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Othello district split on standards-based grading; staff recommend testing Skyward as alternative to Empower
Summary
District leaders presented a standards-based grading (SBG) update after a teacher listening tour. Staff reported mixed teacher feedback, identified communication and late-work issues, and said 50% of respondents favored either continuing or modifying the rollout. The district will test Skyward reporting alongside Empower before deciding a path.
Othello School District officials told the school board they have not yet settled on how to standardize grades under a standards-based grading model and plan a short-term test of Skyward to see whether it can replace Empower for reporting.
The update, led by district administrators and staff who visited peer schools and ran a teacher "listening tour," summarized teacher feedback and implementation problems: confusion for parents, inconsistent use across classes, workload for teachers, and disagreement about late-work policies and athletic eligibility tied to grading.
Superintendent Perez told the board the district gathered teacher input on three possible paths: keep the current course and continue with Empower; stop using Empower but press ahead with SBG using Skyward; or give departments choice while setting minimum consistency requirements. "25% said keep going. Another 25% said, hey, let's think about this and let's stop using Empower," Perez said, and summarized the staff split as “50 percent.”
Administrators said Empower offers strong longitudinal data on student learning standards but that many teachers and families find it complex and sometimes unreliable in the district’s current use. Board members and administrators repeatedly raised concerns about parents and students being unsure how their progress appears in a trend-based SBG tool and how late submissions are handled.
District staff described common implementation issues reported by teachers: unclear proficiency scales, inconsistent department-level adoption, and insufficient administrative support for communicating changes to families. The presentation noted the district has tightened its late-work window this year from a six-week policy toward a shorter deadline; teachers on the listening tour recommended further tightening in some cases.
To gather more evidence before a full decision, the district will run side-by-side tests of Skyward and Empower with teacher volunteers and return to the board with results. Perez said the immediate next step was to "spend a few hours" letting teachers test both systems before locking in a model and to continue targeted professional development on proficiency scales and common assessments.
Board members and students pressed administrators on practical consequences: whether transcripts will translate to letter grades (administrators said SBG results are converted to letter grades for transcripts under state rules), how athletic eligibility will be defined, and how the district will prevent the system from encouraging procrastination. Administrators said the work aims to give students deeper mastery of fewer standards rather than accumulation of points from many low‑value assignments.
