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School District Puts New Grading Guidelines in Place For Fall

90/10 Plan aims to provide consistency for academic standards.

Beginning in August, the will implement a new system-wide grading system it piloted last year with smaller groups of students. The goal of the new guidelines is to provide consistency in grading across the school district.

In the 90/10 plan, students’ grades on their report cards will be determined at 90 percent by graded assessments of material and at 10 percent by work habits in areas such as homework and study skills. According to the pupil evaluation policy in the student handbook, the 90/10 plan will “cause grades to have a more common meaning.”

“Some teachers focused heavily on homework and let that be the grade, even though [students] had not mastered the content or understood the material,” said Debra McNair, director of teaching and learning for the school district.

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“The 90/10 [plan] is our opportunity to communicate with students and parents that their grade is based on the achievement of their academic goals,” she said.

d introduced the new grading process to the school district in February, 2010. The 90/10 plan was then tested throughout the 2010-11 school year with sample teams of students at , and .

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“We do not want 50 percent of a child’s grade to be based on collecting notebook papers and keeping a folder all year long. That’s not going to demonstrate the child’s mastery of those standards,” Holland said at the June 13 meeting of the school board.

“We have to create some continuity in the parameters of grading students, based on 90 percent of mastery of content and 10 percent non-mastery, study skills and habits,” he said.

Teachers throughout the school district will be instructed on the new guidelines during staff-training days in August.

More information on the 90/10 plan is available on the school-district website.

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