By: Kirk Tran
The six week progress report system is a silly system that needs to be abolished. Convince me otherwise. Pro tip: you can’t.
As far as I can tell, all relevant parties either loathe the system or ignore it entirely. It’s not uncommon for teachers to complain about the large stack of papers that need grading when the end of a six week period nears–some even bemoan the system interfering with lesson plans. Many of us students consider the end of the six week grading period a deleterious stressor, and we fret over what colleges may think of our hexaweekly assessments.
Here’s the rub: nobody cares.
Colleges don’t care about the fruits of our academic efforts at any point but the end of the semester. Employers, obviously, won’t care either. Nobody has the time or the energy to look at Billy Bob’s report card and say, “Oh, he seems like a smart lad, but he had a B minus for an agonizing long six week period. It seems like he’s not so smart after all. What an outrageous rogue! What a ridiculous punk! It seems like I’ll have to toss him!” That’s silly. Nobody cares.
Okay, so why exactly do we have progress reports every six weeks? Well, the California Education Code holds that “Parents of currently enrolled or former pupils have an absolute right to access to any and all pupil records related to their children that are maintained by school districts or private schools.” That’s located in the California Education Code, Title 2, Division 4, Part 27, Chapter 6.5, Section 49069. Be grateful for that information, because I spent an unjustifiable time navigating the byzantine works of the online California Education code to provide that information for you. Even ignoring that, MUSD’s very own policy states that “the Superintendent or designee shall establish administrative regulations governing the identification, collection, retention, and security of student records. These regulations shall ensure the rights of authorized persons to have timely access to student records while maintaining the confidentiality of student records consistent with state and federal law.” You don’t have to be as grateful to me for that information as you do the school board, because MUSD school policy is very well-organized. These statutes are very much common sense and reasonable.
What is unreasonable is the continued mailing of six week progress reports. It’s a waste of paper and ink, because parents and students alike can get a report on academic progress from that organized bundle of electrons zipping to-and-fro we call the internet. MUSD has used online grade-recording programs for ages, so why are they still giving these paper progress reports out, anyway? It’s yet another example of bureaucracy failing to keep pace with technology.
The use of online grade reports begs the question, however, of what families without internet access will do to check their students’ grades. The answer is that there shouldn’t be any families without internet access, considering that a) Milpitas is situated smack-dab in the middle of Silicon Valley, tech central, and b) lack of internet access is generally precluded by the majority of MHS’ teaching staff. See: the use of turnitin.com to turn assignments in, the proliferation of teacher-built websites or at the very least a Google Classroom, and the use of e-mail to convey pertinent information to students when in-person announcements are not possible. Nobody at this school acts like students can not access the internet. Heck, I’ve even seen homeless people with smartphones.
What should be done, then? The six week grading period should be abolished, and all on campus and all families associated with the school district should be immediately notified of the consequences of this action or rather, the aforementioned lack thereof. In the end, it’s a win-win for everyone involved.
Students won’t have to worry unnecessarily or stress over a six week grading period that nobody actually cares about anyway, and instead can focus on the more pertinent long-term goal of raising their semester grades. Teachers, instead of being forced to grade a truckload of papers before the end of some arbitrary grading periods, may instead grade papers at their own pace, or even take their sweet time and grade everything at the end of the semester. The school district could save some paper ‘n’ ink budget by not printing literally thousands of progress reports several times a year.