Standards Based Grading System
Beginning this year, Lovinggood Middle School is adopting standards-based grading. This change will provide students and parents with grades that reflect what the students know and are able to do. For example, in Life Science the report card will show the percentage of mastery of a standard such as “identifies the major parts of a cell” instead of a task description such as “unit test”. Seeing this kind of grade should make it clear to parents that their child needs to study the parts of a cell to improve, not everything taught about cells in the entire unit.
Old FACS Categories:
|
Tests |
30% |
|
Homework |
15% |
|
Labs |
35% |
|
Quiz |
20% |
New FACS Standards:
|
FACS8-FCA1Culinary Arts + FACS8-FNW1 Food, Nutrition & Wellness |
20% |
|
FACS8-ECE1 Early Childhood Education |
20% |
|
FACS8-CF1, 2 Consumer and Finances |
20% |
|
FACS8-ID1 + FACS-FD1 Interior & Fashion Design |
25% |
|
FACS8-CA1Careers & FACS8-FCGL1 Family, Community & Leadership |
10% |
|
Literacy in the content area |
5% |
An important element in improving our children's learning is being clear about what students are expected to learn. This change in grade reporting at Lovinggood will better inform parents of their student's progress in mastering each of the standards taught in the subject area.
Some changes you will see as we transition into standards-based grading.
· Student behaviors such as turning in work on time or participating in class will not be included in academic grades but will be reported in a separate category on the report card called NON-GRADED.
· Students who do not reach mastery on final assessments will be allowed one opportunity to retake such tests (except benchmarks). They will take the retest before or after school once they have completed an assigned reinforcement task. On Tuesdays (8:00 – 8:45am) and Thursdays (4:30-5:15pm) students can attend academic detention. Teachers may offer additional office hours.
· Assessment must be redone within 5 days of grade being posted in Pinnacle.
· Classwork and homework given during a unit must be completed before the unit assessment.
· Not all classwork and/or homework will be recorded, especially at the beginning of a lesson.
