New grading and reporting policy proposed

Montgomery County school officials have proposed a change to the county's grading policy for assignments turned in late. Under the proposed policy, teachers would be required to accept all late work but penalize it by dropping the grade by no more than one letter grade. For work that is not turned in at all, students would get an E, which would be translated into 50 percent on a 100 point scale. The change could take effect as early as next school year.

Betsy Brown, Director of the PreK-12 Curriculum Development Team in Montgomery County's Department of Curriculum and Instruction, said that the proposal is in the initial stages and that nothing has been adopted permanently yet. "Right now, we're developing some guidelines about late work, but nothing has been decided. We're just putting things out for feedback. We're under discussion about exactly what the guidelines should be and what the implications are."

The county's grading and reporting committees proposed the new policy after consulting various education experts. The committees were concerned that an overly harsh penalty for late work could undermine a student's ability to bring their grade back up. "[Penalties for late work] shouldn't cause kids to lose motivation and give up," Brown said. "We're looking for the balance for just giving away the score and just slamming the door in a student's face."

Reactions at Blair to the proposed policy have been mixed. Social Studies teacher Jake Lee said that he thinks the plan will not benefit students overall. "I think it's ridiculous that a student can get 50 percent for doing nothing," said Lee. "You wouldn't be making the better student. You're only falsely inflating the grade."

Sophomore Amina Hassen said that the policy will not encourage students to complete assignments and that it will only make students "more lazy and procrastinate more."

But Brown clarified that the policy was not proposed to simply give students free grades and rewards when they do not do the work for it. Teachers cannot give grades lower than the lowest letter grade if work is late, meaning that on a 100 point scale, a student could receive no lower than an E or a 50 percent. On a 4.0 point scale, however, the E would be a zero.

The new policy still punishes students for missing a deadline, but the punishment will be less severe. "Teachers can still set deadlines for when they will no longer accept late work, [such as when they] have to do progress report or interim or give papers back," Brown said. The policy simply ensures that when a student does complete an assignment, they will not be penalized as dramatically when it is only a couple of days late. The current policy for many teachers is to drop a score by one letter grade for every day it is late. Brown is worried that this approach does not accurately reflect the student's academic ability. "If a project is due and after five days it's an E, that is a distortion of the grade," Brown said.

The no-zero policy does not apply to incidents of cheating or plagiarizing. "We have a discipline code for cheating and copying," said Brown. "Cheating and plagiarizing is not late work." In addition, according to Brown, the policy does not apply to all assignments. "What this covers is the assignments teachers have developed to assess your learning. It's most likely [to cover] the longer, more comprehensive assignments," she said.

Sophomore Samantha Mayer said she thinks the new policy is more fair than the old policy. "Some teachers don't understand that there are sometimes good reasons for turning something in late," she said.

Freshman Maggie Sullivan thinks that the policy will really help students' grade point averages go up. "I like it. If you do your work and leave it at home, it's not fair that [teachers] won't accept it even if you did it," Sullivan said.

English teacher Vickie Adamson said that she agrees with the philosophy underlying the new rule on "certain levels" because it makes sure that the "students get feedback." However, she worries that it will create problems "if the parameters are too loose." "My belief is that it will work against the student's motivation," she said.

According to Adamson, the English department currently gives 50 percent for late work instead of a zero but she fears that the policy will take away the teacher's power to give zeros. "We should not promote a system that rewards students for doing nothing."

Because the proposal is a draft still undergoing changes, the department is collecting feedback from anybody, including Blair students, interested in providing input on the plan. "We need to know how to close [a] loophole or if [the policy] will work against students. We also need to know if teachers see that they can be lobbied by student or parents [so that the policy is] interpreted in a different way. We're trying to make this fair," Brown said.

All feedback needs to be in by the end of April so that the plan can be printed in a handbook that will be given to teachers and students next year. Students can post feedback here.