When some students opened their online report cards last week, they may have seen a grade they never saw before: NG.
NG stands for no grade. It is a new designation Hinsdale District High School District 86 is using during the pandemic.
A student who had not completed enough work to determine whether or not they had gained basic proficiency in a course might have received NG, Hinsdale South High School principal Arwen Pokorny Lyp said.
An NG is similar to the grade F, because the student does not earn any credit for the class, nor is he or she allowed to advance to the next level of the subject. The difference is, unlike an F, an NG is not included in calculating the student’s grade-point average.
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There is no “GPA penalty,” Pokorny Lyp said. But the student will have to make up that credit.
Teachers at Hinsdale South gave 149 NGs and Hinsdale Central High School teachers gave 100 NGs on their students’ first semester report cards.
Typically, those who received an NG were students who experienced a significant hardship or trauma, Pokorny Lyp said.
The pandemic and the need for online learning has affected students and their families differently, Central principal William Walsh said. Many students adapted to online learning without any noticeable problems and some even thrived learning from home.
“But we have students who experienced significant trauma,” Walsh said.
“We have students working full-time to support their families,” if the parent or guardian lost their job, Walsh said. “We have students attending classes between their work shifts, whether it’s part-time or full-time. We have students caring for siblings and elderly family members in their homes during the school days. We have students experiencing instability in their housing accommodations. We have students lacking reliable internet access.”
“It is a traumatic time for many, many of our students,” Walsh said.
The district is responding by adding more time for interventions in the afternoon, by delaying when the school buses leave, so students can receive help one-on-one with their teacher or other support staff.
In the second semester, students who choose the hybrid model also will have more time in school for in-person instruction.
Due to the added difficulties the pandemic presents, District 86 administrators also expanded the use of “incomplete” grades in the first semester, which ended Dec. 18.
Teachers are giving “incompletes” to students who did most of their work, but did not complete a few core assignments or assessments, Pokorny Lyp said. If a student got an incomplete on their first semester report card, they have until Jan. 22 to finish and turn in the missing work. After Jan. 22, the incomplete will be converted to a final grade or an NG.
As of Jan. 14, Hinsdale South students had received 93 incompletes and students at Central had received 96.
If the district had not created NG and expanded the application of “incompletes,” all those students would have received Fs, Pokorny Lyp said.
That would have further penalized students who already were struggling to do their schoolwork during a pandemic, she said. Instead, the district is providing additional support for those students, while still holding them accountable for their actions, she said.
At both Central and South, teachers gave more As and fewer F’s in the first semester of 2020 compared with the first semester of 2019.
As of Jan. 14, Hinsdale Central teachers gave only 15 F’s in 2020, compared with 59 F’s the prior year.
Hinsdale South teachers gave 42 F’s in 2020, compared with 237 the prior year.
At the other end, Hinsdale South students received 4,385 A’s in the first semester of 2020 compared with 3,934 A’s in the first semester of 2019.
Hinsdale Central students received 9,651 A’s in the first semester of 2020 compared with 9,159 A’s a year ago.
District 86 School Board member Kathleen Hirsman questioned the number of A’s and the validity of the grade.
“I find it remarkable that in both schools we have a higher number of A’s,” Hirsman said.
District administrators attributed that to the interventions teachers had, either in person or online, with students, and the teachers’ flexibility to accept late assignments or allow students to retake tests in certain circumstances.
School Board member Marty Turek was concerned that what District 86 was doing was similar to what other high school districts were doing.
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Walsh said the 16 or so principals of schools in the West Suburban Conference have been collaborating during the pandemic.
They decided to use the NG grade, too, Pokorny Lyp said. They discussed how pre-pandemic, teachers used NGs in very rare cases when a students had very serious issues. Because of the pandemic, “We all have this collective trauma that is causing us to think about policies,” she said.
It’s too early to say whether District 86 will use NG as broadly in the second semester, but it’s not likely to be permanent, Pokorny Lyp said.