Report Card Grading Adaptations for Students with Disabilities: Types and Acceptability
Munk, D. D., & Bursuck, W. D. (1998). Report card grading adaptations for students with disabilities. Intervention in School and Clinic, 33, 306-308.
Abstracted by Barbara Higgins-Dover
In this article Munk and Bursuck discuss an overview of report card grading adaptations that can be used for students with disabilities who are enrolled in general education classes. A table is provided which illustrates the three types of adaptations that can be made. The authors also discuss the acceptability to teachers who make such adaptations and the acceptability to students who receive these types of grades.
Common Adaptations for Report Card Grading: Table 1 illustrates three types of adaptations that can be made to report card grading. These three adaptations included changes in grading criteria, changes to letter and number grading, and the use of alternatives to letter and number grades. Examples of such changes are provided in the table.
Acceptability to Teachers: The reading includes a discussion of a recent national survey which asks 368 elementary and secondary regular education teachers to respond to a series of items regarding the use and perceived fairness of grading adaptations. In response to this survey, teachers believed letter grades to be more useful for students without disabilities, and pass/fail grades to be more useful for students with disabilities. However, "regarding fairness, 73% of these same teachers felt that making report card adaptations only for students with disabilities was unfair."
Acceptability to Students: The authors also incorporate findings of a survey asking 274 high school students with and without disabilities about the fairness of grading adaptations. Table 2 shows that the majority of students felt that making adaptations for students with disabilities alone was unfair. These same students were also asked which adaptations were the least and the most fair. Their answers suggest that giving credit for effort was most fair, and the least fair was that of passing students no matter how they performed. In a final question, students were asked about the fairness of weighted and unweighted systems for determining GPA's. Seventy percent of the students felt that weighted systems giving more credit for difficult classes were fair and that counting all classes the same, no matter how difficult, was unfair.
Conclusion: In this final section of the article, the authors discuss current grading practices with regard to adaptations, and student/teacher perceptions of these practices. Teachers are willing to make adaptations for students who need them; however, students see this practice as unfair. It is suggested that grading policies, practices, and adaptations be explained to the students in the beginning. Munk and Bursuck suggest recognizing effort as a good starting point to reaching some consensus about grading adaptations.
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