Board of Education Testimony: March 2003

Good evening. My name is Brian Stelter. As you know by now, I am a senior at Damascus High School and the Secretary for MCR, the county student government organization. I come before you tonight to express my disappointment at the recommendations on the Grading & Reporting policy’s operational framework.

Attached to my testimony is a letter from MCR stating our beliefs on grading and reporting. Attendees at our most recent meeting supported it nearly unanimously. Excerpts follow.

In January, when the policy was tentatively approved, the rationale behind the increase was as follows: Making the exam worth more gives students more of an incentive to take the exam, take it seriously, and study for it. Who disagrees on this? It's common sense. Speaking of common sense, I suggested a reasonable compromise: Leave the weight of final exams at 25% and make the exam mandatory.

In recent weeks, though, I've noticed a disturbing shift in the rationale for an increase. Apparently the weight should be increased for 'validated' tests to collect data on teachers. Ms. Cox explained this new recommendation to students at the March 18th MCR meeting, and she'll be the first to tell you how adamantly students were opposed to this. Now this whole "validation" claim is a flawed argument. Data on student achievement and teacher quality can be gathered at 20%, 25%, 75%. Why have we shifted from a reasonable rationale -- that exams should be taken seriously -- to one that has not yet been explained to the community?

These recommendations -- which I was told this morning, much to my dismay, that I could not access prior to this evening -- entered into the equation when public comment was concluding and only after your last Board meeting.

If this mistake happens ­ if you raise the weight of exams to 30% for “validated?tests ­ I hope you keep in mind the results of first semester final exams in these five courses last year. (Sadly, the data for this school year has yet to have been released.) 61.8% of students passed the Geometry exam, for example, and the numbers for Biology were worse. To remind you of this data, I have attached it to my testimony.

You will accomplish only ONE thing by raising the weight of exams: you will hurt students. That's it. You won't stress the importance of exams; you certainly won't boost college admissions chances. You will brag about rigor, while students are the ones that must spend that stressful night awake studying, and that nervous morning scribbling down answers.

I am disappointed in the recommendations. On behalf of the 41,000 high school students in Montgomery County, I say: Don't make this mistake.

Thank you for your attention.