Source: http://www.ithaca.edu/ithacan/articles/0503/03/imgs/grade.jpg

Texas school districts are working to revise their grading policies to reflect the Senate Bill 2033. SB 2033 ends the ongoing education policy of minimum grades for students. . .policy changes allow Texas teachers give students scores lower than 50, the typical minimum grade they can earn. You get a 22% on a test, and it isn’t changed to a 50.

This is no longer permitted. As such, school district procedures are changing.

It is my understanding that in systems like ESC-20’s ITCCCS, the settings default to a grade of 50…this has to change. Some background information:

PEIMS is a statewide reporting system that enables school districts to provide information on district organization, finances, staff, and students to the Texas Education Agency (TEA). TEA determines the specific data the districts must provide and the format that must be used when reporting the data. Data is collected by TEA four times each year, and different requirements apply to each submission.

The iTCCS PEIMS application provides programs to extract the appropriate data for each PEIMS submission from the iTCCS Student and Business systems. These programs are reviewed and modified annually, per the published PEIMS Data Standards, to ensure that the data extracted to the iTCCS PEIMS database is as accurate as possible. The extracts provide some of the edits as defined in the PEIMS Data Standards, and in some cases convert local codes to the state-mandated code values.

I first became aware of this at the Texas CTO Council 2009 meeting, where Anita Givens pointed it out in her legislative update:

SB 2033 – School district grading policy – minimum grade of 50-70, whether they actually did the work. Instead of a zero, they got a minimum grade. Provides guidance how they have to establish a grading policy and reflects students actually performing the work.

This was shared by Anita Givens, Associate Commissioner for Standards and Programs.

How is your Texas district making adjustments to reflect the law?

Consider Wichita Falls ISD (thanks to Beth Still):

While the Wichita Falls Independent School District was busy in April writing up its new grading policy that would give students no less than a 50 in any class, the state was making other plans.

And in the end, the state won.

With the recent passage of Senate Bill 2033, the state decided that school districts may not interfere with a teacher who wants to give a student a zero for lack of effort or poor performance.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure