New grading policies starting to roll out

The school is piloting some new changes for the grading policy this year, including a full school wide change and a freshmen only change.

The first part of this change is for the whole school. What it does is make it so that teachers now have to grade on a 70/30 split, so grades will be more test dependent. It also extends the late work policy for the end of a grading period, so all teachers except for AP and College courses will take late work up until grades need to be sent home. This change is intended to help students with a more proficiency based grading so that it doesn’t hurt the student as much if they can’t make it to school.

The next change is for freshman only, and what it does is makes it so that freshmen are not supposed to get homework: all assignments are supposed to have a rubric and are graded from a 0-4 scale.

There seemed to be some confusion within the staff on what all this new policy entailed and whom it was affecting, but it has been accepted positively by some teachers. 

“It’s definitely a switch for teachers, but it’s a good one,” said health teacher Julie Mack. “It switches how I think about my curriculum.” 

She’s not alone in needing to get used to the new change and adjust how she does things. 

“It might take longer to grade, because the teachers will have to figure out how to put grades in,” said level up teacher Deirdre Sennot. “It’s a big adjustment for both teachers and students. Report cards will look a little different.

“It will be good for students in the long run,” said ASL teacher Ellayna Skondin. 

“It hasn’t impacted 9th graders yet,” said Mack, “but I don’t think it will once they get closer to the end of the year.”