I have a second grader that is LD. His new special ed teacher this year is using a modified grading system so that a 40% score is modified to a grade of 70%. I read about this type of grading system somewhere on this website. It is my understanding that it is a generally accepting grading method for special education students. Can anyone explain to me how it benefits the child to receive these artificially inflated grades? Am I wrong to be concerned that my child is receiving A’s, B’s and C’s, but is really (on a true scale) getting C’s, D’s and F’s? Maybe it is possible to perform at the 40% level and be able to move on. I don’t know. Is this grading method tried and true? Thanks for your comments.
Re: A couple of schools of thought
Thanks for your thoughts, Susan. I haven’t seem my son’s first quarter grade card yet, but I know he will be getting mostly B’s on a modified scale. It doesn’t seem right given the fact that he is still struggling to read on the first grade level. Unfortunately, I think his teacher is more concerned about getting through the material so that they can keep up “sheet-for-sheet” with the regular ed class. The special education process mystifies me.
Sometimes, it doesn't seem very special, does it?
Recent research (Seligman, et.al.) looks at self-esteem and indicates that a person cannot feel self-esteem without feeling competent somewhere. If that is true, the only way educators can help children feel high self-esteem is to build their skills competence. Parents can also help by building islands of competence (Robert Brooks, I think) in home and recreational activities.
I wish I didn’t have to give A, B,… grades.
Re: Sometimes, it doesn't seem very special, does it?
Dear Susan and Ann,
I know what you are talking about! Just yesterday, my 3rd grade son who is in Learning Support for reading, spelling, and math, and also has ADD, brought home a social studies paper on the “continents and oceans” and the teacher had told me that “he didn’t do well” on the test. OK. I thought that meant he didn’t know where the continents and oceans were. WRONG. HE KNEW EVERY ONE OF THEM! Problem was he didn’t spell them correctly! Now, I have to get it written into his IEP a special exception for spelling in non-language arts classes so that he can feel that he is accomplishing something! He came home and reported that “he did bad” and I told him no it was a perfect paper and that the reason he was in learning support was to help him learn to spell and that his teacher should have taken that into consideration when grading his paper. So what should have been a 100% paper is now a 77% (mid C).
I think self-esteem is really important to these kids and receiving really good grades to them is so important that I guess the “modifed” grades are important to them in this aspect.
Yes, Special Education/Learning Support, whatever you want to call it is a great mystery to us all and I think I learn every day what needs to be in the IEP is ‘USE YOUR COMMON SENSE TEACHER’ — I’m glad that there are learning support teachers out there like you.
Good luck to both of you in your pursuits!!
Re: Modified grading - What is the benefit?
No grading method is tried or true and all of them derive from an underlying philsophy. Ask yourself - how are grades arrived at? There is no national scale nor are there even scales within schools. Teachers decide upon grades and most teachers, whether they are aware of it or not, do so by comparing students’ performances to each other. The best performance gets the A, the next best the Bs, and so on.
Are children with learning differnces fairly compared to children without? Is the playing field a level one if we compare the performances of students with learning differences to those who have none? Schools and their teachers who believe it is not fair to compare the performances of students with learning differences to those without often modify grades.
Your child’s modified grades mean someone feels he is doing well given the challenge of his learning differences.
Self-esteem
Researchers like Seligman et.al. (Pennsylvania) discuss self esteem as derived from competence. So, that toasty feeling in 3rd/4th grade over good grades goes down the pipe in 6th grade when students realize that they aren’t really earning them like everyone else. That’s one of my problems with A-B-C-D-F grades over mastery percentages.
BTW, if the lesson objective is the know the oceans and locations, then you are very correct in asking for the accommodation. IN my opinion, any teacher “in the know” would do it without being asked in a 504 or IEP.
Re: Self-esteem
My son studied for a science test every night for a week and knew the material backward and forward. He took the written test and missed two questions.
His wonderful teacher knowing that he knew the material gave him a verbal retest and he got 100%.
How nice of the teachers to give the kid credit and an accommodation do do well.
On the one hand, advocates of students with disabilities want to “level” the playing field in the “honor roll” department. That assumes grades and related honors to be the ultimate goal and evidence of learning to be of lesser importance.
For myself, I could give a big hang about grades but want to be sure that students have mastered the skills taught. This means that I must be sure that my grading criteria is valid for the purpose. That is a big assumption. The tasks must be analyzed—especially in the content areas—to be sure that we are measuring what we think are the objectives. It is a little easier in math when the program used is very tightly sequenced. Reading can be slippery, too, unless one has carefully analyzed the objectives and tasks or is teaching in lower grades with a tighter scope & sequence.
In the end, not a very simple question, eh? I went into education to get some of my parent questions answered. What I found are more questions.