Senate Questions Bill That Would Change How Students Are Graded

By Jackie Hallifax
Associated Press Writer
Mar 21, 2000 - 06:50 PM

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - State law says a student who does average work is supposed to earn a grade of C. That's by definition. But the most common grade given out in Florida is B.

But her bill to change how grades are calculated, which the Leesburg Republican argued will make them more reflective of academic performance, faced a lot of questions from other senators Tuesday.

"I'm trying to figure out, first, what you're doing and then, secondly, why you're doing it," Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville, told Cowin after she explained her measure.

No action was taken on the bill.

"Do you think you need a little more time to chat with the members?" Senate President Toni Jennings, R-Orlando, asked Cowin after more than hour's worth of questions from several senators.

A companion House bill (HB 1191) has not yet been heard in the House Education K-12 Committee.

Under current law, high school students earned grades of A through F based on a scale of 100.

A letter grade of A is supposed to reflect work graded at 94 percent and above. A letter grade of B is for work between 85 percent and 93 percent. A letter grade of C is for work between 77 percent and 84 percent. A letter grade of D is for work between 70 percent and 76 percent. And an F is given for work at 69 percent and below.

Cowin's bill (SB 990) would eliminate the current requirement that letter grades be tied to percentage grades and give teachers the authority to grade on a curve or to take into account the difficulty of the work they assign or the exams they give.

However, school districts would also be have to publish the grades handed out in schools and the scores of standardized tests each year. That way, Cowin said, parents could tell if grades were being inflated by comparing the grades with the standardized scores.

Research by Senate staff indicates that an A earned by a student in a school in a poor neighborhood may be equivalent to a C or a D earned by a student in a school in an affluent area, Cowin said.

"So the grades are really arbitrary and when you go to find out why they're arbitrary, we're finding that teachers many times will take the low-performing children and give them better grades," she said, adding that some schools even give extra points to students just for showing up.

Sen. Mandy Dawson, D-Fort Lauderdale, expressed concerns about the legislation.

"I'm hearing two sides of a jagged-edge sword and I think if we're going to work on this legislation we need to be clear," she said, pointing out that children in affluent schools have all the basics and extras on top of that.

In comparison, she said, children in a poorer neighborhood "sometimes they have to dress themselves, get up without a parent at home, walk past the gin mills, walk past the drug dealers to a class that doesn't have any computers."

Maybe those students deserve the A for overcoming the hurdles they face just to get to school, she suggested.

"I think the reason we're confused in the chamber today is that we're trying to determine: Is an A on my side of the track ... just as valuable as an A would be on your side of the track?" Dawson said.

"The real goal of this bill is to make sure that academic grades reflect the achievement of students so that we can come in and ... raise that achievement," Cowin said.

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