By: Rae Christensen
The teacher union is battling Albuquerque Public Schools over a new grading system and way of communicating with parents.
The new grading system would require teachers to give a final exam that would be worth at least 10% of the student's final grade. Right now teachers are able to decide what projects and assignments they post and how much of the final grade they are worth. Teachers also get to decide how they communicate with parents about how their student is doing in class.
Ellen Bernstein with the teachers union says this new grading system takes away the teacher's right to ¨assess and assign grades¨. Right now teachers can grade how they want. They give grades the way that works best for their class and to see how the students are learning. She also says teachers should be able to use ¨a variety of methods¨ to communicate with parents.
Amanda Aragon says that APS is making the changes to grading and to communication with parents because ¨the community is asking APS to change¨. She supports the changes by saying the way things are now ¨is a failure.¨
Will these changes from APS make the grading system more fair and make communication between teachers and parents better, or should the teachers be able to make their own changes for improvement?