Opinion: San Diego Unified's new grading policy has noble intent, but rollout raises hard questions [Opinion]
The first two landmark laws made a commitment to equity. The latter two landmarks showed sharp disagreement on how to achieve it. Now a national consensus on what to do looks impossible. In many states, the easy answers offered by one side and the other have battled it out with no clear winner. But in California, since Jerry Brown returned as governor in 2011, the old idea thatwas the best way for communities to figure out how to help their students has again become the norm.
Which brings us to the San Diego Unified School District. In fall 2020, the state’s second largest school district adopted what’s fairly seen as a radical shift tofor middle and high school students. It has as its central concept the idea that what’s most important is to learn and master required material — not to do so according to a set time frame.
The appeal of this idea is obvious. For decades, evidence has shown that disadvantaged students mired in poverty face huge obstacles to success. In a community where housing costs are so high that even middle-income families can feel impoverished, why not respond to this problem with a bold approach that tries to address it? At the board meeting where the policy changed unanimously, officials voicedNearly two years later, however, a more complex and troubling picture has emerged.
But there was also intense criticism. Virtually all stakeholders described a program that was applied in different ways by different teachers, a confusing and maddening result that was probably inevitable because of state laws giving teachers wide autonomy. Some parents said their kids responded to the changes by coasting and adopting habits that could haunt them in college and in their future careers.
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