There have been a few discussions on grading going around the ‘ole school building this month. A new idea (for us) being floated is changing our grading structure to ones that have been tried in other districts.
First, changing our grading system to a 1 thru 5 scale for everything. It sounds like a bit more work on some things – grading, converting to 100% scale and then converting to 1 thru 5 scale… but I suppose it would a somewhat easy switch for English teachers.
Second, no longer giving a grade lower than 50%, even if a student turned nothing in – not even a piece of paper with a name on it. I know there are many schools who have made this change and it always invokes controversy.
The theory behind these changes is that it severely punishes students who don’t turn in assignments, as opposed to those who turn something in… bad or good. Some would argue that if a student can pass an exam, but not bother to do any homework, should the grade be based upon their learning or their level of responsibility. For me, I haven’t had a student pass a test without doing the assignments first in a very long time, but then again, I don’t really use “tests.” I’m more of a do some sort of project/paper/presentation kind of person. Last year I gave one ‘test’ in each of my classes… so if the student gets at least a 50% on a paper that he/she didn’t turn in (and did only the minimal prep work while I was standing over him/her), is that fair?
If you’ve worked with this type of system, what is your experience?
Comments
Also, if you are going to a 1 - 5 scale and just going to treat each value as 20%, you have basically created a lot of extra work for yourself and changed absolutely nothing about what the score represents. Until your school is ready to have that conversation, you might as well stick with what you have.
There are tons of great blogs out there by secondary teachers who have changed grading practices and are making it work.