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District staff outline 'apples-to-oranges' grading and data challenges, recommend task force
Summary
Portland Public Schools data staff told the committee that inconsistent secondary grading scales and fragmented data architecture make dashboards and district comparisons unreliable; staff recommended a stakeholder task force to explore grading standardization and technical fixes.
Hailey Diedrichsen, the district's senior director of data and technology, told the Curriculum & Student Success Committee on Dec. 8 that the district faces an "apples-to-oranges" problem when trying to present academic-grade data across high schools.
"I call this an apples to orange data problem," Diedrichsen said, explaining that secondary grading uses a mix of scales — 0–100, 1–4 and A–F — and that existing Infinite Campus crosswalks that translate between scales can lose nuance. "Technically you can make it work, but our scales are at different grain sizes...in some cases, we lose some of the nuance when we're creating that crosswalk," she said.
Why it matters: Staff said the inconsistency hampers the district's ability to set districtwide academic goals, compare outcomes across buildings and put usable academic dashboards into the hands of educators. Diedrichsen said the technical setup of Infinite Campus was not centrally architected, which has resulted in different naming conventions, calendar configurations and course records across schools and complicates federal reporting and analytics.
Board members raised implementation and philosophical concerns about standardizing grading, including how standardization would affect teacher autonomy, unique school identities, how to represent exceptional student work, and the needs of special-education students. Several board members supported convening a task force but emphasized the need for clear scope, timeline and budget estimates before moving forward.
Diedrichsen recommended a task force that would include teachers, school leaders, students, families and technical staff to weigh the benefits and trade-offs of more common grading practices and to propose an approach that combines technical fixes and policy/cultural work. Management clarified the task force would be exploratory—bringing recommendations back to the committee rather than enacting immediate policy.
What comes next: Committee members asked staff to return with proposed task-force parameters, budget implications and a clear timeline for pilot or phased changes; staff indicated they will develop a template and cost estimate for committee review.
