by Cara Farr ‘27

After multiple changes to the grading policy over the past few years, MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor is looking to revise grading for the upcoming school year as a “Return to Rigor” that will “restore clarity and establish high expectations for students,” according to a slide presentation at the April 10 meeting of the Board of Education. The district has been looking to make changes to the grading policy after the 2020 virtual school year, where due dates, deadlines, and grades were all relaxed.
The most significant change is that MCPS is planning to bring back semester exams, which the county stopped using in 2017, moving to quarterly progress checks. By the end of this month, Taylor has called for MCPS to determine 2nd and 4th marking period summative requirements in which curriculum teams finalize plans for English, math, science, and social studies. It has not been announced if the exams will be graded as a percentage of the quarter grade or a separate category in the gradebook. When MCPS previously used final exams, they counted for 25 percent of students’ entire semester grade.

Another significant change is that, beginning with next school year’s incoming ninth graders, MCPS will change how semester grades are calculated. Rather than students receiving an upward trend in which an A in one quarter and a B in the other quarter results in an A for the semester, Taylor is looking at changes to how grades are calculated so that students are held more accountable for trying the duration of the entire semester. The slide show presented at the board meeting showed that the number of absences of students nearly doubled in quarter 2 and 4, compared to 1 and 2. In order to prevent this increase in absences, Taylor is looking to implement “summative assessment requirements” and new ways to calculate grades to make sure that students are still trying and still learning in the second and fourth quarters.

Another adjustment to the grading policy is the intention to better standardize the so-called 50%-rule, which MCPS first put in place in 2008. For a number of years, students received a 50-percent minimum grade even if they did not submit any work. This school year, MCPS put requirements in place that students must complete a minimum level of work, as determined by the teacher to receive at least half-credit. The new grading policy for next year will further clarify that students must show evidence of defined learning to receive a minimum 50%. Other changes for next year are to define a clear retake and deadline policy to be used uniformly, such as establishing a maximum deadline window such as 10 school days after the original due date.

In the 2023-2024 school year, the county added end of course exams for biology students to take in their second semester. This counted towards the grades of the 9th grade students taking the test, not the 10th grade students. They also added an end of course exam for students taking National, State, and Local (NSL) Government classes, where just like biology, it counted towards the grades of the students enrolled in the class. At the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, the ten-percent category was reinstated for English and Math classes.