"WDN has never thoroughly covered school board meetings or city council meetings and I think they should."

"I sure wish that the whole meeting was reported on in the newspaper and not just the sensationalism. I really don't care

about the conversation between Mounce-Arnold and English. I care more about all the topics they discussed including the

report on the grading scale. It would be nice to find out what happened at the meeting somewhere when we are unable to watch

it. The last minutes posted online are dated in April."

"I think that space could be better used for something more important, such as posting the minutes of school board

meetings."

Those were three comments, or excerpts of comments, posted on the article I wrote about Thursday's school board meeting.

http://www.winonadailynews.com/articles/2008/06/13/news/03waps13.txt

You asked for it, you got it. A "brief" synopsis.

The main thing to report is that nothing was decided. There was no action taken, as it wasn't an action item. More than

that, no hard data was presented to the board. The board asked for a trend analysis on grades to be provided by Phelps when the student handbook is approved, but at this point, all that was discussed was what parents and teachers think about the uniform grade scale. A GPA comparison for classes wasn't even provided.

A very informal, 70 person questionnaire was filled out by parents at parent-teacher con-ferences, which showed mixed feelings

on uniform grades, with slightly more people against it than for it. Phelps also said that he has held numerous meetings

with groups of teachers to ask for their opinions of grading scales.

The most common idea presented, if uniform grades were not continued, would be to have departments create grading scales and

have them uniform internally.

"Standardized grading for everything is not realistic," Phelps said. Each one of you would grade a paper differently, and I

could write a paper for each one of you and each one would give a different grade, Phelps told the board. Phelps also

presented other concerns and ideas, like how some teachers and parents feel each grade should be treated differently:

freshmen and seniors should have their own grading scales. Also, some teachers felt that different level learners should be graded on separate scales.

The interesting thing about the rather long discussion that ensued was the fact that the board, and Phelps, seemed to be

talking about two different things. The purpose of the uniform grading scale isn't to af-fect rigor, it's to provide students

and parents with a defined expectation about what a grade will look like. Instead of hav-ing one class have a 90 as an A and

another have a 90 as a B or A-, they would all have the same scale. Theoretically, a uni-form grading scale could reduce grade inflation if a more stringent A and B are used in all classes than before, assuming that happened.

Most of the discussion the board members initiated, however, wasn’t really about grading scales, but about how a student

achieves each grade, or how much those grades were worth. Several board members brought up the fact that, in their opinion,

an A in say, gym, isn't as hard to get as an A in organic chemistry, so the two should be treated differently.

That's an issue of weighting courses, which Phelps said teachers are not in support of.

Even if courses are uniform, as Phelps explained before, the actual worth of that grade could change from teacher to teacher, depending on their own philosophies.

Another topic raised was by Kelly Herold, who said he'd like to see every course use something similar to a bell curve. A

bell curve wouldn't affect a grading scale, as curves are a grading system than grades students in relation to their peers in

the class. The district could still maintain the current uniform grading scale, and institute a bell curve, though I don't know how popular that would be. It would definitely re-duce/eliminate any possible grade inflation, since the majority of students would be get-ting C's in their classes. However, if you used that in all classes, it wouldn’t fix any con-cerns about whether some classes are harder than others yet still giving out the same grades. Bell curves are traditionally used in academically challenging courses to correct for abnormally low grades; Herold used the example of an economics professor he knows who uses it. The highest grade in one of his classes was something like a 70, though that person would receive an A using a bell curve.

Not discussed by Herold was whether he'd like to see curves used across class sections, or just individually.

Grade consciousness was another issue raised, as the board and Phelps expressed concern about students avoiding challenge and

AP courses because of the fear harder classes would negatively affect their GPA's. De-spite the fact that many higher education institutions look more at class rank than GPA, and also take into account whether students take advanced courses, losing that 4.0 had a physiological affect on what courses students choose, Phelps said.

The most likely change, or at least the one most teachers lobbied for, was a dropped range for a failing grade. While some teachers, like those in physical education, would actually like to raise the F range, most others lobbied for more leniency, according to Phelps.

A list of 11 alternate grading scales were tested in a survey among teachers along with the current scale. That scale, which has an A as 100-95, an -A as a 94, a B+ 93, a B 92-87, and an F as 69 and below, was the third most popular scale. The most popular re-duced the floor for a D- to 65, and raised the A range slightly to 100-96. The second most popular scale dropped the D floor lower, to 61, kept the current A scale, and ex-panded the A- scale from 94-93.

So, that's more or less what was talked about when it came to WSHS grading. Did the current grading system reduce concerns for grade inflations? I have no idea. Where is the grading scale going to be next year? We don't know. Are other grading options go-ing to be changed for next year? Nothing was decided.

The following other items were also discussed or acted on:

- work study contracts with WSU, UWI and Chileda Institute were approved.

- Staff appointments, lane changes, resignations and other human resource issues were approved.

- The 2009 Misato trip was preliminarily approved.

- An update on the trip to China, proposed by Scott Hannon and approved last board meeting, was provided. The cost per

attendee would be about $2,500, but donations by RTP and Fastenal would likely drop that cost by a couple hundred dollars,

Hannon told me. Former board member Ruth Marg spoke during public comments, criti-cizing the board for approving this trip

after they had passed a new policy recommending that trips overseas be submitted 12-18 months in advance.

- The Wellness committee provided an update about employee health.

- Ridgeway and Bluffview provided updates, and Bluffview provided their charter for review, in hopes that it will be renewed.

- A $49,000 electrical, fixtures and rigging upgrade for the WSHS auditorium was ap-proved.

- An update on the district's comprehensive plan was provided by Superintendent Paul Durand.

- 3 new policies were reviewed, dealing with student surveys, violence prevention and crisis management.

- The board noted that the first date to file for the School board election will be July 1, and the last day is July 15.

And that isn't even everything.

So, that’s a little more info on the school board meeting.

I’d be interested in if readers (all 8 of you) still think that we/I focused on the wrong things, and why. That’s one of the main reasons I wanted to do this blog.