On Monday, Oct. 30, the Kaneland Board of Education voted 7-0 to “sunset” standards-based grading (SBG) at the end of the 2023-24 school year after Board Vice President Bob Mankivsky called the issue to vote. The board used the term “sunset” to reference retiring the use of SBG and gave school administrators for grades 6-12 until the end of the current school year to develop a plan for implementing a curriculum-based grading system.
District Director of Educational Services 6-12 Patrick Raleigh presented the board with an update on SBG at the Oct. 16 board meeting, which included survey results from parents and students on how they felt about SBG. There were no results from teachers, as they had not been recently surveyed. The voices of community members helped convey the public opinion of SBG to the board.
“Our role as the school board of education is to be representative of the community, and I believe the community has spoken,” Board President Addam Gonzales said. “I hear it at all levels: students, teachers [and] parents.”
Now that the public discourse has been heard and acted upon, Kaneland High School Principal James Horne believes the community will be pleased.
“The fact that the board has taken action tells me that the community wanted a change,” Horne said. “In response to the 7-0 vote, I think that the community is going to positively receive this.”
One of the reasons Mankivsky cited for stepping away from SBG was the increased workload it placed on teachers, which is something Career and Technical Education (CTE) teacher Eric Baron agreed with.
“We’re converting, changing [and] recalculating grades more than we’re focusing on our students,” Baron said.
The idea of SBG stemmed from proficiency-based learning, which focuses on giving students clear goals regarding what they need to learn. It breaks learning into objectives that students should focus on throughout the year, as opposed to the books or topics that curriculum-based instruction would revolve around. This allows students to focus on one ability at a time, making sure they have mastered it before moving on.
SBG at Kaneland was first introduced to the high school through the English department.
“[The English department was] the only one doing it. We did not have a one through four system. When we started, it was one through three,” English Department Chair Kimberly Reese said. “We had a logic chart to convert [students’] grades, and because we had control over that logic chart, we fine-tuned it so that it really matched what the grade would be.”
Throughout the following years, the district moved to make SBG the universal grading system for grades 6-12.
“[When we switched to SBG], it became a little more problematic,” Reese said. “That’s where a lot of different people interpret the scoring differently.”
Since then, the district has gone through multiple different versions of SBG. District administrators developed a grade conversion chart that assisted teachers with assigning letter grades based on results from the one through four scale, which has also fluctuated since its introduction.
“The program was thrown upon us with no real direction, and every year since its inception, it has been changed,” English teacher Lori Shroka said.
Despite the evolving nature of Kaneland’s grading system, teachers have stayed focused on one goal: teaching.
“I’m going to continue to teach, and my students are going to continue to learn, regardless of what system we are under,” Reese said.
There are some positive takeaways from SBG that teachers can still implement in their classrooms, such as different approaches to learning rather than a one-size-fits-all method.
“We as a district got better with our students’ learning targets and knowing what a student is supposed to be learning,” Baron said.
The board recognized that if people felt SBG was not working, it was time for a change.
“If you have a majority to almost a supermajority of individuals from staff, students and parents that… are struggling with this program, it’s never going to work,” board member Aaron McCauley said.
With such a significant change to the grading policy, different people are going to have different reactions. Shroka believes that this change will be seen positively, though.
“I think that, by and large, people will be relieved. Anyone who has been in education will know that this is so much clearer for everyone,” Shroka said.
