Some teachers have assailed changes to the Aspen system, which is made by the educational services company Follett, as overly complicated and labor intensive, requiring them, for example, to manually enter scores multiple times. District administrators acknowledged that the complications with the system led to report cards being issued late in the fall.
The matter was addressed at Tuesday’s meeting of the school board’s curriculum and instruction committee by Arthur Adamakos, the Memorial High School principal who worked closely with information technology staff on the implementation of Aspen and the changes to the system this school year.
Adamakos at once defended and acknowledged flaws with the system, maintaining that some teachers encountered difficulties because they didn’t follow all of the necessary steps.
“You can’t skip a step,” he said. “It’s like the cha-cha.”
Adamakos said most teachers were able to adapt. “There hasn’t been a single grade book issue I haven’t been able to resolve,” he said. “The newer teachers struggle less, because that’s all they know. The veteran staff are sometimes more uncomfortable with it.”
Adamakos explained that he has long been involved school computer matters given his background in programming, which he said dates back to the 1980s.
Adamakos insisted it was not the Aspen system that was at fault for the problems, but the unusual system that the district had developed over the last five years to factor “competency-based” scores into student grades. Competency-based grading, which has become a priority for state education officials, aims to measure the ability of a student to master a subject area, as opposed to how the student scores on discrete tests and assignments.
Adamakos said the district’s recent problems stemmed from the attempt to upgrade to Follett’s latest system, while preserving fundamental aspects of the existing system.
“We’re now using 5.0. It’s more powerful but it means we have to do the steps ourselves,” he said.
At a school board meeting earlier this month, members voted to request Follett representatives appear before them to explain the problems that have arisen with Aspen.
Assistant Superintendent David Ryan told the committee on Tuesday that he was working with teachers to develop a better system to calculate competency-based grades and that would be better integrated with Aspen.
But he said he didn’t expect there to be any immediate changes. “The work is going to extend into the next year, shifting the grading philosophy with teachers on board,” he said.
In the meantime, Adamakos said the district had “a fallback plan” that would involve separating students’ traditional letter grades from competency scores.
Ward 2 board member Deb Gagnon Langton expressed frustration with Adamakos’ explanations.
“It shouldn’t be that complicated,” she said. “It seems like the time teachers need to put these (scores) in is significant.”
©2015 The New Hampshire Union Leader (Manchester, N.H.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
