by Haley Whitt ’15

Participating in extra-curricular activities, babysitting, doing chores, working and making time for friends can be difficult, especially when homework is thrown into the mix. When students work hard to keep up with all of their responsibilities, it becomes stressful to log into their Edline account and find that there are no grades entered for the math homework that they turned in, or for the English essay that was submitted over a week ago.

It is possible that teachers are equally as stressed as the students, and are trying as hard as they can to keep each student’s grades updated, but hard working students who check their Edline accounts frequently expect it to be updated within a reasonable timeframe. It is the students’ responsibility to habitually check their grades. It is the teachers’ job to have them updated.

Many students at Sherwood work hard, accept rigor and excel to be the best that they can be. Therefore, they deserve to have a reliable resource to access information about their grades. A mandatory grading policy needs to be established to make Edline more structured, organized and up to date. This grading policy will contain specific, yet reasonable, deadlines for grading different subjects and assignments. Assignments that are collected for completion, such as math homework, should be updated into Edline within 48 hours. A paragraph assignment for an English class should be posted in Edline within 72 hours, and an essay should be graded within one week.

Quizzes should be graded within two days so that the student has plenty of time to prepare for an upcoming test or to retake the quiz, if possible. Tests need to be graded as quickly as possible in order for students to be able to see how the grade on the test has affected their overall grade in the class. With a policy like this, students can see what they need to work on or if they need to get extra help before a test. Unless there is transparency with the grades teachers give, students won’t know how they are doing in the class. This can be an even bigger problem for seniors, whose grades are what stand between them and college acceptance. They need to be invested in every detail of their grade and possible mistakes; so that if there is a problem, it can be fixed as soon as possible.

What Edline needs is a boost. Why not go ahead and create a policy for the teachers and administrators? Students would acquire a better understanding of how certain assignments are affecting their grade, and how they could be proactive about it.

*Whitt is currently enrolled in Journalism.