Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook

The section on zeros derailing a students overall grade is alarming. I can think back to when I was a student and all the differing methods and policies about late work and remember how depressing it was to forget an assignment, get a zero, and have the whole quarter ruined. We were talking about that in one of my other classes last week and brought it back to what we hope students are getting out of that assignment. Is it our job to teach them to turn their work in on time or to have them gain the skills or knowledge from their homework? It seems reasonable to dock their grade for late work, but zeros can be debilitating and do demoralize them for the rest of the term.

There are a few key ideas that I see repeatedly which are related to grades being clear and meaningful. Not only should the grading methods be clear to students, but to their parents as well. Parents should be able to understand the progress their child is making and how that is being measured. I like the concept of Principle 4 that states that not all information gathered should be graded. Parents will want to understand the difference between what is graded, what is not, and what factors are outside of that process.

Principle 5 is interesting to me because I feel like we always grade on an average. Typically,  it seems like bigger assignments are worth more points or weighted to be a higher percentage of the grade, but I don't think I've seen grades later in the quarter worth more just on the basis that they're later in the term. Bigger projects and assignments tend to be later in the term and usually incorporate several learning points from that unit or term, but you can say the same thing about midterms or end of unit tests. It would be interesting to weight grades more as the quarter went on to track a student's progress as they learn their teacher's expectations as well.  Sometimes it seems like a student would prefer to keep the grades specific to the assignment and not the time frame if they struggle with a particular unit.  For instance, if you struggled with a particular part of ninth grade science, like chemistry, and the rest of your semester/year went really well, then you wouldn't want that unit towards the end of the year to drag your entire grade down.