In what seemed like a blissfully normal return to school, students received a slap to the face when they heard about the new grading policy that you are probably already aware of.
Briefly summed up: grades are now split 90% summative assignment grade and 10% formative assignment grades. Summative assignments are culminating, like tests or projects; formative assignments are literally everything else. The one caveat: students must be allowed to retake any summative assignment for full credit.
Some context: last year the grades were split 60% summative and 40% summative. It was a change that no students saw coming, and didn’t really think about until the first units of the school year ended and summative assignments were passed out. Thinking back, students received no warning last year about the possible change. Students were allowed no input, despite it being a severely consequential decision.
The new change has been extremely difficult overall. The policy needs to be changed as soon as possible as it is harming students.
Adjusting to the new change alone has been challenging: 60 to 90 is a huge jump, and when I took my first tests of the year, I was completely surprised by how much the difference could really be felt. In the space between 60 and 90, any sort of acceptance of settling with a low score is impossible. While scoring a B in the old grading scale was fine, now it feels much lower. The stakes have skyrocketed.
The stress I have faced this year so far, and what I know everyone else is going through, is immense. It is absolutely unlike anything I have ever experienced. While test days under past grading policies were something that I worried about, test days this year are incomparable. They are enough to ruin your week.
Teachers try their best to be understanding, but it’s not like they can stop assigning summatives. Additionally, it would be impossible to fully understand how truly awful the new policy is unless you’re a student yourself.
Nothing should ever be this stressful or anxiety inducing. Words fail to describe the despair that the policy has wrecked on students. It may sound like I am exaggerating, but I promise that I’m not. It’s been devastating.
The 90/10 rule is one of those things that really makes you question everything. Why? Why am I stressing all this much about this one test? Why am I staying up until 2 a.m., studying for this one test? Why am I letting my mental health plummet as a sacrifice for my grades? Unfortunately, it’s because grades are an inevitable unflinching pillar of school, and they mean everything. This is part of a larger issue, the whole grading system, but the 90/10 rule is shedding light on all the faults.
Last year, by the end of the year, as a result of the rolling grade book, formative assignments were negligible. But that was when they were 40% of the total grade. Now, AHS is still using a rolling gradebook, only formative assignments are 10% of the total grade. So if you think formative assignments were negligible by the middle of the final quarter last year, they are going to be practically nonexistent by the start of the second semester this year.
The new policy is utterly ridiculous. I understand that the whole point of the decision is to make sure that one’s final grade is overwhelmingly determined by mastery of a topic, as would be hopefully demonstrated in a summative, rather than lesser grades. However, the policy is entirely infeasible. I don’t know how much longer myself or any of my classmates will be able to keep up with it.
