The purpose of grades at Big Hollow Middle School is to accurately, reliably, and efficiently communicate student learning to teachers, parents, and students. In short, grades should reflect what a student currently knows and can do while pointing to areas where more support or practice is needed. Grades should be determined based on evidence, rather than calculated based on arbitrary formulas.
Shared Understandings: We believe that...
- Academic grades should be used for the purposes of communicating the level of proficiency on a particular standard, rather than as a punishment or consequence for non-compliance. Behavior should not impact academic grades.
- Retaking assessments allows students to learn at different rates and provides additional opportunities to reach mastery.
- Students should always be given the opportunity to exceed expectations on graded assessments.
- Students should be given multiple ways to demonstrate mastery.
- Feedback should be timely, specific, and related to the learning objectives. It should also be continuous.
- Students should be given multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery — they should not be penalized by grade calculations that place value on previous performance when students have demonstrated mastery.
- Students should be assessed on priority standards, with which they have had multiple sustained opportunities to practice. Priority standards reflect endurance, leverage, and readiness.
- To guide our work as educators, we consider the following four questions when designing assessments:
- What do we want students to learn?
- How do we know if students learn it?
- What do we do when students learn it?
- What do we do if students don’t learn it?
- What do we want students to learn?
Shared Practices:
Based on these understandings, we commit to the following shared practices:
- Students will be graded on learning. Behaviors, participation, attendance, and effort will not be included in academic grades; instead, separate methods will be used to communicate student progress in these areas.
- Late work will be accepted without penalty; however, some deadlines will be established for the purposes of reporting at the end of each trimester.
- All students can request to reassess regardless of the score earned. Teachers can also initiate the re-learning process and request reassessment.
- Academic dishonesty will be handled as a behavior and not reflected in an academic grade.
- Teachers will determine grades, rather than calculate them. This affords students the opportunity to improve their performance throughout the grading period while not being penalized for previous performance.
- Teachers will use only individual performance for grades — not group scores.
- Teachers will replace extra credit with test corrections and/or enrichment.
- Teachers will provide timely, specific, and related feedback on assessments so that students have the opportunity to target their practice toward mastery.
- Teachers will design assessments based on priority standards that reflect
- Endurance - knowledge and skills that will last beyond a class period
- Leverage - knowledge and skills that cross over into many domains of learning
- Readiness - knowledge and skills important to subsequent content or courses