Prep Pass/Fail Program Extended Another Three Years

During faculty meetings last Monday, the faculty voted to extend the pass/fail program for another three years, after which another review will take place. Under the program, students receive pass/fail grades during their prep fall. It was originally voted in as a three-year pilot program in Feb. 2013 after being proposed by Exeter’s Curriculum Committee in an effort to help preps adjust to Exeter’s rigorous academic environment.Curriculum Committee Head and English instructor Brooks Moriarty described the program as “a three-year experiment as one mechanism to help our youngest students adjust to the Exeter experience.”Moriarty explained that because the program “is about grades on transcripts, this measure often focuses everyone’s attention on grades [when] it is really about the wellbeing of our new preps and their adjustment to Exeter.”After the Academy implemented the program, the Curriculum Committee administered a survey to preps each spring with three questions regarding pass/fail. This helped evaluate the success of the program.

“I know that it helped other students feel welcomed and supported as they settled in.”

Of the 2014 and 2015 ninth grade classes, an average of 73 percent of preps agreed or completely agreed that pass/fail helped them to adjust to life at Exeter, and 76.5 percent felt that pass/fail reduced anxiety and stress. On the other hand, only 19 percent believed that pass/fail decreased academic motivation.According to Moriarty, by the measure of the survey alone, the experiment “has been successful.” He also noted, however, that although the program’s focus was well being and adjustment, GPA data from before and after does not show large variation.“Some students... may not work as hard as they could due to pass/fail,” Moriarty said, but “it’s possible that the time they are spending making friends and adjusting to life away from home in a new community is more valuable than any time they could have put into academic work.” Moriarty also noted that pass/fail may just postpone student’s need to push themselves. He believed the experiences of students should be looked at holistically and that pass/fail should not be seen as the only mechanism that will either help or hurt our students.Now that the pass/fail program has been extended three more years, the Curriculum Committee looks to gather more feedback on the program to improve it in future years. Specifically, Moriarty said that the extension “will give us time to collect reflections from seniors looking back on their entire Exeter career” as well as “survey one group in their first year in college.”By doing so, the committee hopes to “broaden the lens through which we view pass/fail” and “find other or better mechanisms for improving the experiences of our students,” Moriarty said. Thus, in three years, the committee will have developed “a more comprehensive plan to create the best experience for students” of which “pass/fail may or may not be [a] part.”As the students of the class of 2019 conclude their pass/fail term at Exeter, faculty members and students reflected on the benefits and disadvantages of the program.Science instructor Sean Campbell said the pass/fail program has been effective in easing student transitions to PEA. He noted that “a majority of students who benefit from the policy self-report agreement with it in larger numbers,” but “some report that they did not take classes as seriously.”“It’s a mixed bag, and I don’t think anyone would say that it is an unmitigated positive,” he said. “I think it has been positive so far.” Looking forward, Campbell said that he hopes the school can have more objective measurements of what constitutes success or failure of the policy.Many students who have experienced pass/fail found the advantages more significant than the inevitable setbacks. Lower Megi Topalli, an international student from Albania, emphasized how pass/fail allowed her to learn study skills and adapt to a new school and culture. Coming from Albania, prep fall was her first time away from her home and family, as well as her first time in the United States. With English as her second language, she appreciated having pass/fail during her adjustment period.On the other hand, prep Wynter Tracey found that all students might not need the “buffer,” but she still suggests its continued institution. “I found pass/fail helped remove the pressure to perform super well [in] really tough classes like computer science. I think it will be helpful for future preps to figure out study habits and time management,” she said.When the initiative was first passed, another concern was that students may work less during their first term. However, modern languages instructor Kayoko Tazawa dismissed this idea. She believed students are still working diligently while creating healthy habits to accommodate for the academic rigor.“I did not see change in how the students study,” she said. “The preps in the Japanese program are always working hard. I guess the students who take Japanese want to learn Japanese and they work hard regardless of the grade.”English instructor and department chair Ellen Wolff strongly supported pass/fail and saw no diminishment in student’s motivation since the system was implemented. “I know that it helped other students feel welcomed and supported as they settled in. One student told me, ‘It’s like the school is telling us that we don’t have to figure everything out in the first term.’ And feeling welcomed and supported—that’s a good foundation from which to learn well,” she said.However, some worry that because pass/fail creates a binary final grade regardless of student’s varying effort, students won’t learn the necessary foundation for higher level courses, especially in languages and mathematics.“I think it’s beneficial,” classical languages and history instructor Megan Campbell said. “However, I do worry about what effect it has... on a student who takes a language prep fall and doesn’t put their full effort into it—that’s something that can come back to haunt them three years down the road.”Students also expressed mixed reviews of pass/fail. “Although pass/fail is a safety net for preps, it also invalidates the grades earned by hard-working students that would contribute to a cumulative GPA,” lower Lara Galligani said.Lower Alyssa Kuwana believed that pass/fail allowed students to slack off. “It gave them an opportunity to not care about classes and grades,” she said.Prep Sam Michaels approved of pass/fail, despite the individuals who did not work to their fullest potentials. “It was obvious when another classmate did not contribute to class. Skipping on work and not participating in class isn’t the best way to take advantage of pass/fail, and now they’re probably not prepared for this term,” he said.Some students also worry that pass/fail excludes new students who are not preps. Upper Lauren Wilson entered the school as a new lower and expressed the challenges faced by all new students. “Being a new lower without pass fail can be challenging in that even if you were not adequately prepared to Exeter academics, you still have be on par with peers who have already had a year of experience,” she said.Science instructor Tanya Waterman noted that there are also obvious benefits such as less stress and the opportunity for students to take risks sampling courses without worrying about grades. However, she also noted that there is a potential for abuse of the system by preps who are tempted to “slack” during pass/fail.She noted that “even the slackers learn a valuable lesson” in that “their math placement will suffer” and “their writing skills will be weaker.” She said that “having a few weeks to make the adjustment from middle school to high school and to a new place is a reasonable accommodation.”