District reports falling grades

March 28, 2006

JOEL DAVIDSON

Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU - Nearly one in four high school students have overall grade averages of D or below at five Mat-Su Borough high schools.

Students with &#8220below average achievement” or GPAs of less than 2.0 more than doubled from first semester 2005 to first semester 2006.

School board member Larry DeVilbiss requested a comparison of last year to this year after noticing that 24 percent of Mat-Su high schoolers were below the 2.0 average last semester. That compares to only 9 percent a year earlier.

&#8220I want to know what's going on,” DeVilbiss said at the March 22 school board meeting.

Connie Lutz, the district's executive director of instruction, told the board that there isn't one specific reason that explains the lower grades.

&#8220There are so many issues around grades,” Lutz told school board members. &#8220There is a lot of information that we don't have represented here to reflect how grades are earned or given because there are different ways that happens.”

Ideally, Lutz said grades should evidence student learning or lack thereof. Whether that actually happens, however, is unknown, she said Monday.

Part of the problem, she explained, may be that some students from lower grades are not taught the material that they need to know before moving on to the next grade level. Another possibility is that some students might be placed in classes above or below their academic abilities. If a class is too hard or too easy, lower grades could be evidence that students are either unable or unwilling to do course work, Lutz said.

Homework grades, too, are a crucial issue in determining overall student GPAs. Many teachers complain that students are not finishing assigned homework, Lutz said. This makes it difficult for both teacher and students to move forward with lessons.

&#8220Some teachers say students are not doing their homework,” Lutz said. &#8220Reading the book at home - a large portion of students are not reading the chapters, and the next day in class they can't engage in conversation about a book.”

Homework is also a considerable part of student grades for many teachers but is not uniform across the district. Lutz said education department chairs within the district are going to address the homework problems at their next meeting later this month.

&#8220Homework is very important, and the district is very supportive of homework, but homework can be used appropriately and inappropriately for determining a grade,” she said. &#8220If a student passes all their tests but hasn't turned in any homework, what grade does the student get?”

Of the five schools listed in the report, Houston High had the largest percentage of students below a 2.0 GPA, with 33 percent of the student body at &#8220below average achievement.” That represents a 13 percent increase from last year.

Houston Principal Mike Vrvilo attributed the lower grades to the fact that the student body has changed through graduation, incoming freshman and other new students.

&#8220It's not about the quality of work from the teachers,” he said Monday, while adding that the report does concern him.

&#8220It means we have to try to increase those grades,” he said. &#8220We look at this stuff every year.”

Grades alone, however, don't tell the whole story, Vrvilo said, because Houston High is also one of the few Alaska schools to pass Adequate Yearly Progress every year under the No Child Left Behind Act.

&#8220Grades are just one piece of the data,” he said.

One issue Lutz plans to review with education department chairs later this month is whether to implement uniform exit exams for all specifically required high school courses in English, math and science. This way, all teachers of a specific course, such as English I, would test students on the same material instead of varying from classroom to classroom. If approved, Lutz said uniform tests could be implemented by next year.

Contact Joel Davidson at

352-2266 or joel.davidson@

frontiersman.com.