Kudos to the teachers who voiced their concerns. Parents who have voiced similar concerns feel that their comments have fallen on deaf ears.

Thank You to our teachers for courageously speaking their opinion. The leadership needs to take heed and LISTEN instead of taking notes and piecemeal fixing problems. LET TEACHERS TEACH. Trust them. They went to college to be professionals. School Board, you are elected officials. Listen to your voters. Take your losses on SBG and end it. It's in your power to act.

Thank you teachers for braving the politics of the situation to speak up!

Bravo! Bravo! When hundreds of teachers speak, the school admin had better listen. And act immediately. Love to know where this ridiculous "program" hatched. I'd lay odds it was a big-buck edu-consultant or some edu-corporation hawking a "program" designed by folks who haven't spent a day in a classroom, much less a public school classroom. The king is naked. And the teachers are speaking truth to power. They need our support before our schools are devastated.

The issue seems to be professional development, rather than SBG itself. As a teacher who has used SBG for years, I could never go back - it's much better for my students and raises the bar of communication quite a bit. I, however, did a great deal of research and preparation ahead of the first implementation. No matter what the system is, you won't be able to implement it effectively without full understanding of it. Let's get folks trained well; delay implementation and understand that there are a lot of conversations (not lectures) needed to make such a transition.

My sincere thanks to the 755 teachers who signed the letters for change and to those in attendance at this important meeting. As a parent, I feel that the SBG has lowered the standards for our children by rewarding low performance with passing grades. SBG will no doubt soften the competitive edge that the children of ISD 279 need to gain in order to be competitive in higher education and the "real-world" workforce. Please take action and make a change.

A big issue that I'm not sure was brought up at last night's meeting is that along with SBG, our district instituted the 0-4 grading scale, and "multiple opportunities", all at the same time with inadequate research or training.

As a teacher who uses SBG, and has done so for several years, I would never go back to a traditional grading system. I don't know what the SBG system looks like in Osseo, but those who claim that SBG allows failing students to pass do not understand the process or purpose of SBG. Students can certainly fail even when using SBG. However, the focus is on the student learning. Perhaps a question to ask is 'Why are students failing in the first place?'
My job as a teacher is to help guide the learning of the student, and SBG is how I do that. A traditional grading system never allowed me to set such a clear path before a student.
I wonder how the SBG initiative was implemented in Osseo. The implementation may account for some of the backlash against it. It does take a great deal of time and effort to set up the system to work effectively. Once done, the rewards are tremendous, for both the student and the teacher.

I'm a teacher in a big suburban public high school and I am the only one in my building using SBG. I did research on my own and talked to at least 5 other teachers in other places using SBG before trying it myself. It is a challenge, but I can see the real benefit to my students when they struggle to understand something and then finally make a breakthrough. I see a big difference in effort when students realize that they have to keep re-assessing a topic they didn't get.
However, I started doing SBG on my own initiative after learning a lot about it and hearing other teachers' experiences with it. If someone above me made the decision for me, and then hadn't provided the time/opportunity to learn how to do SBG well, I imagine I would protest that also. And if there is no money for PD, then maybe the football team can forgo new uniforms. This type of reform needs much better PD than my school district supplies, and I imagine Osseo isn't that much different from my district in that regard.

Callie--under your SBG system do you convert all grades to a 1-4 system or do you use straight percentages? And do you find your students asking "Is this formative or summative" and then not completing formative work b/c it does not count for much in the total grade? Does your district allow students to turn in work at any time (even three weeks late) with no penalty? And finally, does your district allow multiple retake opportunities and if so, do you find students preparing less for each assessment b/c they know they can just retake (and get the higher of the grades given). Thanks for your feedback. I think 279's SBG is different. In some ways it is not preparing our kids for the real world, where you have deadlines and you have one opportunity to get it right.

Video of the regular school board meetings are usually available for replay sometime the next day after the meeting. As of 3:30 p.m., it hasn't been added yet. But, here's the link to where it should be once the district has posted: http://www.district279.org/who/SchoolBoard/BoardVideos/index.cfm

Barbara, that is very sad that the 9th graders don't get to go to Valley Fair for science anymore. We used to be able to take our physics classes to the amusement park, but we have been told that there is no money in the budget this year for substitutes, so we won't be able to go unless we raise the prices. The tickets already cost way too much, in my opinion, between the park ticket and the bus cost. I am all for individualization and creativity!
I can certainly imagine standards for jewelry, to use your example. Students should probably show proficiency in beading, soldering, knotting, etc, all skills that can be poorly executed or (with practice) well executed. I would hate for a teacher to have to grade on aesthetics. What if the teacher didn't like a student's individual style? But that should not be a standard, in my opinion. Who decides what the standards will be that are being assessed? If it is not the teachers who teach the course, I would be protesting right along with you, though I love using SBG.

Very, very sad that teachers are apparently willing to continue to provide grades that are frequently inaccurate, inconsistent, meaningless and not supportive of learning. "Other things--weighing formative work to almost nothing so that students don't try,- STUDENTS UNDERSTAND IN BAND AND BASKETBALL THAT PRACTICE COUNTS, THEY NEED TO UNDERSTAND THAT IN THE CLASSROOM TOO. NO SCORES FROM PRACTICE WILL DETERMINE THE RESULT OF THE SUPER BOWL!!!! opening the door to multiple retests so that teachers spend most of their time rewriting tests instead of instructing, ALLOW REASSESSMEMENT ONLY WHEN STUDENTS HAVE SHOWN EVIDENCE OF ENGAGING IN CORRECTIVES equal interval grading which makes it almost impossible to fail and extremely hard to earn an A, NOT TRUE, TELL THAT TO ADVANCED PLACEMENT AND INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE, THE TWO MOST HIGHLY REGARDED HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMS IN THE WORLD! requiring teacher to accept late work with no penalty--HANDING IN LATE IS BEHAVIOR NOT ACHIEVEMENT; I BET MOST OF THOSE TEACHERS ARE SOMETIMES LATE WITH THINGS THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO LIKE GETTING GRADES IN BY A CERTAIN DATE BUT THEY ARE NOT PENALIZED that is what teachers and parents are resisting because it is negatively impacting student learning.NOT IF THEY ARE DONE PROPERLY No amount of training will fix these flaws. YES IT WILL. GIVEN THIS LIST OSSEO SHOULD INVESTIGATE "THE POWER OF ICU"

Kenoc, I wish you were in charge of implementation in 279! Unfortunately, current administration has not communicated as well as you have here.

Certainly district 279 is not the first district to implement such a program/philosophy. This goes back to "throwing wet paper towels at the wall and HoPING they stick". They dive in without the full planning necessary to involve every stakeholder without know if the research says it will work. Meanwhile we waste our teachers time, at the expense of our children only to drop new initiatives a few years later while we go nuts about the next best silver bullet! When are the districts and board members going to figure this out? We no longer need to guess about what works and what doesn't because many pioneers have gone before us to know if new initiatives are worth our dollar. Shame on district 279 and any other district that adds more to a teachers plate without buy in, and many times without any data on its effectiveness!