Cara Loverock
Northern News Services
Published Friday, January 11, 2008

YELLOWKNIFE - Yellowknife Education District No. 1 is investigating similar grading systems to the one implemented by Yellowknife Catholic Schools last fall - one which doesn't hand out zeros for incomplete work or lower grades for bad behaviour.

Metro Huculak, superintendent of Yk1, said while they are not considering the same system employed by the Catholic school board, they are thinking about bringing American educator Rick Stiggins to the city, on whose theories the Catholic system is based.

"I know Rick Stiggins well. In fact he wants to come up here and do some work for us," said Huculak.

"I talked to him in Vancouver in October and he wants to come up and do some work with our staff, so we're going to look at bringing him up."

Asked whether or not Yk1 will follow suit on his methods, he said, "I'm not going to give you a yes or no answer," adding that he felt that would be oversimplifying.

"What we're trying to set up is a good communication pattern with parents to ensure that our students are engaged in their learning," said Huculak.

Claudia Parker, deputy superintendent with YCS, said Catholic schools turned to books written by Rick Stiggins and Ken O'Connor when implementing changes to their assessment system.

"We did lots of action research using mostly Ken O'Connor and Rick Stiggins, their books," said Parker.

"We followed what schools were doing in Alberta and had people in Alberta come and talk to us about what's going on."

She said Ken O'Connor's book How to Grade for Learning was purchased for all YCS teachers. Huculak refused to label any possible changes at Yk1 as a new grading system, calling it instead "common sense."

"You're always looking at ways to improve, so we are investigating and I meet regularly with my parent advisory council chairs," said Huculak.

Huculak said there are no current plans to make changes to report cards but the school board is examining how to implement changes if they feel it is necessary.

He said Yk1 wants to make students responsible with more parent involvement.

"We are looking at different ways that we can report to parents," he said.