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DO EQUITY AUDIT TOOLS HELP BUILD TEACHERS’

AWARENESS OF EQUITABLE GRADING PRACTICES FOR

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS, SPECIAL-CIRCUMSTANCE

STUDENTS, AND AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS?

A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Stanislaus

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership

By Tyrone Perry Jr. May 2019

CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

DO EQUITY AUDIT TOOLS HELP BUILD TEACHERS’ AWARENESS OF

EQUITABLE GRADING PRACTICES FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE

LEARNERS, SPECIAL-CIRCUMSTANCE STUDENTS, AND AFRICAN

AMERICAN STUDENTS?

by Tyrone Perry Jr.

Signed Certification of Approval page is on file with the University Library

Dr. Anysia Mayer Date Professor of Advanced Studies in Education

Dr. Kilolo Brodie Date Professor of Social Work

Dr. Debra Bukko Date Associate Professor of Advanced Studies in Education

DEDICATION

First and foremost, I want to dedicate this dissertation to my Lord and Savior,

Jesus Christ. Without you nothing is possible. I thank you for patience, focus, drive, unconditional love and a million other loving descriptive terms.

I would like to dedicate this dissertation work to my mother for her extreme work effort, time, and encouragement and love. Also this work is in dedication to my father, Taber, Um-Allah, Mattie, Kiteran and Reginald. To my family and friends, thank you and I love you all. I appreciate the encouragement and understanding.

During my journey to continue my education and complete my research there were many events that I could not be a part of and missed. It was a sacrifice to reaching not only a dream, but an intended ambitioned destination.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to acknowledge Dr. Anysia Mayer, my advisor. This work would not have been possible without your guidance and support. I would like to thank my committee. Dr. Bukko, Dr. Brodie, and Dr. Mayer. Thank you to Dr.

Virginia Hernandez-Montero, Dr. Jim Riggs, Dr. Kathrine McKenzie, Dr. Oddmund

Myhre for their commitment and dedication to your doctoral students. Shellie

Machado, “thank you, you are absolutely amazing. I appreciate each and every time that you went out of your way to help me and guide me during my course work.”

Lastly, I would like to thank my Cohort 10 brothers and sisters, that grew with me during the past few years. It has been an honor to learn and professionally grow with you.

I am grateful to all of the teachers who participated in my study. Thank each and every one of you for you valuable time, knowledge and insight. Also, thank you to the administrative team that allowed me to conduct the study. I am also grateful to

Officer Dave Sarginson and the Atwater Police Department for giving me the opportunity to participate on a ride along and critically explore the work that you live and work daily. To my family and friends, it means the world to me that you understood that I could not break away from my studies at times, and still you supported me. You motivated me with kindness, love and encouragement. Lastly, thank you to all of my students. I love you all and we have greatness to pursue. This imperfect world needs our hard work, compassion and care.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgements ...... v

List of Tables ...... viii

Abstract ...... ix

CHAPTER I. Introduction ...... 1

History of Grading ...... 3 California State Equity ...... 4 Grades and My Experience ...... 5 Significance of the Study ...... 6 Purpose of the Study ...... 7 High-level Policy ...... 8 Research Questions ...... 9 Summary ...... 9

II. Literature Review...... 11

Problems with Grading in the United States ...... 11 Marginalized Groups ...... 23 Achievement Gap...... 29 Fixing the Issues ...... 31 Equity Audits ...... 33 Summary ...... 41

III. Methodology ...... 42

Research Questions ...... 43 Research Design...... 43 Data Analysis ...... 56 Reflexivity: Researcher as Instrument ...... 58 Summary ...... 62

IV. Research Findings ...... 63

Introduction ...... 63 The Role and Background of the Researcher ...... 65 Summary of Findings ...... 70 Presentation of Data and Results ...... 73 Summary ...... 119

V. Discussion and Suggestions for Future Research ...... 121

Purpose ...... 121 Summary of Main Findings ...... 123 Summary of Findings ...... 125 Explanation for Findings...... 135 Limitations of the Study...... 153 Implications...... 154 Recommendations for Future Research and Practical Applications ..... 155

References ...... 157

vii

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE PAGE

1. Grading Structure ...... 53

2. Data Analysis and Findings ...... 54

3. Emergent Themes ...... 65

4. Mr. Smith’s Equity Audit ...... 82

5. 4-Point Grading Scale ...... 99

6. Mrs. Tee’s Equity Audit ...... 101

7. Ms. Arin’s Equity Audit ...... 114

8. Research Questions/Answered ...... 125

viii

ABSTRACT

This research explored the use of an equity audit as a tool for helping teachers to provide more equitable grades for English Language Learners (ELL), and African

American students. Grading is an important part of the education and teaching profession as it provides feedback to students, families, teachers, and administrators about the students’ progress in courses. Unfortunately, not all educators agree on a universal best practice for grading. Teachers tend to grade based on a hodgepodge of traditions they believe yield the best reports of students’ progress in their courses.

This study utilized a qualitative case study method to inquire if equity audits can help bring about equity in grading for ELL, special circumstance, and African American students.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Grading is an important part of teachers’ charge to successfully measure students’ levels of learning. According to Munk and Bursuck (2001) “teachers sometimes view the task students of assigning grades as time-consuming and unrelated to actual teaching” (p. 38). Grading is a necessary part of teaching as it serves as feedback. Feedback is the key to helping students to move from position A to position B. Bloom (1981) argued that "what any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn, if provided with the appropriate prior and current conditions of learning" (p. 137). As a teacher, educational leader, and scholar, I firmly believe that all students are able and capable of learning. Educators are tasked with providing the learning conditions in which the students can and will learn. While denouncing a political agenda, Anthony Muhammad (2015) argued, “I am antidiscrimination, and I am pro-equality, and I am open to any method or resource that abolishes inequality and supports equality” (p. 5). I believe that the classroom is not about the teacher, it is about the student. I believe teachers do have a moral and ethical responsibility to their students and society. In my view the educators’ main duty and responsibility is to support every student in successfully moving from point

A to point B in their subject area, and grades help track that movement and progress.

Grading practices have become as traditional and distinct to teaching as each teacher’s explanations for their particular grading system. Educators (myself

2 included) do a good job of explaining our reasoning for why and how we grade, but there is a dearth of research supporting our grading schema and practices. Marzano has suggested that the purpose of grading is to provide feedback on achievement to students, parents, teachers, and administration. This feedback loop should motivate teachers and educators to seek equity in how we grade our students’ coursework.

Guskey and Jung (2009) have indicated that “to become active participants in education programs, families need specific information about their children’s learning strengths, areas of struggle, and what can be done at home to promote success” (p.

54). While this information is true, we must realize that not all families are welcomed or, perhaps, able to be as involved in their children’s education as school systems perceiv to be adequate. Also, every child does not have a nuclear family, which makes it more important that each teacher establishes a relationship with each student to let students know that they have someone on campus that cares for them. To learn about a student’s strengths and struggles, I would not recommend a visit to the students’ grades. I would recommend, instead, a visit to students’ assignments, teacher feedback on those assignments, and a conversation with the students.

Some of the non-academic factors that affect students’ grades are effort, responsibility, attendance, motivation, behavior, attitude, ability, improvement, and participation. Assuming grades are not affected by these non-academic factors can be detrimental to the success of many students. I encourage teachers to seek to bridge relationships with students, teaching them the importance of each of the non- academic factors on success in and out of the classroom.

History of Grading

It is important to look at the history of grading and grading practices to properly understand their place in the educational arena. According to Marzano

(2000), “For at least a hundred years, teachers at almost every level have been using grades of some type—letter grades, percentage scores—as the overall indicator of student achievement” (p. 1). While teachers and schools have always had a concern for understanding students’ learning, standardized grading systems have not always existed. Certainly, A-F grading and grade rankings have not always been conditional for students to progress in their primary education. A-F and percentage grading began first at post-secondary institutions. During the early part of the 20th century, this grading scheme became standard for elementary and high schools. Though grades are synonymous with educational institutions, we often struggle to fairly relate grades to students’ abilities and their possibilities for life.

Grading and testing have always, to some extent, been subjective and highly dependent upon the teacher. Indeed, early on there was an effort to simplify grading.

Bock (1997) asserted that the ease of grading multiple choice tests was a major reason schools changed to using them for entrance exams. “In the field of education, the

College Entrance Examination Board, which since 1899 had administered essay tests to students who apply to college, began to include multiple-choice questions in the examination” (Bock, 1997, p. 23). At first, multiple-choice questions were added to written exams. Later, multiple choice questions replaced essay questions. Also, the feedback process for essay grading was too lengthy and was not seen as objective by

4 applicants. As education became compulsory for students age six through twelve, it became substantially easier and more expedient for teachers and schools to utilize multiple choice type testing to accommodate masses of children in the school system.

While there are many schools, technical programs, and specialty schools that use practical methods of assessing student learning, traditional A-F grading is still used by most middle and high schools.

Marzano (2000) explained that measurement experts believe that since educational reform is on the rise in the areas of curriculum development, standardized assessment, and high-stakes testing, a greater need of further reform should include grading practices among classroom teachers. This suggested change could eliminate and refute the attitude of some lay people and educators that grading practices are so ambiguous that the actual grade is meaningless. Therefore, this study of equity in grading practices for English language learners (ELL), special circumstance, and

African American students at the high school level is warranted.

California State Equity

In California, a statewide electronic database, “Dashboard,” has been deployed as a tool for equity monitoring in an effort to make transparent equity issues within individual schools and districts. The Dashboard tool highlights schools with systemic equity issues which need to be addressed and corrected. Any user can query data for individual school districts and schools in California to get equity information.

The tool shows four important reports. On the first page, a school’s or district’s equity report shows how all students are performing. The second page is the status and

5 change report; it shows the status of the school and the school’s changing metrics over three years. The third page contains a detailed report on how a particular school is doing over the three years. The fourth and final report is a student group report, which provides performance indicators for the various student groups of the school or district.

Grades and My Experience

I can remember in high school that there were many classes I never took because of their reputation for being difficult or having large numbers of students failing. I took simple classes which I knew I would be able to easily pass. I took Math

A and B level classes that concluded with entry level algebra. I did not challenge myself much in science either, with entry level chemistry being the most challenging class that I took in high school. I never considered attempting algebra, statistics, finite math, pre-calculus, calculus, biology, physics, or anatomy. It is also the case that my counselors never directed me towards the higher-level classes. According to Shifrer,

Callahan, and Muller (2013), “Students with poor academic histories may simply be placed into less rigorous classes by teachers or counselors focused on their high school graduation rather than their college enrollment” (p. 658). I did not have a poor academic history, but I also did not have the confidence to take the higher-level courses and take a chance of failing them. Unfortunately, as a result of taking less- challenging courses, when I reached college I had to start at the bottom of the academic course registers and take basic prerequisite classes before I got to the classes I actually needed.

The days that I feared to fail academic classes are behind me, and I have learned the importance of taking the more difficult route in order for me to grow to my fullest potential. Many times, I wish that I was previously informed that my struggles in school would help me to be more successful and would help me be a better learner later in life. Now, I take pride in challenging myself. Even when I struggle to learn concepts, content, themes and ideas, I continue to hunger for more.

My hope is that grading with equitable balances will help deconstruct some of the fear that kept me from pursuing more challenging course and to prepare more students for success in their academics and careers.

Significance of the Study

I believe that there is a need to study equity in grading as there appears to be discrepancies in the grading accomplishments of ELL, special circumstance, and

African American students as compared to average students’ GPAs. Assuming this inequity, the study of equity in grading is warranted. This study may also consider that some students do not take classes that are more advanced as they often have a perception of those classes being more challenging and not fair or equitable to them.

It is possible that more challenging classes enhance students’ fear of failure. If it is only a perception of challenge that precludes the student from taking a class, this influence that grading has on student choice should be investigated. I will also consider these issues from a teachers’ standpoint to determine whether teachers value the idea of equity and how they feel equity audits related to their grading practices may ensure that they are being fair to ELL, special circumstance, and African

American students. Skrla, McKenzie, and Scheurich (2009) explained that “part of the power of our relatively unstructured model of equity audits is that practitioners have to make decisions about exactly how to do them based on local contextual factors—availability of data, school climate and culture, knowledge base of participants, and so forth” (p. 25). Because of this, educators must take an active role in the equity audit process.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose behind this research on equity in grading is to emancipate students who have a history of lower grades on average. Merriam (1991) says, “In critical research, knowledge is viewed as subjective, emancipatory, and productive of fundamental social change” (p. 53). I will use critical theory to analyze my research.

In the United States of America, being a minority and a member of various races has always been a problem and, as a rule, disadvantaged groups have never been given a fair chance in different areas of life including education. As Muhammad (2015) explained, “The purpose of acknowledgement is not to demonize or vilify. The intent is to bridge gaps in understanding and perceptions so that we can collectively find a common solution” (p. 20). This narrative of disadvantage has been the case for the lower socio-economic members of society and special circumstance populations.

Davis (2014) has said that in an attempt to bring about productive fundamental social change “research emerged to challenge the dominant narrative in mathematics education [focusing] on African American males’ low performance on international,

8 national, and state standardized test” (p. 206.) This same kind of research may also need to emerge in grading as related to traditionally underserved populations.

High-level Policy

The figure below shows how schools can use equity audits in grading to support student’s efforts to attain success factors. Success factors are phenomena such as achievement, accountability, student location, the number of students staying in class and/or in school, a reduction in the number of unrecoverable grades, and allowing students opportunities to fix grades. The success factors help to create systematic change in the ways that grades are produced for students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Positive student outcome is achieved as students feel their work is highly valued by helping more students to obtain passing grades, and students work harder because their work is valued. These items strengthen the theory in action: if we focus on building equitable grading practices, students will feel valued. Fewer students will give up because they feel they cannot be successful. If we have fewer students feeling like they cannot be successful, student achievement will increase.

Figure 1. Equity audits for grades. This figure shows the interaction between success factors and grades.

Research Questions

The following questions guide this inquiry:

1. How do teachers understand the relationship between equity and grading?

2. What did teachers learn from their equity audits?

3. What impact, if any, did the equity audit have on the teachers’ understanding

of equity?

4. What impact, if any, do teachers think the equity audit process will have on

their teaching practice?

Summary

The purpose of this study is to emancipate ELL, special circumstance, and

African American students from a traditionally oppressive process of negative

10 grading impacts, caused by equity-deficient grading systems. I believe that equity- oriented tools like equity audits can help to bring about equitable grades in classrooms in a country (U.S.) and state (California) that has a history of unfair and unequal treatment. Equity audits are also important in bringing about fairness in grading as no group of instructors agrees on a universal system for grading.

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

Problems with Grading in the United States

There are equity issues with grading throughout American education.

McKenzie and Scheurich (2004) cite equity issues to a term they describe as equity traps “conscious and unconscious thinking patterns and behaviors that trap teachers, administrators, and others, preventing them from creating schools that are equitable, particularly for students of color” (p. 601). It is important that educators become equity conscious to avoid the traps and be able to support learning with all students.

Overtime, United States law has sought to support all students of different backgrounds, nationalities, varying abilities, social economic status, nationalities, language abilities, and genders. Critical studies recognize that societal institutions are based on structures of power, and more dominant groups are able to marginalize others. The discourse is that the United States government was created based on majority rule and minority rights. One major issue with equity in grading is that many teachers have not been thoroughly trained on how to grade and, for the most part, there is not a universal grading system that assures consistency, fairness, and equality when providing feedback regarding grades to students, families, and educators. We need equity because we have not reached equality. In this chapter, we will review what research has revealed concerning education law for the success of all students, the achievement gap, equity issues, fairness in grades, being a social work educator,

12 and equity audits; especially as it relates to ELL, special circumstance, and African

American students.

Long lists of studies have investigated grading in the United States over the last hundred years. In line with that information, dissertations, books, and peer- reviewed articles were used for this literature review. Additionally, much research has been done concerning equity in schools throughout the United States. Even more research concerning various grading practices has been done. However, there have not been ample studies on equity in grading practices considering ELL, special circumstance, and African American students. This study will investigate the way that all student groups experience power structures, paying particular attention to how power structures marginalize specific groups.

Certain populations of people and students have historically had less access to quality educational resources than others. For the purpose of this dissertation I leave it up to the teachers’ discretion to decide which students will be special circumstance.

The definition of special circumstance is purposefully vague to give the teacher the ability to make accommodations and adjustments to help students as they deem necessary. I tend to group students in the group population with special circumstance students when a circumstance might inhibit their ability to adequately participate in the course. In studying students with learning disabilities, Shifrer, Callahan, and

Muller (2013) have said that “classification with the Learning Disability (LD) label is intended to initiate the provision of differentiated instructional practices and accommodations that enable these students to achieve up to their potential” (p. 657).

This, however, has not always been the case. As Mehan, Hertweck, and Meihls

(1986) have shown, just the label ‘learning disability’ continues to displace students

“Schools substantially shape students' identities. There are a number of ways that students are classified and channeled into different programs and tracks. The classification determines, in part, which subjects and what content children have an opportunity to study” (p. 189). Students with any negative label or association will likely be marginalized, and as a result; labeling a student becomes “a self-fulfilling prophecy.” So, it is better to have a system in place that students can fairly navigate while still earning their due. No student benefits from a system that is easy or gives unearned grades.

While some special circumstance students are helped by the systems currently in place, many special needs students are not fully successful in schools and continue to fail classes in higher numbers than the general population students. While it is easy to assume that grading practices and measures for equity have already been set in place to accommodate these students, for special needs students, this may not be a reality. Any of my students dealing with extreme circumstances that might hinder their class performance are grouped into a special circumstance category. Teachers have to decide which students are dealing with special circumstances in addition to students with I.E.P.’s or 504 plans.

Labels activate a self-fulfilling prophecy for all three groups: ELL, special circumstance, and African American students. These three groups of students fail courses, get suspended, and drop out of school at higher rates than the general

14 population students. When and if they complete school also has a direct effect on their futures. According to Berktold and Carroll (1998) “Regardless of how one completes high school, years of education obtained has an impact on the long-term earnings potential of youth in the labor market” (p. 44). Without some additional checks in the institution of education, all educators could be taking part in the cultural reproduction of society’s perpetuation of poverty, higher suspension rates, lower graduation rates, and lower academic grading scores for the trailing groups. Geiser and Santelices (2007) found “high-school grade point average (HSGPA) is consistently the best predictor not only of freshman grades in college, but the outcome indicator most often employed in predictive-validity studies, and of four- year college outcomes as well” (p. 1). Therefore, looking at grading practices specifically related to these specific student groups is appropriate. Shavelson and

Towne (2003) declared that the educational institutions must adhere to current legislation that commits educators to evidence-based practices. High school grade point averages are currently the educational, industry-wide norm for succinctly relaying grading data. Equity audits provide a necessary tool to bring about change in identifying marginalized students who need additional assistance.

Many laws have been enacted in the United States to help all students to be successful in education. This educational goal is set to provide each and every person with the tools to be literate and obtain a certain minimal level of educational ability regardless of various classification classes: nationality, gender, socio-economic status, race, disability, and/or language ability. The “No Child Left Behind Act”

(NCLB) of 2001, signed into law January 8 2002 by President Bush provided federal guidelines that states and school districts were mandated to meet or exceed in testing to provide an equitable education for all students. If a school consistently did not meet “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) in bringing its educational program up to par for educating its students, the school was labeled unsafe or persistently dangerous, and parents could take their children out of that school and transfer them to a school with a better educational program. Brown (2010) explained that “the broad goal of

NCLB [was] to raise the achievement levels of all students, especially underperforming groups, and to close the achievement gap that parallels race and class distinctions” (p. 1). The goal was harder to achieve than expected, and many districts filed waivers to avoid the repercussions of the impact of the law. In 2015,

President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in December of 2015, replacing No Child Left Behind Act. Goals of the ESSA were to fix the core issues of NCLB, without the negative drawbacks hindering other students. I believe an overarching goal of both of the acts was to institutionally, through the avenue of education, attempt to harness and ascribe the inherit value of every child on a national basis and assure all students received a quality education. The new ESSA is aimed at making fixes to the NCLB act by giving power back to school districts and states for the overall improvement of the educational programs and on the nation-wide tests that are given to measure that improvement. Another important component of the new act is that the states were also to evaluate and make progress towards having all of their teachers being “highly qualified.” The schools still had to give mandated state tests,

16 officially report student test scores, and be given a school AYP score. A critical improvement would be to add requisite tools like equity audits as a help for teachers to bring about change in areas of grading and teaching for equity. It was also crucial that states and school districts focus on improving the bottom 5% of schools with the highest dropout rates, chronic absenteeism, low graduation rates, and high suspension rates. According to Darling-Hammond et al. (2016) “The new law provides the possibility that states can create more balanced systems of support and accountability focused on educating young people so they can become productive, engaged citizens who are prepared for 21st century college and careers” (p. 4). From a federal education standpoint, the new law provided great educational responsibility to build programs, tools, and policy that promoted systemic equity in education. California state education’s electronic reporting Dashboard is an example of a transparency tool which provides districts with knowledge on required improvement areas for local schools. Equity audits would further help the schools, administrators, and teachers to accomplish the actual goal. Furthermore, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title 7 prohibits discrimination based on race, national origin, or color; “No person in the

United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance” (U.S. Department of

Education). School districts that receive federal funds have to provide students with services and cannot be discriminatory. This provides another reason that equity in

17 academics and equity in grading is important to consider and implement in the educational arena.

A large part of equity in grading is that many educators have not been trained enough to understand the purpose of grades in the instructional program. Many teachers take for granted that grading is just a part of the institution of education.

Marzano (2000) says the main purpose of grading is to provide feedback on achievement to students, parents, teachers, and administration. Guskey (2013) deplores the grading scale for having 60 levels of student failure compared to only 40 levels of successful student achievement. The current traditional grading scale is designed for students to fail. This same scale is used as the universal grading scale by almost all educational organizations. In the 1920s, teachers started to favor the A-F grading scale as it was seen as more efficient and time saving in providing feedback to how students were performing in their classes. High school teachers may have between 150-200+ students per semester at some urban and suburban schools; therefore, there was a need for a grading system that was easy to access and manage.

The A-F grading system has been institutionalized and remains today. To totally replace the current traditional grading system, high school teachers (and other levels as well) will have to find ways to efficiently provide students, parents, and others with valuable feedback on student competency and still accommodate the equity issues related to students’ acquisition of the content. Concerning classroom grading

Marzano (2000) has argued “the most important purpose for grades is to provide information or feedback to the students and parents” (p. 23). If feedback to students

18 and parents is the main goal of grades for the educators, then teachers should be using equity tools to check themselves and determine to what degree they are providing the best level of equitable grades to students and parents. It is the feedback that is important in the grading process which means the feedback needs to be specific to each student on their specific academic achievement. Formative rubrics are provided as an option to help teachers in the grading process to give feedback to students at the beginning of the grading process instead of after, as most forms of traditional grading do. Rubrics also give specific information as to the components of the final end grade to students at the beginning of instruction. Marzano (2000) also highlights the need of the feedback on grading to be specifically related to the content studied. Marzano

(2000) stated, “In an attempt to alleviate this problem, ‘standards’ have been identified in virtually every major subject area both at the national and state levels”

(p. 31). Additionally, certain skills such as thinking-reasoning skills and communication skills are required to be included in grades. There is a need for a tool that will assist teachers with addressing equity issues that often remain hidden.

Most educators, students, and teachers know that grades are an important part of the institution of education’s processes, but many do not know exactly what the purpose of grading is. Brookhart et al. (2016) described grades as “symbols assigned to individual pieces of student work or to composite measures of student performance on report cards” (p. 2). No one can deny that grades recorded as a result of tests are a large component of what is included on report cards. Wormeli (2006) described students’ performance on assessments and in class as a function and inclusive of a

19 variety of factors the students may be dealing with at the time. Hunger, sleep deprivation, stress, scared, and traumatized from situations at home are just some of the factors that may influence a student’s test (assessment) taking abilities. Using these factors as a basis of reasoning, I argue that teachers and schools should make all of these things a required part of the grading process. Others may argue that including these factors would make the grading process too subjective. One of the main considerations of the Wormeli (2006) study was to answer the question: What do grades mean? Brookhart et al. (2016) reflected on research over the course of one- hundred years in relation to studies of the reliability of grades, composition of K-12 report card grades, survey and interview studies of the perceptions of teachers on grades, standards-based grading studies, and grading in higher education. According to Brookhart (1993), “Grades are widely perceived to be what students ‘earn’ for their achievement” (p. 139). Equity in grades are, in part, earned, but grades also reflect a part of the larger societal structure. Students, teachers, and schools with better or more resources would, therefore, have more tools related to equity and multiple supplemental achievement avenues.

Grading Issues

The lack of proven, universal fair and equitable practices in grading is at the core of the equity issue. Some of the questionable factors that enter into grading are tests, assignments (inside and out of class), projects, attendance, student behavior, quizzes, and participation and the weight of each of these on final grades. Additional questions related to equity might ask if teachers are using grading curves and if the

20 curves represent equitable solutions to correct equity issues. Current grading practices can be a rather simplistic reaction to a standard—a forgettable and under-investigated part of an educator’s duties.

There is no universal grading practice across the nation. This lack of a system leads to inconsistency in the grades that are given to students in the same states, districts, and schools. Yesbeck (2011) believes that teachers need to know why they grade, understand measurement theory of academic factors for achievement, support student learning with academic factors, and be supported with staff development in the area of grading. The above factors would help to create a culture of fairness in grading. The addition of equity audits to this list would serve as a check to the fairness in the individual teacher’s grading. Yesbeck (2011) said that these factors

“suggest that although measurement theory experts recommend that achievement factors should be the only factors that determine student grades, the results of this study indicate that teachers use a mixture of variables in determining student grades, known as hodgepodge grading” (p. viii). She set out to examine the factors that help teachers determine final student grades. According to her, grades communicate information to students, parents, and school leadership about academic performance and results. To Yesbeck (2011), there is a discrepancy between grading policies, purposes and practices. She believes the discrepancy exists because of the lack of teacher professional development concerning grading. To make the development complete, equity audits or other such tools should be incorporated.

Issues related to grading and equity have also been considered in relationship to elementary schooling. There have been studies of comparisons of elementary grading configurations and secondary grading configurations (schools). Gordon,

Peterson, Gdula, and Klingbeil (2011) studied grade configurations in schools: elementary, junior high, middle, and high schools. They also looked at the grade configurations impact on student achievement and behavior. Gordon et al. (2011) stated, “The majority of these studies found that elementary schools students did significantly better than middle and junior high school students of the same age in

G.P.A., standardized state math scores, standardized state reading scores, and state test composite scores” (p. 5). This seems to suggest that these researchers found that

K-8 grade elementary schools do not have significant equity issues for the different student groups. The research did not identify the factors that lead to students doing better in the K-8 elementary schools versus middle grade schools. The researchers did state that it may be a factor of the class sizes in the elementary schools being smaller.

Although larger class sizes have been continually addressed as an issue in secondary education, it persists as a perpetual problem. Teacher shortages remain an issue, and class sizes continue to be large in many schools. Also, teachers are not always properly trained, and many teachers have a lack of understanding of all students in their classes, especially ELL, special circumstance, and African American students.

Authors Munk and Bursuck cite the lack of teacher training concerning grades as it applies to special circumstance students. That lack of training further marginalizes special circumstance students. Munk and Bursuck (2001) say “District

22 grading policies lack guidelines for making grading adaptations” (p. 212). Guskey and Jung (2009) studied reporting and grading of special circumstance students. The goal of their research was to help teachers to develop a step-by-step process that assisted with fair and meaningful grades for special circumstance students. They suggested the following steps: give clear learning standards (process, product, progress goals); discern if an adaptation needed to be made for each standard; when modification is needed, discern if adaptation or modification is needed; if modification is needed, determine standard based modification; and assign grade according to modified standard and note report card accordingly. Even with these clearly defined steps available, it was found that districts neglected teacher development concerning grading and grading practices, leaving teachers to guess at best practices for grading (Guskey & Jung, 2009). Many teachers are ill informed or not sufficiently informed concerning equity issues in grades and have no knowledge of equity audits. Utilizing these steps would help teachers to consistently provide fair and meaningful grades. Overall, it was also found that most common and the strongest adaptation made by teachers is to alter the weights of assignments and the grading scale (Guskey and Jung, 2009). I would add that the addition of equity audits would provide a value check into the system for teachers to look at classes to see if, statistically, students are being marginalized.

Best Practice Regarding Grades

Grading best practices should be reinforced across states, districts, and schools. There should be consistency in what works in regards to helping students to

23 be successful. There are best practices that can be used for equity in grading according to the research conducted by Hanover Research (2016). First of all,

Hanover (2016) found that grading circumstances and educator responses to these circumstances need to be systemized district-wide (modifying a points-based model or implementing a standards-based model). Second, Hanover (date) found that standards-based grading allows for clear learning targets, accommodation for different learning styles, and feedback during the lesson. Third, Hanover (date) found that there should be separate scoring for academic/non-academic performance. It is hoped that this dissertation will be able to determine additional best equity-based practices in regards to grading.

Marginalized Groups

The issue with grading in the United States is that it has not taken into consideration the needs of ELL, special circumstance, and African American students. ELL, special circumstance, and African American students continue to frequent lists that show deplorable statistics in GPA, suspension, and graduation rates.

The California School Dashboard also confirms that these are populations for concern in our state and are, indeed, marginalized students who complete high school at significantly lower rates than the general student population.

Special Circumstance Students

Special circumstance students are a growing population of students in all levels of education across the nation. These students include students’ already labelled special circumstance by virtue of being in a Resource Special Education

Program (RSP) or having a 504 Plan via an Individual Education Learning Plan

(IEP). Merriam-Webster (2018) defines special needs students as “any of various difficulties (such as a physical, emotional, behavioral, or learning disability or impairment) that causes an individual to require additional or specialized services or accommodations (such as in education or recreation)”. As a high school educator, I would add “at risk” youth to this special circumstance group. In examining problems, educators are often concerned with grading students who are defined as special circumstance. Pollard and Rojewski (1993) said “Assigning grades is an integral component of our educational system; however, there does not appear to be widespread agreement as to the most appropriate methods to evaluate student performance” (p. 155). Brownell, Ross, Colón, and McCallum (2005), researching the critical features of special education teacher preparation programs, explained that

“although the reform reports accept the premise that teacher education makes a difference, the national debate continues because we lack definitive studies about the impact of teacher education on student achievement” (p. 243). Brownell et al. (2005) have noted the importance of teacher programs emphasizing inclusion, collaboration, field experience, cultural diversity, and the use of program evaluations. Freeman and

Alkin (2000) cited the importance of inclusion of special circumstance students: “On the other hand, advocates of integration for children with disabilities cite such social advantages as positive peer modeling and greater achievement through exposure to peers” (p. 3). Citing the lack of definitive resources in grading students for equity, it is important to ensure that schools do not marginalize this group of students further.

Adding equity audits as a tool in the grading system will allow teachers access to equity issues before grades are released and allow an opportunity to address these issues directly. Another significant area of concern in grading special circumstance students involves homework as a number of these students often do not complete homework assignments. In citing subjects of their study Munk and Bursuck (2001) noted that “teams for Andy, Mary, and Jason cited homework as a demand that had a negative impact on the report card grade” (p. 229). This area is an issue as help on homework is not always available to all students. Special circumstance students often do not have the self-motivation and parents or guardians who are capable of appropriately assisting them in their homework. Also, all students do not have access to computers or the internet to complete assignments, and some students have responsibilities after school that do not allow the student to work on additional school work. Equity audits can help teachers to dig deeper into equity issues entrenched in assigned school work and the degree to which students have help outside the classroom. Teachers who neglect to find out which students are suffering on grades from not having adequate help on homework are contributing to further marginalization of these students. As educators identify specific issues, we can seek specific adaptations for students that may help them to be more successful.

English Language Learners

ELL students have a history of being marginalized in U.S. schools. ELL students are another group of students that educators need to do more to protect and support through more equitable classrooms. ELL students continue to have a lower

26 graduation rate, higher suspension rate, and lower grade point averages than the overall student populations (National Education Association, n.d.). In 1974, the Lau v. Nichols supreme court case found that school districts were responsible to provide language services “where inability to speak and understand the English language excludes national origin-minority group children from effective participation in the educational program offered by a school district; the district must take affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency in order to open its instructional program to these students” (p. 568). In this case it was shown that students could not be successful if they could not understand the course content. It is important to give ELL students the necessary content and skills in a form they can understand and work within if schools want to reconcile lower grade point averages and graduation rates and higher suspension rates. If the students do not understand the material, there is no way they can access the content and pass the courses necessary for graduation.

Without understanding, they are also more prone to not going to classes and other misbehavior. Equity audits allow teachers and schools the ability to self-identify issues to highlight problem areas in grades and be proactive by adding additional opportunities for students to be successful.

English language proficiency is instrumental in achieving educational improvement with language-minority students in the United States. As mentioned by

Rumberger and Larson (1998), “The issues of English-language proficiency and immigration are particularly relevant to Latinos because Latinos are more likely to be both immigrants and non-English speakers” (p. 69). The researchers studied the

27 socio-culture and socio-economic factors that lead to some Mexican-American students being successful or unsuccessful in school (Rumberger & Larson, 1998).

Students from Spanish speaking backgrounds that became English proficient (FEP) tended to be more successful than students who were not proficient in English (LEP).

But it was not the only success factor, according to Rumberger and Larson (1998).

Social aspects of education were identified including attitudes, behaviors, and relationships with educators, all of which had a bearing on improved academic achievement. This is also the case with other Spanish speakers who are Latin, but not of Mexican origin (e.g. Puerto Rican).

Studies have also been conducted to research the effectiveness of English as a

Second Language (ESL) programs to see if they have a positive or negative on students. Impacts can be positive and negative. In 2010, Callahan, Wilkinson, and

Muller studied the effects of ESL placement on language minority students for academic achievement and college preparation. The researchers wanted to know if

ESL programs in schools helped students who spoke another language at home to excel academically or hindered their growth by sheltering the students from more rigorous content. Callahan et al. (2010) found that “although ESL services may initially ensure that students’ linguistic needs are prioritized, if ESL placement is continued over time, it may undermine long-term academic achievement” (p. 104).

Conversely, it has also been found that if students remain in the program and successfully progress in them, they acquire the necessary language skills and tend to be more prone to go on to higher education and gainful employment. Needless to say,

28 there is still much controversy and research continuing in this area. This research is particularly important as it cites the importance of offering services at the beginning of program to be of the most help to the students, rather than later which can hinder them. This finding also relates to the need for equity audits, as teachers need to be mindful when they are assisting this vulnerable population and, possibly unknowingly, hindering their students. The impact of hindering students may cause lifelong damage on notions of efficacy and a desire to learn.

Stereotype Threat (Deficit Thinking) African Americans

African American students have a history of being marginalized in all aspects of American society: economic, educational, criminal, etc. Equity traps in education

(McKenzie & Scheurich, 2004) are types of thinking and behavior that limit educators’ abilities to provide all students with first class education, especially students of color. According to Boske (2015), “Black students face harsher discipline and experience less rigorous curricula than their White counterparts” (p. 121).

McKenzie and Scheurich (2004) “define[d] the four equity traps—the deficit view, racial erasure, employment and avoidance of the gaze, and paralogic beliefs and behaviors” (p. 601). Describing deficit thinking, Muhammad and Hollie (2012) said,

“underserved students are many times seen as deficient, deviant, defiant, disruptive, and disrespectful” (p. 84). McKenzie and Scheurich (2004) have also provided strategic tips on how to combat the traps. Educators must be aware of the equity traps, while not labelling the African American students, yet upholding the integrity of instruction. As important to this research, it is the case that all schools in the U. S.

29 have the responsibility of providing an education that is challenging, high quality and accessible to all students.

Achievement Gap

Cause of Gap

Specific factors are responsible for causing any given achievement gap.

Lewis, James, Hancock, and Hill-Jackson (2008) studied successes and failures of schools’ attempts to narrow the achievement gap. The work enumerates three paradigms to facilitate change: social-structural inequality, deficit, and discontinuity.

First, social-structural inequality holds that schools, like other American institutions, are social reproduction sites that perpetuate class-based social inequalities based on race. Second, deficit thinking blames African American students for the shortcomings in societal structures based on assumption that they are inferior by racial inadequacy.

According to Ford (1996) speaking about deficit thinking “This ideology of African

American and other ethnic-minority students’ intellectual and cultural inferiority infects teachers, curriculum development, administrators, school policies, and ultimately, students’ academic progress” (p. 141). Thirdly, the notion of discontinuity assumes that educators (i.e., teachers, administrators, and counselors) have the primary responsibility for recognizing success or failure in student’s achievement. Recommendations made by the Lewis et al. (2006) are that stakeholders need to come together to address the lack of cultural literacy and establish ways to eliminate philosophies that are against academic excellence. Districts and school administrators need to articulate a philosophy of excellence to promote high

30 achievement which would allow students more time, if needed, to obtain the necessary skills in an academic environment (such as afterschool programs) and providing relevant professional development opportunities for educators (2008).

These institutional changes may provide the underpinnings of systemic changes that are necessary for the success of minority students (African American students in particular).

Harm in Gap

James et al. (2016) studied the tracking of minority students to find out if students who were not tracked into classes would be provided with a deeper understanding of the content. James et al. (2016) used critical race theory to see if race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic level had anything to do with the classes students were tracked into from basic classes to Advanced Placement (AP) and honors courses. They found that it was indeed the case that in many urban areas

African American and ELL students were tracked into more basic courses and not placed into AP and/or honors courses in large numbers. This reduced their opportunities to be college bound. James et al. (2016) found “Students must be academically challenged to ensure their readiness to take part in post-secondary educational opportunities” (p. 179). The students needed the high school curriculum to be challenging in order for the students to accomplish it successfully and, thereby, be prepared to take on and sustain the same level of success in their college coursework. Additionally, the researchers cited the need of parents to have the information about classes offered and how the classes will help prepare their students

31 for success. Lastly, the researchers explained that placement practices need to be transparent, and challenging content needs to be a major part of all students’ schooling (James et al., 2006).

Fixing the Issues

Our job as educators is to proactively seek opportunities to help our students be successful, whether through social or emotional opportunities, grading, using equity audits, or other equity tools.

Social Work Educator

Social reproduction and social justice for all students is important to consider in the larger conversation of equitable classes and grading schema. Social justice is a responsibility for students who will have the highest chance at being successful in school. A social justice educator has the responsibility of providing tools for success to all students and providing modifications that may support marginalized or underserved populations. All educators must take part in the process of being a social work educator. Sayre (2014) has argued that “social work educators can provide greater access to resources (e.g., the instructor’s time) for students experiencing disadvantages that affect their academic performance” (p. 32). As educators learn that certain students need more time having assignments explained or to working one- on-one; needed modifications are put in place to help students be successful. Sayre

(2014) has discussed the importance of “distributive justice” in education and providing equity opportunities to students who have been marginalized and distributing a fair share of resources to help those students who are struggling. Equity

32 in grades is built on the premise that all teachers are to be “social work educators.”

Sayre (2014) also highlighted that teachers who “go-easy” on students, hinder their growth. Sayre (2014) asserted that an educator’s job is to challenge the student and ensure that they have the opportunity to grow in their coursework. Teachers should not be making class easy to pass as a tool for equity. Disadvantaged students are left without the ability to think critically and are therefore not educated with a depth of knowledge. The constant “easy-outs” do not allow the students to “dig in” or to own their successes. The result is less knowledge in the subject area and later grades reflect the failures of the students and educators’ shortcomings. However, teachers need to be aware of inequities that exist in their students’ lives to best help students succeed academically. Considering the work in which “social work educators” engage in, all students must be challenged to learn and encouraged with fair and equitable grading systems. Capper, Theoharis, and Sebastian (2006) describe frameworks to prepare leaders for a social justice program in schools. Social justice work in education is needed as it bridges social justice and grading. The authors call educators to promote social justice by providing safe zones in which students can take emotional and intellectual risks to social justice stances as well as reflect on their own biases, stereotypes, and deficit thinking (Capper et al., 2006). School districts across the nation are talking about equity in education; it is equally important to hire educators who will be willing to educate students in a way that fosters an equitable reality for all students.

Bowers (2010) found that the dangers of students dropping out of school begin earlier than previously thought; “it appears that risk of dropout in the present data set began in Grade 7 in middle school, two years earlier than the majority of present district at-risk prediction and prevention programs begin” (p. 203).

Researchers used grades as a determinant to know which students would drop out of school and when they would dropout. Bowers (2010) also found that grades 8 and 11 were the most likely years for students to dropout and that students who had been held back in school were more likely to dropout. Lastly, he found that teacher assignment of grades were significant in predicting if students would dropout

(Bowers, 2010). Again, this shows the importance of grading, its impact on special populations of students, and, possibly, the equity issues related to grades.

Equity Audits

Equity audits are tools to solve equity issues that are recognized in education or society. Equity audits are tools that could readily be used to help bring about equity in the community, on campus, and in classrooms across the nation. This literature review will talk about three types of equity audits.

Brown (2010) talks about the necessity of schools using equity audits to bring about systemic change in education. She purports that schools have to use tools like equity audits to bring about change to narrow the achievement gap. Equity audits can be used to bring about systemic change. Brown (2010) has argued that:

“in many ways, this system of recognition, marked solely by students’

attainment of a target score on a standardized test as defined and measured by

NCLB, actually conflates excellence and equity; therefore, offering a narrow

definition of student achievement and perpetuating the current achievement

gap that separates many minorities from their white counterparts” (p. 2).

It is important that we give all students opportunities to be successful in ways that will impact their world. Expressing the importance for equity in education, Brown

(2010) described educators who promote excellence in schools that are not equitable to be hypocrites.

An equity audit is an educational tool that can be used to help educators to narrow achievement gaps. Citing the importance of these audits Skrla, Scheurich,

Garcia, and Nolly (2004) stated, “Our idea for using equity audits as a tool to guide schools in working toward equity and excellence is based on an impressive history of equity auditing in three areas: civil rights, curriculum auditing, and state accountability policy systems” (p. 138). Equity audits are proven tools to shed light on equity issues that affect educational ecosystems and may have a negative impact on students. Equity auditing consists of using qualitative data to uncover issues in teacher quality, educational programs, and student achievement (Skrla et al., 2004).

Grade point averages of individual teachers and schools can be audited, comparing targeted group areas for improvement (i.e. ELL, special circumstance, and African

American students). Skrla et al. (2004) remind us about the growing achievement gaps that persist by race and resources that need to be eliminated. This call to action not only clarifies our obligation to make corrections to the achievement gaps that

35 exist across the nation, it sets educators in a position of not being able to make claims of success in the profession without narrowing or eliminating the gap.

Community Audits

According to Nelson, Bustamante, Sawyer, and Sloan (2015) there are five themes found to be important to culturally competent schools: “eye-opening experiences, recognition of strengths, the role of school leaders, road maps for change, and empowering marginalized groups” (p. 221). These are also areas of importance to ensuring individual students have success in an educational setting.

Similarly, the areas defined by Nelson et al., (2015) are areas that relate directly to the grading of ELL students and their success in particular classes and school in general.

Schools or classes that ensure ELL students have eye-opening experiences broaden the horizons of those students and give them additional places, people, and arenas in which to apply, discuss, and show success in their academic endeavors create rather than limit educational opportunities. Giving recognition to their strengths, which the students may not even know they have, has the effect of empowering them as individuals and as a group. This practice also accentuates their academic performance. Providing definitive road maps for change and the recognizing the important role of school leaders in these matters and the kids’ lives are also important tools and avenues which can assist in positive transformations for ELL students.

Green’s (2017) research promoted using community equity audits to provide students with more support in their communities for the betterment of education. The larger goal of this work is to bring school and community leaders together to provide

36 the students better educational outcomes and understanding. School leaders would have to reach out to critically understand the students in the communities in which they live while learning about structural and institutional racism, community poverty, and violence. Green (2017) uses community equity audits as an instrument, strategy, process, and approach to guide leaders to positive community and school outcomes.

He says the community equity audits are not step-by-step, not quickly fixed, and can be used together or individually. He also suggested that- principals are not saviors but are advocates for students and families and that the stakeholders have to commit to equity (Green, 2017). According to Green (2017), “Not intended to undermine a sense of urgency, community-based equity audits should be viewed as an approach to address adaptive and systemic problems that require time, trust, experimentation, iteration, and commitment to shift from deficit- to asset-based perspectives about students, families, and communities” (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002; Henderson et al.,

2007; Mapp & Hong, 2010; Green, 2017, p. 5). There are four things that the community equity audits should do: disrupt deficit views of the community, conduct inquiry and shared experiences, establish a community leadership team, and gather asset-based data to act upon.

In their research of community-based equity audits, Kellow and Jones (2008) found that there are harmful stereotypes that can hinder the success of students and other persons. Kellow and Jones (2008) explained that “stereotype threat is the threat that members of a stigmatized group experience when they believe that they may, by virtue of their performance in a domain of relevance, confirm a negative stereotype

37 about themselves and members of their group” (p. 95). As an African American male,

I usually do not order chicken when eating at restaurants, always tip and usually tip pretty well as a counter to negative stereotypes about African Americans. Kellow and

Jones (2008) wanted to know if just the stereotype of African American students not doing well on standardized tests had anything to do with their lower performance scores. The authors argued that “stereotypes about individuals based on group membership persist in part because they often are true for at least some individuals in the group” (Kellow & Jones, 2008, p. 94). An example of a stereotype threat would be that as African American students usually do not do well on certain standardized tests, they would only aspire to not doing well on any standardized test taken.

According to the study, the researchers found that the African American students’ performance did not decrease, but the White students’ performance scores increased.

For this study it meant that the African American students did better, but the White students did better than they had previously done. The result was a widening of the achievement gap. Even though the gap persisted and the stereotype threat was not corrected, it was not that the African American students did not perform well, the

White students, as it turned out, did even better than previously which seemed to have construed the results.

Campus Audits

Groenke (2010) researched using equity audits in schools as a tool to help rethink equity in public schools. Her work is directed at revealing to new teachers the importance of educating for equity and using equity audits as a tool to bring about

38 systemic change in education. Groenke’s (2010) work is directed at preparing beginning teachers to be social change agents. Equity is definitely seen as an area of growth potential and opportunity to make systemic changes in the educational arena.

Groenke (2010) wrote, “As a result of conducting the equity audits, young teachers begin to consider reasons why teachers’ understandings of the degree of inequity in schools are often unclear and consider how obfuscation of such data helps perpetuate the status quo” (p. 88). The teachers were astonished at the differences in schools for classes that were offered to students at some of the schools and not offered to students at others, such as A.P. courses (Groenke, 2010). Another equity audit revealed that all

ELL students were being sent to one school in the district, and that that school was plagued with issues like being one of the poorer and understaffed schools in the district.

Classroom Audits

In 2011, Van Ewijk studied the grades that ethnic majority teachers assign to the course work of ethnic majority and ethnic minority students for the same work.

The researcher manipulated the names on the essays that the teachers would grade to make the teachers believe the work they graded was an ethnic minority or ethnic majority to find out if the essays would be graded the same or differently due to the names on the assignment. Findings were that the teachers reported lower expectations for ethnic minorities. Van Ewijk (2011) found that teachers indirectly had lower expectations for minorities and allowed them to perform below par. Minority students were able to pass with worse performance. Students passing with lower performance

39 highlights rigor issues in coursework for students. This important research shows that it is very important to have equity in grading and not default lower standards for minority students.

When considering audits, educators, parents, and leaders will have to support teachers in having access to additional tools to help every student to be successful in the learning environment. Equity audits may be a way to target particular students for individual education plans for success in the classroom.

Munk and Bursuck (2001) believe that teachers, students, parents, and administrators need to collaboratively create individualized grading plans for all students in special circumstance categories. One of the challenges of implementing individualized student grading plans for all special circumstance students as considered in this research may be the possibility of teachers spending one hour per student per month with individual students (as necessary to equity auditing) equates to 180 hours per month on students’ grading plans. Teachers who have 175+ students would spend a significant portion of their time working on student grading plans in comparison to actual instruction time. This individual grading plan would be in addition to the IEPs or 504 plans many special circumstance students already have.

The feasibility of all or even many teachers being willing to do this readily and without additional monetary compensation is questionable. I believe it is important to look at having an individual education plan for special circumstance, ELL, and minority students who are underperforming as a result of an equity audit. We have to find a balance in readily and easily using efficient audits to help teachers to provide

40 equitable classrooms that will be effective while helping to minimize students being marginalized.

All of these areas tie into equity in grading as special circumstance students are included in the responsibilities of educators to grade all students. Special circumstance students of all varieties will need the support and care of all educators in the profession. Orr and Bachman (2009) found that overall more students with disabilities are currently attending college, citing this as a need to provide additional opportunities for success. Educators at all levels need educational tools to help in the grading and educating of all students, including special circumstance or students with disabilities. Ford (2013) argued that “Being able to provide learning opportunities to all students within an inclusive classroom is certainly an advantage of differentiated instruction” (p. 8). Educators not only have a responsibility to students entrusted to their institutions, but they should have a moral obligation to help bring about equity for all persons in the educational arena.

Equity audits are tools that can be used to help all three of these underserved groups: ELL, special circumstance, and African American students. The education profession overall, schools, communities, and society can benefit from individual teachers being able to readily identify if these students are falling behind and beginning to fail in their classes. Districts and schools will benefit by developing teachers’ abilities to use such tools, and entire communities in turn can profit from the enhanced populations of students who are graduating and being productive members

41 of society. School-based equity audits help in highlighting the need for individual classroom, student, and teacher audits.

Summary

In this chapter, I have reviewed research concerning educational law for success of all students, the achievement gap, equity issues, and fairness in grades, being a social work educator, and equity audits. I have explored some of the literature that builds the conceptual framework of this research. There is a wealth of research related to and concerning equity in schools and even more research on grading practices. The following study seeks to build upon the research related to equity in grading practices of ELL, special circumstance, and African American students.

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

I seek to understand how teachers grade for equity in their classes. Using a tool like equity audits, teachers can seek to provide equitable grades for all students, especially those who are disenfranchised including ELL, special circumstance, and

African American students.

Educational leaders need to take courses of action that are data driven.

Because of this, school improvement becomes a continuous part of school-wide intervention. The most effective educational leaders use data to drive decision making and interventions and monitor progress in a student-centered fashion. Therefore, it is important that judgements made by educational leaders are based on an understanding of the data and its role in guiding improvements. The goal of this research is to consider ways to assist teachers to develop equitable grading practices. Equity audits serve as a tool that teachers can use to ensure their grading practices are equitable for all students in every class. In an equity audit practice, teachers take grades and calculate the averages for the entire student group and the sub groups. The audit may reveal that certain groups of students are performing at the average, above the average or below the average. The teacher can then choose to make changes that will help students in trailing groups.

Educational leaders have a responsibility to be social equity prompters with a desire to grow all students’ skills and abilities. Ambitions to achieve equity have been a continual part of public and educational law in the United States. Schools and

43 educational organizations that do not make equity a primary focus will continue to marginalize students and increase achievement gaps instead of shrink them.

Research Questions

The following questions guide this inquiry:

1. How do teachers understand the relationship between equity and grading?

2. What did teachers learn from their equity audits?

3. What impact, if any, did the equity audit have on the teachers’ understanding

of equity?

4. What impact, if any, do teachers think the equity audits process will have on

their teaching practice?

Research questions in this document were designed to give insight into the reasons ELL, special circumstance, and African American students trail behind the overall student grade point averages (GPAs) in grading. The questions also sought to help identify variables that might help ELL, special circumstance, and African

American students catch up to their peers in grade point average as a measure of classroom success.

Research Design

I used a qualitative case study methodology to investigate how teachers can use equity tools to promote equity and seek to eliminate current patterns of marginalization in education. This research is also important in that it can be used to explore and make sense of classroom decisions to make a positive change in

44 supporting equity-related decisions. Qualitative research seeks to understand phenomena through prolonged engagement with artifacts, participants, or documents.

This particular use of qualitative data interprets data for an understanding of equity issues that affect students—in this case, grades. This research provides educators the opportunity to participate in in-depth exploration of data and dialogues with participants for a greater understanding of the phenomenon. Skrla et al. (2009) says that equity improvements need to be planned and systematic. This kind of research can help that planning process.

Methods used in this article include document analysis, observations, and interviews with teachers. Schwandt (2001) explained that “typically, three classes or types of tools are used to generate qualitative data: interviewing (listening, talking, conversing, and recording), observation (watching and videotaping), and document analysis (reading and photographing)” (p. 159).

The equity audits used in this study investigated grades of ELL, special circumstance, and African American students. The information was collected from teacher grades for these individual groups and the overall student population. The purpose of this research was to see if teachers could use the equity audits of grades as a tool in their classrooms to provide additional support for struggling groups of students.

Qualitative Case Study Methodology

An equity audit was used to derive data for this qualitative case study. The research involved interviews, observations, shadowing, and collecting documents. A

45 case study method was used to gather and analyze the data. A qualitative study is a method of inquiry used to study human behavior. Many disciplines use qualitative inquiry to understanding a particular case or phenomenon.

The purpose behind this critical qualitative work was emancipation. In particular, this work provides knowledge to better understand and advocate for students who have had a history of lower grades on average than the overall student body. Merriam (1991) said, “In critical research, knowledge is viewed as subjective, emancipatory, and productive of fundamental social change” (p. 53). I used critical theory to analyze my research. In the United States of America being a minority and of member of various races has always been a problem, and, as a rule, disadvantaged groups have never been given a fair chance at success in different areas of life including education. As Muhammad (2015) has explained, “The purpose of acknowledgement is not to demonize or vilify. The intent is to bridge gaps in understanding and perceptions so that we can collectively find a common solution”

(p. 20). This disadvantage has also been shared by students of a lower socio- economic status and special circumstance populations. Davis (2014) has argued that in an attempt to bring about productive fundamental social change “research [that] emerged to challenge the dominant narrative in mathematics education [focusing] on

African American males’ low performance on international, national, and state standardized test” (p. 206.)

In this research the ontology is subjective and understood through constructions of power. Merriam (1991) said that “Society and human nature are

46 human constructions that can be altered through people's progressive understanding...

In critical research, knowledge is viewed as subjective, emancipatory, and productive of fundamental social change” (p. 53). This study demonstrates research being subjective and constructed on issues of power that can possibly be affected and altered if teachers take more proactive standardized measures to encourage students’ success.

The axiology represented in critical theory values democracy, freedom, and equity as it relates to educational opportunities, teaching, and standardized testing of students. Merriam (1991) offered that “This paradigm requires researchers to reflect critically upon society and their complicity in reinforcing an oppressive structure so that they and the people they research can overcome domination and oppression through praxis” (p. 52).

The epistemology in this investigation is that of multiple truths. Bernal (2002) explained, “Critical raced-gendered epistemologies emerge from the experiences a person of color might have at the intersection of racism, sexism, classism, and other oppressions” (p. 107). Lower grade point average is an oppressive truth faced by many minority students.

The methodology used in this investigation is participant observation.

According to Schwandt (2001), “Participant observation is a procedure for generating understanding of the ways of life of others.” A qualitative study is a method of inquiry used to study human behavior. Many disciplines have used qualitative inquiry to understand particular phenomena, and the method is appropriate for this study.

Site Selection

Research sites. Research was conducted at a high school in the Central

Valley of California.

Access. I asked for permission from the high school principal about conducting research on equitable grading. I also received permission for the study from the school district officials. I also reached out to teachers to see which ones would agree to work with me and use my program. Permission of California State

University Stanislaus Institutional Review Board was procured prior to the beginning of this study.

The high school where the research was conducted is one of the comprehensive high schools in the Central Valley of California. The district serves five surrounding cities. The school was established in 2001 and serves approximately

1900 students who come from the surrounding communities and unincorporated areas of the county. Students range from 9th through 12th grade and are typically between14 and 19 years of age.

Selection of Participants

For this research I selected three teachers at one single school. Purposeful sampling was used to select teachers for the study. Palinkas, et al. (2015) explained purposeful sampling for collection and analysis of data “Purposeful sampling is widely used in qualitative research for the identification and selection of information- rich cases related to the phenomenon of interest” (p. 1). For selection, I asked these

48 teachers if they were willing to participate in research on grading equity. All three of the teachers teach in core subject areas. I chose one of the teachers because she is an

African American teacher. Another one of the participants was chosen because she has a large population of “at risk” students in her classes. Another teacher was chosen as he has over twenty-five years of teaching experience. All of these teachers were teachers who I trusted to give me their honest feedback.

Profile of Participants

Mr. Smith is participant number one. He is a government and economics teacher—the core subjects taught in the social studies department of the school. Mr.

Smith has been teaching for over twenty years. He has been at this particular high school for more than fifteen years.

Mrs. Tee is participant number two. Mrs. Tee is an academic support teacher.

Academic Support is an elective course for students who are identified as “at risk”.

She had been teaching at the school less than 5 years and had teaching experience in central California before coming to the school district.

Ms. Arin is participant number three. Ms. Arin is a math teacher teaching

Integrated Math A and Integrated Math B—the core subjects taught in the mathematics department. She has also been at the school less than 5 years.

Organizing Students into groups

It was left to the teachers to identify students into the groups of English

Language Learners, African American and Special Circumstances. Teachers were not told what criteria to use to place the students into the groups. A district-wide data

49 management system usually lists if students are English Language Learning, but does not always accurately designate their levels and a teacher would usually have to get to know the student to ascertain which accommodations are appropriate for a particular student. Teachers also have to find out for themselves which students should be placed into a special circumstance. Special circumstance in this study was used to encompass all students who are dealing with additional challenges that might inhibit their performance in school. Examples for special circumstances are: homelessness, foster children, hunger, chronic illness, injured with a physical or mental disability. I tend to group my special circumstance students into the category with almost any circumstance that would be a significant challenge to the student completing work: homelessness, hungry, injury, chronic illness, physical or mental disability, emergency at home, excessive absence or suspension, parenting students, working students, depressed and other circumstances.

It is important to note that students might be in all three categories. They are not tallied three times. It is up to the teacher to find which group will serve the students’ needs best.

Data Collection

Interviews. I used interviews and an equity analysis tool for an equity audit of grades. I used semi-structured interviews to “capture the unseen that was, is, will be, or should be; how respondents think or feel about something; and how they explain or account for something” (Glesne, 2011, p. 134). I began the interviews by giving an introduction of my research to each of my interviewees. I then talked about my

50 objectives in researching and explained what I hope to accomplish with my research.

Next, I inquired about the questions and concerns my interviewees might have about the research. The interviews were conducted between May 2018 and August 2018.

Equity Audit. I ran an equity audit on the grades of four classes per teacher.

Teachers provided me with the grade sheet for four or five of their classes. I then ran average statistics on the total class population and subgroups that the teachers had selected. The teachers identified students in each of the categories for the equity audit. According to Brown (2010) equity audits help to identify where in a system a flaw might be “Results do indicate that equity audits are a practical, easy-to-apply tool that educators can use to identify inequalities objectively” (p. 1).

Steps for Data Collection

1. I interviewed the three teachers for approximately one hour prior to

introducing the equity audit information to each participant. In this interview I

asked them about their understanding of grading and grades [e.g. how you

develop a grading scale? Why do you grade how you do? Do you weight

assignments and how? What do grades tell you about students’ learning and

achievement? The purpose of this preliminary interview was to provide a pre-

assessment of their practices. I collected from the teachers the scales they use

for their grades. I also collected their syllabus which should contain a copy of

their grading scale.

2. Second, I conducted a sample equity audit with the teachers. I sat down in the

teacher’s classroom or a private space with their computer-based gradebooks

for approximately one or two hours. This process involved several steps:

a. I gave the teachers an overview of what an equity audit is by using my

own equity audit experience and forms that I developed. This helped

them understand the steps in the process and build a level of trust.

b. The next step was for me to create an Excel spreadsheet that contained

all of the equity audit variables. We then entered their students’ third

quarter grades. We entered grades for at least four of their classes.

Previous research suggests equitable grading can be an issue for some

teachers. The sense of being “fair” clouds some educators’ decision

making. Often teachers get equality and equity confused. There were

times in the classroom I found that I got so concerned with getting

“grades in” that I didn’t take into account some of the different

situations going on in my classroom gradebook. Due to my knowledge

of these issues, some of the questions that I asked prepared the

teachers so they could be aware of potential hazards:

Q1: Who is doing well in my classes?

Q2: Who is not doing well in my classes?

Q3: Are there patterns that exist?

Q4: Are there students who could improve in my classes with some

added support?

3. The third stage of my data collection was to conduct follow-up interviews

with my participants within one week of the equity audit. During this

interview I sought to understand if and how the equity audit process impacted

their thinking about grades and equity consciousness. I asked teachers to tell

me what they saw in the data results table. The goal was to have the teachers

describe the results and notice disparities in the data. If they did not

adequately discuss the disparities initially in the reporting data, I made note of

that and proceeded to point out different ways to look at the data according to

the equity audit process. Depending on the teacher’s responses to the equity

audit process and the results of the analysis, I continued the interaction with a

discussion of how the equity audit might influence their individual grading

practices and how they could better support students in their classrooms. I also

asked the teachers how the process and equity audit results made them feel

about their instructional and grading practice.

4. I kept field notes, recorded the session, and I received teachers’ permission to

keep copies of the equity audit data and results in line with the Institutional

Review Board documentation.

Data was collected in each section from each of the teachers in regards to how and what they use as their grading system, A-F grading, and percentages (example in

Appendix B). Data for this equity audit was extracted from the school’s Aeries software management system. The number of students in the classes were also calculated and counted.

Table 1

Grading Structure (My Previous Grade Scale)

Grade Percent score A 100 - 89.1 B 89.0 - 79.1 C 79.0 - 69.1 D 69.0- 55.9 F 54 and below

As an example, for the teachers, I ran an equity audit of my classes during the

last school year. Data for this equity audit was extracted from the school’s Aeries

software management system. I had 178 students in my classes. After running a final

grade mark analysis report, my results were: 76 A’s, 29 B’s, 18 C’s, 27 D’s and 22

F’s. I graded with a modified standard grade point system where 89.1% and higher

was an A. The B grade ranged from 79.1% to 89.0%. The C grade ranged from 69.1%

to 79.0%. The D grade ranged from 55.9% percent to 69.0%. The grade of F was

given to students who earned a 54% and below. In this system, the grade of A was

worth four points. The grade of B was worth three points. The grade of C was worth

two points. The grade of D was worth one point. The grade of F earned no points. An

all-class average was run, and my average GPA was 2.64. This number was averaged

from 171 students in my classes. I also had seven students with no grade in my

classes as they were too new to assign grades. I did not include students who had

54 special medical needs in this audit. For this assignment, I went class-by-class, student-by-student, to find out who my exceptionalities (special circumstance students) were and what grade they had earned according to the audit. Although I joined the ELL data overall into the special circumstance group, I also ran the data analysis for the ELL students separately to get a more detailed picture of how these students performed as a unit. According to my data, there were 20 ELL students in my classes with a combined average GPA of 2.30. I had a total of 55 special circumstance students with a combined GPA of 2.22. Males had an average GPA of

2.43 and the females had an average GPA of 2.91.

Table 2

Data Analysis and Findings

Period Students ELL ELL Special Special Class GPA Students GPA Circumstance Circumstance Students GPA 1 36 4 3.0 17 2.33 2.58 2 29 1 4.0 6 2.83 2.90 3 36 9 2.0 14 1.86 2.56 4 33 4 1.50 8 2.13 2.27 5 37 2 3.0 10 2.20 2.66 Totals 171 20 2.30 55 2.22 2.64

In my Period One class, I had 17 of 37 students who are special circumstance students. The class had 6 ELL students who averaged a GPA of 2.60. My ELL students trailed behind the average class grades slightly. As a result of this data, I

55 wanted to do a better job of providing all of my ELL students with a greater opportunity to succeed in this class. My special circumstance students’ GPA in the class was 2.35. The special circumstance students’ GPA in period one trailed far behind the rest of the class average.

My Period Two class had 6 of 31 students who were in the special circumstance category. I had one ELL student in the class, and he had an A (4.0

GPA) in the class. The overall special circumstance GPA was 2.83. This GPA was higher than my overall class average.

Fourteen of 36 students enrolled in Period Three were special circumstance. I had 9 ELL students in the class with a combined GPA of 2.0. My special circumstance students had a GPA of 1.86. I certainly had an issue in this class with student performance according to their grades. My special circumstance students definitely needed support in this class.

In Period Four, I had 8 out of 34 students who were special circumstance. I had 4 ELL students in the class with a GPA of 1.50. My special circumstance students had a combined GPA of 2.13 this period, according to the data analysis.

Period Five student enrollment showed that 10 out of the 37 students were special circumstance. I had two ELL students with a total GPA of 3.0. My special circumstance students had a combined GPA of 2.20.

My findings on the average GPA of all classes and my GPA per period of

ELL students and special circumstance students showed that special circumstance students trailed behind others on average. Only in my second period class did special

56 circumstance students out-perform the class average in the GPA ranking. Overall, my findings revealed that even though two classes with ELL students had higher GPAs than the average, most did not. I found that as a teacher, I needed to do more to assist my ELL students and provide more opportunities to help the students with their overall classwork and in the content areas. My overall average GPA for the ELL students was 2.30. Not only was I surprised to learn of the lower average for my ELL students, I was embarrassed. I felt that I let those students down, and I should have done more to help this marginalized population of students.

Classroom Grading Equity

After getting the consent of the teachers to participate in my study, I provided the teachers with the actual equity audit tool. I assisted teachers by plugging in their numbers to generate the grade point average statistics. Grade point averages were generated for the entire class population, ELL students, special circumstance students, and African American students. The unique group averages were compared to the class GPA.

Data Analysis

I utilize a case study approach for the collection of data. As part of a case study, data is analyzed in a systematic way that produces themes. These themes tell the larger story of the case being studied.

Transcripts of the interviews were broken into segments and I applied codes.

Schwandt (2001) explained that “coding is a procedure that disaggregates the data, breaks it down into manageable segments, and identifies or names those segments”

(p. 26). Categories are designations to group multiple codes under. Themes are even larger groups for designating categories. Interview notes and transcripts were used to identify the codes, categories, and themes.

Reduction

Reduction of the data in this study helped to develop a point of view from the teacher’s perspective. Being able to capture the teacher’s point of view is of special importance to this study as it was their perception that I sought to understand. In reduction I listened to the teacher’s story as they understood it. Listeners have to be aware of their bias, prejudice and judgements. I had to let my participants tell me their story while gathering the necessary data.

Imaginative Variation

Imaginative variation is the process of viewing data from different perspectives (lens). The researcher must seek to see things from different angles to understand a case and human exceptionality. Understanding multiple lenses includes the knowledge that not only the teachers have a perspective on grades, but so do the student, parent, administrator and other stakeholders.

Internal Validity and Reliability

To keep the work honest and reliable, I engaged in reflexivity, participant review, and the use of direct quotes. Being reflexive was important to keeping the data true and accurate to the research. Participant review was important to ensuring that I properly conveyed participants’ meaning in the interviews. Using direct quotes helped to center interviewees’ voices as part of the language of the research.

I had participants look over and verify that I was catching the essence of the interview that they gave (participant review). I also had participants review any quotes that I used. This review helped to ensure they were being used properly and understood in a particular context.

Utilizing direct quotes allowed data to be reflected as it was said. Because of the danger of “story change” it is important to keep the story as original as possible when studying particular cases.

Data Management

Data management is not only a necessary part of research, it is a critical component of research inquiry. All data was labeled and stored in a secure cabinet.

Each piece was titled, dated, and stored whether it was documents or information stored on a data drive. I also used backups to protect data. Physical documents were labeled and secured in the same locked file cabinet.

Reflexivity: Researcher as Instrument

My Grading and Philosophy

Equity, in my belief, is supporting all students in their quest to learn. As I see equity, its purpose is to provide students with the necessary supports to learn, especially by making daily short-term or long-term adjustments to help students.

Therefore, if a student were to say that their stomach hurts and ask to sit next to the door in case they needed to go the restroom quickly, I would allow it. If a student had an emergency going on with their family and asked to text their parent, I would say,

“Yes, let's sit you by the door, and if and when it’s time for you to message them,

59 quietly step outside the door handle business and quietly step back in and fully rejoin the class.” As a standard rule, the use of cell phones is not permitted during class; phones have to be “out of sight, out of mind.” But in the case of an emergency and in the spirit of supporting students, I make exceptions.

The grading scale that I use is a modification of the traditional grading A through F system (No Credit). An “A” in my classes is marked from 86% and above.

The “B” grade is from 70% to 85.9%. A grade of “C” ranges from 55% to 69.9%. A

“D” grade range from 40% to 54.9%. The “F” or “No Credit” grade ranges from 0% up to 39.9 percent. Instead of entering an F on a student’s report card grade, they will see No Credit. I changed to this grading scale a couple of years ago for equity reasons and the simple rationale that- I do not believe that a massive F range serves to help motivate students to be better or successful. It does not make good sense to me to have 60 levels of failure out of a 100 levels of assessment. I also divided the other grading ranges up to have a nearly equal opportunity for students to reach a higher grade. While letter grades improved, I felt that students who did not reach the minimum of 40% lacked the foundational subject knowledge to master the content. It made sense that students with a 39.9% or lower are better off to retake a class and have the opportunity to actually master the concepts and content.

Modifications that I regularly use in classes for students’ success include accepting work after the appointed time (late work), assessment retakes, group work opportunities, alternate assignments, learning buddies-partners, and flexible seating. I take late work as I want students to know that all assignments are important. I take

60 the work until a cut-off date towards the end of the quarter or semester. The cut-off date is designed to give me an opportunity to get all assignments graded and entered into the school’s grading system in a timely manner. Students can take assessments late as well, until a cut-off date. If students want to re-do an assessment for a higher grade, I usually have them complete a project that will show their mastery of the content. This will help them to improve their grade, but is also an alternate way for them to display their learning. Group work opportunities help students to display their learning with the facilitated help of their peers. Also, the professional work world often yields itself to group and team work. For students to be successful in the future they will likely have to be part of a functioning team. Students will have to work with others, negotiate, and navigate within their careers according to their strengths while supporting a team’s mission. I usually allow students to choose their own teams when they work on projects. I do not want to them to have to count on anyone who they may not trust or want to work with for something as important as their grade. I also generally allow students to complete alternate assignments if they are having a problem or would rather show their knowledge in another way as it facilitates self- learning and often shows mastery of concepts in an equally compelling manner.

Allowing for alternate assignments allows students to take greater responsibility for their own learning. Flexible seating is something that allows students to sit in a place they feel most comfortable. With the exception of students asking to sit in the front, back, by the door, or in a particular place for medical or related reasons, students can generally sit where they prefer as long as they are working productively. I also

61 usually do not shorten assignments or give less work for certain students as I feel it implies that the students do not need to learn the material. An exception to that rule is made when I am asked to do so for particular students (i.e. RSP or ELL) or if I determined it to be something that the student needs to be successful in my course.

Otherwise, I believe that all students need to do the same work assigned to the whole class, and students should be challenged to present their best work. I also take this into consideration when grading the students’ work.

When considering equity in my classroom, I group students into the three marginalized groups of ELL, special circumstance, and African American1 based on information in the school’s AERIES database and talking with students, parents, and colleagues. Just because a student is in one of the above categories does not mean that a student will necessarily need a modification or be treated differently. It may only mean that I will identify them to potentially provide additional support in class. I group students into the Special Circumstances population of students for anything that would mean the student needs special attention. This group contains students with disabilities, students dealing with illnesses, all at-risk students, students on an

IEP or 504, students missing classes due to suspension or poor attendance, students with behavior problems, and students who come to class late regularly because they help with other activities on campus like breakfast, break, or lunch preparations.

1 AERIES complies with the federal guidelines for collecting race/ethnicity data. The software uses a two-part question: What your ethnicity? Hispanic/Latino or not Hispanic or Latino; the race question is your race? Mark one or more races. White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.

Researcher’s Positionality

My own perspective and positionality is as important to my teaching as it is my research. With bias being natural to the human condition, it must be understood to know how it is affects or shapes research. I am a African American man who has come from slave ancestor roots on both sides of my family. I am deeply tied to research concerning African American, ELL students and Special Circumstance students. For that reason, it is of extreme importance that I had to continuously reflect on myself and biases that may have influenced research decisions and analysis.

Summary

Educational leaders should be using evidence derived from data to make informed decisions about improving equity in the learning environment. Critical qualitative phenomenological methodology was used in research to promote equity and seek to reduce patterns of marginalization. Classroom equity audits are an assessment tool that can be used to bring light to equity issues in making progress to eliminate achievement gaps in education.

CHAPTER IV

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Introduction

The purpose of this qualitative study of equity and teachers’ grading practices was to emancipate students who are in groups with historically lower grade point averages. I believe that the term “special circumstance” should reflect a global inclusivity of not only racial groups, but other sub-populations (i.e. foster children, homeless, resource students, chronically ill, and other exceptionalities). According to

Morse and Field (1996), “Qualitative research enables us to make sense of reality, to describe and explain the social world and develop explanatory models and theories”

(p. 1). This study sought to understand if using equity audits as a tool could help teachers to be more equitable in grading ELL, special circumstance, and African

American students. Research questions for this qualitative case study were addressed in interviews with the three classroom teachers.

In this chapter, the result from the equity audits and subsequent interview data are presented to show how teachers understand equity and grading. The data in this chapter was collected through interviews and equity audits performed by practicing teachers in a high school setting. Data was collected in three phases. First was a semi- structured interview. Second, the teacher and I conducted the equity audits. Thirdly, another semi-structured interview was conducted. Data analysis was conducted and correlated as the information from each teacher was collected. Data from the interviews were transcribed by Rev.com. a third party service. Transcripts of the

64 interviews were first read and highlighted for important key concepts. They were read and re-read again for patterns and to ensure that important concepts were not overlooked. Highlighting was layered with yellow, green, light blue, darker blue, pink, purple and orange colors to code for different ideas or groupings of analysis units. Brainstorm charts were used to create maps that showed the themes in relation to each code and other themes. The teacher interview data was reviewed and synthesized into codes, and then themes. Codes were circled in the document in red ink so they would easily stand out. Notes were taken on ideas related to specific concepts in black, red, and then blue ink. After this, codes were noted on the list of notes taken while listening to the audio of transcripts. Coding was also highlighted while reading the transcripts in layers. Below is a table of emergent themes from the data analysis.

Table 3

Emergent Themes

Themes Codes Experience grading, years, students Equity training, grading, fairness Philosophy classroom, grading Relationships expectations, responsibility, goals, behavior Grading learning, grading scale, 4-pt. grading, purpose, understanding Motivation satisfaction, effort, habits, procrastination, prove something, family Professional freedom, modifications, grading, helping Judgement

The Role and Background of the Researcher

Creswell stated, “Within qualitative case study methodology, the researchers

play a critical role as the primary collection instrument, allowing the researcher to

create a deeper understanding of the phenomenon” (Creswell, 2013). At the time of

the study, I was a public high school history teacher, with students ranging from

grades 9-12. I garnered most of my experience at Title 1 schools in California’s

Central Valley. At the beginning of my quest to pursue my doctorate in education I

started to research how standardized testing affects students, especially African

American males. I, being an African American male, had always been deathly afraid

to take standardized tests as they had a way of making me feel inferior as a person.

Taking a deeper look into the issue of standardized testing for African American males led me to research social justice issues related to equity in the classroom. I gained experience with equity audits during my coursework at California State

University Stanislaus. I chose three student subgroups that evidenced an achievement and opportunity gap according to the California State Dashboard for Education.

Running equity audits on my own classes challenged my pedagogy and notion of justice in education. As a teacher, I always had the belief that I was doing all I could to assist my students to be successful. Running the equity audits gave me the opportunity to see that even when I believed I was doing the best that I could to help students to be successful, certain groups of student populations were still trailing significantly behind the overall general student population. It was also the case that some of my classes had traditionally marginalized groups that outperformed classmates in terms of grades. Then there were classes in which these traditionally marginalized groups trailed by a large margin. I was disturbed by the data. As a result, I felt guilty knowing that I was supposed to be a part of students’ larger path to success in the classroom and in their general education. I asked myself what I could do to help the trailing students. Our school had a variety of opportunities for students, but every opportunity was not an option or opportunity for every individual student. I started looking into the numbers of students who did not have internet availability in their homes. Some students did not even have a stable home, some had to work after school jobs, others had brothers and sisters to care for after school, and there were still other students with additional responsibilities which impacted their ability to find

67 the extra time needed immediately after school for their enhanced chances at success

(i.e. being translators for their parents at appointments). It is important for educators to understand that just because extra credit or additional points to bring up a grade is offered to students to attend a game, do an extra project or schoolwork, or attend a

“Back to School” event does not mean that the extra credit is readily available to all students. Therefore, the case for teachers completing equity audits in their classes may be particularly important for marginalized students.

Initially, my equity audit consisted of gathering grade sheets from four of my classes. Grading averages were run on the total class populations, ELL, special circumstance, and African American students. Statistics were generated with the following values: A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1 and F=0.

Three simultaneous cases using other teachers’ class data were also studied at the same time. The research location for interviews was either my classroom or a fellow teacher’s classroom. One of the second interviews was conducted at the teacher’s home. Four teachers were originally chosen to interview for the research. I interviewed only three while keeping the fourth as an alternate. When one of the original primary teachers could not complete the study, the alternate equity audit teacher was interviewed, allowing the study to be completed as originally planned.

The time span of the research being conducted was spring of 2018 through early fall,

2018. Even though the initial school year had concluded, arrangements were made to meet with teachers over the summer and into the following school year to complete the study elements.

My goal for this study was to find out if providing teachers with tools like equity audits would help teachers to be more effective in grading all students, especially in regards to student populations that have a history of marginalization as with ELL, special circumstance, and African American students. Teachers across three core subject area domains were selected to examine the equity audit tool’s usefulness from multiple viewpoints.

Semi-structured interviews were used to gather an understanding of the teachers’ experiences, views, and perceptions about equity as well as finding out if a tool such as an equity audit could be useful to help teachers with being more equitable in grading. The teachers offered rich narratives of experiences, perspectives, and goals for grading students to promote learning. As I completed my last interview, data analysis started the same day. I had already taken notes, and after completing the interviews, common themes began to emerge that generated foundational answers to the following questions:

(a) What impact, if any, did the equity audit have on the teachers’

understanding of grades?

(b) Do teachers who value equity in grading “grade more fairly” than teachers

who do not (grade more fairly means= grade justly and reasonable

considering each class and the exceptional constrainments of different groups

that make up the student population)?

grading practices for ELL, special circumstance, and African American

groups?

(d) What did teachers learn from the equity audit?

(e) What impact, if any, did the equity audit have on the teachers’

understanding of equity?

(f) What impact, if any, do teachers think the equity audits process will have

on teaching practices?

(g) How do teachers believe equity audits should be implemented?

Data collected was organized into codes and then themes. Themes for data collected were semantic and latent. Semantic themes, according to Maguire and

Delahunt (2017) are themes that contain the “explicit or surface meanings of the data and the analyst is not looking for anything beyond what a participant has said or what has been written” (p. 3335). Latent themes were added also as assumptions and concepts came together regarding the data. In explaining latent themes Braun and

Clark (2006) say “thematic analysis at the latent level goes beyond the semantic content of the data, and starts to identify or examine the underlying ideas, assumptions, and conceptualizations – and ideologies - that are theorized as shaping or informing the semantic content of the data” (p. 84). Data was coded and themed, and then re-worked several times. Data was coded line-by-line; however, all data supplied was not necessarily coded as some of the transcript data was not relevant to

70 the study. Relevant data was broken into codes and themes and was appropriately documented.

Summary of Findings

Throughout my research, I was looking for evidence of grading equity. In the following sections I will provide relevant information on data that was presented as evidence of equity in grading and the grade point averages for students, especially

ELL, special circumstance, and African American students. My findings centered on teachers’ experiences, grading, relationships, student motivation, and professional judgement.

Experience was a major finding in the study. Experience led some teachers to doing more to bring about equity; but, was also a factor that led to some teachers consciously ignoring equity issues. More experience did not lead to the first teacher doing more to bring about equity. Having greater classroom experience was also found to sometimes be a hindrance and stop a teacher from doing more to bring about equity. Lesser experience, at times, was the driving force that caused the teachers to do more to address equity. Teachers who had less educational experience were less

“set in their ways” and more apt to make changes in the way they conducted the business of grading.

Valuing relationships was aligned with motivation, professional judgement, and the success of students. All of the teachers spoke to the importance of fostering positive relationships with pupils. Teacher A (called Mr. Smith to preserve anonymity) spoke of the importance of building relationships with students. He said,

“I think relationship building is probably my number one strength. Building strong relationships with each and every kid in your class, and having solid class discussions that get kids involved and interested in the subject matter.” Teacher B (Mrs. Tee to preserve anonymity) emphasized the importance of fostering positive relationships with students when she stated, “I think just getting to know your kids and knowing when they need help and when they need to be pushed is important.” Teacher C (Ms.

Arin to preserve her anonymity) said that her relationships with the students is also her strength, “I believe my strengths, one of my biggest strengths in the classroom I honestly think is my age, me being so young, in that I easily relate to the students. I was just in their position.” She states she is able to connect with students and establish strong relationships with them due to her being close to their age.

I found professional judgement was an important aspect of how teachers in this study approached grades. My data suggested that because there is so little guidance from administration or professional preparation programs, teachers have to continuously use their professional judgement to find out what is working for students and what is not, to solve problems, fix multiple academic matters, help students, and care for them on a constant basis. Teachers rely on their professional judgement to find out what is working and what is not for the success of students in their classes.

They need the freedom to make the important decisions related to their own classes.

On the other hand, schools, districts and states also have a responsibility to mandate critical change that is needed in schools.

I also discovered that grading is a learning process for teachers and another area of significant findings in this study. Two out of the three teachers are still learning and continue to make changes while grading students’ work. The two teachers will learn and continue to make adjustments in this area according to the best practices they have available to them. One teacher was not significantly impacted by the process of participating in this study but did gain some insight into his grading practices. He focused on the way he grades and concluded that he believes he is being fair and objective; treating all students the same through his grading practices.

Generally, teachers are given freedom to make changes and adjustments to grading practices according to their own discretion. Teachers also need to know about various options for grading students and should employ those options that most help their students and themselves to be successful. In doing this, they often collaborate with others in their school, subject area, department, grade level, district teams, and even garner tips and strategies at various workshops and conferences. To be fair and of the utmost use to all students, educators should consider the issue of how students learn and the role of equitable practices as it relates to different areas and applications in the educational arena.

If a major goal of the state or school district is to provide equity (and that is a goal according to the California State Office of Education), equity information tools need to be easily accessible by classroom teachers. California Department of

Education highlights the importance of equity in education by saying “Ensuring equity in education is a necessary component in narrowing the achievement gap.

Teachers and school leaders ensure equity by recognizing, respecting, and attending to the diverse strengths and challenges of the students they serve” (California

Department of Education, 2018). Tools like equity audits will show teachers to readily make adjustments for students’ needs based on available information without having to process a large number of calculations which they must accomplish in addition to their already impacted schedule and workload. Student attendance information data systems may be the best place to house items such as an equity audit tool and other equity identifiers. I recommend that a simple dashboard system be incorporated and displayed containing the equity information for all the teachers’ courses as a simple way to make equity data available to all teachers in a school.

Presentation of Data and Results

For this research, three teachers were interviewed twice and one equity audit was conducted with each. I interviewed teachers with varying amounts of experience from one recently hired to one with over twenty-five years of experience in education.

The three educators teach social studies, math and science. All of the teachers are at the high school level. All three also coach after-school sports. Before any of the interviews were conducted, approval for the research was given by the California

State University Stanislaus Institutional Review Board. Approval was given to conduct the research at the school level by the high school district before any of the research began.

During the research, I was most interested in the teachers’ experiences and their views about equity and grading. The first interviews focused on the teachers’

74 understanding of equity, fairness, and the purpose of grading. The second interview focused on the teachers’ feedback and thoughts in regard to the actual equity audit process and its usefulness as a tool for teachers to look at their students’ grades and grade point averages. The interviews were structured around the research questions.

In the following section I will describe each of the three participants. For each participant I relate demographic and professional information learned during the interviews. My three participants were Mr. Mike, Mrs. Tee, and Ms. Arin. A brief introduction of each teacher is first offered followed by a discussion of each teacher’s teaching philosophy. Then themes form interviews are introduced, equity audit results are presented, and the teacher’s reflections to the equity audit are included.

Teacher A

Teaching experience. Mr. Smith is a Caucasian male social studies teacher who has been teaching for over 25 years at the high-school level. Mr. Smith teaches traditional and advanced placement (AP) classes in both curricular areas. This instructor has a Bachelor of Arts in History with some master’s level courses completed in educational administration. In addition to teaching, he also coaches sports.

For Mr. Mike, his experience directs his teaching philosophy. He uses his years of experience to reinforce or give proof to his beliefs, often referring to the fact that he is “approaching the 30-year mark in teaching.” In our interviews, Mr. Smith said that during his many years of teaching experience he has been able to see what works by trial and error. For example, he shared that early in his career he assigned

75 large projects and assumed that the students were working independently to complete them and would turn them in at the deadline without ongoing reminders and assistance. Over time, however, he learned that students needed to be taught how to parcel out and complete the assignments with short step-by-step instructions, specific timelines, and criteria for each section of the project. Also, he has learned to check daily to ensure that students are turning in quality work. Mr. Smith also takes an opportunity at the beginning of each period to talk with students about the assignment if they have not completed it to find out why they have not completed the particular assignment rather than assume they were lazy or did not care to complete it.

Grading. In our conversations about grading, this teacher said he expects to see a bell curve (normal distribution) of grades in each of his classes. The grading scale used in the teacher’s courses ranges from 0-100 scaled out from F to A. An A is

90% to 100%. A grade of B ranges from 80% to 89%. The C grade ranges from 70% to 79%. D grade is scored 60% to 69%. Failing is scored 0% to 59%. Explaining his grading, Mr. Smith stated, “I mean I just use a 90 - 80 -70 -60 points.” Mr. Smith uses the standard universally accepted scoring for grades.

My analysis suggests that in Mr. Smith’s perspective, the bell curve represents fairness and an expected and time-honored means of competition in students completing course content. He describes the normal distribution of the grade range as being the best possible rendering of competition for grades in a course:

Generally, the students are performing about between a 2.25 grade point

average and a 2.75 grade point average. It's about the bell curve representation

that you would expect to see in any class with about the same number and

representation of A’s and B’s as you see in terms of C’s and D’s. And then, of

course, which leads it to a bell curve representation, which is what tends to

happen in every class regardless of the students. Now, of course, competition

in each classroom drives the overall performance because students are always

competing with each other as opposed to against each other in class, and they

all want to perform at the highest they are capable of or for which they desire

to reach.

Again, the bell curve and competition represent fairness to Mr. Mike. He reported that he does not give any students preferential treatment, including ELL, special circumstance, and African American students. He expects that all students will fall within the bell curve continuum. He continued his thoughts by explaining, “I would say it acknowledges what I assume is the case in that students are performing essentially the same regardless of who they are and where they come from, and that doesn't play it down, it's simply that students who come into my classroom are all essentially the same.” He does not believe that some students have an advantage over others in school or even in life, for that matter. This instructor did not see it as a particular problem that the three groups of marginalized students were trailing behind the overall student body in their grades; instead, he saw their grades as factors that make up the total population of the class and its grading system. He explained,

“You're not going to see huge discrepancies between one group of students and another.” In effect, he believes the importance of equity or fairness is erased from the

77 table as there is not “special treatment” given to any individual or groups of students.

According to Mr. Mike, “It’s about the bell curve representation that you would expect to see in any class with about the same representation of A’s and B’s as you see in terms of C’s and D’s in grading”.

Relationships: Teacher and student. Mr. Smith spoke about the importance of having a relationship with the students and getting to know them. He uses the time that students are entering the classroom and leaving the classroom to contact the students and communicate with them, therein working on his relationship with them.

He believes that relationships are extremely important to build with students:

Getting to know them on a personal basis - if they turn in an assignment or

not. Then I take a quick glance at each of their assignments as I'm collecting

them in the front of each row. I tend to have four kids in each row so it's easy

for me to get to know those four kids in each row, because in a class of 35,

let's say, I can quickly and efficiently go from row one, row two, row three,

row four on one side of the classroom and then across to the other side. I get

to know them on a personal basis by seeing, number one, if they turned the

assignment in; and number two, if they didn't turn the assignment in. I get to

easily know students based on the seating chart which helps me to readily

make a connection with each one of them and remember who they are.

Mr. Smith believes his classroom organization helps with getting to know each individual student and how they are doing each day. Mr. Smith also used the time during class when he is collecting homework at the beginning of each period, row-by-

78 row, to engage in brief conversations with students. He then asks the students who are missing work, specifically about that class work and why they did not complete it.

Mr. Smith uses this contact point of gathering the work to establish a personal relationship with students based on their responsibility to complete their work. By questioning his students, he believes he shows that he cares about them. He said,

“That’s what the kids are looking for, that you care about them. If you can show that you care about them, they’re going to be happy with the grade they earn, for the most part.” Mr. Smith considered relationship building among his greatest strengths with students in his classes. He also said that having strong relationships with the students becomes important to having interesting class discussions and getting students involved. He believes it builds their self-esteem. This teacher insists he motivates students to get their assignments done by getting to know them and inquiring what is going on with their work and the quality of their work. He assures that this, in turn, leads to increased student motivation; therefore, it is a cyclical, self-sustaining routine.

Student motivation. Mr. Smith seeks daily to excite learning in his class and says that if the teacher shows students that what they are learning is important, the students will believe it is important. He also likes to ensure that the classes are discussing current events or important matters occurring in society as a motivator for learning the government curriculum. This instructor believes that if students are motivated to be an integral part of that kind of classroom learning environment, they will put more effort into their course assignments and this effort will in turn lead to

79 higher quality work and, thus, better grades. One way he tracks students’ motivation is by using 3” X 5” cards with students’ name and participation codes on them. He ensures students get involved in pair-share and group discussions by giving marks on these cards. This allows him to objectively verify that all students are part of class discussions which motivates them to be prepared as they may be called on at any time for input into the discussions. Mr. Smith said, “It’s another way for me to hold them accountable.” When talking about equity in the classroom, Mr. Smith stated,

“Everyone’s goal when they come in as a teacher is they want every kid to feel as if they’re a part of the learning process each and every day in class.” In this statement, we see that he views equity as each student having the same amount of opportunity to actively participate in class. He does not necessarily relate specific grades that students earn as linked to equity.

Mr. Smith also emphatically believes that competition is an important motivator for students. Even with being in competition with other students in his classes, they are graded on a curve. According to Mr. Mike, “Life is about competition.” Students will be in competition for jobs, customers, business, and many other areas of their lives. He also mentioned that a significant number of students in his classes are motivated to a larger extent by being a first-generation American student in their family. He noted that considerable numbers of these first-generation students are motivated to try to go to college and become the first member of their family to graduate from high school or college.

Professional judgement: Equity, fairness, accommodations and autonomy. Another theme that emerged was related to professional judgement. In speaking on professional judgement, Mr. Smith uses classroom procedures to promote objectivity and fairness. Grading on a curve is one tool that Mr. Smith use to be fairer with the students in his classes. He explains the use of grading on a curve to promote fairness: “I usually throw out the highest score, and take 90% of the second- highest score, and then I use that score, 90% of that score to set the curve. On assessments, most class assignments and projects, students are graded on ninety percent of the second highest score equals an A. The other grades are adjusted from that point to finish out the bell curve.” He believes that using this grading curve helps students to be more successful and in competition at the same time. He thinks his professional judgement, while subjective, assists him in relating to students, properly preparing assessments, scoring, grading, and assessing students’ motivation and desires academically. Professional judgment is an area this teacher tenaciously guards, adamantly wants reserved, and actively contests attempts to erode it.

Mr. Smith said some students are generally given more opportunities to reach class goals for A and B grades because of the circumstances in their lives (example: sickness or injury). Generally, students with serious illnesses, conditions, and injuries are allowed to make up work or given additional time to complete their class work under less-restricted requirements than students who are not (most often students without conditions are not allowed to make up work or turn it in late without penalty).

It is also the case that for some students, these adversities lead to additional tenacity

81 or an impulse to dig deeper than normal. It is these students for whom Mr. Smith thinks competition in grading is a particularly strong motivating mechanism for learning as they may get significant additional time to turn work in and maximize their grades without added pressure. Again, in his opinion, professional judgement assists the teacher to readily ascertain and determine how to best encourage students with these types of issues.

Mr. Smith also asserts that teachers use a great deal of personal professional judgement when they are selecting content and assessing for mastery of the course content. He said that teachers need this autonomy to be effective in teaching and for them to be genuine and authentic in their calling. Most educators go into teaching for the right reasons, according to Mr. Mike. He said that no one goes into teaching to make a fortune. Educators go into teaching because they enjoy being with children and helping kids learn. His view is that as a result of these aspects, teachers need the ability and full latitude to make decisions that will help their students best.

Equity audit: Mr. Smith. I sat down with Mr. Smith one day after school to do the equity audit. It took about an hour. He was quite organized. He had all of his grades downloaded and ready to go. During the equity audit, we analyzed four of the five classes Mr. Smith instructs. Two of the courses were AP classes, and the remaining two were traditional “college-prep” government courses. There were a total of three African American students in the government classes. Generally, all students in these courses performed at between a 2.25 grade point average and a 2.75 grade point average. He stated this data is true to the bell curve representation that is

82 expected in any class, resulting in about the same number of A’s and B’s as there were C’s and D’s in a class. Again, in his perspective, competition is a major factor in each classroom and is a driving force in a learner’s overall performance because students are always competing with each other, as opposed to against each other in class (this terminology was used specifically and repeatedly by Mr. Mike). Students all want to perform at the highest level possible so that they are the one setting the actual bell curve with their A grade. There were no African American students in the

AP courses of this teacher. ELL students were in all of the government courses

(N=68) comprising approximately half of his AP classes and just over half of his traditional classes. No special circumstance students were in the AP courses, and there were eight students from this category enrolled in this teacher’s traditional government classes.

Table 4

Mr. Smith’s Equity Audit Class Average AA Special English Total GPA Students Circumstance Learners Students GPA Students GPA AP Social Studies 2.75 NA / 0 NA / 0 2.5 / 16 28 Period 1 AP Social Studies 2.42 NA / 0 NA / 0 2.69 / 17 31 Period 2 CP Social Studies 2.04 2.50 / 2 2.25 / 8 2.00/ 18 28 Period 3 CP Social 2.74 1.00 / 1 2.5 / 9 2.59 / 17 27 Studies, Period 4

The first class specifically equity audited for this research was an AP social studies class (n= 28). The AP class had an overall grade point average of 2.75 (C+).

There were no African American or special circumstance students in this class. It was also the case that in this class more than half of the students were ELL students. The average grade point for the ELL students was 2.5 (C).

The second social studies class reviewed was another AP level class (n= 31).

The average grade point for this class was 2.42 (C). There were no African American or special circumstance students in this course, either. It is interesting that in this high-level course, according to the teacher, over half of the students were ELL students. The school does have a substantial Hispanic population, but all of the

Hispanic students are not English Language Learners. The California State

Dashboard shows the English Language Learner population at 7.9 percent for the year of 2018. The grade point average for the ELL students was 2.69 (C), which is slightly higher than the overall average for the class as a whole.

The third class we discussed during the equity audit was a traditional social studies class. The course had 28 students’ total enrollment. It had an overall grade point average of 2.04 (C). The ELL population of the class was over two-thirds of the students with an average grade point of 2.00 (C-). African American students had a grade point average of 2.5 (C) and special circumstance students had an average grade point of 2.25 (C), which are both higher than the overall class grade point average.

The fourth class reviewed with this teacher was another traditional social studies course. The class had 27 students enrolled. The course had an overall grade point average of 2.74 (C). The ELL population in the class was approximately two- thirds of the total students, and they had an average grade point of 2.59 (C). African

American students had an average grade point average of 1.00 (D-), but this number represents just one student. Special circumstance students in this class had a grade point average of 2.5 (C). In the second interview, we discussed what the teacher thought about this data.

Equity audit follow-up: Teacher A. In this interview Mr. Smith talked at length about grades falling into a normal distribution or bell curve according to statistical numbers on averages, means, and standard deviations. He explained that on assessments (tests), he assigns letter grades (A-F) based on 90 percent of the highest student’s score. He felt using the curve gives all students the best opportunity to be successful in his courses, and he also spoke of his concern for students’ motivation to learn and competition in the classroom. We discussed Mr. Smith’s ideas about motivation, relationships, professional judgement, and competition at length in the second interview. He was adamant that students are greatly motivated by their relationship with the instructor, family influence, and competition in classes. He claimed he knew that competition was a great driver of performance in his classes. In our discussions, he insisted that in his opinion the best way he knows to ensure all students are treated equally was to let them compete for grades. This perspective seemed to emerge from his belief that many major components of life are connected

85 to competition. Mr. Smith also believes that it should be self-evident to everyone in education that competition supports student achievement and some of the attributes of student success is improved grades and high grade point averages.

Later in the conversation, Mr. Smith also asserted that many times teachers and other educators do not know the source of student motivation, but establishing a relationship with students will help teachers to discover from where a particular child’s motivation arises. For example, this teacher said he has noticed that ELL students are often more motivated and serious about their education than many other students. In acknowledging that some students are clearly more motivated and more responsible in getting their classroom work completed than other students, Mr. Smith said that he attributes these differences to the family’s support of education. At the same time, Mr. Smith believes all students are in competition and that competition is a driving motivator, even though hidden at times, for students and families.

“Individual maturity and responsibility,” he said, “become huge in motivation.” I interpreted his statement about maturity, turning in homework and projects on time, relationships, motivation, and competition to be referring to characteristics that contribute students earning the highest possible grade in his class. This statement about motivation led us directly back to looking at the data for this teacher’s classes.

We reviewed the data and discussed some potential causes and ramifications of the grade point averages for all the students, and the three marginalized groups, in particular. The data (see Table 4) appears to suggest, and Mr. Smith agreed, that the

86 purpose of grading is for him to learn whether or not students turn in their work on time and if that work is acceptable.

In summary, my data suggest that Mr. Smith believes there are three key factors involved in creating an equitable classroom: 1) getting all students involved in the learning process, 2) showing students that the teacher is enthusiastic about what they are learning, and 3) fostering competition in the classroom to further motivate students to produce in the academic arena. The data suggest that his beliefs in this area prevents Mr. Smith from recognizing that the lower grades for the ELL, special circumstance, and African American students is an equity issue. To probe further into his views on equity, I asked him to share with me why he thought there were no

African American students in the AP government classes and why there are low numbers of special circumstance students enrolled in his courses. He said, “I don’t have any in this class, but if I did they would probably be about the same. You can see a fairly even representation of students across the spectrum regardless of their backgrounds and their nationality or ethnicity has not made a very distinct difference between performances academically in class.”

I also sought to delve deeper into his thoughts on the enrollment and grades of

ELL students in his classes, especially in the AP courses. I learned that Mr. Smith assumed that all students with a Hispanic surname or designated as Hispanic were

ELL students. But, when we went back to the school database, we learned that for most of these students this was not the case, they were not English Language

Learners. He did not seem either concerned or interested in the grades or grade point

87 averages of these students in his classes or how these students with so called limited

English managed to earn higher scores in some courses than the overall student body.

It was also not a concern when, as a group, they received much lower scores than the overall student body in other courses.

Considering this information, I sought to understand if Mr. Smith saw the equity audit process as beneficial. Mr. Smith said that while he was not totally supportive of the equity audit process, it is possible that the process was beneficial and that he would use the equity audit tool in the future to see if there were huge discrepancies in the grade point average data of his courses. However, he believes equity audit tool usage has to be left to a teacher's discretion and that only they should decide if it really enables or helps his/her students best. According to him, “Teachers can help students better if they are given plenty of latitude as they have more information and can bridge that information with relationships with the kids while considering the needs, wants, and desires of students.” Mr. Smith valued this kind of latitude to use their professional judgement as an educator and insisted on administrators giving respect for years of experience, knowledge, and best practices in dealing with students. “I approach everyday with an enthusiastic, positive, perspective; building relationships with kids to motivate them to their best performance and success.” This teacher sees the issues of teacher-student relationships, family support, competition, motivation, and professional judgement as all intersecting genres (and grading is a subset of these) that are foundational in assisting students’ success in his courses, and he, as the teacher, is key in facilitating

88 these components and does not want that infringed upon in any way. What this teacher may not recognize is that the relationships he has with the students may be limited to their turning in homework and classwork and do not delve into their core person, home life and other situations which may be impacting the person they are and what they are able to deliver in school. Also, while it is true that generally competition often motivates students to improve and strive for greater and better than they initially purpose, competition in the setting of earning grades does not always have the same effect. This teacher, being a coach, is viewing competition from the standpoint of ‘winning a trophy or that critical game that makes all the difference in the sports world’. However, even in sports, sometimes the price that athletes pay to be motivated and to compete to win the game is not worth the injury to the body or strained disconnections from friends and loved ones. Competition for grades also may not have the intended effect that this teacher believes the bell curve gives. It may not be necessary to have just as many A’s and B’s in a class as one has C’s and D’s. This would be particularly true in an AP class where one has all advanced, academically motivated students. It is very admirable that Mr. Smith begins daily with a fresh, positive, enthusiastic approach to try to motivate students to their best performance.

There may be a need to look at the issues surrounding grading from multiple viewpoints, which may entail considering how various groups, academic levels, cultures, and sub-populations of students are doing and not just look at the individual student.

However, as I reviewed this teacher’s grade data and the teacher’s responses to my questions, I concluded that Mr. Smith may not be able to recognize the inequity present in his data. According to Bensimon (2018), without an equity mindset, teachers will not “see” inequity in their data. “Experience has taught me that equity- mindedness does not come naturally. It requires a knowledge base. It takes a lot of practice” (Bensimon, 2018, p. 98). For example; looking at his class data through an equity lens, the data in the general government courses reveal that ELL students are doing worse on average than the other students in his classes. When I asked Mr.

Smith to make a specific observation about the grades he ran the equity audit on in these government courses, he did not identify this inequity of lower grades of the

ELL students. Likewise, Mr. Smith did not initially recognize that the absence of certain groups of students (African Americans) in AP courses could point to an inequity. My analysis suggests that equality was more important than equity to this teacher. He believes that no student should be treated any different than any other student. In reflecting on the equity audit data, he said, “What I’m seeing represented here is pretty much what we are used to seeing in classrooms and that is a fairly even spread in terms of recognition of grade point averages”. In Mr. Smith’s philosophy, all students will eventually fall within the normal grading distribution; therefore, the grade point averages are also within the appropriate ranges and are equally valid for all students. Because he believes competition is a fair way to earn grades (his students are in competition for the A’s and B’s) the resulting differences in grades across students in his class, while inequitable, are fairly earned. The question this issue

90 addresses is not necessarily whether all students should fall somewhere within the normal grading distribution, but if they fall within the normal ranges having had an equitable opportunity to be graded appropriately both as an individual and as a sub- population of the overall student body of his classes.

Teacher B

Teaching experience. Mrs. Tee is a science teacher who has been teaching for five years. She is a Caucasian female teacher. She teaches classes in the sciences. biology is the one AP class that is taught by this instructor. Mrs. Tee holds a Bachelor of Science from California State University. She is a few months away from completing a master’s degree in education best practices from a private university. In addition to teaching, she coaches girls sports.

Grading. Mrs. Tee made a point to share that her grading will be changed from a traditional system (90=A, 80=B, 70=C and 60=D, 59 and below= F) to a four- point, or standards-based, grading system. In a standard-based grading system, grading measures a student’s mastery of the essential standards for a class or how well the student understands the material in class. The four-point grading system is a system based on subject content standards (skill levels) met on assignments. A score of 4 points shows that students’ work is completed at a mastery level. Score of 3.5 shows that the students work is completed and correct, but there are important detail mistakes. A score of 3.0 means that most of the work is correct, but there are important content mistakes or incompletions in the assignment. A score of 2.5 indicates that the assignment is completed, and students’ understanding is above a

91 basic level. A 2.0 score displays that the student has completed the basics of the assignment and has acquired the fundamental knowledge of the content. A score of

1.5 shows that the students has a below basic level of understanding. Any scores at

1.0 display that the student has a minimal understanding of the assignment and content. A score of 0 shows that the student did not display any work, effort, or attempt and does not meet any assignment criteria. It should be noted that the “four- point” grading system has more than four possible grading scores (it has eight possible scores which are based upon State Curriculum Content Standards). This teacher noted that the traditional grading scale had been given to her at the beginning of her career by other teachers:

I got it from asking other teachers, and that's just what everyone does, so I

assumed that's what you should do. That's how it's always been, like 90 and

above an A, 80 and above a B, 70 and above a C, 60 and above a D, anything

59 and below is an F. She stated that with her kind of still being on the newer

end of things, she still doesn’t fully know grading. However, no one tells you

exactly what your gradebook should be.

Each year since she began teaching, Mrs. Tee amended, in some form, her grading

For example, at the end of her first-year, after she began using the traditional A-F traditional grading system, she changed to using different “weighted categories” in the grades issued to students. However, this method was not to her satisfaction because in it, even though altered and more weight is given to varied components of an assignment or assessment, students did not consistently try any harder to learn the

92 content or put any more effort into the assignment; therefore, the grades were not any higher than those in the original grading system. Mrs. Tee is hoping to help more students to be successful in the future with the drastic change in grading and scoring of content, as aligned with content standards, which she plans to finalize her system by the end of this school year. She said she values being able to change her own grading what she views is important in assisting her students without compromising the curriculum.

One of the drawbacks from Mrs. Tee’s limited experience with the four-point grading system (which she is attempting to modify), has been how to handle the students who are not actually accomplishing much classwork and are still passing.

With the points available in this system, some students are able to accomplish executing minimal quality work with little effort, thereby gaining the additional points needed to pass the course which technically means they mastered the content, and that is not necessarily the case. This is problematic as they would then progress to the next level class without the foundation to be successful. Students acquiring extra points to increase a grade without additional effort have been very frustrating to Mrs.

Tee. However, she is confident she will be able to resolve this important issue within the four-point grading system that she is determined to employ.

Mrs. Tee has routinely allowed students to turn in late work in order to get as many successfully completed assignments as possible from students. She also insists it is very important to assure that the students are on task throughout the class period, and she trusts them to be continuously productive while accomplishing the course

93 work. This teacher is still trying to find significant avenues to ensure that students view all of her coursework as important to master. In order to ensure students are motivated to complete the work she assigns in class, she makes sure all of her in-class assignments are to be turned in to earn points. This process allows for many possible points in her present system. This may suggest that some of the course work is not, or may not be, of considerable value to students. The instructor often compares her course work, in the school’s data information system, to the classwork and homework assignments given out by other teachers. Mrs. Tee explained, "It appears, at first glance, that I give out too many assignments.” However, a closer look at the curriculum suggests there is a need for all of the assignments that she has students completing.

This teacher also tends to give project assignments instead of significant numbers of tests. She states that she has found that students are inclined to cheat more on tests than when working on projects. “With certain students, academic honesty may be questionable when completing assessments.” Mrs. Tee believes she is not sure that assessments represent or accurately display student’s learning and mastery of the content. She says she doesn’t like to use testing, “Kids will find a way to cheat on every test no matter how much you watch them.” She would rather give students projects instead of tests to ascertain their mastery of the concepts and content.

Relationships: Teacher and student. Mrs. Tee says relationships are the key to personalizing education for the students, “I think it’s helpful in just knowing who your kids are; like taking the time to find out.” This teacher firmly believes getting to

94 know students is an important function of being a teacher and getting students’ best efforts. She said this is especially true with special populations of students where there are significant numbers of students at different levels who have differing needs.

She also states that having a relationship with each student allows the teacher to know how to best help and scaffold the curricular material so that individual students experience success. She asserted that currently instructors often find out (sometimes too late) some of the struggles that students are dealing with in life, at school, and at home. Knowing these things could assist the teacher in better helping the child to thrive in their class.

Student motivation. Students’ own motivation to complete the coursework in order to gain or lose privileges and personal items was another element Mrs. Tee linked to student success. Mrs. Tee stated that in her experience, she noticed that students getting into trouble and not being allowed access to things like their cell phone, a dance, or time with friends is a major motivating factor in many of the students’ lives. Some students are so dramatic; they claim they cannot live without these benefits. She is constantly trying new things and attempting to find other readily available motivators (until students get to the point of self-motivation) to assist students in being successful in her classes.

One academic motivational tool Mrs. Tee previously used to monitor students’ work was a daily completion task, which was a system of plus (+), minus

(-), checks (✔), or zeros (0) to assure that the class work is turned in and submitted on time. Mrs. Tee was giving daily grades, but grading everything “I graded a lot of

95 stuff - a plus, check, minus, or zero. If the students finished the class work, they earned a plus. They earned a check if some portions of the assignment were missing.

If they were missing quite a bit of the work they earned a minus and if they did not do anything the student earned a zero.” She was hoping that this system of keeping students accountable and giving them immediate feedback would motivate students to be more engaged in class. However, she noted this system did not improve many of the pupils’ class work behavior for the whole semester or year.

Mrs. Tee has since changed to motivating students to work by building stronger relationships with them and giving out more individualized course work. She accomplishes this by issuing assignments based on the student’s abilities and individualizes what is required of each particular student. The students also have a say in picking and choosing how they will show content mastery and answer the application piece to the lesson they are working on in their own unique way. For instance, one student was allowed to build a 3-D model of a cell to demonstrate the concept of cell biology as she had an interest in working with her hands, but had no interest in drawing. Other students were drawing the cell biology maps by hand. This strategy to allow this student to actually build the model using materials she chose while still showing mastery of the subject matter. In using this individualized approach, students show mastery while having valuable input in determining how to best illustrate what is learned.

This instructor also motivates students by giving them credit for all work attempted. In talking about grading she said, “I rarely give zeroes anymore. The only

96 time I will give a zero is when a student doesn’t do anything at all.” She believes students put more effort in their work and produce more thorough evidence of their learning. As well, students get credit for at least trying to do and accomplish the course content. It’s often the case that students with little ability accomplish much more than she actually expected.

Mrs. Tee thinks she motivates students best by building a genuine relationship with each student. A relationship where she knows more about the student than their grade or what they may want to do after high school. She believes knowing something of their personal hobbies, interests outside of school, how many siblings

(younger or older), birth order in the family, some of the family dynamics (i.e. if there is a grandparent or other family member ill or they go to for advice), and possibly what shuts them down and causes them to want give up assists her in understanding each student and their will to do better in her course. She likes to have more conversations with the students about why they are failing or why they are not trying as hard as she thinks all of her students are capable of achieving and believes strongly that students’ perceptions of self-efficacy affect students’ academic outcomes.

Finding out why the student is not successful is important to this instructor and eases both her frustrations and those of her students. She believes that taking into account the personal dynamics of students and putting into place a new grading scale will assist students in being more successful in her courses. She said that grades are a means to communicate to students, parents, counselors, higher education entities,

97 future employers, and others the abilities, aptitude, skills, fortitude, and mastery of the course content.

Grades also serves as a ranking mechanism of student’s potential and performance as compared to others. Mrs. Tee hopes that continuing to emphasize the relevance of building relationships with students while implementing the new grading system will positively affect the grades students earn in her courses and the grade point averages of individual students as well as various populations of students including the marginalized student groups.

Professional judgement: Equity, fairness, accommodations and autonomy. Professional judgement is important to Mrs. Tee as she says a teacher needs the ability to make changes in their teaching practices and grading to what works best for their students. According to Mrs. Tee, “After five plus years of teaching, you learn what works and what does not work. I don’t like to give a lot of tests because they’re going to find a way to cheat.” She also stated that as a teacher having the freedom to make all decisions about grading is very important to her. Mrs.

Tee also talked about a teacher’s ability to assign pass/no pass grades at the end of a quarter or semester as critically important, especially, when grading special circumstance or special education students. She said that sometimes she could not ethically give a traditional grading percentage or letter grade to the course work that some students had accomplished, yet she did not want to assign a failing grade to the student due to their ability limitations or other situations that would preclude them from engaging in coursework. Through interviews, I found that she felt strongly that

98 teachers need this flexibility as many students have many different situations going on in their lives ranging from sickness, surgery, homelessness, parents in prison, parents on drugs, and multiple at home challenges, or their lack of cognitive mentality which may inhibit the students’ ability to be successful. She said that it is the case that sometimes some students cannot come within the range to pass a class if she simply assigned a grade based on how many answers on a homework assignment or a test the student answered correctly though they may have given their best efforts.

Bowers (2011) explains grades in a similar way, “Emerging literature indicates that grades may be a multidimensional assessment of both student academic knowledge and a student's ability to negotiate the social processes of schooling, such as behavior, participation, and effort” (Bowers, 2011). Some students will not fit into this model, thus Mrs. Tee is breaking the student free of this paradigm from having to negotiate the social part of schooling and having the student focus on the knowledge piece.

This is an example where pass/no pass grading or the four-point grade scoring would be much more equitable and appropriate for reporting students’ grades. Mrs. Tee also went to great lengths to discuss her rationale for individualizing work for special populations and marginalized students to challenge them and scaffold the material for them so that they have the utmost opportunities for fair and equitable grading and academic education.

Table 5

4-point Grading Scale

Letter Grade 4 Point Explanation of Standards Acquisition Scale A 3.5 to 4 Exceeds most standards B 3 to 3.4 Meets standards C 2 to 2.9 Meets most standards D 1.0 to 1.9 Meets some standards F Below 1.0 Standards not met Note. This is a teacher-created scale for a grading rubric

Mrs. Tee also stressed the importance of giving students the opportunity to improve their grades in many ways. Overall, she believes it is important to be flexible in work and to individualize to allow the students the opportunity to show learning and display mastery of the concepts in the manner that best shows the students’ understandings.

I think that I’m very flexible and individualized with my students in their

grades. Especially in my life science class, I have some kids who just struggle

a lot with home life stuff, and they’re not here a lot, or when they’re here

they’re very zoned out. But some days they’ll come, and they’ll do work, and

they’re smart. They can do the work, so they’re missing 20 assignments, but

they do that one assignment really well, and they show me that they

understand. So I’ll excuse other work or give N/As or grade that other

assignment they could do more heavily than others.

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Relying on her professional judgement to ascertain the best methods and strategies for her students’ success in improving their grades will also give her peace of mind.

Often new teachers are not as confident as tenured teachers in matters related to assigning grades. New teachers may also have the feeling they are being monitored in grading by the school administrators as they are aware that sometimes they are questioned by students, parents, counselors and others about their grading and issues related to the course work. Issues related to the grading and a teacher’s judgement arises in AP classes, even more so than the regular traditional classes, due to the advanced level of the courses.

Students in AP classes are graded on a more rigorous scale than students in the entry level or standard grade level classes. Because of this, Mrs. Tee insists she has faced more scrutiny in those courses regarding her professional judgement.

Students, parents, and others question the course requirements, grading, and resulting grade point averages of these classes more often and teachers have to be ready to defend such. Teachers in these courses, and Mrs. Tee in particular, argue that teachers must have the flexibility to grade more rigorously to preserve the rigor of the courses.

However, she insists that it is also important for teachers to be able to individualize work for students as the teacher determines necessary in order to maintain the integrity of the subject matter, teacher standards, and student needs. The individualized work will help the particular student in moving forward in their learning.

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I found it interesting when Mrs. Tee mused, “I wonder if after twenty years of teaching, I will still be as lenient on students. If I will go to such great lengths to give students so many opportunities to improve their grade and turn in work?” She insisted whatever the future brings and no matter how long she is in the field of education, she will always have students’ best interests, care, and concern at heart while retaining deep-seated beliefs and confidence in her professional judgement.

Equity audit: Mrs. Tee. The courses that underwent an equity audit by Mrs.

Tee were science classes. The classes taught were biology, marine biology and life science. There were a total of two African American students in all four of these science courses. There were 19 ELL students in the four classes and 25 special circumstance students.

Table 6

Mrs. Tee’s Equity Audit Class Average AA Special English Total GPA Students Circumstance Learners Students GPA Students GPA Biology 1.29 0.0 / 2 .38 / 8 1.00 / 8 28 Period 1 AP Biology 2.11 NA / 0 1.83 / 6 4.0 / 1 18 Period 2 Life Science 1.86 NA / 0 2.17 / 6 1.0 / 8 22 Period 3 Life Science 2.87 NA / 0 2.80 / 5 2.0 / 1 23 Period 4 The biology class was the first of the classes Mrs. Tee audited for equity. The first observation was the staggering amount of failures in the class. We observed failures for most of the 28 students. There were 13 F grades in the class and five Ds.

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The average grade point for the class was 1.29 (D-). The African American students’ grade point average in the class was 0.0, with two F grades (one earned by each of the students enrolled). There were eight ELL students who had a grade point average of

1.00 (D-). Also, eight special circumstance students earned a cumulative grade point average of .38 (F).

The second class that this teacher and I completed the equity audit process for was an AP biology science course that had an overall class grade point average of

2.11 (C-). This class had a total enrollment of 18 students. There were no African

American students enrolled in the course. Only one ELL student was enrolled, and they earned a grade point average of 4.0 (A+). There were also six special circumstance students in this class who earned an average grade point of 1.83 (D+).

The third class was a life science course which had a total overall average grade point of 1.86 (D+). There were 22 total students in this class. There were no

African American students in this course and eight ELL students who had a cumulative grade point average of 1.00 (D-). The six special circumstance students enrolled earned a total average grade point of 2.17 (C-); which was higher than the overall class average.

The fourth and final class that Mrs. Tee completed the equity audit process with was a life science course. This class had an overall average grade point of 2.87

(C+). There were 23 total students enrolled in this class. Of those students, none were

African American. There was one ELL students in this class who had a final grade point average of 2.00 (C-). Finally, there were five special circumstance students in

103 the class who had an average grade point of 2.80 (C+); which was only slightly lower

(.07) than the total overall class average.

Equity audit follow-up: Mrs. Tee. In her second interview, Mrs. Tee continued to talk at length about the need to change the way she grades entirely to a four-point system to have a more fair and equitable grading system by next school year. Again, this is a teacher whose subject matter and courses experience a significant number of lower grades and failures (see Table 5). For instance, in biology, the African American students have a 100% failure rate; 18 D’s and F’s earned with a total enrollment of 28 students, eight ELL students had a GPA of 1.00 and eight special circumstance students’ GPA was .38, a very low F grade. She stated she hoped that moving to the four-point grading system would help to shrink these massive failure rates which she believes is a result of the traditional grading scale currently utilized. Even though this teacher is hopeful that the four-point grading will assist her grading to be more equitable, she is also open to continuing to change and refine her grading systems to assist in making herself a better teacher. As well, the teacher discussed the benefits of limiting the course workload for the students by limiting “busy work.” Mrs. Tee explains her issue with busy work when she says “so why are we giving them busy work when we could test them on their knowledge and what they know and what they learned instead of if they can just do all the work we ask them to do?” She felt that if a student is able to show on a pre-assessment that they already know the content, they should not have to do all of the coursework contained in a unit. It is her stance that limiting busy work could help students with

104 poor conduct and classroom success as the negative behaviors are sometimes due to students having quite a bit of repetitive work in order for students to master the concepts and material they already know.

The three themes of relationships, motivation, and professional judgement came up in the second interview. Mrs. Tee insisted she will use her professional judgement to ensure her grading becomes more equitable. Again, she reiterated she thinks it is extremely important that she move to a four-point grading system to assist her in allowing for more equitable practices in her classes. Mrs. Tee says that moving to the four-point grading system is beneficial because “4-point grading is really benefiting kids because it takes away that big bulk from 50 to 0.” She believes more equity-based practices will help all students, especially ELL, special circumstance, and African American students to experience greater success in her courses. She is hopeful that the four-point grading system will also assist more students by motivating them to try harder in her classes. One of the struggles she is now having with attempting to employ the new grading system and testing it out with her current classes, is that many students are not diligently accomplishing much work and, yet, are still passing. Addressing that challenge, Mrs. Tee said that the important issue is that she can attest to the fact that more of her students are actually learning.

Furthermore, she is also committed to instituting some type of pass/no pass grading system to help her Individual Educational Plan (special education) students achieve greater success too.

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In discussing the matter of relationships with students, Mrs. Tee stated that some of the marginalized students have serious issues occurring in their homes and are struggling in many classes, not just her classes. She regularly communicates with students between classes, before, and after school with students, colleagues, counselors, administrators, and other professionals to get to know students better to find out how she can accommodate and help students, especially those who have circumstances that may hinder them from being successful in her class. As a result of this study, another critical realization by Mrs. Tee was that teachers need to be sure to be equitable with students throughout the course parameters, not just at the end of a quarter or semester.

After reviewing the specific grades of the overall student populations of her classes and comparing them to the three marginalized groups, this teacher came to the conclusion that there is a definite need to adjust her grading scales. Without any prompting from me, Mrs. Tee noticed that there was a discrepancy in the scores of the

ELL, special circumstance, and African American students and the general student body. By the end of our interview she commented that she wanted to change her grading scale anyway, but completing the equity audits for each class revealed an urgent need to look closer at her grading practices and grade point averages.

After going through the equity audit process and talking to Mrs. Tee about the tool, I wanted to get feedback. I asked her what she thought of the tool and its usage.

Using the equity audit tool, Mrs. Tee stated, should consistently be utilized behind the scenes to help the kids in being successful in school. She thought it would be

106 particularly useful if the tool was a checkbox-type instrument: “some go-to checkbox thing that we had or something that we could implement daily, which would be more beneficial to the students.” This kind of easy-to-use format that teachers could easily access would make the data readily available in a quick form for teachers to assist their students without the kids being aware of it. She said that good teachers will take the time conducting analysis like equity audits to ensure that their students are not being adversely affected when they have tools available to help address such issues.

But the equity audit would make it easy for all teachers, including inexperienced teachers, who are too new to the educational field to be considered a good teacher; it would be easy to use by experienced instructors who may initially be more hesitant to incorporate the process into their practice. First- and second-year teachers are observed and evaluated by district administrators more often and more closely than the other teachers to make sure the district wishes to keep them or grant them tenure

(a status whereby it is more difficult to dismiss a teacher). The new teachers are very aware of the need to be very diligent and work hard as they can be dismissed without any reason, which is stated in all California public teachers’ contracts when they are hired. Mrs. Tee also mentioned that often the issues of equity are glossed over in busy world of education, but more information means more students can be helped.

Teacher C

Teaching experience. Ms. Arin’s core subject area is math, and she is a first- year teacher. Ms. Arin is an African American female in her early to mid-twenties.

The math courses taught by this teacher are Integrated Math A and Integrated Math

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B. Ms. Arin has a Bachelor of Science and is one month away from completing a master’s degree. In addition to teaching, Ms. Arin Coaches Girls Softball.

Ms. Arin described herself as close in age to the students. When I initially met with the teacher, it was her first semester teaching. Most of the experience in the educational arena this teacher has is as being a student herself. She described it as,

“seventeen years of being a student of education.” The teacher is only three to five years older than most of the students in her classes; therefore, she feels she is able to readily relate to their attitudes and issues. She believes her youth helps her with understanding how the students are thinking; also, she is able to connect and interact with the issues important to them. Ms. Arin also spoke extensively about her concern to know how and when to, definitively, put her foot down with students and not to budge. Even though the teacher does put her foot down and readily call the students to task on problems, it is rarely done without trepidation. As well, currently students are not graded specifically on their behavior, and a student cannot be failed because they are hard to handle or manage in class. This causes the teacher significant frustration and angst. She is exploring multiple avenues to address the practices and difficulties related to student behaviors.

Ms. Arin stated she has found that students need easy to implement practices, rules, procedures, and routines in order to be successful. She also felt she has sufficient ability to figure out the best structures for her temperament and classes in order to effectively hold her ground with the students. She noted she can also send a student to the Intervention Center on campus to isolate the students’ behavior from

108 their academic performance in the classroom. She employs this school resource as needed, but she is hesitant to use it often as the result of it is that students are not present in her class and get behind in the coursework.

Grading. Ms. Arin employs a grading system based on points. She uses the traditional based grading scale which has scores ranging from 0-100, A to F letter grades. On this scale, an A is 90% to 100%. A grade of B ranges from 80% to 89%.

The C letter grade ranges from 70% to 79%. A D letter grade is scored 60% to 69%.

Failing is scored 0% to 59%. Ms. Arin uses the system as she was encouraged to use it upon entering the teaching profession by established teachers, and she was used to seeing it during her own educational experience. According to her own words, “I basically just pulled it from what the grading scale was when I was in school; I pulled it just from familiarity.” She noted that she is also open to adjusting the scale and considering other grading options as she gets more experience, time, and knowledge to add more strategies to her teaching toolkit.

Relationships: Teacher and student. Ms. Arin talked significantly about her age being a strong point and a positive factor in the classroom and for her success in relating to students. She is in her early 20s and can relate easily to the students’ attitudes and behaviors. Ms. Arin expressed how her closeness in age helps her to relate with students: “most of my students, I’m only about 4 or 5 years older than them, so I think I relate to them just mentality-wise. I know where they’re coming from, I’ve been through some of the things that they’ve been through.” The teacher noted that many of the problems that the students face she has recently experienced,

109 which helps her to relate to them and adjust her teaching to the students’ best benefit.

Ms. Arin grew up in the same generation as the students in her classes, so she is able to relate to their mentality. She also has matured and grown up in the present-day information technology age just as her high school students who have constant access to smartphones, pad devices, chromebooks, and laptops for personal and school applications. This teacher employs the aforementioned attributes to enhance her relationships with the students in her classes.

In regards to teacher-student relationships, Ms. Arin described herself as authoritative, with a heavy foot but an open mind. She believes she holds her ground but moves forward with the relationships and curriculum without holding a grudge against the students. For a young and/or beginning teacher it is important not to be a pushover or to be taken lightly, according to Ms. Arin. She said that she has learned that it is crucial for her to not allow her feelings to hinder how course work is graded and that she should not assume students will continue to be “bad’ or “good” from day to day. She states she has to constantly reset her expectations of the students and hold them to a high standard of working productively in her curricular area in order for them to be successful in her classes. A positive relationship with the students assists her in managing the students’ behavior and their progress. This teacher states that as she gains additional experience in this area of the educational arena, she will become outstanding in supporting students to their greatest growth and scholastic benefit. Ms.

Arin states that she in particularly interested in building important connections and relationships with ELL, special circumstance, and African American students; she

110 noted their substantial lack of progress depicted by their grades and grade point averages in her courses as a result of the equity audit. She also noted that they more often did not complete the homework and wondered if they did not have sufficient help at home to explain and finish it. I would encourage that she ask the student about the amount of help they have at home on school work. Just to assume that students do not have help at home or to think in the deficit about students and families leads to an equity trapped minded teacher. This turned out to be an area for additional exploration for this teacher and one on which she will work.

Student motivation. Ms. Arin said she found that grades, and particularly good grades, are a significant motivator for her students. In her first interview, the teacher said, “I noticed this in my students, when they saw their grade jump a whole letter, they were so ecstatic.” She felt that all of her students wanted to get a better grade than they initially earned. This teacher also noticed that students are more inclined to turn in the assignments at the end of the quarter or semester and as close to the last deadline as possible. She also said that ELL, special circumstance, and

African American students appear to have something to prove in the classroom and seem to want to show that they are just as capable as any other student. Ms. Arin seeks to motivate the students with positive reinforcement by encouraging them when they make mistakes so that they continue attempting to endeavor to progress to their greatest ability in a subject area that is considered difficult by many people.

Ms. Arin discussed in detail her efforts in motivating students intrinsically to care about their school work and learning her content although it may be a difficult

111 subject area for them. She identified some students as caring about getting a 100% each and every time they produce classwork. “One student was upset that she earned a 97%. She wanted a 100% score and wanted to know specifically why she did not score 100%. She also wanted to know what she could do to get her grade up to the

100% score.” She noted that conversely there are other students who do not appear to care at all about the quality of their course work. These seemingly unconcerned students are ones who want to get a 100% score just for turning in or submitting classwork, regardless of the quality. Therefore, the issue of student motivation is definitely a challenge for Ms. Arin and one that needs to be considered deeply when contemplating equity in grading and grade point averages. It is also one with which this teacher continues to struggle to get under control. Ms. Arin has found that this is an issue with the overall student population and, in particular, marginalized student populations such as ELL, special circumstance, and African American students and other specialized student groups.

Professional judgement: Equity, fairness, accommodations and autonomy. Ms. Arin said that one way that her professional judgement being exercised as a teacher is by modifying how grading is accomplished and finding a grading system that helps students to be successful, while still being sufficiently challenged. This teacher stated she felt she could justifiably use her judgement to find out where students may have made mistakes and still give the students credit for having tried when considering the issue of grading and equity. She believes she should use her own judgement, unilaterally, to assist students’ in their success.

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Student effort is a significant factor in Ms. Arin’s grading. She notes that if she can see attempts to work out problems in the work of students, she will give the students points towards their grade even if the problem is incorrect. According to Ms. Arin,

“Pretty much the only time a student doesn’t get any points at all, is if they’re just sitting there and they’re not trying.”

Ms. Arin also discussed how her new and limited experience in her trade of being a teacher, and having to motivate the students to care for their own learning, was both challenging and rewarding. The teacher actually believes this is one area in which her age definitely is showcased as one of her strong points and an unmistakable benefit. Ms. Arin emphasized her age as a positive thing: “One of my biggest strengths in the classroom I honestly think is my age, me being so young, in that I relate to the students. I was just in their position. I just graduated just a few years ago,

2013.” She uses this point when reasoning with the students and in discussions with them. Ms. Arin insists it is crucial to note that she also relates to the students in other significant ways to get their attention, including availing herself to some of the current trends, entertainment, and emerging technologies and this technology’s uses for school purposes. She can aptly use some of the catchphrases of the day, popular artists, songs, games, and current events to win students’ attention and then seamlessly use examples to relate it to the curriculum. For instance, she can use examples of current recording artists to explain how the concept of time, distance, and speed works.

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This teacher expressed that she intends to continue exploring additional means and methods to address issues related to equity and accommodating her students’ needs. She expects to grow in acquiring the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to assist her students in being more successful in her courses. Ms. Arin states she also intends to continue to take advantage of site and district level trainings, workshops, math conferences, and other curricular schooling to advance in procuring additional strategies and best practices for student achievement as she aspires to one day be a master teacher.

Equity audit: Ms. Arin

All four of the math classes audited for equity in this research study had significant student grading implications. The populations of the three marginalized groups included in this study were relatively low in all the classes. The total numbers of African American students enrolled in these classes were seven students. There were three ELL students in the classes and 12 Special Circumstance students enrolled in the teacher’s math classes.

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Table 7

Ms. Arin’s Equity Audit Class Average AA Special English Total GPA Students Circumstance Learners Students GPA Students GPA Integrated 1.64 1.75 / 4 1.40 / 4 NA / 0 28 Math A Period 2 Integrated 1.82 1.00 / 2 1.17 / 7 NA / 0 28 Math A Period 3

Math B 2.33 1.00 / 1 2.00 / 1 NA / 0 37 Period 4 Math B 2.71 NA / 0 2.00 / 1 3.67 / 3 34 Period 5

The first class audited for equity by Ms. Arin was Integrated Math A. The

total overall grade point average in the class was 1.64 (C-) in a class of 28 students.

There were four African American students enrolled in the class with an average

grade point of 1.75 (C-). For this class, the African American students had a grade

point average slightly above the overall average of the course. There were no ELL

students enrolled in this class. The class also had four special circumstance students

with a grade point average of 1.40 (D+).

The second math class was an Integrated Math A class as well with an overall

grade point average of 1.82 (C) from the 28 total enrolled students. There were two

African American students enrolled in this class who had a cumulative grade point

average of 1.00 (D-). Once again, there were no ELL students enrolled in this course.

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However, there were seven special circumstance students enrolled in class with an average grade point of 1.17 (D-). One of the Special Circumstance students had a grade of simply “P” (Pass) that this teacher did not calculate toward the cumulative grade point average of the class.

The third math class audited for equity was an Integrated Math B course which had a total of 37 students enrolled. The overall average grade point of the class was 2.33 (C+). There was one African American student enrolled in the class who had a grade point average of 1.00 (D-). This class did not have any ELL students enrolled in it. There was one special circumstance student officially registered in this class who earned a grade point average of 2.00 (C-), which was slightly below the total class average of 2.33 (C).

The fourth math class that was part of the equity audit for this research was an

Integrated Math B course with a total of 34 students enrolled. The overall average grade point for the entire class being 2.71 (B-). There were no African American students registered in this class. There were three ELL students in the course who had an average grade point of 3.67 (A-). There was one special circumstance student enrolled in the class with a grade point average of 2.00 (C-).

Equity audit follow-up: Ms. Arin

During the second interview with Ms. Arin, she said that initially she was not happy with the results of the equity audit (see Table 6). She contends the difficult thing revealed by this data is that the teacher initially felt that if one student could earn an A grade in her class, other students should be able to earn an A also. The

116 instructor declared that with that mindset, it was difficult for her to see a need to make accommodations for particular students or certain groups of students. However, after the completion of this equity study and considering the audit outcomes, this teacher had very different beliefs. Ms. Arin began to explain some of the accommodations that she plans on setting in place within her classes for the future.

Some of the main new strategies to be enacted are directed at assisting her students to be more successful in their grades and grade point averages. Special attention will be paid to ELL, special circumstance, and African American students. The teacher detailed one of the new success strategies is to work closer with the ELL instructors and the special education instructors for the benefit of her students. Students will also be working more in pairs to assist one another in the completing their work. She said that sometimes students feel more comfortable asking a peer a question before considering asking the instructor. Therefore, this should be a significant benefit to students.

Changing how grades are actually calculated in classes where the targeted groups are falling behind is another way that Ms. Arin is hoping to fix grade point average gaps. She is considering changing to a weighted categorical grading system from a traditional point value system; she believes this strategy will probably allow students to better see the value of each assignment and assessment. She explained that the idea for changing how she was grading was a direct result of this study and a professional development workshop that she attended which centered on grading for

117 what “kids know” instead of grading for effort. The equity audit statistics helped her to specify the groups of students actually trailing behind in her classes.

According to Ms. Arin, when she first began teaching, she thought that bad grades were often a normal result of teaching. She had previously believed and made the statement that, “I guess statistically speaking we are supposed to have bad grades.” However, she then went on to explain that she has changed that mindset and now also believes it is incumbent upon teachers to take responsibility in assisting individual students and struggling groups of students to improve and acquire the subject matter rather than just report on students’ progress in attaining the content as displayed through grading.

The themes of relationships, motivation, and professional judgement emerged as interrelated at times, and separate at others during the second interview with this instructor. Ms. Arin decided that having students who are sitting in pairs to accomplish their work will assist substantially in the area of motivation in them assisting one another with their class work. She also notes that building relationships with peers and with the teacher is vital for students to get needed help. She stated that she, the teacher, was always available to assist but expressed the value of students helping each other, especially as a significant number are too shy, “cool”, or resistant to ask for help. The teachers’ professional judgement of ensuring support for shy or resistant students is a strong incentive for this instructor to focus on motivating students to get peer help. Ms. Arin insists, “This would give them a pinpoint person to ask if they need help.” She hopes that the buddy system will readily encourage

118 students to work hard and seek help. The buddy system also promotes the growth of relationships, something that she believes is important and something that, in her opinion, our society seems to be lacking more and more.

Another important aspect in supporting relationship building in students is for teacher to reach out to English as Second Language and special education instructors for additional information that can be employed to assist students in her class. The instructors will be going into the math classes to help students during the school year and helping the math teacher with tips and strategies that will assist the students listed on their class rosters. This practice will give pupils the help that they need for the math courses, where they need it. This way assistance will be provided in the math class, where students and teachers can use the help most effectively.

Last, but not least, Ms. Arin spoke about grading students more fairly whether they get an answer “right” or “wrong.” This may appear to be an unnecessary concept as students should be graded fairly regardless of if answers are right or wrong.

However, it just may be that it is necessary to maintain such an attitude if one is to ensure that grading is in need of transformation to have an equitable distribution of grade point averages. To make sure that this happens, this teacher will make it a practice to note where an error occurs, if it does, and give students at least half credit.

She says that it is important to reward the students’ effort and work outcome to ensure that kids remain motivated to learn and consistently give an earnest effort in class. Ms. Arin is excited about the modifications she will make in her teaching as a result of studying the equity audit data. She expects these modifications to assist her

119 in incorporating more equitable grading practices for all students, especially the marginalized groups of ELL, special circumstance, and African American students.

Summary

In this research study, a series of first interviews, equity audits, corresponding data, and second interviews were conducted with three teachers. The teachers had a range of teaching experiences from being a first-year teacher to having over 25 years of experience at the high school level. To accomplish this study, the teachers considered and looked deeply into their personal teaching attitudes, practices, students, and grading. The teachers collected school site and state data to assist their contextualized viewing of the various components needed to conduct and complete the equity audits.

The teacher interviews resulted in three main themes: relationships, motivation, and professional judgement. Relationships were believed by all the teachers as important to caring for the students enrolled in their classes valuing each other, as well as valuing themselves as they relate to interactions: student-teacher, teacher-student, student-student, and/or teacher-teacher relationships. Student motivation was another major theme that emerged from in this study and links to teachers’ perceptions or perspectives of grading; whether it was associated with a student’s personal motivation or how the student was motivated to perform in classes is still undetermined. Professional judgement was the last major theme identified through analysis of the interviews and equity audits. Teachers use their own professional judgement and the parameters for it based on their grading, changes,

120 adjustments, and decisions of when and how to best help students. It appears that for each of the teachers, all three of the themes are interrelated and often work together.

Sometimes the themes cannot be separated into distinct functions when instructors are teaching in their particular disciplines and dispensing the resulting grades for the work students accomplish. I believe each teacher’s data, results, and responses accurately reflect their perceptions about the issue of equity audits, grading, grade point averages, and equitable practices as related to ELL, special circumstance, and

African American students. This study did not convince all of the teachers that they should use equity audits for the benefit of the three marginalized groups. However, it does show that teachers who value equity can readily use the equity audit tool to gain important perspectives that can assist them in objectively exploring additional options for the success of all their students, including ELL, special circumstance, and African

American students. Therefore, teachers can easily use the equity audit tool as a means to ensure more equitable grading, and it may well result in more equitable grade point averages in classes where it is used.

CHAPTER V

DISCUSSION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Purpose

The long-term goal of conducting a study on equity audits for grading equity was to free students from negative grading impacts. Negative grading impacts on

ELL, African American, and special circumstance students have been linked to lower graduation rates, higher suspension rates, higher at-risk behaviors, and higher dropout rates at the state and national educational levels. Equity as explained by Brown-

Jeffy and Cooper (2011) is “giving students what they need” (p. 74). Giving students what they individually need to be successful would identify requirements of particular students in order for them to constructively navigate a class or subject. Different students’ abilities, learning styles, and strengths need different teaching strategies and modalities. Education, while an individual endeavor, is often gained in a whole class one-size-fits-all manner. Even though students are “batch educated” and processed, they are individually on their own educational quest. Equity audits helps to free students by making the teachers aware that a parity issue exists in the education and assessment of certain groups of students, and that something needs to be done to address this issue. As teachers become conscious of equity concerns and address the issues, they free the student from the negative impacts of grades. Equity audits are important to supporting all students in their educational goals, especially ELL,

African American, and special circumstance students. Dodman et.al (2018) refers to equity audits as a data-driven means to address achievement gaps in education. I

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122 argue that educators who use equity audits will be able to proactively address equity issues in their own courses.

Some teachers may not be aware that a failure to understand equity can contribute to a failure to teach all students. Equity consciousness is a person’s awareness level of equity and inequity in behavior, policies, settings, organizations and outcomes (Skrla, McKenzie, and Scheurich, 2009). Skrla et al. (2009) direct readers to four core beliefs: all students (except a small percentage with profound disabilities) are capable of high academic success; “all children” regardless of race, social class, gender, sexual orientation, learning differences, culture, language, religion and other origins are inherently able to progress with assistance; adults in schools are responsible for students learning; and traditional practices in schools work for some but not all students (Skrla et al., 2009, p. 82-83). Caldwell (2016) uses the term “disposition” to explain the equity consciousness that a teacher needs to have in order to teach all students equitably (p. 15). An educator's equity disposition or the qualities of mind and character toward equity in their classroom is needed for an asset approach to all students. Educators who have an asset approach draw on strengths of the students for success. An example of approaching an English Language Learner as an asset is to talk positively about the student(s) being able to speak a second language. It is important to value the additional language as a skill that could possibly be used by the student in the future to better communicate or be more successful in life with having the skill. Another way that I use the asset approach when interacting with African American students is highlight great contributions by African American

123 people in times of hardship. I also talk about music and other positive traits linking them to the students likes. Caldwell related a person’s disposition to relationships, caring, and having a growth mindset (Caldwell, 2016). I believe that educators themselves and the field of education as a whole would benefit from internalizing an approach that encourages teachers to care and work to intentionally provoke all student groups to success via data-driven means like equity audits.

Summary of Main Findings

The purpose of my study on equity in grading is to emancipate students from the negative effects of the achievement gaps in grades for ELL, African American, and special circumstance students that have persisted at the national, state and local educational levels with lower grades and lower grade point averages. To understand if equity audits impact grades and grading, I asked the following research questions:

The following questions guide this inquiry:

1. How do teachers understand the relationship between equity and grading?

2. What did teachers learn from their equity audits?

3. What impact, if any, did the equity audit have on the teachers’ understanding

of equity?

4. What impact, if any, do teachers think the equity audits process will have on

their teaching practice?

I used the qualitative case study methodology to investigate how teachers could possibly use equity tools to promote equity and seek to eliminate current patterns of marginalization in grading. I collected qualitative data during the months

124 between May and August, 2018. I unitized and then coded the units into useable segments. I also conducted a thematic reduction process on the codes developed from the teachers’ interviews to reveal the findings for this research. Direct quotes were used as much as possible because of their ability to shed light on the specific perspective of the teachers’ view on the particular aspect of grading equity.

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Summary of Findings

Table 8

Research-Questions/Answer

Question Answer How do teachers I did not find evidence to suggest that teachers understand the understood that there was a relationship between equity relationship between and grading. Part of the reason that I do not believe that equity and grading? teachers equated a relationship between equity and grading is because none of the teachers displayed a strong sense of equity consciousness.

What did teachers When comparing average grades for each class, the learn from their averages should be the same across student groups. The equity audits? teachers do not know the students’ needs partly due to large caseloads.

What impact, if any, The equity audit process increased awareness of equity did the equity audit issues for the teachers in the study. have on the teachers’ understanding of equity?

What impact do There was a continuum of responses that ranged from teachers’ think the surface level awareness to specific intentions to change equity audit process their practice. will have on their teaching practice?

I found five major themes while conducting this study. Teachers’ perceptions

of equity and the need for auditing for it centered around their personal educational

experiences, grading practices, relationships, student motivation, and teachers’

professional judgement.

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Experience

Upon review of the information collected, I deduced that teachers experience in the field of education was a major factor in their perceptions of equity as related to grading practices. All three study participants decided that their experience had equipped them with sufficient ability to develop equitable grading practices. Contrary to what I expected to find, more experience did not seem to be related to more equity consciousness in the teachers’ practices. In fact, the most experienced teacher in my study was less likely to care if equity was addressed within his courses and was more concerned with ensuring equality among the students in his classes. It seemed that his many years of experience led him to be very confident in his grading practices and less willing to consider alternative ways of working with students when it came to grading. On the other hand, the two cases with fewer years of teaching experience seemed more willing to reflect on their practices, thereby leading the instructors to look for tools to address equity issues for their students. The findings related to experience were more closely linked to lesser experienced teachers being “less set in their ways” and, consequently, more likely to ensure that all students were treated in an equitable manner in their courses.

Mr. Smith seemed to perceive his thirty years in the profession as an indicator that he knew what to expect and how to manage his job without questioning grading, resolutions of grades, content, managing a classroom and building relationships with students. I also gathered that equity was not an important issue to him. He talked substantially about fairness and seemed to think of fairness and equity as the same

127 thing. Caldwell (2016) stated, “In order to fully enjoy equality, one must first have equity” (p. 8). This teacher defined equity as giving all students in his classes the same opportunities to learn, earn grades, and earn extra credit in his courses. My analysis suggests he did not see any issues with access to courses, the availability or unavailability of opportunities in education, employment opportunities, and students’ futures.

Mrs. Tee had five years of experience as a teacher and used her experience to advance her teaching style and grading methods. She was seeking ways to help students to be successful in her classes. She reported making adjustments to her grading each year in efforts to make her grading a more equitable, reasonable, and balanced way to assess the acquisition of the content for all of her students. It surprised me when she said that she had a large group of students who failed each year and that she expected to continue to see a high failure rate in some of her classes.

However, Mrs. Tee is proactively seeking to change the extremely high failure statistics of her courses.

Ms. Arin had a short amount of teaching experience at the time of these interviews, having just completed her first year of teaching. Her past experiences as a student guided most of the decisions that she was making as a new teacher. She developed her grading system from her past experiences as a student in high school and college. Ms. Arin learned additional strategies for grading during her first semester of teaching, and she reached out to other specialty subject area teachers

(English language development and special education) for assistance on helping

128 struggling students. She also talked considerably about continuing actively in looking for additional accommodations to help students to be successful in her classes.

Relationships

All participants in this study insisted relationships with their students were an integral part of how they managed their classrooms and motivated students to learn.

All of the teachers spoke to the importance of having positive relationships with students. My analysis suggests positive relationships appear to be strongly correlated with motivation, professional judgment and student success in all three cases. I believe students need to be supported in the classroom beyond hearing that they need to “pick themselves up by their bootstraps”. Looking at the examples of motivation, professional judgment, and relationships from the teachers in this study, all rely on students picking themselves up. In each case, the motivation, professional judgments, and relationships are directly tied to student ability and what they do without many other interventions.

Mr. Smith spoke to the importance of building strong relationships with each pupil in his classroom. He used relationships to get to know students and to motivate them to learn and to complete the class work. He also uses it to challenge them through a competition type format towards success as he feels competition is foundational for many areas of life.

Mrs. Tee said teachers need to know their students to be able to ascertain when and how they can push and challenge the student. She also said that teachers have to get to know students to understand the dynamics of students’ home life and

129 their source of internal support. Mrs. Tee cited homelessness, single parent homes, family drug addictions, and low socio-economic status as some crucial impediments to success students experienced that could only be addressed through relationships with students.

Ms. Arin attributed her positive relationships with students to her young age.

She believed the closeness in age formed common ground with the students whereby they easily interrelated and connected to build on successes in her classes. She uses the connections built from these relationships to motivate her students to perform and work hard in a subject area, mathematics, that is initially very difficult for many students, especially African American and special circumstance students.

Motivation

Motivating students to learn was of extreme importance to all of the teachers.

It is a critical component of what teachers do. All of the teachers conveyed the importance of encouraging students to put forth their best work and efforts in class and in life. While the teachers used different terminology to describe the specifics of their and the students’ motivation, they all focused on the significance of motivation to their profession and to the students’ success educationally and personally.

Mr. Smith motivated students to learn with enthusiasm in his curricular areas.

I was impressed with the passion that Mr. Smith had for his curricular subjects and with his conversation about equity audits. He loves the subject matter he teaches. He also motivated and rewarded students in the area of grading for participation and their input into content discourse, debates, projects and other class work. Students were

130 given points in class for partaking in whatever occurred each day as they were actively involved in the classroom exercises. Competition was the last, but probably most important, motivator for students, according to Mr. Mike. He believed competition with other students was a necessary factor in classes and assisted students to aspire to be their best selves academically. The importance of competition that Mr.

Smith emphasizes as being a critical factor probably comes from his experience in coaching sports, especially basketball.

Mrs. Tee’s perception of student motivation was linked to their loss or gain of privileges at home. She believes students are strongly motivated by having their cell phones taken away or getting into trouble by their parents. She also spoke considerably regarding motivating students with individualized work when the student learns better by a distinct manner of displaying the knowledge. She will give the student more of the work that they excel in to show their mastery of a concept.

For example, if a particular student has a propensity to excel when working in a group, she would pair the student with a partner for most of the assignments. Mrs.

Tee said that working in a team was a very realistic substitution for 21st century employment as much of the working world is centered on working in teams and getting along with others. I appreciated that she also sought to motivate students by facilitating a relaxed learning environment with seating areas that included couches and other flexible constructions to encourage comfort and focus on student work.

Last, but not least, motivation was connected with grades as the students received

131 marks such as checks, minus or a plus for assignments completed or failed to be completed.

In Ms. Arin’s interviews, grades were found to be an important motivator for her students. Students were visibly happy and excited as they performed well on assignments. Pupils were also upset when they did not get the grade that they expected to have. I found this teacher to be effectively using positive reinforcement to encourage or motivate the students to learn to their maximum potential.

It is also possible that these things show how resilient students are and that they can readily adjust to the personalities and requirements of various teachers.

Students also appear to adjust to different teaching styles and are not particularly harmed by the differences if they perceive that the teachers have good intentions.

Professional Judgment

The use of professional judgement was another important finding of this study. Teachers operate, as a rule, using a great amount of individualized personal judgement daily. There is little direct guidance from school administrators or professional education preparation programs to teachers once they complete the formal processes. They learn to fix problems, maintain control, grade, foster a positive learning environment, and refine other educational matters, to a significant degree, on their own. There are numbers of teachers who also believe they make many professional judgement calls amidst school, district, state, and national mandates on an ongoing basis without having sufficient prior direction and training.

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One such area of work is the responsibility of assigning students’ grades and grading the classwork, assessments, and projects that students complete for courses.

Mr. Smith stressed that he uses his professional judgement to the best of his ability and chooses to grade on a curve for assessments as a fairness accommodation for students. He believes grading on this curve helps students to be graded against common scores in his classes, instead of being graded on the full 100% of the test questions on his assessments. Mr. Smit he also feels very strongly that teachers should be allowed to retain the full right to grade how they see fit, without any limitations on that power. Mr. Smith also believes that professional judgement encompasses a part of a teacher’s job which allows him or her sole authority to select the content and assess for mastery of that content. He, as well, thinks that it is imperative that teachers keep that autonomy to be effective in teaching courses. This becomes important as sometimes districts, states and federal mandates require certain content to be included within a course or subject that the teacher may disagree with or disagree with its importance.

Mrs. Tee described the importance of professional judgement to make changes to teaching practices and grading to support and do what is best to help students. She continually talked about making judgement calls to help her students to be successful and for them to put forth their best efforts on their coursework. An example of her using professional judgement to help bring about equity was to change to standards-based grading (4-point grading). She also spoke intensively about

133 the right to grade students in her advanced placement courses more rigorously than students in her lower-level classes.

Ms. Arin uses her professional judgement to modify how students are graded on assignments as she observed the effort and reasoning put forth by students in accomplishing their classwork. She believes she can justify giving students points for the times that they make errors and mistakes in their work, as there is significant learning resulting from those errors. Student effort was a significant factor to triggering the professional judgement accommodations in this area for Ms. Arin. She said, “The only time students don’t get any points is if they sit and do nothing.” Ms.

Arin also argued for the need to leverage knowledge gained through professional development for beginning teachers. She believes there are additional areas new teachers need to be adequately or deeper trained in so that they make better decisions

In all areas of the field, from day one, as a fully competent classroom instructor. This includes being adequately trained in areas such as class room management, effective motivational strategies to get students to readily work to their utmost potential, the best grading options, strategies and practices for use in education or their subject area.

Grading

Grading is a learning process for teachers. Teachers must learn and decide the basis of their personal grading philosophies. They must determine the scope, foundation, and details of how they will go about grading. In education there is no one best system of how to grade; even though there are some common grading features such as the use of percentages (0-59 points being an F, a D grade ranges in

134 the 60s, a C grade ranges in 70s, a B grade range in 80s and an A grade ranging in the

90s). Some teachers will employ more equitable ways to grade such as standards- based grading to determine the extent of the mastered content. Some teachers will become set in their ways and will stick to grading as they see fit according to the criteria they identify as most important. Other instructors will use various combinations of measures to best rate and relate students’ success or non-success in their courses. One factor that this study found consistent was that teachers have to experience the grading process and figure what works for their own style of teaching.

The teachers involved in this study had to learn on their own about alternate ways to grade and consider if the students were sufficiently mastering the course content. The specific concept of “grading for equity” was not taught to any of the teachers in their education programs. Mrs. Tee learned about standards-based grading (4-point grading) at a district-offered professional development opportunity. Ms. Arin, the one teacher with some knowledge of equitable grading before this study, had an introduction into equity audits in her education program but was not fully trained.

While conducting this research, I found that teachers need to be provided more information about their students without having to do extra work to find it. With the workload that teachers have, districts that provide additional information in an accessible fashion will help teachers to be more efficient. I recommend that not only equity audit information be provided to teachers, I recommend that data systems be employed that contain stand-out equity information provided to teachers. Adding identification bars around an attendance picture or next to the attendance name list

135 will help teachers to know who their kids are without having to do extra research.

These efforts would not remove a teacher’s responsibility to learn about their students but would assist teachers with more efficient tools to perform their work better. An alternative might be to provide a separate equity tab in the data systems. The tab could be a display similar to the attendance line-up, providing teachers with information not only on ELL, special circumstance, and African American students, but also on exceptional students. I found that for teachers to adequately help students, they need to be provided with more information about those students without requiring large amounts of time to access the information. Teachers have heavy workloads and need easily obtainable information on understanding the students who are in their classes. Data systems will need to be employed in a way as to provide easy “stand-out” equity information on the students to appropriately support teachers.

Teachers will still have the responsibility to get to know the students in their courses to best help individual students.

Explanations for Findings

Equity Consciousness

Equity consciousness was not mentioned in teacher interviews, but it was a significant aspect of my research. For an educator to address equity in grading concerns, he or she must be aware that equity or inequity issues exist. Within my research, teachers talked about their experience, grading, relationships, student motivation, and professional judgement. However, the participants did not relate these topics specifically to equity.

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None of the teachers interviewed displayed a strong equity conscious base of knowledge or an understanding of its issues. Skrla et al. (2009) describe equity consciousness as, “A person’s awareness of the level of equity and inequity present in behaviors, policies, settings, organizations, and outcomes” (p. 12). Caldwell (2016) classifies an educator’s equity understanding into three levels: limited, emerging, and full understanding. He explains limited equity consciousness as mistaking equality for equity, equal access, equal opportunity, and open access. Emerging equity consciousness is to understand equity and equality as being different and to know the concept of equity in definition. Full equity consciousness is when a person can identify and define equity in a number of situations. Furthermore, Caldwell (2016) categorizes an educators’ equity understanding into understanding, knowledge of content, do/doing, and disposition. I believe two of the teachers are at the limited equity understanding level, and one teacher is at an emerging understanding level.

None of the teachers in this study are at a full equity conscious understanding level. It is also the case that very few teachers currently in the field of education are at a full equity understanding level.

I found Mr. Smith and Ms. Arin to be limited in their understanding of equity.

Mr. Smith placed equality as the more important item when compared to equity, and he did not see a difference in the two items. He wanted to make sure that all his students had the same chances and opportunities in class. Race, gender, and individual needs were of no importance to his grading and teaching. Alternatively,

Ms. Arin displayed an understanding that equity is different than equality and that

137 students are different. However, I gathered nothing that would lead me to believe she relates equity to race or gender. She applies equity to ability levels, grouping students with a stronger ability with weaker ones. Ms. Arin also did not provide differentiation for her students as she provided the content for her students in the same way.

Differentiation is teaching students in alternate ways or using alternative materials so that the pupils can better understand the concepts.

I found that Mrs. Tee has what Caldwell (2016) would call an emergent equity understanding. She understands that there are differences between equity and equality and can explain the concept of equity. Mrs. Tee also has a student-centered instructional approach and readily made adjustments for her individual students, but race and gender are not addressed in any way in her teaching, grading, or manner of dealing with students.

In order for teachers to live the goal of teaching, supporting and educating all students, teachers must be aware of equity issues that exist in schools and in our society. When speaking to the importance of reaching all students Caldwell (2016) emphasizes, “In order to fully enjoy equality, one must first have equity” (p. 8). I agree that we cannot skip over the underlying issues and expect that historic injustices in our nation will fix themselves without first addressing equity consciousness. If our nation is to ever fully embark on narrowing or eradicating the past historical violations, damages, and the educational achievement gap, it will have to also address and focus on the groups that are continually trailing educationally.

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Stereotype Threat and Deficit Thinking

My research leads me to identify deficit thinking as a hindrance to equity consciousness. McKenzie and Scheurich (2004) identify deficit thinking as an equity trap that hinders teachers from the ability to teach and reach all students. In a deficit thinking mode, teachers view a student as too limited, unsocialized or unmotivated to learn instead of thinking of them as an asset. Students are assets in our world and each one of them bring something valuable to the classroom. They are our future and one day will take their place in our society. Each student has unique experiences, thoughts and feelings which can add to the overall climate of each class. They take these along with their academic learning out into the workplace and world when they leave school. Relationships with students need to be nourished and students perceived as valuable assets to all classrooms, society and as important members in our society.

Social Justice Worker

A social justice educator has the responsibility to provide tools for all students to be successful, especially marginalized student populations. Castelli, Ragazzi and

Crescentini (2012), in discussing the importance of equity in social justice, argues

“To a greater extent even than education, equity is related to various aspects of life of a community: in fact, reflecting on equity means focusing on the issues of social segregation, racism, gender or status discrimination or on other forms of potential discrimination” (p. 2244). Every teacher is a social justice worker as they strive to bring about education to all students. This is especially the case in public education as it is supposed to be a forum of inclusiveness that serves all students. Public education

139 in the United States has the charge to educate all students 6-18 years of age, regardless of their ethnic background, economic status, and/or mental ability. Sayre

(2014) defines a social work educator as an instructor who makes themselves more accessible to the disadvantaged students who need them most. Teachers need to make themselves more available to students who need the most help. Having equity in grading will ensure that teachers are not only teaching and helping the average student base but all students who fall out of that “normal” range. Social work educators, I hope and believe, will actively make addressing equity issues a high priority in their classes.

Experience

Given that additional experience in teaching did not automatically give way to the teachers being any more equity conscious or caring for students, schools and districts might have to do more to ensure they are retaining the teachers who are willing to grow and readily take on new change in order to best help all student populations. In order to attract and retain highly qualified teachers, teachers may have to be paid much more than current salaries offer. Darling-Hammond (2001) explains the challenge with teacher pay being quite low compared to other professions saying,

“Building and sustaining a well-prepared teaching force will require local, state, and federal initiatives. To recruit an adequate supply of teachers, states and localities will need to upgrade teachers' salaries to levels competitive with those of college graduates in other occupations, who currently earn 20% to 50% more, depending on the field” (p. 226). The need for additional equity consciousness and the

140 corresponding increased responsibilities to monitor may suggest a necessary raise in salary for teachers.

It is likely that schools and districts utilizing a “high leverage policy” could effectively help to achieve the goal of increasing the equity consciousness of its teachers. As Munk and Bursuck (2001) highlighted, “District grading policies lack guidelines for making grading adaptations” (p. 212). Teachers need direction from leadership, and the leaders need to be enabled to do what is best for all students. It is very possible that the leaders could enact policies in the area of equity and grading that increase equity goals for its school and district and retain instructors that are in line with the policies. If this were the case in this study, the newer teacher would be more likely to be retained in employment and the more experienced teacher would be in danger of being out of a job. Tenure and seniority may be in direct opposition to this flipped policy of retaining the newer teachers and removing the teacher who has been in their position so long that he/she is unwilling to embrace new district, state and federal education goals in this area. Not all tenured or seniority teachers will fall into this group of teachers who might be removed. However, Black (2016) calls the group of tenured teachers who refuse to consider and embrace new research-based changes, “ineffective teachers” (p. 75). I understand this is a sensitive proposition that would include mandates that would likely upset the currently entrenched order of seniority and tenure. School systems will have to find ways to retain talented new teachers who embrace new goals for equity and also be acceptable to the tenure laws and mandates.

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I do not believe that having experience in the field of education, in and of itself, makes teachers unwilling to embrace change concerning grading equity. Not all veteran or later career teachers resist change. Snyder (2017) explained that veteran or later career teachers fall into four categories; continuing renewal, positive focusing, disenchanted, and negative focusers (p. 4). It is the negative focusers that will undermine equity improvement attempts and present resistance to change. I believe that some teachers who have been teaching for over twenty or thirty years go out of their way to learn new strategies and methods for instructing students. I believe some of these teachers may be equitable in their grading without completing the equity audit processes. However, it is a district’s administrators’ duty to find out who these teachers are and assist the older teachers who do not employ results that display equity in grading to grow and gain the necessary skills; or get new teachers who will live the change that schools and students need to see. This would be a major benefit to the entire field of education. All students deserve the opportunity to learn and excel in school and feel that their teacher is fair and doing all they can to help them to succeed in their class.

Both district-level and site-level administrators will also have to find ways to ensure that marginalized students in the more challenging subjects get caring teachers to readily assist the students in mastering the curriculum and helping them move forward in navigating the content. They also need to assure the students and their parents that the teachers not only care but have content mastery. Therefore, students will have enough trust in the teachers to enroll in courses that they are traditionally

142 afraid of failing, and which they could graduate without taking. These courses, however, will likely assist them in being more successful educationally (i.e. the higher math or science courses). Darling-Hammond (2001) insists the key to improved student success is increasing the teachers’ knowledge base, stating, “A key corollary to this analysis is that improved opportunities for minority students will rest, in large part, on policies that professionalize teaching by increasing the knowledge base for teaching and ensuring mastery of this knowledge by all teachers permitted to practice” (p. 226).

Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) maintains that all students to be provided with the opportunity to learn. According to Zinskie and Rea (2016), “ESSA requires that progress toward meeting or exceeding standards must be assessed for all students including identified subgroups of students who have disabilities, are economically disadvantaged, have limited English language proficiency, and belong to a major racial/ethnic group” (p. 3). The four groups cited were described because their history with being underserved in the United States: students who have disabilities, who are economically disadvantaged, those who are English language learners and racial/ethnic groups.

Grading

It was extremely alarming during the research to learn that many teachers do not get specific grading experience in their training programs. There is a lack of consistency in grading in schools and throughout districts and a lack of education in regards to grading for equity in most graduate programs for pre-service teachers and

143 administrators. Grading is an extremely important aspect of a teacher’s work duties.

Berktold and Carroll (1998) remind us of the importance of grades and completing high school, writing that “Regardless of how one completes high school, years of education obtained has an impact on the long-term earnings potential of youth in the labor market” (p. 44). Grading and grade point averages determine what post high school education students get and even if they pursue post high schooling. Therefore, grading with equity focus should be one of the foundations of how teachers perform their work. Staff development and teacher programs should be used to educate teachers and administrators on how to grade students with an equitable approach. I do not necessarily recommend that teachers lose their autonomy in grading, but currently, there is a dearth of research in this area and a need for adequate attention on grading for equity. My mind gravitates to the question asked by Brown (2010),

“Can a school really be classified by the state as ‘excellent’ and yet still have significant ‘gaps’ and disparities in grading?” (p. 1). All teachers, programs, and administrators want to have a great school. Also, there is a predominant issue regarding accountability to ensure teachers grade with equity conscious-based approaches. Grading options need to be taught to students and professionals who will go into the profession of teaching. Schools, districts, and the State Department of

Education can support teachers by fostering professional development options, encouraging collaborations and the sharing of best practices. This is a critical need that would be most beneficial to the teachers, students, and schools alike.

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Equity audits in grading could help to provide a check for teachers to ensure they are considering their grading with various student groups. Grades can be looked at objectively and can reflect how many students are passing or failing in a particular subject or with a particular teacher. Brown (2010) cited equity audits as a useful tool, writing, “Results do indicate that equity audits are a practical, easy-to-apply tool that educators can use to identify inequalities objectively” (p. 1). Both teachers, Mrs. Tee and Ms. Arin, admitted that they had equity issues. They said they noticed it as a result of looking at the grading data. Each said that after they acknowledged they had equity issues, they were able to start looking at solutions to the equity matters. Each teacher answered research question number two (Do equity audits help build teachers’ awareness of equity and equitable grading practices for ELL, African

American, and special circumstance groups?). Mrs. Tee acknowledged, “It is my special populations that are doing the worst in most of my classes” (interview two).

Ms. Arin said that the equity audit helped her to see that certain populations of students were doing worse than others, a fact she did not previously realize.

As the teachers and I conducted the grading equity audits, several questions about equity continually arose concerning ELL, African American, and special circumstance students. What students were in the classes? How many of the students?

Lastly, which groups were not in the class? These questions are of extreme importance because of their relationship with equity. Darling-Hammond (2001) describes the inequity in school resources writing, “Not only do funding systems allocate fewer resources to poor urban districts than to their suburban neighbors, but

145 studies consistently show that, within these districts, schools with high concentrations of low-income and ‘minority’ students receive fewer instructional resources than others in the same district” (p. 208).

I believe Mrs. Tee made an important professional decision when she chose to move to 4-point grading (standards-based grading) in an effort to bring about equity in her classes. Guskey (2013) denounced the current traditional and common practice in percentage grading as it provides little in terms of expectations of success for all students, “The result is a scale that identifies 60 or more distinct levels of failure and only 40 levels of success. In other words, nearly two-thirds of the percentage grading scale describes levels of failure!” (p. 3). All three of the teachers were using this high failure percentage system. According to Mrs. Tee, she had learned about four-point grading at a staff development, “I liked how the presenter made sense of her gradebook and decided that it was a better way to grade all of my struggling kids”

(Teacher B, interview number two). The other teachers, Mr. Smith and Ms. Arin, may have changed to a standards-based grading system if they had the opportunity to learn about it like Mrs. Tee.

Relationships: Teacher-Student

Positive teacher-student relationships were important to all of the teachers in the study. According to Suldo, McMahan, Chappel, and Bateman (2014) in a quantitative research on teacher-student relationships in American high schools, “The teacher–student relationship is a critical correlate of students’ academic and psychological adjustment” (p. 12). They attributed the teacher-student relationship to

146 the students’ success and satisfaction in a class. Green (2017) directed us to use audits to improve teachers, student, family, and community relationships saying, “To address adaptive and systemic problems that require time, trust, experimentation, iteration, and commitment to shift from deficit to asset-based perspectives about students, families, and communities” (p. 5). This asserts that a continual building of relationships is critical to reaching goals together. Relationships for the sake of saying that we have good relationships are not the important factor here. Building relationships with students to find out the student’s ability to complete work and what they need to be successful in a class is the goal. Teachers can better serve students if they build relationships and know how to adjust and modify the curriculum. I firmly believe that it is good to establish relationships with students to motivate and encourage them. I would caution, however, that relationships built only for encouragement are not the same as establishing a relationship with the students because you, as a teacher, care about the student. According to Kelm and Connell

(2004), “Students need to feel teachers are involved with them - that adults in school know and care about them” (p. 1). For a teacher to truly establish a relationship with students based on care, I believe that means the teacher has to embrace cultural elements of the students and have a concern about them as a person, not only focusing on whether or not they complete their class work. I detected from the interactions with teacher number one and the students, a sense of racial erasure. I understand that in his mind, Mr. Smith means well by saying, “I don’t see race, I treat all of my kids the same.” People are harmed by this attempt to erase the essence of the person. I find

147 myself in agreement with McKenzie and Scheurich (2004), “We define this concept

[racial erasure] as the notion that by refusing to see color, by acting as if we can erase the race of those of color, and by prioritizing other factors– such as economics––over race, we can deny our own racism” (p. 613). Since our society has been built from the ground up on a foundation of power relationships between race and gender, we have the responsibility to fix problems that persist today as a result of that power structure.

Erasure only harms students and assesses that their roots and cultures are not being valued. Equity relates to addressing students both individually and as members of a marginalized group.

Motivation

Every teacher needs to know how to motivate students, and successfully doing so impacts student learning. Koca (2016) explains the importance of being able to motivate students of the future, “That an emphasis on student motivation may be far more valuable than an emphasis on which specific facts students have memorized from U.S. History or which functions they can calculate in mathematics” (p. 1).

Motivation based on the future will help students connect the importance of the course content to their own lives. It has also been shown that students attend classes more regularly when they are motivated by the teacher’s concern and actions. I appreciate Mr. Smith’s determination to motivate his student’s everyday with enthusiasm for his subject. I share with Mr. Smith the affection for my subject area, and I believe that teachers have to enjoy what we are teaching. It is important that we have a passion for the subject areas we teach. I also think that it makes a lasting

148 impression on our students and makes it much easier to deliver the curriculum. Koca

(2016) described the importance of motivating students by acknowledging that

“Motivated students learn more, learn better, and learn by themselves” (p. 2).

Depending upon the motivation, its source, the student’s acceptance of it, their background, goals, family situation, and a host of other, related and non-related factors determine if the student feels the motivation is heartfelt and authentic and, therefore, has an effect on their efforts in the class and in their school success.

When relating motivation to competition, as Mr. Smith does, I would caution teachers to be very careful when seeking to make components of the course about competition. Competition in certain features of a class can be very motivating.

Competition can also be restrictive to students that lack the tools to be competitive or have the self-confidence. Often, students who are more outspoken or have buy-in within the power base of the class become the overwhelming voice of competition in that course. It is also the case that teaching is not a team sport; educators have the responsibility of teaching and supporting each and every one of the students who come into our classes (and to assist them as individuals to their best benefit).

One of the teachers in this study found that students getting into trouble or losing privileges was a real motivation for the students to perform successfully in her classes. I tend to use the system of rewards and punishment in my own classes as part of my class management style. Reaching out to family members of students can be very effective in connecting with a student if they sense you have a genuine interest in them and their future. A call home can change a student’s motivation to participate

149 in class and have a positive effect on their behavior. It can also give common ground for teachers to really know and understand their students. It is equally important that teachers work with students as necessary, individually, and in groups, making accommodations and alternative assignments to help them be successful.

Lastly, grades motivate most students. Grades can encourage students to keep trying academically or grades can break students, causing them to give up in a course.

Negative or low grades have been linked to higher levels of suicide and risky behaviors, but higher grades have been linked to lower suicide rates and more productive citizens. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention explored the connection with suicidal thoughts and behaviors and academic grades (2015). Grading and the resulting grades are important to the majority of students.

Professional Judgement

This study is not advocating that teacher’s lose classroom autonomy.

However, it is stating that teachers need to be educated, aware of equity issues, and, at times, held accountable for the grades they assign students and the resulting grade point averages. As McKenzie and Scheurich (2004) stated, “The concept of equity traps evolved from a qualitative study that revealed the conscious and unconscious thinking patterns and behaviors that trap teachers, administrators, and others, preventing them from creating schools that are equitable, particularly for students of color” (p. 601). I am advocating for more guidance, professional development, and high leverage policies for teachers that might help them to consider matters relevant

150 to equity in classrooms. Instructors will be better informed to make better, data-driven decisions if they take equity related issues seriously.

Mr. Smith’s decision to use the traditional Bell Curve in his grading is, in his opinion, a good modification for him that will help his students at all levels and assist various student groups of his courses. However, there is a deficit in adequately accessing all the needs of a portion of his students, various minorities and special needs pupils. As a result of this study, I believe that there is certainly more he can do as an instructor to assist students. I also believe that the racial erasure that results from his practices is harmful to students. It is not true that forgetting about race will make it go away. While life currently is generally better than it was previously for

African Americans and other special circumstance populations, our nation has more work to do. Failing to address issues related to race has not significantly lowered the unemployment rates of Blacks in cities and states, has not lowered the achievement gaps in education, and has not lowered the incarceration of African Americans and other minorities in prisons. Therefore, it is safe to say that not addressing racial issues in a significant way has not made racism go away.

Mrs. Tee and Ms. Arin use their professional judgement to help their students to be successful in their classes. I believe that providing them with additional usable strategies, tools and knowledge would certainly assist them in performing their jobs with greater student-oriented achievement. Equity audits are just one of these tools.

These tools could aid them (and teachers on the whole if used with fidelity) to reach district, state, and national equity goals.

151

School, district, state, and national policy should incorporate a mandate that new teachers to the field of education receive instruction on various strategies for equitable grading options. While conducting this research I found that teachers need to be provided with more accessible information regarding their students. With the workload that teachers have, districts that provide additional demographic and equity- related information in an accessible fashion will aid their teachers to be more efficient and successful in educating the students. I also recommend that not only equity audit information be provided to teacher, but that data systems should furnished routinely updated stand-out equity information. Adding identification bars around student attendance pictures or next to the student attendance name list will benefit teachers to know who their kids are without their having to extensively research the information.

While these measures do not remove a teacher’s responsibility to learn about their students, they provide teachers with more efficient tools to perform their work better.

Another alternative might be to provide an actual equity tab in the data system itself.

The tab could easily display like the Attendance Line-up - providing teachers with information on ELL, African American, and special circumstance students, and on all exceptional students.

If a major goal of the state or school district is to provide equity, I believe that equity information tools need to be easily accessed by the classroom teacher. Equity is an area already addressed on the California School Dashboard. Tools like the equity audit will allow for teachers to make adjustments for students based on available information without having to process a large amount of additional data or

152 work. Student information data systems may be the best place to house tools like an equity audit tool and other equity identifiers. I also recommend that a simple dashboard type format be displayed with the equity information for all the teachers’ classes and that class rosters be broken down by class periods at the junior high and high school levels.

It is my belief that graduate educational preparation and professional development programs should build equity sensitivity into the content standards for all teacher education programs. According to Merriam (1991) “Society and human nature are human constructions that can be altered through people’s progressive understanding” (p. 53). In efforts to make changes about equity sensitivity we would need to embrace understanding and change in the programs that educate the teachers to include sufficient equity information. I would also ensure that grading options be routinely incorporated within these higher education teaching programs, especially with an equity aspect related to grading. Future teachers and administrators must be taught the importance of caring for students and for the equity issues that students face. Again, I believe that school districts and teacher education programs have a responsibility to current teachers and future teachers to provide them with knowledge on additional or multiple grading options like standards-based grading, modified grading scales and alternative grading.

Fixing Issues

To address the widening student achievement gaps, I believe that we must name the groups who are trailing behind academically and keep them in the forefront

153 of educator’s minds. Bernal (2002) approaches the issues with the need to talk about the groups and the experiences of hidden color, "For too long, the histories, experiences, cultures, and languages of students of color have been devalued, misinterpreted, or omitted within formal educational settings" (p. 105). Knight,

Norton, Bentley, and Dixon (2004) cited the importance of counter stories about students of Black and Latina/Latino ancestry, “We are who we are, who and what we are because of who and what other people have been...that’s why I advocate...for education. Cause people died for us to be able to go to school” (p. 99). Students should not only be recognized, but they should be celebrated as being beautiful in their individual identities. We must also investigate and look at the specific needs for accommodations that will help those struggling students. The national trend has been to make blanket accommodations that will help all students with the expectations that the help will trickle down to the students who need them the most, without targeting the students directly. One major problem with this process is it takes too long for change to effectively occur; however, there is hope and using the equity audit process will make change occur more quickly and meaningfully.

Limitations of the Study

The research that I conducted adds to the limited body of equity audit information as related to grades for struggling minority groups like ELL, African

American, and special circumstance students. Students in these groups need be participants in future studies. School administrators and counselors’ perceptions

154 related to this topic also need to be studied. Another option to further research this topic would be to conduct the equity audits research using quantitative approach.

Implications

These findings suggest that we need to continue to develop policy, plans, and programs to support all students to be successful in school, especially ELL, African

American, and special circumstance students. National and state statistics as well as achievement gaps that persist for graduation rates, grades, dropouts, and suspension rates support this finding. There is a need for continued study to address issues related to equity in education and in grading and grade point averages as related to the marginalized population groups. Teachers are on the front line of helping all students to be successful in building their futures. Many teachers see an individual student struggling and see it as an individual issue or problem. They do not always see the systemic nature of the issue. The equity audit helps teachers to be able to readily see the issue on a larger scale instead of seeing it as an individual matter of one student failing in one individual class. Teachers need more information, strategies, and tools to be successful at reaching and helping the vast numbers of students failing multiple classes.

My research led me to the following themes for teachers as concerned with equity: relationships have an impact on student success, motivation, professional judgement, and the success of students; teachers have to use their professional judgement to find out what is working for students and what is not; grading is a learning process for teachers; teachers will learn to grade and continue to make

155 adjustments in their grading according to the best practices they have available to them; and most often, teachers are given full unilateral freedom to make changes and adjustments to grading practices according at their own discretion.

Recommendations for Future Research and Practical Applications

Future research should be conducted to investigate the perceptions of all students regarding this topic. Also, ELL, African American, and special circumstance students need to give their perceptions of equity and the impact of low grades and low-grade point averages earned from the teachers. As these are the students our attempts are aimed at helping, we need their input to be most effective in that pursuit.

Feedback is also needed as to what works or does not work, academically and personally, to assist these pupils. Research on closing the achievement gap with equity audits should also be conducted with school administrators and counselors.

Engaging counselors and administration in the research will help to gather data on the equity consciousness and perceptions of leadership on campuses that support the teachers and students. Understanding this metric will help in the conversation about student access to courses. School administrators already often use equity information systems like California School Dashboard, but the extent to which the administrators act upon the data for data-driven decisions would be beneficial for academia to know.

A quantitative study regarding equity audits in grading of ELL, African

American, and special circumstance students would be a great addition to this field of study. While this study explored the actions and experiences of teachers, another qualitative study could explore the perspectives of parents of marginalized groups. I

156 recommend that future research investigate if teachers are aware that equity issues related to student learning exist, if teachers are aware what the specific equity issues are, and what this means for marginalized students and their families. I also believe it is important to research the extent to which matters related to equity affect students’ grades and grade point averages. Also, it is important to consider whether or not grade point averages in fact hold students back from entering college or being successful once there. Additional work could also investigate whether grades and/or grade point averages are related to issues of power in society. Carter Andrews (2014) discusses issues relating to power in race that have been a limiting factor for students of color. To her, issues related to power need to be addressed when working with students of color.

An easy to use equity audit tool could be a simple solution to helping teacher to make advancements towards equity. Providing teachers with a simple click tool that will allow them to select the students and run the data will give the teacher the ability to help themselves. This practical application could be a simple tool to be added to make progress toward eliminating the achievement gap.

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