2024-2025 Grading Policy and Course Marks
““We can use grading to help students become the leaders of their own learning and lift the veil on how to succeed.””
Our Grading System
Our grading system communicates your child’s overall grade level mastery at a given moment in time. Ongoing feedback from your child’s teacher relays their specific progress towards this mastery across the curriculum. Our course marks correspond to the following mastery levels.
4= Excels in Grade Level Standards
3= Proficient Grade Level Standards
2= Below Grade Level Standards
1= Well Below Grade Level Standards
Our intention
We intentionally separate grading and feedback as much as possible for our students, knowing that the research says that the impact of feedback is significantly reduced when connected to alphanumeric grading. Knowing how important feedback is to the learning process we want to ensure that it is as impactful as possible to student learning. In keeping with this belief you will not see the course marks in the remainder of this communication and instead will see the following language: below, approaching, meeting and excelling in grade level standards.
Our Vision
In keeping with this vision we will be providing only glow and grow comments for Marking Period 1. You will see course marks in Marking Periods 2 and 3. This is to allow teachers time to know students deeply and to afford students adequate time to demonstrate their full abilities.
Notes
Please note: grading in elementary school does not impact student access to future opportunities. Only final June course marks are shared with middle schools. Middle schools in our district do not look at grades, our district uses a lottery system for admissions. Of the limited choices families have outside of our district, there is a very small number that will be using screens, most of which are based on audition or sibling priority. We have reached out to the few schools using grade screening to clarify our grading system so they are able to correctly interpret our course marks. Private schools either contact schools directly to understand their grading policies or more commonly use independent assessments to evaluate if a student would be a good fit for their community.