FCHS Grading & Reporting / Report Cards
Dear Jaguar Families,
We are excited to have made it to the end of the first quarter of the 2020-2021 school year! Thank you and families for embracing our virtual start. We wouldn’t want to be on this journey with any other community, and we are so thankful for your support.
As the first quarter comes to an end, we wanted to reach out to share some information about our school’s grading policies for this school year. As you are aware, this school year has been and will continue to be different than ever before. A rolling gradebook allows for progress towards a final mark that captures the total picture of student grades, regardless of length of quarter or number of assignments in each quarter. Although we never imagined the need to make this change because of a global pandemic, this decision aligns with the learning in which we have already been engaged. In addition, many other FCPS middle and high schools have also chosen to operate on a rolling gradebook for this school year.
We realize that the delayed start to the school year and the combination of both synchronous and asynchronous learning requires us to be even more responsive to the needs of our students and families. A gradebook that provides maximum flexibility and ensures equitable grading practices to meet the academic and social-emotional needs of all FCHS students is now more important to us than ever.
With a rolling gradebook, grades for individual assignments from each quarter carry over and build upon the previous quarter. Therefore, quarter grades are a snapshot of a student’s current progress in the course and demonstrate performance to that date, not just for that quarter. Final grades are determined from all assignments and assessments throughout the year, regardless of the quarter the work was completed.
A rolling gradebook is an approved gradebook type per Secondary Grading & Reporting Policy and numerous FCPS schools, teams, and teachers, including some of our own teams at FCHS already utilize a rolling gradebook and have for several years.
Benefits associated with using a rolling gradebook include:
- Allows time for demonstrating mastery of content and opportunities for remediation, completing make-up work & reassessments
- Helps students maintain positive mental health when setbacks occur
- Reports long-term progress to students as the year progresses, not just short-term achievement in each quarter
- Provides a more accurate reflection of the student grade at any given point in time
- Reduces number of tests or large projects due at the same time over multiple classes (usually at end of quarter)
- Negates imbalance of quantity of assessments within each quarter and timing challenges at certain times of year
- Encourages content units to end naturally and not get rushed due to quarter breaks
The report card will be visible in your SIS ParentVUE account after November 7th. For those that did not opt-in to paperless, we will be mailing home the report card the week of November 16th.
To learn more details about a rolling gradebook to include how it will look in SIS Student/ParentVUE, please take time to review the following video. Teachers will communicate grading design and policies via the course syllabus. We encourage families who have more questions about the rolling gradebook to reach out to us.
Sincerely,
Ben Nowak
Principal
#WeAreFC
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