Grades

At the school where I teach grades are submitted both in hard copy and digitally. Both seem unnecessarily cumbersome. The hard copy of the grades is a multiple paged book that includes daily attendance, behavior scores, standardized testing scores, unit scores for first semester, mid term scores (broken down into unit scores), unit scores for second semester, and final scores (also broken down into unit scores). All of these must be in the proper format.

What that format is, is difficult to determine. I thought I had found the answer when I found values for all the columns in a school wide syllabus dated this year. If only it were that easy. Sometime between the publishing of the syllabus (I think I received it in August) and now, the point breakdown for the final changed from 4,4,4,3 to 3,4,4,4.

Why they decided to decrease the weight of the first unit, while decreasing the weight of the last unit, is more than I know. When they decided to make the change, is also beyond my knowledge. How I was supposed to know, is beyond fathoming.

The point value per unit must match for all classes with the same course code because all the grades are fed into some computer in the dark depths of the registrar building, and the computer demands numbers for every unit, and it demands that the numbers for those units be uniform within a given course number.

The process of getting the grades into the mysterious computer in the dark depths of the registrar building is at least as painful as filling in the grade book.

The process begins with the journey to acquire the diskette (yes I said diskette, not flash drive). The difficulty of this quest varies. Last semester I was sent to the math building, where I was told that the diskette for my class was in use. I was asked to come back later. I came back later, it was in use by another teacher. I gave them my phone number so they could call when the diskette was free. I got a call the next day.

This semester the hunt for the diskette was relatively painless. The registrar made me my own diskette. This process only took about fifteen minutes!

Once the diskette is acquired, one must dig up a computer with a slot to stick a diskette into. That done, one must boot the computer from the disk. Then navigate through menus all in Thai to find the various pages where you key in all the unit grades for each of your students.

I’m sure DOS had a place. I’m am not at all convinced that DOS has a place.

There is no copying and pasting from your Excel grade book. Each grade must be keyed in. The inefficiency of keying in something that already exists in digital form drives me nuts.