Change is hard. We have all felt some sort of hard change sometime in our lives. In the next few school years, a big change is coming. HHS Principal, Mr. David Williams has brought up the idea of standards based grading to our school. This leaves many students, parents and teachers wondering what the grade book will look like next year. 

Words to know: 

• Evidence Based Instruction – Researched based instructional strategies that have a positive impact on student learning.
• Standards Based Grading –   Clarifying exactly what students need to learn, know and be able to do. We measure it as accurately as possible, which is done on a 4 point scale. Instead of grading, teachers will gather evidence of what students have learned which makes the gradebook more accurate.

Here is what Mr. Williams has planned for the next few years worth of changes:

• When: Full change (including a new report card), likely not until the 2024-2025 school year at the earliest, possibly even 2025-2026 school year. 
• Why: Our current grading system is not accurate to show what the students know and how the teachers are teaching 
• How: the change began with professional development for the teachers, it started in the HS on evidence based instruction and standards based grading. Full implementation of this new grading and teaching system will not be in effect until the teachers are comfortable enough with the new practices. 

With every change comes positives and negatives. According to Mr. Williams, some positives of the new grading system are; it will be much more accurate, it opens the door to more student agency, more teacher autonomy, and academic freedom for teachers. The only negative is it’s a whole new way of teaching for teachers, even some of the veteran teachers will feel like brand new teachers next year.

A few teachers have begun implementing this change in their classes. Mrs. Hill, Social Studies teacher, uses her learning targets to grade her students. She has them fill out an ‘exit ticket’ that has to do with that day’s learning target and based on how well they answered the question(s) they are given a 4 to 0, 4 being advanced and 0 being absent/no attempt. 

“I receive better quality work, they want to be able to accomplish the proficient level, and not have to continue with that learning target and not have to do extra work over the same concept,” Mrs. Hill said. 

Mrs. Hill’s government classes are seeing this change first hand. At the end of the unit, they are given a proficiency scale and their graded learning targets back. She has them highlight on the scale where their learning target placed. If they show “proficient” (3 or 4), they do not have to answer that question on the test. 

“I think it’s better because I do not have to take the whole entire test and if I make silly mistakes, I have a chance to fix those mistakes,” Miranda Guss, Honors Government Student said. 

My math teacher, Mrs. Dillender used this idea on our last test. We took three quizzes throughout our chapter, before our test we were given a sheet with all of the skills we should have been able to answer, we showed we were proficient on that skill if we got it right or not on the quiz. On the skills sheet, we went through our quizzes and highlighted the skill we were proficient in. On our test, the skills we were not proficient on were highlighted and we only had to answer those questions. 

“I really liked how Mrs. Dillender did our test, It was nice to be able to focus on only what I needed help with, and not have to redo everything since I proved I knew how to do it, “ DeAnna Haynes, Math 160 student, said. 

Parents are looking forward to the change as well. Many see it as an opportunity for their students to be able to rise above where they are now. 

“Although my child won’t be here to see the full effect of the change, I am excited for the students who will all be given the opportunity to benefit from the new grading system,” one parent said.