04/08/24
7,
ISSUE
5
NUEVA CURRENT Photo by Kayla L.
THE
VOLUME
NEWS
Photos by Ariana Grande / Beyonce Albums
Students from Piedmont High School presented accounts and statistics on sexual assault at the first-ever Consent Assembly. [ P 2 ]
A R T S & C U LT U R E
Photo by Holly Nall
Collage by Isabella X. Images by Freepik and Natalie L.
After a long hiatus, Ariana Grande and Beyoncé released new albums featuring fresh changes in direction. Read the reviews of their albums here. [ P 4 ]
Demonstrating “mastery?”
F E AT U R E S
With average grades rising nationwide, how does Nueva’s standards-based grading model affect student outcomes?
Faculty and staff from every Upper School department got together to stage their adaptation of Romeo and Juliet for the senior class. [ P 12 ]
Image by Cato Institute
By Isabella X. and Natalie L.
OPINION
Photo by Jordan D.
Two students respond to the House overwhelmingly passing a measure on March 13 that gives ByteDance a choice of selling TikTok within six months, or get removed from app stores. [ P 14 ]
E N T E R TA I N M E N T Go behind the scenes into the gradewide game of Senior Assassin, which has galvanized spirit and inspired devious feats and Machiavellian plots. [ P 17 ]
I. STANDARDS-BASED GRADING IN THE CLASSROOM
The founders of Nueva’s Upper School never wanted the focus to be on grades. “As an educational institution, our focus has always been to prioritize student wellness and curiosity as motivation among students, rather than relying on the external motivation of grades,” Upper School Assistant Division Head Claire Yeo said. So when designing the new high school in 2013, early Upper School administrators turned to standards-based grading, a philosophy that emphasizes the mastery of learning rather than a letter grade. It identifies targeted factors like learning outcomes unique to each course and uses a scale of mastery as the metric for evaluating a student’s achievement. They sought advice from Denise Pope, an academic pedagogy advisor and lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education. Pope’s approach centers on mitigating the impact of academic stress on students’ mental and physical well-being while promoting engagement in learning. Aligned with this philosophy, the administration decided that excellence at Nueva wouldn’t be reflected in percentages up to “100%.” Rather, skills and competencies in a course would be evaluated on a rubric, ranging from insufficient evidence to mastery. This system, officially known as
THE NUEVA SCHOOL: 131 E. 28TH AVE. SAN MATEO, CA 94403
standards-based grading, has become increasingly accepted across the country in recent years. A 2021 study published by OSF studying a randomized group of 2736 ninth grade mathematics students determined that this learning approach was “optimally designed to help students learn.” For students in grades 10 to 12, these rubric standards are still translated into a traditional letter grade on a student’s transcript for each completed class. Freshmen are given “practice” letter grades at the end of the spring semester that are not included in their official transcript. While this may not align perfectly with Nueva’s educational philosophy, it was seen as a practical necessity. “In the ideal world, standards-based grading does not have a letter grade attached to it,” Yeo said. “But, it is the most legible method to account for student mastery on a transcript, which is why they are used at Nueva.” Upper School history teacher Chelsea Denlow is no stranger to standards-based grading. Before joining Nueva, Denlow spent three years at Pacific Crest Community School in Portland, an independent school using standards-based grading. Denlow explains that a standardsbased approach aims to make grading less subjective. “Grading at the end of the day is subjective. It just is. The difference between an A and an A-minus is often in the eye of the beholder,” Denlow said. But standardsbased grading offers rare insight into what factors constitute each letter grade: “You
have specificity where you’re really asking: how’s your argumentation? What’s the evidence? How’s your syntax?” Upper School English teacher Alexa Hart adds that her department has also taken measures to ensure that those teaching the same course are on the same page. Before each school year, the 11thgrade team takes three anonymized student writing samples and grades them together. While grading English essays can’t have a definite “perfect answer,” Hart believes this calibration allows all the teachers to see— and grade—eye-to-eye. “As a discipline team, because we have the same rubric across all four grades and a similar cadence of how many [major assignments] we give, there’s consistency,” Hart said. For elective classes, which can be taught by a single teacher, calibration is less about getting everyone on the same page and more about deciding what exactly to expect on the page. Jana Comstock has taught linear algebra at the Upper School for seven years, but continues to ask herself: “What do[es] success look like in my class?” And in a complex subject like linear algebra, it doesn’t always look like a perfect rubric. “It’s very important to me that getting an A does not require you to hit all of the content objectives,” Comstock said. “I think it’s important not to just cross it off and say, ‘I’m done.’ I want students to realize there’s always more math.” [ CONTINUED ON P 10 ]
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