Cobb Reporter

In the speech Mr. Boswell gave on the first day of school, he pointed out how in the past, there were 70 ways to fail (0-69), and 31 ways to pass (70-100). 

The Upper School has implemented a grade floor of 60 for all assignments, quizzes, and tests. Instead of grades ranging from 0-100, they range from 60-100. This makes our system more like a 4.0-grade scale. When I talked to Wesley Caldwell, 12, he told me that “bumping it up to a 75 would be better, but I think we would all want that.”

When I talked to Ms.Greenberg, US Math Teacher, she said that this grading scale sends the wrong message to students. When you think about it, it is pretty unmotivating to get good grades and pass when there is a higher chance of failure. “We hope that [the grade floor] benefits the students emotionally and in terms of motivation,“ she said to me. “But, if nothing else, it sends the message that we care about you passing and we’re not gonna overly weigh your failures.”

The grade floor makes sure that it is much easier for students to recover from one bad day. For example, if you were to get a 40 on a test, it is mathematically impossible to recover from it, even if you do really well every other time you have a test.

According to Mr. Boswell, transcripts on MyLion automatically didn’t show grades lower than 60. This means that although we did have a grade minimum, it did not apply to every assignment as it does now.

Faculty are still figuring out how all of this will play out. When I spoke with Ms. Greenberg, she said that a student must show honest effort in order to receive the 60. “If a student writes a story on a math test, that is still a 0 it isn’t a 60 because the student didn’t give an honest effort,” she explained. 

But when I spoke with Mr. Boswell, he explained that when it comes to missing work or work reflecting insufficient effort, the two main options for teachers are giving an incomplete, or using the grade floor. He said the grade floor applies to individual assignments within a class. “Whether a teacher automatically assigns 60 or "missing" to that assignment is up to them,” he said. “For me, it would depend on the importance of the assignment - I would automatically assign a 60 to a daily assignment but would mark a more major assignment as missing until it's received. That missing could lead to an incomplete if a marking period came up.”

We could end up seeing more "Incompletes" on quarterly or semester report cards. Mr. Boswell said incompletes are a designation given only on report cards “that implies that we don't have enough information to provide an OVERALL grade at this time. This usually happens when a student hasn't submitted a major assignment before a marking period or at the end of the semester.” 

It seems like teachers will have some flexibility about when they use incompletes, when they just put in a 60, and when they give students the chance to complete missing work and replace the grade.

Much of the inspiration for this shift comes from the book Grading For Equity, by Joe Feldman. Many teachers participated in a study of this book over the past few years, and have been wrestling with its core ideas related to making grading more equitable. This book encourages educators to change their grading practices in order to improve learning, reduce failure rates, and more.  

“Part of Feldman’s philosophy is that our grades are actually evaluating what the student is actually capable of,” Mr. Boswell told me. The grade floor accurately shows your performance, which is why it has been implemented. 

Of course, the new change has brought some concerns for students. In the survey we conducted, 11% of the respondents said that they were not a fan of the grade floor. One student said, “I feel like none of the teachers actually use it.” Students also expressed that they were confused about how the grade floor worked. Many other students also said how they wished that homework and classwork were still graded. “A lot of teachers are taking away homework grades that would usually inflate my grade,” one student said.

I asked Ms.Greenberg why homework was no longer part of our grades, and she said that this was also part of the new policy in order for grades to be more accurate. In the book, Grading for Equity, Feldman talks about the importance of minimizing grade inflation. The nice thing about homework no longer being graded is that students only have to do what they need to do. It’s no longer just about completion, which can encourage cheating. 

However, it does not mean not doing your homework at all. Using one of her many sports analogies, Ms. Greenberg said, “You can’t skip practice Monday through Thursday, and then start at the game on Friday.” Homework has the same concept. Although we sadly can’t get any completion points in our grades, at least we aren’t wasting all of our time on work we don’t need to do.

Teachers are also having some concerns about the new grading system. A lot of teachers have had similar policies to this grade floor, but some do not understand why we need it. “Teachers think that if a student earns a 20, the student should get a 20,” Ms. Greenberg told me.  “The biggest concern for teachers is that students are going to be less engaged with the material, whereas I firmly believe that it will have students more engaged because there is now a reason to not give up; you can recover,” she explained. Teachers are having ongoing discussions about understanding the grade floor, which will make it better for everyone. 

Wesley, along with Ms. Greenberg and Mr. Boswell, mentioned that the grade floor may lead to many students no longer putting their best effort into the grade floor. “I think that it might change people's mindsets going into studying,” Wesley told me. It seems that some students think that they don’t need to try as hard because they are guaranteed a particular grade already. “You'd be doing yourself a disservice when a little bit of studying could actually probably help you maintain a grade,” Mr.Boswell advised.

I also got to talk to Megan Jones, 11, and she told me that she recently had a math test that she didn’t do well on. “Having the grade floor gives me some hope that for my retest, I have the opportunity to do a lot better,” she said. The grade floor has given many students the opportunity to do better. “Coming back from summer was just jarring,” she added. 

Many students on the survey also expressed that they like the grade floor and the opportunities it provides. One student wrote, “I like it, because if you really mess up a test or quiz, then it won't impact your grade to the point where it can't be saved.” Other students mentioned that it helps with stress, and it will boost grades in order to get into college.

Hopefully, as students and teachers become more accustomed to the grade floor, we can all see the overall improvement in grades and, more importantly, learning here in the Upper School.

Original source can be found here.