More clarity on BCPS’ new grading policy

Verletta White

At the beginning of the school year, Baltimore County Public Schools unveiled to parents a new grading policy that said homework and behavior would no longer count toward students’ grades. Then earlier this week, BCPS met with PTA representatives and released an addendum to the new policy to clarify how grades should be determined.

Today in an interview, BCPS Chief Academic Officer Verletta White added more details about the addendum. She said the new grading policy has not been changed. Instead, she said, BCPS is giving teachers and parents more information about how grades should be determined.

Feedback from teachers indicated that they needed more examples of assignments that could be used to grade students, White said. Some teachers — as well as parents and students — were under the impression that tests and quizzes should make up the bulk of students’ grades.

“One third of the grade should be based on tests and quizzes, and two thirds should be based on other assignments and demonstrations of learning, such as labs, projects and recitation,” White said, adding that those measures could include work that was done at home.

White said BCPS would also like teachers as different schools to coordinate more closely their policies for allowing students to re-do tests or assignments on which they got bad marks. So, for example, all fifth grade teachers at West Towson Elementary would have the same policy, where as their counterparts at a different school might have a different policy.

However, system-wide tests are not eligible for do-overs, said Christina Byers, senior executive director of curriculum operations for BCPS. And a blanket policy about other do-overs would not make sense, she said.

“Teachers may have assignments where most students do not do well, and they can say, ‘Well, that’s about my teaching, so I need to re-teach and then re-assess this portion,'” Byers said. “It would be difficult in a system as large as ours to say what can and can’t be re-done systemwide.”

The addendum to the policy also highlights the rule that a score on a single test or assignment cannot reduce a student’s overall grade by more than one letter grade. For example, a student who has an A in a class and then fails a test can’t then receive an overall class grade lower than a B.

Some parents have expressed frustration that the new policy seemed to have not been well thought-out or well executed, but White said it was not a rushed process.

“This policy was adopted in 2015 and we used the 2015-2016 school year for professional development among principals, assistant principals, STAT teachers and department chairs. It wasn’t a last-minute implementation,” White said.

“I think with any shift in practices, there’s going to be an implementation gap with a need for clarifying people’s understanding,” White said. “We are a large school system and we need to make sure we provide an avenue to ask questions and to continue to provide support to our educators.”