The Fault Behind Failure
“If CSH truly is a place that wants to usher students into a place of success and motivation, it needs to change, because right now it’s as if we’re in a perpetual limbo that emphasizes the failure of many and the success of few.”
This past trimester, CSH started allowing seniors with a B+ (80%) or higher in every class to leave school after 5th period. Every single week, all 12th grade students would receive an email with the names of the students eligible to dismiss early that week. However, the astonishing thing is that throughout the entirety of first trimester, only eight students achieved this privilege, and of those eight, only four maintained it from start to end.
There are around 98 students in the 12th grade, so for only eight to have had a B+ or higher, and for only four to have maintained that performance the whole trimester speaks volumes about not only the consistent failure that we have normalized, but also the gap between pass and fail that we have created.
Currently, the number of students eligible for early dismissal right now is ten, but when you really think about it an increase of only two students isn’t really an improvement.
However, this problem speaks less about study hall dismissal and more about the problem of widespread student failure that this reveals.
If I were to ask how many F’s someone thought we had as a school, they would be more likely to say something far less than the actual number.
“150,” “200,” “146,” “450,” “205,” “100,” “125” — These were the guesses of various students across the CSH community when asked how many F’s they thought we had as a school.
The actual number — 227 F’s at the end of last year.
Think about that number for a second and let it sink in.
227 F’s
That means that 26% of students ended last year failing at least one class – more than a quarter of our population. And that number tends to be higher in the middle of each school year..
But…why? What is behind this gap between students passing and failing?
In order to answer this question, I dove into mastery, teacher practice, relationships, our population, our grade distribution, and even spent the day at the Nightingale-Bamford school to find out more about why students fail, and what can help us all succeed.
PART 1: MASTERY?
Oftentimes when we think about grades, we think about them as a measurement of future success. If a student isn’t succeeding academically and making the grades that they should, then they are less likely to get into a top school, top program, and any other secondary option.
This ideology — which is also fact — is one that is often drilled into the minds of students and hangs over their heads as a constant reminder of what is at stake. And yet, even knowing the impact and importance that grades bear on their futures, students still fail.
I want to know why this is the case – why students fail despite being fully aware of a grade’s impact on their future. As such, I interviewed four CSH seniors to understand what they feel the importance of academics is on their future. They all felt that academics are imperative to their future, but that this focus on academics has also created an environment of toxicity in their minds where grades ultimately dictate their emotions. Of those four seniors, two of them had gotten F’s in their math classes in T1, and one had received a C in theirs — the reason why: they chose not to push themselves because they either thought it wouldn’t make a difference or they simply didn’t know how to.
One thing that is more normalized than it should be at CSH is for students to have one or more F’s simultaneously. In fact, it is so normalized that everyone I asked knew it shouldn’t be the norm but could still provide me with various examples of their friends and even themselves still failing.
If you think that students having one or more F’s simultaneously is normal this is your sign to wake up because it is anything but normal.
And of course, that isn’t to say it’s every CSH student, but it is 56% of them who are failing now and on average around 30% who are failing at the end of each trimester and that is something that needs to change.
Since its founding five years ago CSH has used a mastery-based grading system, a system that was chosen intentionally by the founders. The mastery-based system is a system “based on students showing signs of mastery and understanding of various skills instead of only providing the traditional numerical grade,” which makes sense because the goal of it is to “demystify grades and turn them into useful feedback” while “not reinforcing poor habits.” At the bottom of the CSH mastery-based grading theory however, there is a section answering the question “[h]ow will we know when we are successful?” which says the following:
If students develop more ownership of their learning which will be clear when students are asked how they are doing in a course and they say “I am doing pretty well in [competency name] but I still need to work on [competency name] and I am doing that by [actionable steps].” Instead of “Fine, I have a B in [name of class].”
Because of how most students conceptualize their success in school as based solely on a letter grade, you never hear the true indicator of success of the system if you ask a student how they are doing in a course. What you often hear is simply the letter grade and the quick cursing of the teacher that gave them such a grade.
One thing that CSH English Teacher Mr. Ryan expressed to me was how when designing the system for mastery-based grading, the school tried to “alleviate any sort of error that would occur just because of systems and how grades are done and what kinds of things you get grades for.” Instead of focusing on the percentage in a competency, which is still important, he found it more about being able to “identify a theme about something on [students] grade level [that can can contribute to failure like] a habit they don’t have, lack of clarity from a teacher, miscommunication, etc.”
Mastery-based grading was created with the goal of not relying solely on grades as an indicator of success, it was about finding the factors that contribute to student failure and understanding that when a student fails it isn’t because they want to, but rather because of another variable. And yet, students are the ones who bear the blame for failing most of the time.
PART 2: TEACHER PRACTICE
A key thing to point out about the mastery-based grading system is the fact that it allegedly prevents teachers from putting a 0 in the grade book because, according to “The Case Against Zero,” “0 is mathematically inappropriate.” Instead, teachers should mark missing assignments as “25% of the total points” so that students are earning an “F equivalent grade” and not a 0.
When you think about grades as ratios, “A is to B as 4 is to 3; D is to F as 1 is to zero,” which makes sense on a 4-point scale like the one CSH uses because each letter grade has a number grade that it is directly equivalent to. However, the use of zero goes beyond just a number and extends to be more about the fact that zeros tend to be given with the intent to punish (Reeves p.325). Logic tells us that if “students failed to turn in an assignment…they receive a failing grade” instead of being “sent to a Siberian labor camp” (Reeves p.325). And of course, this isn’t about a literal Siberian labor camp, it’s about the impact that a zero can have. Unlike “sentences at Siberian labor camps” which “ultimately come to an end” all it takes is “just two or three zeros to cause failure for an entire semester” (Reeves p.325). That’s just 2 to 3 missed assignments, failed exams, etc. And as we previously established, grades have the power to make or break your future so “just a few course failures can lead a student to drop out of high school, incurring a lifetime of personal and social consequences” (Reeves p.325).
Using this logic, it makes sense why teachers are not allowed to put a 0 in the gradebook for missing assignments (with the exception of assignments that are worth only 4 points). And yet, teachers still put zeros in the gradebook for assignments that don’t meet that criteria. In fact, I had a conversation with a student who was comfortable enough to show me her gradebook and in addition to a few F’s standing at around 30%, there was a 0% in one of her classes. This isn’t something that’s new though — teachers have been putting zeros in the gradebook throughout all four years that I’ve been at CSH, and I’m willing to wager they were doing it even before then.
How can CSH really expect the mastery-based grading system to work and cause the systemic change that it wants to create if its teachers aren’t even adhering to the rules they’re supposed to?
This then leads me to the next question that I let guide my thinking: do the school’s current grading policies enable students to pass or fail?
Mr. Ryan believes that “[the school’s] grading policy overwhelmingly allows students to pass,” and he thinks “because we haven’t refined it and shown people how to implement it with fidelity that the system sometimes causes people to fail.” However, he also “wholeheartedly” believes that is why “we have mastery assignments and multiple assessments for students to show their learning in multiple ways.” Instead of focusing solely on grades, Mr. Ryan sees it as more imperative to “instill a growth mindset that is integral to learning” through the mastery system.
So who’s fault really is it when students fail or fail to meet the mark they are expected to be at like many seniors did last trimester?
When a student fails, it is always for a reason. This reason could be an error on the teacher's end, a mistake or lack of ownership on the student’s end, or literally anything else that could come into play, but the whole point of mastery-based grading is to help students learn from that failure and not get penalized for it. If at least 40% of students didn’t meet the mark they were supposed to, Mr. Ryan acknowledges that it is then the fault of “the environment, teacher, school, or whatever else…if more students are not able to find success, that’s solely on the institution.” And to be clear, it is not always the school’s fault, but when you do have constant failure on a certain level, it undeniably is.
In the same way that teachers fail to consider the philosophy behind not giving 0’s in the way they are supposed to, another thing that Mr. Ryan highlighted for me was the support required by law that teachers often fail to provide. I’ll use myself as an example here:
Last year, I took an exam for a class and ended up needing to use my extended time, which is something that I am legally entitled to because of my education plan. When I went to finish my quiz, my teacher (who knew I needed extended time) had blatantly denied me my extra time. My ability to use my extended time was taken away from me, and because of the fact that I couldn’t look over my work and actually spend time trying to conceptualize my answers, I didn’t perform as well as I knew I could. My Test was simply out of my hands and I had to accept the grade I got which did make me take a hit. It took me practically the entire trimester to bring my grade back up in the class through countless revisions and masteries. And while I did meet with my teacher and make them aware of their mistake, that was something that I shouldn’t have had to do in the first place if the rules of my education plan had just been followed. The even sadder truth is, this wasn’t the first time I’d had issues with teachers disregarding my education plan and it wouldn’t be the last.
I spoke with a few other students with education plans and they feel that while their plans have been “emphasized in high school,” they still experience teacher error with their plans more than they would like. One student especially expressed their embarrassment and annoyance to me about how they have to constantly remind teachers they have an education plan in order to prevent any error, and how they feel having an education plan can make them a target of judgment from their peers.
Denying extra time, prematurely grading exams, and doing anything else that is in violation of a student’s educational plan actually harms them more than you may know. And of course, teachers make mistakes and forget things, but that doesn’t mean students should have to continuously stress over mistakes like the disregard of their education plan because they know if they don’t stress over it, they will fail. To any teacher reading this — please remember that students who have education plans have them for a reason.
This brings me back to my point about student failure. Mr. Ryan brought to my attention the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which clearly states what accommodations students with IEPs and other education plans need. However, to him, “not all teachers know the best ways to accommodate students, so a lot of the time students will fail because teachers fail to give them the correct support.”
Do students need to be accountable for their academics? Yes.
Do they need to make sure they try to ask for help where they can and actively try to improve? Yes.
Should they bear the brunt of the shame and punishment that comes when they fail because of institutional error? No.
There will always be outliers who don’t meet the mark, but if the majority of students miss the mark, it should really make us reevaluate our current practices. Director of College Advising Mr. Meyers put it this way: “you know the grade a student should or is likely to be receiving because of how they’ve performed historically, so if they aren’t performing like that, it’s a red flag.”
No system is truly perfect, and no one is expecting the school's mastery system to be perfect either. However, there are just too many discrepancies in the school’s system that evidently are contributing to students’ failure to meet the mark they are supposed to meet.
PART 3: RELATIONSHIPS
One of the things that you often hear in really any school is that teachers have favorites.
But just how much of an impact does having a good relationship with one's teachers have on a student’s academic performance?
All of the CSH students that I interviewed unanimously agreed that they felt having a good relationship with their teachers did make them more comfortable to ask for help, and, as such, more likely to perform better.
And even if you personally thought that wasn’t true of a professional relationship like a student-teacher one, it still is true in any other relationship. When you like someone and have a good relationship with them, you know that you can rely on them and therefore you are more comfortable to go to them about practically anything. In addition, knowing that you have someone who you are in good-standing with also makes you want to do everything in your power to keep that good-standing. For students, that often means passing their classes and doing everything in their power to succeed and make that respected figure proud.
To look at it from the perspective of a teacher, I spoke with CSH Director of STEM, Ms. Liani, who finds that some of the kids that she is closest to don’t actually have A’s in her class. To her, a true student-teacher relationship comes from showing “care” and oftentimes that care is found the most in the time she spends with students who are struggling. And that isn’t to say she doesn’t spend time with students who are doing fine, but it is to say that students who tend to not struggle have less of a need to attend office hours and have 1 on 1s where that relationship building really happens.
Mr. Ryan has also found that “shared success builds trust,” and so when a student and a teacher are able to win together, they are “more likely to have good feelings toward each other.” The only caveat with this however, is the fact that if the relationship is solely built on success, when that success fails, so does the relationship.
One thing that we see often at CSH is how students tend to treat teachers when they are experiencing failure in their class. A relationship that was once close and vibrant can easily become filled with tension and resentment because of the failure that a student experiences. Students can go from saying “hi” to their teachers with a smile on their face, to cursing them out over the smallest issue because they associate failure with their relationship. It is this type of thinking that often embeds in students the idea that if they fail it is because their teacher doesn’t like them. This isn’t to say that teachers and institutions aren’t at fault when students fail, but it is to say that when that failure does occur, it is important for there to be some type of accountability and dissociation of that failure from the relationship. No person should want to associate another person with failure, just as they wouldn’t want to be associated with failure themselves.
If there is one thing that I believe we should all be able to agree on though, it is that even if a student does not have a good relationship with their teacher or the teacher doesn’t have a “good student rapport,” as Mr. Meyers says, they still tend to (at least for the majority) hold a level of respect for them because of their reputation with being effective educators.
I hold a great deal of respect for every adult that’s ever taught me, and even the ones who I may not be as close with, because their teaching was so effective it not only made me grow as a learner but also as a person when it came to building those relationships.
It can be a little hard, but it’s all about balance and finding the point where students and teachers can truly meet and gain the ability to collaborate in a mutualistic relationship where they both succeed.
PART 4: DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH
When I started writing this article, one of the things that I really wanted to consider were the ways that CSH’s academic culture compared to other schools. No single school is the same, there’s always some kind of differentiating factor, and CSH has many.
The biggest differentiator of CSH is its diverse community. The CSH promise is that whoever walks through the school's door is someone who the school will help and support in achieving whatever dream they want to achieve. Oftentimes, when we think of diversity, we think of it in relation to ethnic, racial, and religious identity. And while of course, CSH does have diversity in all of those aspects, it also has them in aspects that more prestigious schools like Scarsdale and Stuyvesant do not. Things like education prior to high school and post-secondary aspirations both in and outside of the workforce are all a major part of what diversity looks like at CSH, and are harder to find in the aforementioned prestigious institutions.
I spoke to Mr. Meyers, who attended Scarsdale High School, about how the academic environment there compares to the one at CSH, and there are some major differences. He recounted to me a story about how on parents' night (for himself or one of his siblings), a principal had told parents “you give us gold and we keep it golden.” At schools like Scarsdale and Stuyvesant, most students attending the high schools matriculate from the lower schools the school has already established. The “gold” that the principal was talking about were the students who, as you probably could have guessed, were on grade-level and came from largely affluent backgrounds, and the money their families would bring. And in no way is this to shame students from those backgrounds, because it’s actually great for them to have access to such opportunities. The point of this is to say that because of CSH’s lottery system, its promise to welcome everyone with open arms, and its location in the poorest Congressional District in America, it tends to have a diversity of students in every sense of the word – those who read below grade-level and above, and those who come from a variety of economic, racial, and cultural backgrounds, each with their own personal joys and struggles.
CSH students may not all be what the Scarsdale principal would consider to be “gold;” in fact, I’d say they’re more like diamonds in the rough, but CSH invests in them to make them diamonds, regardless of the rough. Unlike a lot of competitive schools like Stuyvesant and Scarsdale, one of the things that Mr. Meyers admires about CSH is how teachers adapt to the diversity in their classrooms. Having students on completely different spectrums of something like reading-level is something that “would never happen in a Scarsdale classroom,” so the fact that CSH teachers are able to take that on and use “an approach that's more progressive” than the traditional one used by Scarsdale speaks a lot to its investment in students.
PART 5: DISTRIBUTION
Every school has something that is known as a distribution. There is the distribution of grades, GPA, matriculation, and any other indicators of a school's success.
Grade Distribution
I want to focus on the difference in grade distribution between CSH and Scarsdale. At Scarsdale, in English, 78.3% of students have a B+ or above (the reason why I’m focusing on B+ is because that is the standard mark of success here at CSH). In Social Studies, that number is 76.4%; In Science, 73.5%; In Mathematics, 71.2%. Less than 30% of students at Scarsdale ever fall below the B+ mark, and while a reason for that is possibly due to the grade inflation Scarsdale practices, it’s also largely in part because of the academic culture and academic background their students have. At CSH, those numbers look drastically different. For every academic area at Scarsdale, 24.3% or more students had A’s. At CSH, Science and English classes have a 6.89% distribution of A’s; In History, 8.37%; In Math, 19.95%; In CS, 24.44%. Mastery-based grading is supposed to help students understand the academic competencies that they fail in, but that’s not what the grade distribution data shows — in fact, the data indicates that the opposite would be true.
However, this scarcity of A’s and other high grades works to the advantage of students when applying to college. For example, once a college sees the distribution for A’s in a science class to be only 6.89%, they know that if an applicant has an A in a science class that they really had to work for it because of how rare of a commodity it is.
GPA Distribution
GPA (grade point average) is one of the first things that colleges and even potential employers (in some cases) look at when determining whether or not to accept an applicant. GPA is based on a student's grades.
Knowing the trend in CSH’s grade distribution, you could have probably concluded that its GPA distribution is dramatically low too.
And you’re probably thinking that is because of the resources those schools have, and the population they serve, but if that were to be entirely true, then CSH wouldn’t have such a low GPA distribution, especially when compared to other schools in the Bronx.
However, CSH manages to make up for this through its Regents pass rates, which are much higher than those of other schools in the Bronx. Which, in itself speaks to the fact that the way that we think about grades often doesn’t reflect the progress students make. To break it down by subject:
ELA (2022-2023)
In ELA, CSH had a 79% proficiency rate while NY State had a 77% proficiency rate. The Bronx only had a proficiency rate of 58%, meaning that we not only surpassed the average rate of NY State, but also our district.
Algebra I (2022-2023)
In Algebra I, CSH had a 58% proficiency rate while NY State had a 65% proficiency rate. The Bronx only had a proficiency rate of 40%, meaning that while we didn’t pass the NY State average, we still over-performed in the Bronx.
Algebra II (2022-2023)
In Algebra II, CSH had a 65% proficiency rate while NY State had a 64% proficiency rate. The Bronx only had a proficiency rate of 11%, meaning that we not only surpassed the average rate of NY State, but also our district.
Living Environment (2022-2023)
In Living Environment, CSH had a 72% proficiency rate while NY state had 66% proficiency rate. The Bronx only had a proficiency rate of 37%, meaning that we not only surpassed the average rate of NY State, but also our district.
Chemistry (2022-2023)
In Chemistry, CSH had a 78% proficiency rate while NY state had a 65% proficiency rate. The Bronx only had a proficiency rate of 9%, meaning that we not only surpassed the average rate of NY State, but also our district.
Physics (2022-2023)
In Physics, CSH had a 69% proficiency rate while NY state had a 68% proficiency rate. The Bronx only had a proficiency rate of 5%, meaning that we not only surpassed the average rate of NY State, but also our district.
Global History/Geography (2022-2023)
In Global History/Geography, CSH had a 86% proficiency rate while NY state had a 74% proficiency rate. The Bronx only had a proficiency rate of 44%, meaning that we not only surpassed the average rate of NY State, but also our district.
By now, you’ve probably started to pick up on a pattern: CSH doesn’t fail its students where it sometimes counts the most: on regents.
With all of this in mind, I think the real question to ask here is, if it isn’t the students, and it isn’t the teachers, and it isn’t the school, then perhaps CSH should reconsider its system because clearly — it is not working.
PART 6: MY DAY AS A NIGHTHAWK
Instead of simply speaking about prestigious institutions, I wanted to see if I could experience a day at a prestigious institution myself. I wanted to see what it would be like to experience a different academic environment for a day in order to find out more about what academic systems do and don’t work, and which systems harm or help student success.
My best-friend Penelope Segerdahl is a senior at the Nightingale-Bamford School, an all-girls private school on the Upper East Side that costs over $60,000 a year to attend. I got the honor of being able to attend school with her for a day and see what it’s really like to be a Nightingale Nighthawk.
I started off my day in the senior lounge — a space for just seniors, full of pictures of the senior class and events. Like a mini office just for students, the lounge contains two couches, a table, a bay window, and lockers for all 57 seniors with positive notes on them. In the lounge you could also find a bit of teenage humor in the flag hanging under the coat hooks of Ravi from “Jessie” and his pet Ms. Kipling with the words “I took her to my penthouse and I freaked it” (not pictured but placed to the left), and the flag of Gibby from “iCarly” eating a banana shirtless (pictured below).
In between classes you can find students either in the senior lounge, the student commons, or right outside the student commons (pictured below) engaged in a snowball fight.
The first class I had the pleasure of attending was Advanced Modern Physics with Mr. Flomberg, where the students were giving PSA’s to convince the public of different types of energy sources/fossil fuel alternatives (ex: solar and nuclear). Just like most classes at Nightingale, there were around 11 students in the class and the class took on a seminar style.
The day of my visit marked the final day of 1st semester at Nightingale so a majority of classes were wrapping up final presentations.
After class with Mr. Flomberg, we then attended a Pep Rally where Nightingale students got to engage in activities like racing remote control cars as a way of rallying up school spirit for the athletics teams who would be playing that same afternoon.
In “Statistics In The Era of Big Data” with Mr. Prince, I got to observe Penelope working on a project where she had to create her own subway line, and also figure out what values to consider in her Chi Square Analysis that she would be writing a paper on.
We then enjoyed a taco lunch where I got to speak to other Nightingale students and get to know more about them and the school.
After lunch we then had a free period, and attended Advanced Art History with Mr. Whitehurst where I got to see students give Docent Talks on various religious structures across Europe.
Perhaps it is the faces of community gathering or the fact that there’s only 57 seniors, that makes Nightingale a close-knit community where everybody knows everyone else and people genuinely care and want to uplift each other.
However, I have to say that my visit was for a reason, and that was to uncover more about Nightingale’s academic culture and what they do that really helps drive their students towards success.
What I Learned
Not every student who attends Nightingale’s Upper School attended private-school institutions prior. In fact, there is a lot of diversity in not only the ethnicity, races, and religions of various students, but also their backgrounds and upbringings.
Nightingale is (as expected) a rigorous institution, however, in the words of Nathalie Cardozo (12th), sometimes “students do take it too far” and obsess over the fact they got an A- instead of an A.
All of the Nightingale students I interviewed felt as though student-teacher relationships do hold a lot of bearing on how likely they are to perform well. Sofia Schiff (10th) felt that she “tends to care more about what [teachers] will say if there’s a good relationship,” which is a sentiment that I feel most people can agree with. However, even if she doesn’t have a good relationship with a teacher, she views it from the “aspect of proving them wrong about [her]” by surpassing their expectations.
The lowest grades received by students at Nightingale are drastically different from those at CSH. After speaking to multiple students, the lowest grade that I was able to conclude was received over 4 years was 68% — a grade that still is higher than the ones held by a majority of CSH students failing.
Aside from student perspective however, I also got the opportunity to speak with two faculty members at Nightingale. According to Nightingale College Counselor Mr. Montenegro, “most people are passing, and those failing make up a pretty severe minority.” And not only that, but Language Teacher Ms. Di Meo also explained to me how Nightingale has “free periods built in, enrichment, and lunch” to give extra help to students who are struggling. As a teacher, she doesn’t want to see any of her students fail, and so she makes sure to never fail a student with an F, but to rather acknowledge their efforts. For example, if you were to take a test in her class and just turn in the test blank, she would still give you a 50% because the fact that you were able to read the test in the language it was written in and then conclude you had no idea still shows “immersion” with the language. To her, “THERE IS NO FAILURE.”
Nightingale uses an A to F scale with no A+ but a D, and practices some grade-inflation but not enough for it to be quantifiable or that’s irregular for an NYC school/school coming out the pandemic. What this means, is that it’s actually harder for Nightingale students to get A’s in their classes because their grades aren’t boosted. Because of this, as I mentioned before, the clear conclusion is Nightingale has a rigorous environment. However, what sets it apart from the Scarsdales and Stuyvesants of the world is that, according to Mr. Montenegro, “it’s more collaborative than competitive,” so you don’t really see any comparison of grades to put people over others, someone being denied help, or anything like that. Another key thing that makes Nightingale distinct is the fact that it doesn’t have any kind of GPA or Grade distribution like most schools, and in fact, doesn’t even give that data to colleges. This culture of collaboration is something that even I struggle to see at CSH because of the fact that at CSH being “good at school” isn’t as cool as it is at Nightingale.
What really made Nightingale interesting to me was the fact that although it doesn’t practice mastery-based grading like CSH, it uses an approach similar to the mastery-based one in order to help students who do fail get back on track and understand material. Mr. Montenegro gave me some insight into this process, which begins with faculty and staff just trying to “figure out what supports can be put in place to plug in the gaps” — gaps being anything from a lack of preparation at a previous school, misunderstanding of content, and anything else impacting the student. The school then places a big focus on first “acknowledging it’s difficult for the student.” Instead of bombarding the student by telling them what they should do/should have done differently, the school acknowledges their struggle first before moving on to figure out ways to prevent failure from happening again for the student. In the words of Mr. Montenegro, “[Nightingale] wants to make sure students understand the material instead of focusing on just the gains…making sure [students] understand material and are tracking well is the important point.” And to be frank, it is clear that Nightingales approach is one that is not only effective, but also places the well-being and esteem of students as a priority, something that the CSH mastery-based system often fails to do.
TO CONCLUDE
Mastery-based grading is a creative system that allows for students to be able to conceptualize their education as more than just a grade. However, I think that when you have a mass population of students failing, you have to really consider your practices. That’s exactly what CSH needs to do, because the system is not working for us.
The CSH mastery-based system is meant to make students pass, and yet, there is still a large amount of failure.
The theory simply doesn’t match the practice.
How can we claim to provide our students with the skills and preparation they need if they are failing to meet even our standards of baseline level success?
Of course, there are some undeniable factors like student background and educational background that impact academic performance, but at the end of the day, we can’t continue to put the blame on students. I acknowledge that CSH is a more diverse school than Nightingale, not just with more students, but with more students from various backgrounds and educational experiences. This makes it harder for us, but it does not mean we shouldn’t try.
Systems are in place because they work, and our system no longer works.
If CSH truly is a place that wants to usher students into a place of success and motivation, it needs to change because right now it’s as if we’re in a perpetual limbo that emphasizes the failure of many and the success of few.
Mastery-based grading may be a good system to try and help bridge gaps between varying education levels across CSH, but it isn’t an adequate measure that truly reflects the educational gains the students make here. It’s simply not fair to grade students who are known to have an educational level less than their peers on the same scale as everyone else because it makes learning more about playing a game of catch up instead of actually internalizing.
It can not be about getting students who are failing to pass, it has to be about helping those who are failing and those who are simply going through the day to day motions, develop a motivation and desire to strive for more than what they believe they deserve. Even if you were to look at the students who opt into the more rigorous Advanced Placement (AP) and Honors course load our school offers, they still struggle academically and, even if they do not fail, they often flounder in mediocrity and simply accept their academic defeat. Of course, there is science that explains why students fail, but it is in part because of the fact that failure is a consistent thing at CSH, and students tend to accept the things that stay consistent in their lives.
I ask that CSH please consider a revision of its system that truly supports its highest-need students, motivates them to get A’s instead of simply passing, and ensures teacher application in a consistent manner.
Our diamonds deserve better.
Work Cited
REEVES, DOUGLAS B. The Case Against the Zero, https://www.ccresa.org/Files/Uploads/252/The_Case_Against_Zero.pdf. Accessed 19 January 2024.