CELL

By JEFF ZELL
Trustee of Sumter School District, Area 8

It is important to recognize our community’s role in demanding change. Sumter School District’s mandatory 50% grading policy, which requires teachers to adjust a student’s grade by at least 50% even if the student performed lower or did not submit coursework, has led to a lot of misinformation and assumptions. This policy, intended to help low-performing students, is doing more harm than good. However, most of your board members have heard the voices of our community and our teachers and acted accordingly.

However, some school board members claim without evidence that this policy of granting unearned academic credit somehow helps students. No data supports this claim, and plenty of evidence shows it hurts our children’s opportunities.

My advocacy is based on empirical, results-based data and the testimony of our teachers and administrators. For example, 83% of our certified staff agree that this policy is harmful and want it banned. This data, which I have reviewed, calls into question the effectiveness of the policy and prompted my investigation. We have entire cohorts of students passing courses and achieving grades above 90%, but failing the South Carolina State Exit Exams at a rate of 90%. This data shows a significant gap between classroom grades and the state’s final exams.

This is not an argument against government testing, but rather to underscore that one statistic shows success while the other shows abject and almost total failure. One of the two metrics is correct, not both. The results strongly suggest that these assessment policies and other poorly designed policies are robbing our students of opportunities for future economic success and mobility. In most cases, these people end up on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. We must do better!

It is important to remember that this policy is not a “curve”; it is a floor that distorts data and academic performance metrics. Despite claims to the contrary, it puts students at an even greater disadvantage. Proponents of this policy have failed to explain how it benefits students other than through emotional speeches, hearsay, conjecture, and false and irresponsible attacks on the character and intentions of those who disagree. As adults responsible for shaping our students’ futures, we must provide them with the education they need rather than preparing them for failure in the real world. This situation underscores the urgent need for better education policies that give our students hope for a better future.

It’s about accountability and appropriate oversight.

Safe cities cannot exist without strict law enforcement. You cannot lose weight unless you have personal responsibility to go to the gym or eat healthier. You cannot give a drug addict the exact drug they are addicted to and expect it to keep them off it. We have become a society of enablers, and these policies, however well-intentioned, have proven to be a burden on those who need the public education system the most. We do no one any good when we do not hold ourselves accountable for the consequences of our decisions. In this case, previous administrations imposed these harmful policies on our district many years ago.

Despite the overuse and misunderstanding of what “accountability” means, prohibiting grades from being given to students who have not earned them IS a responsibility, and any deviation from it is a violation of actual accountability.

We need to look at other “second chance” programs to help students in need, ones that support them when they need it, take their difficulties into account, and provide the necessary resources where they are needed. There are better alternatives, and we need to consider those to make positive change. That’s what needs to happen. We can’t just take something away without providing alternative processes and support programs, especially for those students who are dealing with extreme difficulties and hardships.

You can’t achieve excellence with systematic policies that reward mediocrity. That’s exactly what the 50 percent grading cutoff does. It allows us to advance students who aren’t ready until years later, only to find themselves in a world they weren’t trained for.

Given this political shift, we should be excited to see the real numbers of success. It may be surprising and shocking to see our true state; however, it is necessary to strategize for real and lasting success based on data and facts. We will never achieve it if reality is obscured.

Our students, parents, teachers and community all deserve better than what they are used to. This is a positive step forward and the community deserves to see us deliver on our promises of reform. And that is exactly what I intend to do.

#allinforssd, even if it’s not easy!

Jeff Zell is a Sumter School Board Trustee for Area 8 and the Republican candidate for South Carolina’s 36th Senate District.