As the first semester has come to a close, members of the community have reflected on the county’s new grading policy. Many adjustments have been made to MCPS’s previous policies, including a semester grade that now consists of an average of a student’s first and second quarter grades, district assessments and clearer deadlines about when to turn in and grade assignments. While some of these changes are new to the county entirely, other parts of this new grading system have demonstrated a return to policies from prior years.
In the 1970-71 school year, the grading policy was revised so that a student’s semester grades were an average of their two quarter grades. Now that the county has returned to this procedure, many students have found themselves forced to apply more effort to their studies in general.
A concern that staff members and students had was that it may feel unfair for upperclassmen to adhere to a new grading system and set of expectations when their classes are the most challenging. Many students, especially juniors and seniors, found it difficult to be expected to make such a large switch after being accustomed to the old policy for several years.
“I feel like it’s kind of hard to adjust to it because we’re so used to the other policy,” junior Daniela Carreno Perez said. “Especially since junior year is the hardest year.”
While a large number of students across the school feel more pressured this year, many teachers have differing perspectives on these changes.
“I think the new grading policy is good,” AP Microeconomics and AP Macroeconomics teacher Ty Healey said. “I understand students might not feel quite the same way about it. But, I think the old system enabled some academic practices that I don’t think are good for students.”
Another aspect of the grading policy that has returned this year is summative and district assessments. Some core classes, such as Precalculus and Honors English, have a summative assessment at the end of each quarter or semester that will impact a percentage of a student’s grade in that class. In the 1970-1971 school year, final and midterm exams were set in place and took up no more than one fourth of a student’s semester grade.
“Some courses have these … district-wide assessments that account for a portion of their Marking Period 2 and Marking Period 4 grade,” administrator Gail Samuels said.
Due to the large number of changes that were made to the grading system, it has been vital that administrators effectively spread these new county rules this year, as well as in the past.
“We needed to make sure that every student knew about [the new grading policy],” administrator Brett Imamura said. “We needed to make sure that every parent and community member knew what to expect. General education of what the policy is and what it isn’t was the biggest challenge at first.”
A similar reaction was held in 2005, when MCPS officials stated that one of the main goals of their upgraded grading system was to provide clarity for the community and to form a standardized way for a student’s grades to be counted. In this announcement, it was also shared that the county would once again be requiring semester exams for students, which had been taken away in previous years.
While adjusting to the new grading policy has been difficult for students, families and even teachers, it is important to remember that MCPS has wanted the community to have a clear understanding of their expectations.
“People look to us a lot for guidance, so it’s important that the information we give is accurate,” Samuels said. “We’ve created our own ‘WJ Best Practices’ document to kind of give further explanation for the MCPS policy, so that’s a resource that we just always go back to to make sure that we’re giving the accurate information when we talk to our families, students and the teachers.”
Over time, different aspects of the grading system have come and gone, and members of the community have been able to adapt to these changes repeatedly.
