Dive Brief:
- The South Carolina Board of Education is debating whether or not schools should begin adding conduct grades to students' report cards.
- Board member Larry Kobrovsky proposed that the grades, which would reflect students' effort, punctuality, and neatness, be listed in addition to those for academics.
- Chairwoman-elect Traci Young Cooper, a former state teacher of the year, is opposed to the suggestion, saying report cards not only provide a space for teachers to write qualitative assessments on conduct, but that academic grades should already reflect character and conduct.
Dive Insight:
According to Kobrovsky, effort, punctuality, and neatness are important skills in life, and assigning these traits letter grades is the way to explain this to students. This belief that letter grades are critical for signaling importance is somewhat frightening and hopefully untrue. Many educators have found ways to teach character skills sans grades, using other forms of positive reinforcement.
Beyond the question of letter grades and what they represent is the question of how valuable Kobrovsky's proposed conduct grade really would be. Cooper makes some good points when she argues that behaviors like effort, punctuality, and neatness are probably already reflected in a student's grades. It would be difficult to find a student with high marks who was constantly late, putting in little effort, and always messy. Perhaps if Kobrovsky recommended different conduct traits, such as grit, curiosity, and optimism, there would be less overlap with academic grades and, therefore, less resistance to his proposal.
