EDUCATION

No 'F's given: Some teachers upset about grading policy in Providence schools

Linda Borg
The Providence Journal

PROVIDENCE — Several teachers say the grading policy in Providence rewards students for not completing their assignments and promotes students who are ill-prepared for the next grade. 

Students who flunk a class in Providence don’t earn an F, they receive an "incomplete" and have until Nov. 15 of the following school year to make up the credit.

If the student doesn’t complete the assignments, he or she gets a final “F” grade.

This applies to students in grades 6 and 7, as well as 9, 10 and 11. 

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The policy also says that students can’t receive a grade lower than 50 on a scale of 1 to 100.

Spencer Foote, a high-school math teacher, describes it this way: if a student earns a 90 at the end of the first quarter, then earns the minimum score of 50 in each of the following three, they receive a final grade of 60 – a passing grade. 

Foote said that does a huge disservice to students who are promoted without having mastered the material from the previous year.

In a letter to Senate Oversight Chairman Louis DiPalma, Foote wrote that he is leaving the district because “I cannot ethically do my job.” 

“The Providence Public Schools makes it near impossible for a student to fail,” he wrote. “If a student does zero work and does not even show up to school for an entire quarter, they earn a 50%.” 

Foote also said there are no deadlines for assignments. Teachers are told to accept work from the first quarter at the end of the fourth quarter. 

‘’What lessons does this teach our students?” he wrote. “We are pushing a problem down the road. Students are promoted without the necessary skills to be successful. In fact, it is so fraudulent that we have students taking college credit classes who have a 4th grade reading level. That is not hyperbole.” 

Foote said that he has students taking precalculus who can’t do fractions.

“They think we are giving them the skills necessary to be successful,” he said. “In actuality, we set many students up for failure. All I can say is that these numbers have been fudged and standards lowered.” 

District spokesman Nick Domings said the School Board approved the grading policy in 2016, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to teachers. 

“The union helped form this policy,” he said. “Tons of districts use this approach. Kids can fail. This gives them the opportunity to make up the work.” 

One English teacher, who asked not to be named, said the 2016 grading policy wasn’t enforced until the COVID pandemic hit. She said teachers understood that grading had to be modified to reflect the sudden shift to online learning  

But she, like other teachers, assumed that once students were back in person, the original grading system would return.  

Then, teachers received an email Nov. 17 from Matthew Joseph, the district's executive director of teaching and learning:    

 “As I reviewed my first 5-weeks, I noticed the grading guidelines were not sent out from the central office before I started, so I wanted to pass those along. Click here for the 2021-2022 Secondary Grading Guidelines."

Those guidelines say that Skyward, the district's online grading app, will automatically change any student's grade from an F to an Incomplete once the quarter closes.     

The English teacher said this message caught teachers off-guard. 

“Some of my kids have A's the first quarter, then I don’t see them again for the rest of the year,” she said. “Kids aren’t showing up because they don’t have to. They know they are going to pass anyway. The district is trying to validate social promotion.” 

Meanwhile, she said, some students are taking double periods of math or English to raise their failing grades.  

National movement to change grading

There is a national movement toward a fairer grading policy. Schools have begun to realize how arbitrary grades can be, with some teachers awarding points for good behavior while others give credit for attendance and class participation. 

Ken Wong, a professor of education at Brown University, said an “incomplete” allows those who need more time to complete the course requirements.  

“Earning a course credit is an important step toward meeting the graduation requirements,” he said. “When an 'F' appears on a transcript, it not only lowers the grade point average, it sends a negative signal to potential employers and college admissions staff. Finally, schools need to find ways to support students who have incompletes to earn their course credits.” 

The pandemic spurred even more districts to reevaluate grading. Some are now grading students based on their performance on certain benchmarks; other schools have stopped scoring homework in the belief that it affords students the chance to learn from their mistakes. And some, like Providence, have stopped giving F grades.  

Joe Feldman, author the book, “Grading for Equity,” has long advocated for a revolution in grading.   

In a 2019 interview with the Harvard Department of Education's EdCast, he said traditional grading practices perpetuate disparities by race, income, education, background and language that have been going on for years.  

“The frustrating part I think, is that so many of us go into education to try and disrupt and counteract these cycles of disparities over generations, and do great work and thinking about culturally responsive pedagogy and diverse curriculum, and really trying to listen to our students, and yet we are using practices that undermine those things and actually work against all of the great equity work that we've been doing.” 

Linda Borg covers education for the Journal.