Math teachers work to align grading practices

Math teachers are working more closely to align their testing policies and trying to eliminate perceived differences among teachers who teach a common subject.

An example of why the increased communication is necessary occurred last spring.

Former Algebra 2 Honors teacher Rafael Alapont gave his students a preview of the final during dead week because of a miscommunication between Alapont and the other Algebra 2 Honors teachers.

Alapont handed out the exact copy of the final to each of his students, telling them to remain silent as they absorbed the information. Roughly half an hour later, he collected the tests again.

He proceeded to dictate the math concepts for each question, while students copied his words down — all with the intent of cementing the information students really needed to know.

A few days after this preview, however, some of his students shared a document via Google Drive with questions and solutions to roughly 80 percent of the problems on the test.

Algebra 2 Honors students in other teachers like P.J. Yim and Meghan Pickett’s classes did not have a preview of the final and were enraged by this unfair advantage.

“A lot of our grades in Yim were going through a downslide, and then suddenly the Alapont students got a push and that’s not fair,” sophomore Rachel Won said. “You’re not supposed to violate the academic integrity.”

For their part, Yim and Pickett didn’t learn about this incident until the third day of finals week. In compensation, the two teachers agreed to curve their students’ finals substantially.

In an attempt to prevent any other miscommunications, the math department is now conducting more frequent meetings to discuss their policies concerning test materials.

According to Yim, all the teachers had different policies regarding returning tests based on their “individual comfort level,” since there wasn’t “a universal rule” that prevented teachers from giving back the assessments.

Now these policies are decided upon based upon a majority vote, which helps eliminate the confusion and inequality that exists when teachers all have different policies.

“Aside from last year’s [leaking of the final], which was an individual person not going with the flow of the department, Saratoga does its best to meet with each other and be on the same page,” Yim said.

The outcome of these meetings helped to align the policies in each math course. For instance, all Algebra 2 Honors teachers now allow students to keep both quizzes and tests, while only quizzes are returned in Trig/Pre-Calc H for students to keep with no exceptions.

Yim said these returned tests and quizzes allow students to use them not only as “assessment tools, but also as learning tools.”

Pickett said she has always allowed students to keep their tests at her previous school and thinks there are few disadvantages. 

Besides the difficulty of having to create new test material every year and not being able to compare tests scores from previous years,  both Yim and Pickett agree that returning tests is the more consistent and beneficial option for students.