Parents and teachers tell Berkeley County board DFA grading is harming students; calls for policy change

Dozens of parents, teachers and union leaders used the board’s public-comment period to criticize the district’s new use of District Formative Assessments (DFAs), saying the tests are being treated as graded benchmarks and are harming students’ confidence and teachers’ professional judgment.

Speakers said the DFAs — described in district materials as assessments intended to inform instruction — are being counted in students’ grades in ways that punish children and undermine classroom practice. “He said before his last round of DFAs last week, ‘I’m stupid. I’m an idiot,’” said Adrienne Serpe, a parent and former public-school teacher, quoting her 11-year-old. “Our students and our teachers and our kids deserve better from you.”

Parents and teachers described similar effects across grade levels: anxiety and tears for children in early grades, teachers pressured to “teach to the test,” and what several speakers called poor communication and planning by the district. Summer Dukes said her eighth-grade gifted-and-talented child scored a 50 on a DFA and a 90 on the teacher’s unit test the next day, asking, “If these aren’t formative assessments, then what are they?”

The Berkeley County Education Association president, Kathleen Lowe, told the board teachers feel ethically conflicted: she said district direction to enter scores from tests teachers did not create or oversee forces educators into choices that can violate South Carolina’s code of ethics for educators. “Teachers have been cut out of the decisions,” Lowe said. “This constant conflict and lack of professional autonomy is why Berkeley County struggles to retain teachers.”

Several speakers said the district’s own data shows broad concern: Adrienne Serpe said a petition on the issue gathered more than 2,000 signatures from over 40 schools in a few weeks. Michelle Carroll, a parent at Howell Hall Ames, described unusually high turnover at that school — 13 homeroom teachers, two teacher assistants, the financial secretary and an assistant principal in roughly two years — and asked the board to review retention and exit-survey data.

Speakers raised specific implementation issues: they said DFAs are drawn from a pool of I-Ready questions, administered in MasteryConnect (which they said can mark answers wrong due to exact phrasing), and given inside tight testing windows of three to four days. Many asked the board to require the district to stop counting DFAs as graded unit tests, to allow teachers flexibility in pacing and to include teacher representatives in any advisory group revising grading, pacing and assessment practices.

Superintendent Dixon was referenced during public comments: speakers said district guidance had stated the South Carolina Department of Education reviewed the district’s practice and deemed the use of formative assessment lawful; several commenters nevertheless said the district’s on-the-ground policy and implementation differ from the stated intent. Board member Miss Crowley was named by speakers as having answered some parent inquiries during outreach.

Board members did not take action on DFAs at the meeting. The public-comment speakers asked the board to direct administration to halt using DFAs as major grades, to reopen dialogue with teachers and parents, and to produce transparent timelines for any changes.

“Let teachers teach. Let students learn,” one parent said near the end of the comment period. The board’s next step on the issue was not announced during the meeting.

The speakers below were recorded during the public-comment period and provided the quotations and testimony cited above.