A kid gets a “C” in English. His parent appeals the grade. The principal sides with the teacher. The parent appeals again. Everyone up to and including Superintendent Ken Hinton side with the teacher. Then the appeal goes to the Peoria Board of Education. The Board votes 5-2 to change the grade to a “B.” To their credit, board members Stowell and Parker voted against the change.

The third-year English teacher, JoAnna Moe, told District 150 School Board members she gave the junior ample opportunity to better the grade, but issued a “C” for the lack of effort the student put into an enriched English project.

According to the district’s policy manual (§6:280):

Every teacher shall maintain an evaluation record for each student in the teacher’s classroom. The final grade assigned by the teacher cannot be changed by a District administrator without notifying the teacher. Reasons for changing a student’s final grade include:

• a miscalculation of test scores;
• a technical error in assigning a particular grade or score;
• the teacher agrees to allow the student to do extra work that may impact the grade;
• an inappropriate grading system used to determine the grade; or
• an inappropriate grade based on an appropriate grading system.

Should a grade change be made, the administrator making the change must sign the changed record.

In this case, the administrators upheld the grade given by the teacher. One wonders what reason or authority the school board had for changing it based on the above criteria. The paper states that the appeal “eventually made its way to the board by school district rules, similar to cases involving suspensions and expulsions.” But after looking at the policy manual, including the section on suspensions and expulsions and the uniform grievance procedure, I could find no written policy on appealing a grade to the school board after it had been upheld by the administration.

The teachers certainly see this as precedent-setting. A petition signed by 70 teachers and staff members backed up the teacher. Scott Schifeling, Peoria Federation of Teachers President, was quoted in the Journal Star as saying, “I’ve never seen it go to this level. … I think it sets a very bad precedent.”

For its part, the school board won’t comment on the matter, hiding behind confidentiality rules and laws. So we can’t find out who the student was to know if this was the child of an influential person in the community, for instance; nor do we know what the school board’s reasoning was for overturning the unanimous decision of their entire staff of administrators and teachers.

What’s really incredible is that this is not changing a grade from failing to passing, or changing a grade from a “B” to and “A” to preserve some sort of perfect grade point average. Instead, it changes the grade from a “C” to a “B” — for reasons we’ll apparently never know.

What we do know is that the entire staff of District 150 is now demoralized, and teachers and parents will be forgiven for questioning the board’s commitment to high academic standards for District 150 students.