In the past two months students and staff became aware of changes to the ISD learning environment policy or the EL-12 policy that has become a topic of controversy throughout the district. For context, on March 13, the ISD released an informational video on the updated EL-12 Policy and a follow-up report in April about the vision and goals this policy aims to achieve. However, students and staff have since then spoken out against the policy and its detrimental effects. So what exactly is EL-12? To break it down into more simple and main points, the EL-12 policy essentially aims to lessen mental health struggles and embrace more consistent grading across the district. This means that with this policy there will no longer be any minuses or pluses in grading as well as multiple attempts for retakes or makeups for late assignments and culminating assessments. While this might not seem so bad, the implications of these changes will significantly affect students and staff negatively.

One main point that the ISD states in their video about this policy is that they believe that students should be able to have multiple attempts to reach mastery in their learning. They further add on the ISD website that “homework practices should prioritize learning over volume in accordance with the course expectations.” While I do agree to a certain extent on this point, the ISD fails to address the negative impacts of such adopted changes. A big problem that I have with this new policy concerning retakes for ‘mastery’ is that this completely disregards standards across grading. At the end of the day, as much as “learning the material” is important, I firmly believe that an A is a physical representation of a student’s hard work and effort. While it is not wrong to provide students who do need it with extra support, completely revamping retakes and allowing students to take as many attempts as they like to receive an A only diminishes what it stands for. Many students who work hard for such grades agree with the idea, what is the point of an A if everyone has an A? It becomes a meaningless letter that no longer represents hard work. Additionally, such retake policies only harm students’ ability to grow in that it allows them to develop the understanding that even if they fail or do not study there will always be another attempt. While learning environments should strive to support students, this policy only does a disservice to students, as in the real world, especially in a college setting, multiple attempts simply do not exist.

Furthermore, in the policy report, the ISD gathers evidence and data to support its goal of lessening stress for students in the district with the implementation of this new policy. I find this to be incredibly ironic in that the ISD’s changes to grading and retakes inevitably only create more stress for students. It especially impacts those who are high-achieving in that now they must work even harder to achieve an A. I say this because with the current system, a B+ and an A- are more or less the difference between a 3.8 and 3.9 GPA. Similarly, with similar GPAs or ‘consistent’ grading across the district students will have to further rely on standardized testing to show and differentiate themselves from other students. This will negatively affect those who struggle with standardized tests and those who rely on their GPA to show consistent growth throughout their high school years.

While I do have faith that the district does have the best interests and needs of the students and staff at heart, the current EL-12 policy and what it exactly will entail and the exact changes, positive and negative, are still unclear and broad. Additionally, what I have noticed from reading the report and video is that the district fails to offer transparency to students, staff, and parents. Many students, especially at IHS had to hear about such changes to policies from word of mouth amongst other students and that lack of communication will only bring harm to the district, faculty, and student body in the future. I hope that the ISD will genuinely hear the concerns of staff and students and realize that this current outline only widens the very concerns and issues that the district is trying to prevent with this policy.