Teachers, students, and families rely on grades to give a snapshot of a student’s progress in class. As such, we believe that grades must serve as a meaningful, accurate, consistent and fair representation of student progress and achievement toward mastering grade-level content and skills. The grades should inform students, teachers, and families about what the student has learned and what learning remains to be mastered. Ongoing monitoring of specific standards and providing feedback that directly supports progress towards mastery of standards supports student learning and motivation. Additionally, standards-based grading contributes to greater equity as it reduces the common pitfalls of traditional grading. As a result, this year we will be moving toward ensuring our grades are more reflective of standards mastery.

How are grades determined?

Grading Scales

Grades K-5 will utilize a 1-4 scale (with +/-) in which teachers will measure student progress toward the mastery of the priority standards for each marking period. Using the 1-4 scale, teachers will determine which level contains the preponderance of evidence of a student’s most recent work.

1=Below mastery

2=Approaching mastery

3=Mastery

4=Above mastery

Grades 6-8 percentages will then be translated into letter grades for Report Cards as follows:

Letter Grade & Percentage

A = 90%-100%

B = 80%-89%

C = 70%-79%

D = 65%-70%

F = Below 65%

Standards-based work is assessed in the following weighted categories:

Weight Category

60% Daily Assignments & Formative Assessment

40% Major Assignments & Assessment

Including:

● Relevant iReady Diagnostics

● F&P Levels

Timelines

We will have two marking periods:

● September 8-January 30

● February 1-June

During November Parent Teacher Conferences, teachers will meet with families to provide progress reports and work collaboratively to support

student success.

WHY THE SHIFT?

Grading policies should strive to measure and document students’ academic progress and achievement. Traditional grading systems often

include various other measures of work habits, classroom behavior, and effort that result in inaccurate grades that lack meaning. As educators,

it is essential that we are able to accurately distinguish between behavioral, academic, and executive functioning needs.

Throughout a child’s school years, his / her relationship with grades and feedback changes. Feldman describes this trajectory in the following

ways:

Grading and Feedback Student Mindset

Early Elementary School Teacher feedback is encouraging, reflective,

corrective, and supportive

Curious, innate interest in learning and

growing

Late Elementary School Feedback & grades become a currency of

points that track achievement

“How much is this worth?” “Does this

count?”

Bargaining over points, requests for extra

credit

Middle & High School Grading as economic points with penalties

and incentives

We value not only ensuring that our grades are accurate reflections of student mastery, but also of cultivating learning experiences that

perpetuate creativity and inquiry.

HOMEWORK

At Amistad, we believe that homework provides an opportunity for students to practice skills and learning independently. Homework that is

assigned is brief and meaningful. It supports the teacher in assessing what students are able to do independently so that the instruction can be

modified to meet the needs of the learners. Homework is a tool for learning, and not a measure of learning as completion of and performance

on homework reflects students’ work habits, home environment, and access to other people who may assist them.

The purposes of homework at Amistad include:

● Practicing or reinforcing learning

● Continuing to work toward completing long-term projects or writing assignments

● Preparation for future learning (i.e. completing reading that will be utilized in class discussions, etc.)

● Checking for understanding and formatively guiding future instruction.

Homework assignments...

● Should not require parent support (with the exception of K-1 structural support), and students should be able to complete the

assignments independently.

● Should serve as a function of student learning and never as a punishment.

● Should be reviewed daily in some manner. Review can include: collecting homework, displaying the answers and asking for questions,

peer review, etc.

● In general, with the exception of daily reading, total homework should take approximately 10 minutes per grade level to complete. For

example, 1st grade students are in their second year of school and should have no more than 20 minutes of homework nightly.

GRADING SYSTEM

This year we will be using the DOE Platform to maintain our gradebooks. We will provide support and PD for using this system for each

teacher-team along with parents. By October, digital gradebooks should be kept current so that all parents and students can accurately

monitor and support student learning.

ACADEMIC GRADING

Teachers will identify their priority standards for each unit throughout the marking period. This will allow teachers to create a summative

assessment for each unit that provides quality information around student mastery. Beginning with the summative assessment aligned to the

unit’s priority standards allows teachers to backward plan the individual lessons and objectives that will lead to and support mastery on the

summative assessment. As the backward planning process occurs, teachers will be able to create various formative assessments (i.e.

mid-lesson checks, Do Nows, classwork, homework, discussion prompts, on-demand questions, project checkpoints, etc.) that allow for the

teachers to monitor student progress toward achieving mastery, and provide rich and meaningful feedback.

Throughout the unit, teachers will be able to record multiple examples for each standard using various formative and summative indicators

tracking student mastery that will be used to determine report card grades.

Late Work:

Ensure that grades for standards-aligned work are not impacted by non-mastery factors, such as marking off for lateness. In addition to making

grades less accurate, adding these factors directly into student work makes planning for instruction more difficult, because students may have

higher achievement than what is evidenced in the grade book. Culminating and summative assignments will be given a due date range. Late

work will be noted and communicated to families.

Extra Credit: Extra credit can contribute to inaccuracy of grades by inflating grades and fostering a student-learning relationship in which

grades become a currency and bartering system. Therefore, we will not be issuing extra credit. However, it is completely fine to provide

students with additional opportunities to demonstrate mastery including test corrections.