The Sept. 22 board of education meeting kicked off with two presentations, the first on the state of special education, presented by Dr. Carmen Henderson, and the second on grading trends in the last 10 years, reported by Superintendent Chuck Klaus.
The latter was in response to a concern raised several meetings ago about the possibility of grade inflation.
Henderson said various initiatives for special-education students have started this year, including training all elementary-school special ed teachers in Sonday, a multisensory reading instructional program, and TouchMath, a multisensory math instructional program.
“To keep our students in the general-education program and give them differentiated instruction, we now have all our special-education teachers trained in TouchMath,” said Henderson. “They can align TouchMath with our current math curriculum, so students who are struggling with math will not have a high need of being pulled out for math instruction. They can stay within the general-education classroom and receive the level of support that they need.”
Regarding grading trends, Klaus explained that the school district worked with LinkIt!, a data analytics and assessment management company, to look at a decade’s worth of grades and compare the percentage and number of students who graduate with an A plus average and weighted GPA of 97.0 or higher.
The presentation featured graphs marking the mean, median and mode grades across five core content areas, by level and year. The study found that the number of students who earned A grades had generally increased over the last 10 years, but Klaus noted there were several explanations for that result.
“Two years ago, we went from a seven-point scale to a 10-point scale,” he explained. “What that means is that two years ago, 93 was an A and now a 90 is an A.”
AP and accelerated classes are weighted, meaning a 90 grade in an accelerated class can be weighed as higher because of the course’s increased difficulty. In the past 10 years, the number of students enrolled in AP classes has nearly doubled. Both factors may have contributed to more students having higher grades over the years.
Questions for future consideration include understanding what the grades reflect, checking grading consistency and reevaluating the usefulness of grading to see if other forms of feedback would promote higher levels of student learning and engagement.
The full meeting presentation is available online at the school district website and on its YouTube channel.
Following presentations, Board President Jaime Grookett announced a change in the meeting’s regular format: There will be one public comment section for residents to address both agenda and non-agenda items, rather than two separate comment periods, and it will be limited to one hour. For work sessions, the board has implemented a half-hour Committee of the Whole (COW) so it can discuss topics at length.
For their first COW, board members reflected on the reasons why parents would opt out of sex education courses, but not state-mandated education on diversity and inclusion. No action was taken, but Klaus noted that the discussions will help principals faced with conversations about why parents can’t opt out of various class topics.
“There’s a difference between exposure and curriculum,” said Board Vice President Linda Hochgertel. “The statutes are very clear: Curriculum for K through 12 has to do with highlighting and promoting diversity, economic diversity, equity, inclusion, tolerance and belonging.
“With regard to gender and sexual orientation, people have to understand it’s okay to have different kinds of families, and nobody should feel different as a result of it.”
During public comment, a number of people expressed support for the LGBTQ community and rebuked pamphlets that were circulated by anonymous parents on the first day of elementary school. The pamphlets emphasized parental rights and made claims about the sex ed curriculum and the district at large, including the so-called integration of critical race theory and the belief that parents cannot opt out of “LGBTQ materials.”
Haddonfield High senior Rania Kolluri noted that while she had taken classes like race, class and gender and criminal law, they are electives, and no one taught critical race theory, even though she had asked about it.
“History is history and it needs to be taught,” Kolluri maintained. “As students, we cannot leave these enclosed towns sheltered from certain ideologies. I understand as parents you want to protect your children from these dangers, but learning about our nation’s history, including the triumphs and mistakes of historical figures, is imperative.”
Board member David Siedell publicly apologized for calling out a resident by name in a previous session regarding a comment with which he disagreed. He also offered a private apology to the resident.
The next board of education meeting will be on Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m., high-school library.
