Year-long grades begin at WS
There are positive and negative aspects to rolling grade books
Photo courtesy of Amirah Sumrean
The new year-long gradebook is currently being phased into some classes at WS. The benefit to this is that students can track their overall final grade in real time while working to improve it for a class.
February 14, 2018
This school year, WS has introduced a year-long rolling gradebook in some classes. This means instead of starting each quarter with a fresh start, it starts with the grade that you ended with last quarter. Meaning the same gradebook is used the whole year.
While it may be unfortunate and more stressful for some students who like a fresh start each quarter, I personally like it. Though you don’t get a clean slate every quarter, the amount of points each assessment is worth often increases over time. A quiz first quarter can be worth ten points while a quiz second quarter can be worth 20 points. This is good because if you do better second quarter it’s worth more; the first quarter grade doesn’t matter as much.
Another good thing about the new gradebook is that in some classes students can retake or redo things from previous quarters to get their grade up. The end of the quarter is less stressful this way. Instead of rushing to redo things before the quarter ends, you have a chance to do it later on after seeing how it will affect your grade. Also, if you are able to see what’s bringing your grade down, you know what you need to work on.
The point of the year-long gradebook is as you learn more, the value of your work goes up. Third quarter is the heaviest one of the year as it’s when you put everything you’ve learned together. Quizzes and tests may be worth the most at this time. Fourth quarter is winding down and reviewing for finals and SOL tests.
Some negative aspects of this new system are that quizzes and tests don’t boost your grade as much during the first semester. Since they are worth less, they don’t affect your grade as much. In some classes, there are no retakes on quizzes because the points increase over time, so your “retake” is the next quiz that will be worth more and hopefully overshadow that grade.
Only some classes have adopted this grading system so far, but we can expect that it might be adopted by more classes soon enough due to its popularity and benefits for students.
Whether you love it or hate it the new grading system is most likely here to stay.
