They're among a small but growing group of Long Beach educators who believe that by changing the way teachers traditionally test and grade students, they can raise achievement and help students reach high standards. But old habits are often hard to change, and the methods teachers use to test and grade today have been around for a long, long time. It was a real eye-opener. And the differences abound not only from school to school, but from classroom to classroom. Some teachers add up all the points accumulated on tests, homework, projects, and even class participation.
Some teachers count only certain major assignments.
And different teachers may grant different grades for similar performance. To make matters more complicated, many teachers' lessons may not be closely tied to the district's new content standards. The kinds of assignments and tests they give may have more to do with what is in the textbook than whether a student is meeting a particular standard. Bancroft Middle School teacher Harriett Boyer began to see the contradictions in the traditional grading system when she selected assessment as the topic for her master's thesis in education. No wonder our kids get frustrated.