Disclaimer: this article is an opinion piece. As of the time of publication, HBUHSD is awaiting guidance from state agencies on how to proceed with grading and did not implement mandatory pass/fail.
By Karen Phan
So much is happening right now and it all feels surreal. Our top priority is to stay safe and healthy, and our schools have done their part by canceling in-person classes for the time being.
And while, according to HBUHSD Superintendent Clint Harwick, “teachers will resume grading while awaiting further instruction from state agencies,” students will resume feeling pressured to earn good grades during an ever-shifting global pandemic.
Especially in the face of a public health crisis, our health must always come first, physical and emotional. To support our well being, all schools should make all classes mandatory pass/fail.
With the pass/fail grading scale, students receive either Pass or Fail grades on their transcripts. Typically, a D or above is a Pass and an F is a Fail. Based on most college and university policies, Pass grades grant credit for the course and don’t raise or lower GPAs, whereas Fail grades are no credit and usually lower GPAs.
So, it doesn’t matter if a student gets a C or an A in a class, because a P shows up on their transcript and they earn credit for the course. Even though we should always be doing our best in school, mandatory pass/fail takes the pressure off of students.
That’s what we need more than ever so that we can focus on not getting infected, especially for families that are juggling the stress of COVID-19 in our community with care for elderly relatives, unemployment, food shortages, housing insecurity and other issues caused by the pandemic.
And given that K-12 instruction is shifting online temporarily, or even potentially for the rest of the school year as it already is for seven states, our curriculum and material are going to change. That’s a huge deal for teachers who’ve been in full classrooms their entire career.
Shifting to the online classroom is going to hit all courses hard, especially special education and interactive ones such as theater, ceramics, choir and physical education. Our math teachers will probably make video lessons, and we won’t collaborate in small groups in our English classes anymore. Nothing—teaching, learning and grading—will continue business as usual.
There’s also not going to be the same type, amount and quality of work from teachers and students because of the inevitable difficulty of distance learning. Some teachers and students are familiar with hybrid and online courses, but most aren’t. Many high school students, even those who have taken online courses, will find that it’s easier to learn in-class than online because it’s hard to stay on top of your work and communicate with teachers and peers through a screen.
The confusion and stress of online learning, coupled with the fact that some students are going to take advantage of online classes and cheat, ultimately raises the questions of how valid our letter grades will be when the semester ends.
We need mandatory pass/fail is to ensure that there’s equity as well. HBUHSD has minimized the digital divide gap with its one-to-one chrome book program and allows students to check out Internet hotspots, but the playing field still isn’t level. We’re not at school, so we don’t have access to the same resources, such as fast Wi-Fi, free peer tutoring and quiet places to do work.
As Princeton University’s student journalism, The Daily Princetonian, wrote, equity on campus is a baseline that “allows professors to evaluate students on a graded basis.” Online courses don’t have that equity and lower-income families are likely to be the most disadvantaged, so there’s no way for every teacher to fairly assess their students on an A-F scale.
Mandatory pass/fail is a great solution, but it isn’t perfect.
Perhaps the worst part of mandatory pass/fail is that no student can raise their GPA this semester and their work from up until school closure won’t be recognized. Many students aim for a specific GPA to improve their class rank and to strengthen their applications for college, scholarships, financial aid, internships and more.
One way to compensate for the lack of letter grades is for teachers to write comments on transcripts about a student’s performance. And keep in mind that every American has been affected by COVID-19 one way or another. Institutional empathy is what’s really going to make pass/fail okay for this semester.
Countless colleges and universities, such as Yale, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and UC Berkeley, have adopted optional, mandatory or variations of pass/fail. Harvard emailed prospective junior applicants stating that students who submit transcripts with pass/fail grades and don’t submit SAT subject tests or AP scores will not be disadvantaged in any way. Boston University is going to be SAT and ACT test-optional for first-year applicants applying for fall 2021 and spring 2022.
We’re going to continue seeing higher education institutions change their undergraduate policies in response to COVID-19 and be more flexible with their applicant pool. They know that high schools are experiencing the same problems. They know high school juniors are facing the brunt of modified AP exams and SAT and ACT cancelations. They have empathy for us and will make exceptions.
I also guarantee that a majority of people who are against mandatory pass/fail and prefer optional/pass fail are the students with high grades. The problem with optional pass/fail is that students who are disadvantaged will still feel pressured to take classes for a letter grade and be under even more stress. There’s no equity because students will be “competing on an unequal playing field” to raise their GPAs, The Daily Princetonian wrote.
Another problem with mandatory pass/fail is that even though many FVHS students are academically inclined and hard working, more students will do the bare minimum to pass because A’s aren’t in the equation anymore. That says a lot about how our education system works, but it’s a story for another day. To encourage students to actively participate online as they do in school, teachers need to lay out clear expectations so that students know what they need to do to pass the class.
Pass/fail grading is uncommon in K-12 education, but Palo Alto Unified School District in California recently adopted the policy, so it can be a reality for HBUHSD.
As we move forward during this unprecedented global pandemic, hopefully our leaders will recognize that we need also unprecedented solutions such as mandatory pass/fail to put the physical and mental health of our students first.
April 1 update: updated to include information from Harwick
