Lexington (MA) High School Senate

LEXINGTON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT-FACULTY SENATE

2005-2006

Moderator Peter Lubershane, Assistant Moderator Sam Kafrissen, Secretary Peter Kim

DATE: 1-11-06

Today's Agenda: Announcements

Open Comments

Committee Reports

New Business

Median Grade Reporting Bill

Minutes from Meeting: 1-4-06

I. Call to Order: Meeting is called to order at 7:50 by Moderator Lubershane

II. Approval of Minutes: 1) Senator Buttaro's absence was an excused absence.

2) Senator Slane and Gokhale were here but are marked absent on the minutes.

III. Approval of Agenda: Agenda Approved.

IV. Announcements: 1) Senator Eid-Reiner comments about Child Lexpress Day when Lexpress is 25 cents.

2) Representative Markey and ACLU are holding a meeting at National Heritage Museum today (1/4) from 7-10pm on domestic surveillance.

V. Open Comments: 1) Senator Colarusso talks about his Boy Scouts counselor who will head into space.

2) Welcome back and thank you Senator Jeon for taking down the minutes.

VI. Committee Reports: 1) Oversight met to discuss and enforce the Honor Code Bill.

2) Executive committee will meet today to give the resolution and substitutes information to the principal for a response.

3) Climate committee is brewing up ideas for a new bill.

4) Elections committee will meet on Friday in Room 615 to hear appeals for N'd out Senators.

5) Policy has a new bill. We would like people to revise it on First Class.

VII. New Business 1) Motion to enter into an informal discussion about Senior Final Exams bill passes.

2) Discussion of Senior Final Exams:

a) To suggest, and not require, that something happen is an absurd idea.

b) Are current juniors activist enough to surpass Senator Gingrande's efforts?

c) The idea would open up new avenues instead of constraining teachers.

d) Teachers do have the option when it is warranted but the department head regulates it. The issue is more complicated than what we are discussing. Senator Colarusso remarks that the idea is just "meuuuuuuh~~~~".

e) We are recycling old discussions like Hollywood recycles movies.

3) Motion to copy and enter into discussion of the Median Grade Reporting Bill passes.

4) Discussion of Median Grade Reporting Bill:

a) Median is less sensitive to change than a mean.

b) This did exist 3-4 years ago. It was removed because they felt it pitted teachers against each other. But the current bill will make require reporting of the median for the entire course, not by section.

c) Parents didn't like it then because it also caused student rivalries.

d) There was a more in depth, 1 month discussion on this topic about what it was doing to students. The consensus was that negative aspects outweighed the positive aspects.

e) How does it account for that fact that for some teachers, 87 is a B+ instead of 88? Differences in evaluations are inherent. The bill just encourages some notion of common reporting.

f) 2011 is not incoming freshmen.

g) Kids are pushed hard by expectations and think that only the first senior quarter grade matters. The system is based on the system at Cornell. It was good to know that sometimes C+ was the median of a course.

i) We can eliminate line 4 to address issues about the year.

j) Transition from middle school to high school is rough. This may alleviate parent's fear.

k) End of the year reporting smoothes out fluctuations. 1st quarter grade is different from a 4th quarter grade of a senior student.

l) Amendment to replace "school year" with "quarter" in the first section of the bill is proposed.

i) This amendment another form of class rank. End of the year is good.

ii) Most people drop the courses that they struggle in within the first couple of weeks. It would be useful if the median grade was reported at the end of the first mont.

iii) Someone has to be on the bottom. That's called math.

iv) It must be at the end of the school year. The amendment goes against the spirit of the bill.

v) The amendment will help seniors rationalize the grades that they receive.