Lafayette Parish School System administrators and teachers belonging to the Pupil Progression Committee, a group who makes policy recommendations to the School Board on a wide variety of topics related to instruction, are recommending several changes to the current high school grading practices. The purpose of the proposed changes is to create consistent, fair grading practices across the district and to ensure that teachers are measuring what students have actually learned.
There are four significant changes being proposed by the group:
- A student’s final nine weeks grade will be based on 60% summative assessments, which would include unit tests, essays, research projects, or any other assessment which takes place after the learning and sums up the teaching and learning process. Forty percent of the student’s nine weeks grade will be based on formative assessments. These assessments are meant to provide feedback to the student and teacher during the learning process. Examples of these types of assessments include quizzes, rough drafts of papers and lab reports, interim checks of project work, in-class practice work evaluated for correctness, and lab reports. Ten percent of a student’s formative assessment grade can be allotted to homework.
- The final nine weeks grade for a grading period will consist of summative and formative assessments. There will be a minimum of eight graded assessments per nine week grading period, of which four will be summative assessments and four will be formative assessments.
- Bonus points and/or extra credit assignments are not allowed unless they demonstrate content knowledge. Academic credit can only be granted for work pertinent to the assessment of a student mastery of the subject being taught.
- Any grade assigned for the quality of a student's participation in a class activity should have a rubric attached to it and be based on skill and/or performance comparable to a standard. Exceptions may occur in performance related course work such as Physical Education, Performing Arts, Career and Technical Education.
These recommendations will be presented to the School Board at a workshop on Wednesday, August 5th. The board will vote whether or not to include these recommendations in the Pupil Progression Plan later that evening during a regular board meeting. Although the committee discussed a number of other items related to high school grading practices, they were able to reach a general consensus on these four and recommend them to the board for approval.