In the ever-changing environment of CRLS, faculty and administration are always trying to find ways to improve the learning experience for students. For example, there has been a dramatic policy change regarding grading over the past year known as “Grading for Equity.” The author of the book on which this policy was based, Joe Feldman, described two central tenets of his idea in an interview with Education Week. He said that, “When we grade equitably, we offer students the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.” Feldman also emphasized homework as a learning experience. “With equitable grading, a student’s homework performance isn’t included in their grade … homework can serve a vital role in learning: practice.” Finally, Feldman also feels participation grading isn’t helpful for building a student’s skills and knowledge.
The Register Forum interviewed CRLS students and teachers about their thoughts on equitable grading. David Poulain ’26 told the Register Forum, “Sometimes I participate too much … No, I haven’t been penalized for not participating in class.” When Poulain said he participates “too much” it could have meant that other students didn’t feel as much motivation to speak up. To the question of whether students should be graded for participation, Poulain answered in the affirmative. This could say something about how people get motivated to participate. As Poulain feels, if people get graded on participation, then they are more motivated to do so.
On the subject of test retakes, Algebra 2 teacher Mr. Norbert Hootsmans told the Register Forum, “I require retakes. On one hand I’m trying to incentivize quality and we want students to have an incentive to keep on learning. We are incentivizing first time quality and continued learning.” Mr. Hootsmans additionally said that an infinite amount of retakes would, “take up a lot of time” but he clearly feels the Grading for Equity policy is ideal to help students learn from their mistakes. Mr. Hootsmans implements this in his retake policy as he adds half of the original grade onto that original grade if a test is retaken successfully.
CRLS math teacher Mr. Ross Benson told the Register Forum about his homework policy. “What I now do is I’ve started the standards based grading.” Additionally, he feels that, “the traditional grading system isn’t the best for actually measuring knowledge.” Mr. Benson here wants to measure general content knowledge and make sure his standards are met rather than focusing on each individual assignment. Furthermore, regarding retakes, Mr. Benson told the Register Forum,“I don’t do retakes … There should be retakes in the sense that grades should be about growth… There shouldn’t be any grade that is one and done.” Mr. Benson believes that students will grow by revisiting content knowledge over time. They don’t need individual tests but reminders of the knowledge. When asked about how these policies were working, he said they were working well.
In conclusion, the Grading for Equity policy is an interesting new prospect for CRLS. It works well for some educators but some teachers and students could do without it. If more teachers adopt it then it could become more popular. This is all to be seen.
