Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . Summer school is underway in my New Hampshire high school , but it looks a little different from what we have offered in years past, although we have always offered a remote platform. For my school, an in-person summer school is just not practical due to our size, limited staffing resources, and lack of public transportation for students. For years we have relied on online platforms such as Edgenuity and VLACS to provide content and, in some cases, instructors. Our staff have always provided remote technology support. This year, we took a slightly different approach for summer offerings. We added an option for teachers to award a grade of IP (In-Progress) to students who, due to the pandemic, weren’t able to produce sufficient evidence for teachers to award a final course grade and credit when the remote school year ended, but might be able to reach the finish line if they have access to additional time in the s...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . Fellow school principals, I’m calling on each of you to take action with grading reform in your schools. We need grades that matter, and we need them now! Last month, I participated in a Zoom call with fifty fellow high school principals from my state as we all discussed the pros and cons of reverting to a pass/fail grading system to close out the 2019-2020 school year. The rationale for moving to such a system now was born from the growing concern among educators that current grades and grading practices in remote learning systems are not an accurate measure of student learning and would likely penalize and hurt students if such drastic measures were not put into place. Interestingly, on the call that day there emerged two types of responses. Principals working in schools that had already implemented a competency-based system (and thus, grading reforms) were, overall, not interested in making use of a pass/fail s...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . As our nation prepares to enter a third month of altered operations as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, an alarming reality is starting to give rise amongst policy makers, educators, and parents alike: When it comes to equity, many schools and school systems may in fact be worse off than they may have originally thought, and it will get worse before it gets better. For many educators from coast to coast, the pandemic seemingly arrived without warning, paralyzing schools and school districts in mid-March. As a New Hampshire high school principal, I remember ending a normal week of school on Friday March 13. By Sunday night, I was sending notices to my families that the school facilities were to be closed effective immediately and my staff and I would need a few days to put together our temporary plan to continue instruction through remote learning. In that plan, we would attempt to address issues related to i...