"Looked at Ed. from both sides now.¹-˜ conversation@kuow.org ¥FFFF000000060002000177AA000000000060000000002000110000001-7FFF6EBE0Â480048022120Á-1‚0Â2‚21222CFFFFAFFC0‚10‚‚2‚A000010000003E00000001099440840‚‚2‚21222C96E048E00020217421222C000020000099A00000000994,Greetings, I attended The Evergreen State College (TESC) and Goddard College in Plainfield Vt. (one of the schools it was patterned after) for my undergraduate career. Last year, I started the Master's In Teaching Program at Evergreen also. This year I'm finishing my graduate degree at St. Martin's in Lacey which is a much more conservative program. The irony is that where TESC worked on an evaluation assessment model as opposed to report cards, and a dialogic seminar model as opposed to lectures, their cohort model denied my continuing into my second year there due to my only receiving only 41 of 48 necessary credits whereas St. Martin's offers classes (to be taken over again if need be) to assist students in meeting their standards. On the other hand, the format of the classes at St. Martin's appeals to students who want to spend as little time in class as possible and merely find out what is essential to know on the test. Grappling with the subtleties of any given subject concerning how best to teach and learn are irrelevant. "Do I understand this stuff" takes a back seat to "How can I pass and get out of here?" In my opinion, that metacognitive thought process of "Do I understand this stuff" is better cultivated in alternative educational models. A grade skews a child's focus from their internal subject content awareness to an external validation. Of course, teachers also need to know whether their students are understanding "this stuff." When alternative program teachers are forced to ascribe to a ranking system, which is what graded report cards are, their program can be undermined by this ranking which is only demotivational as those students already internally motivated, get nothing more from grades. I know of what I speak. My daughter attends Olympia's long-standing "Options" alternative program and although she is "behind the curve" in her reading and writing skills and she hates math, she still thinks in terms of "who knows what" in her class as opposed to "who's smarter" (i.e., better). Any district forcing their alternative programs to change their culture to that extent, should compensate that community with performance and standards-based rubrics and an intermediate reporting medium the teachers can use to translate their current assessment reporting model into so as not to harm the good they've worked so hard to achieve. Thank you for your time, Stephen H. Mazepa Future Award Winning Teacher00040000000A000000020996000050000001000000003094C19960000600000031000000010ÁC310‚‚ÁFFFF0‚C00000 20ÂÁ ‚‚Á000700000030000000020‚20Â180‚Á20‚10Â180‚Á0008000000970000000140,Geneva40,4030 10000900000015000000022‚A922C2‚A922C000A00000021000000022‚7FFFFFFF22C2‚7FFFFFFF22C000B00000005000000020Â000C0000001200000001A0‚3203E‚0000F000000200000000050 10 ‚ÂÁÂÁ‚‚ÁÂ00130000007E00000000DA91F8CE1C1D1E1F7F1B044,-.¦¹°­­.'"ÔÕÒÓÉÉFFFF0FFFF001280000000B00000001996‚0Á‚01290000000B00000001996‚0Á‚