The Student Government hosted a town hall-style meeting to discuss its Equitable Grading Bill, where a panel of student legislators responded to questions and debated the opinions of teachers and students during X-block on Wednesday, March 20 in the MLK room.
The bill, developed by members of Legislature, addresses grading imbalances between different classes of the same course and level. It gives students the right to standardized late work and extension policies and a standardized scope and weight for midyear and final exams in identical classes taught by different teachers. Additionally, the bill requires teachers to inform students if policies become misaligned.
Sophomore student legislators Eric Bardon, Adithi Jayashankar, Jackson Musto, Shay-Li Zilbershot and Daisy Huang made up the panel alongside English teacher and Faculty Chair of Legislature Peter Sedlak and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator and moderator Jen Martin.
Before opening the floor for discussion, the panel gave an overview of the bill. Musto said the bill would address inequalities between different sections of the same course by standardizing policies. He said the current version of the bill would not affect grade weighting or retakes.
“The initial idea for this bill came from us noticing that, across the same courses that were being taught by different teachers, there are some different policies,” Musto said. “Maybe you have more of a workload in one class, and your friend is in the same course taught by a different teacher, and they’ll have a different workload or different policies.”
Jayashankar said the panel recognized many concerns with the bill. She also said outside factors could make standardization difficult in some cases.
“Some cons that many teachers have come up with are that [the bill] could potentially limit teacher autonomy,” Jayashankar said. “And the way a teacher teaches their class, there would definitely be a transition period, which we might face some struggles within the next year if this bill gets passed. Another concept that came up was that teachers might resort to the lowest common denominator in terms of policies, which would be the policy that is easiest for them, which might be harder for students. ”
Audience member and senior Itamar Leibowitz said he wondered if the bill would consider student interest. He said the standardization policies might not be the best for students who often work with their teachers to create learning methods that work best for them.
Musto said that issue had already come up multiple times. He said currently a student can produce high-quality work in a difficult class that gets the same grade as lower-quality work in a class with easier policies.
“We’re not trying to get the easiest policies for all students here. That’s not the goal here,” Musto said. “It’s more about [being] equitable, making sure that every student has the same experience.”
Social studies teacher Jennifer Hanaghan said she thought the bill would over-standardize the experience of many students and would reduce the role of their teachers in the learning process.
“I might have a class where half of my class is on individual education plans, and they need to do something different. And as a teacher, that’s my judgment call,” Hanaghan said. “If I’m recognizing that one block needs to do things completely differently—that it will actually be to their advantage as far as they’re learning—this [bill] pigeonholes me, and it concerns me that my judgment is now being overridden, and I might not be able to give students what they need as far as their learning ability.”
Bardon said teachers should have the ability to change policies to better fit individual classes, but that collaboration between teachers would be required to insert those details into the bill.
“It’s really important for teachers to make the decisions, because they know their students better than a policy will,” Bardon said. “We also say that in the policies, you can put in clauses; for example, they can get very specific on where you will hand out extensions or not, and you could put in a situational clause to some cap.”
Hanaghan also said she worried that the second part of the bill, requiring teachers to inform their students of the reason for policy misalignment, would infringe on the privacy rights of faculty members.
“The law protects employees, HIPAA rules, if a teacher is having a major medical issue or mental health issue, you don’t have the right to know that,” Hanaghan said. “The employer is the town of Brookline. And I think the language the way it is written really endangers the privacy rights of the employees here.”
Several responses to Hanaghan’s point were discussed, including one that suggested modifying the language of the bill to only require teachers to inform students of a policy misalignment, not necessarily the reason for it. The updated version of the bill reflects this change.
Bardon said, at the end of the day, the goal of the bill is really in its name.
“We think that grades would better reflect quality,” Bardon said. “The workload would be more similar, policies would be more similar and, ultimately, that means grades being more reflective of your work.”
Students who have questions for Student Government or wish to give feedback about the bill can do so through this survey.
