by Maya Dorsam ‘27

According to MCPS policy, teachers are required to return graded work to students within 10 school days. Those teachers who violate the policy are negatively impacting their students, and the school administration has a responsibility to ensure that all teachers are doing their job to foster student growth. Prioritizing grading students’ work in a more timely manner must become the standard.
For students, approaching interims or the end of the marking period means making countless calculations on our own, figuring out how well we think we did on that last test, and learning to focus on certain classes over others. It is a stressful time with a lot of academic and emotional strain.

A senior at the school shared their experience; “Teachers grading on time is a huge concern for me, especially when my grade is on the verge of an A and B. I am constantly checking to see if they grade something and put it in the gradebook, so I know what my grade will be. My math teacher, for example, will wait until the very last minute to start grading tests, and it really bothers me how I could be so close to an A but not know what my grade is until it’s too late to try and do anything about it.”
Students have a willingness and desire to succeed, and it is popularly demonstrated through the use of grade calculators, which become ever more useful and resourceful during stressful school weeks. Spending important time that could be used to study or to complete assignments to instead attempt to do a teacher’s job is a waste.

A large number of students have grown familiar with Grade Melon, a website that allows students to enter their student ID and view their grades. Not only that, students can enter imaginary assignments and scores to see how it will impact their overall class and semester grades. The county notably just blocked the website on school-owned chromebooks.

“A lot of teachers take weeks to grade multiple assignments, which is why Grade Melon is helpful for checking how more than one test or essay will change your grade,” voiced a junior.
Synergy, the county-wide gradebook, just recently added back a feature allowing students to calculate grades after removing it. However, it’s only useful if assignments with point totals are uploaded by teachers prior to being graded, giving students the opportunity to use a slider to predict the possible grade outcomes. However, teachers doing this is extremely rare. Some people argue that such calculators welcome students to slack off once they realize their grade is safe. But for many students, it fosters important life skills.

Emphasizing trying hard on every assignment of every class is awfully unrealistic when students are forced to juggle seven. The new grading policy has already made it harder on many students. While some could argue that it is in their best interest, teachers should not be the ones making it harder by failing to abide by county rules.

An endless number of students are fed up. At one point this year, one of myteachers was over a month and 100-plus all-task points behind on grading. To put that into perspective, all-task points make up 90 percent of students’ grades for those unfamiliar with the grading policy. I had no grasp of my standing in the AP course.

The philosophy that the purpose of grades is to evaluate a student’s understanding of content or skills and learn from mistakes loses its value when we students do not receive feedback at or near the time that we are learning that material. It is not rare to receive tests weeks after we have been taught a topic, making it significantly harder to retake or re-learn such objectives. Not only that, but when we do not receive progress checks, how are we expected to perform well on unit exams? Student growth is stunted by teachers’ tardy grading.

Some teachers point out that they have to grade a lot and that the assignments are lengthy. The simple solution would be to give reasonable amounts of work. It should not hurt us to complete assignments, yet it often does when it takes weeks to see our accurate grades. The frustration with grading is not one-sided, and something needs to be done if teachers want to demonstrate care for the well-being of their students.

“Waiting a long time for grades adds unnecessary stress, especially when an assignment could make or break a grade. Students are constantly left guessing about their performance,” said another junior. “Quicker feedback would ease stress and help students feel more in control of their academic progress.”