until this week because on Wednesday LCPS parents will see first semester report cards come home. The story has to do with grading disparities between localities, and compares Fairfax to Montgomery.

Simply put, Fairfax high schools set a higher bar for grades than those in Montgomery. To earn an A in Fairfax, it takes a score of 94 to 100. In Montgomery, it takes a score of 90 or higher. Standards for grading in the two counties, including bonus point calculations, are so out of sync that it appears possible for a Fairfax student to earn a 3.5 grade-point average for the same work that gets a Montgomery student a 4.6 GPA.

The article discusses the various impacts this can have on a student's college admission prospects and scholarship opportunities, and reviews the very few studies done on the issue.
I hadn't been aware of or given any thought to this issue until a parent brought it to my attention, so I'm not taking any position, I'm just bringing up the issue for your consideration. Michelle Zuckerman writes the following, printed here with her permission. She makes a number of statements that I have not attempted to verify and a number of others which are her opinion. LCPS would surely dispute much of what she says. I'm sure many parents would agree with her and many will disagree. I leave it for you to judge. I welcome your thoughts in the comments.

I put the Loudoun grading scale up against the Fairfax and Montgomery County scales and found the results interesting.

I have long maintained that our grading scale is too harsh, particularly at the lower end of the scale. The adjustments made several years ago really didn't fix all the problems. It seems to me that earning a grade of 80-81 should not earn you a "C" and that an 82-84 should get you more than "C+". In addition, I don't understand why a "+" added to a grade is only worth .3, rather than .5 points (as it is in Fairfax and Montgomery).

The comparison laid out in the paper highlighting the differences between two students taking the same courses in Fairfax and Montgomery resulting in drastically different GPAs is made even more interesting when you figure out the GPA a Loudoun student would earn for the same courses. We're right there with Fairfax's 3.5, far away from the 4.6 a Montgomery County student would earn.

As the woman interviewed in the article points out, our students are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to college admissions and scholarships. Now the standard line the guidance counselors offer is that "All the colleges know that Loudoun has the toughest grading system." While that may be true for VA schools, it is certainly not the case everywhere else. GPA is the first thing that admissions counselors look at. The same is true when applying for scholarships, particularly for merit scholarships. Loudoun students are at a definite disadvantage because the difficulty of our grading system makes earning a good GPA harder, not so much for the brightest students, but for the average to above average student.

It also fuels the competitiveness of grades at the high school level. The pressure on our kids to succeed is out of control. The push to get as many kids into AP courses and for students to take as many AP courses as they can before they get out of high school is beyond reason (and caused, I believe, in great part, by LCPS' desire to score high on the Post's Challenge Index). We congratulate ourselves on the record number of kids taking AP exams, but conveniently forget that we eliminated the honors courses in all of our history and government courses, forcing many kids into AP classes before they're ready or because their parents don't want them in the academic courses because that's where the behavior problems are. And the pressure and competition lead to all kinds of undesirable behaviors, among all students.

Food Allergy Parent Group

I met briefly tonight with a group of parents who have children with food allergies. Their meeting overlapped with an important meeting of the Special Education Advisory Committee, so I couldn't stay as long as I wanted. Nevertheless, nearly 20 parents came to the meeting and I did get to talk individually with a handful of them.

The meeting was led by Maria Hardy, who has a blog called Allergy Free in Loudoun. These parents are dealing with an especially challenging life situation that I think most of us don't really understand. For these children, the real world is a dangerous place and allergies are not a health issue, they're a safety issue. It's far more complex than kids just staying away from foods that they're not supposed to eat. They need tremendous understanding from teachers, principals and fellow parents. Many times they get that understanding but sometimes they do not.

I hope that Maria or another parent will leave a comment here with a link to a webpage that can help people who are not familiar with childhood food allergies to understand the scope and importance of the challenge.

I am interested in exploring over the next year ways in which LCPS can help our teachers, principals and administrators with guidance and support in ensuring that every school is a safe place for every child with food allergies. If you are the parent of a child with food allergies, I encourage you to get in touch with this parent group for support, and with your school board member to let them know that this is an important issue for you. If you are facing challenges with your child's school or would like to highlight the ways in which your child's school is helping your child have a full and safe experience every day, I hope that you will let me or your school board representative know.

Don't Mess it Up

I was talking to a local and involved elementary school father from my neighborhood a little while back, and he asked me what issues were most important to me. I mentioned a few of the issues that I have been working on, and then asked him what was most important to him. He said "The teachers should be paid more. Other than that, it's a great school system. Don't mess it up."

That is good advice, I think. It's tempting to fix what isn't broken because we believe we see a better way. Even when something is clearly amiss we find when we go to fix it that everything is interconnected, and we can't fix one part of the system without stretching another. Please keep that in mind when it seems that an obvious change is slow in coming.

And yes, our teachers should be paid more. Public school teachers everywhere should be paid more.

“But you already have my address!”

Did you ever think about all of the forms we have to fill out as parents, and how many of them ask for an address, phone number, emergency contacts, etcetera? This is especially an issue during the first week of school when each kid comes home with a stack of new forms to fill out, but continues throughout the year with every field trip, after-school activity and new program. Did you ever wonder why we’re continually asked for that information, even though LCPS has to have that information on file for our kids to be enrolled? I did. So I asked about that. Here’s what I found out:

1) LCPS has several systems that track information, and they don’t all talk to each other. It is a primary effort to reduce this inefficiency as best as possible over time, but it will take time and probably won’t ever be completely resolved.

2) Some school staff find it easier to have paper forms on hand rather than looking up the information in a computer.

3) Contact information does change, and by asking for the same information repeatedly, LCPS always gets the most recent information. This is especially important for medical information.

That said, there is a team at LCPS called the Working Technology Group that includes representatives from the Instruction, Pupil Services, and Business and Finance departments. It also includes the directors of elementary, middle, and high school
education. This group is working on the problem. I have an idea or two I’m going to send their way, and if you have ideas, please let me know so that I can forward those along too.