Extend grading leniency

SHOW ACADEMIC LENIENCY

Grading policies must be forgiving next year after this year’s loss of learning

OMAR KAYALI & SAEHEE PEREZ REPORTERS

The past school year has been a historic one, and there is no doubt that students, along with everyone else, have faced many challenges. With school switching to a virtual setting, FCPS’s grading policies were modified in order to ease the downward drop of students’ performances.

As we approach the end of the school year, it’s simply unrealistic to expect these problems to disappear next fall and to go back to the previous grading policies. It’s imperative that academic leniency continues to be shown in the 2021-22 school year.

As of Jan. 26, no assignment can be scored under 50%, the minimum assignments teachers need to assign per quarter dropped from nine to six, late work can’t be penalized more than 10% and no assignment or assessment can be weighted as more than 20% of the overall grade.

On April 5, the county announced that NM (No Mark) will be used instead of an F grade, final exams may only benefit students and students can select two courses to show a mark of P (Pass) instead of a letter grade.

This level of academic leniency has helped improve students’ wellbeing and mitigated some of the challenges they have faced throughout the pandemic.

“[The new policies] really helped me prioritize myself,” sophomore Tabasum Chowdhury said. “It took me a pandemic to understand that, ‘Hey, maybe I should survive before I worry about college,’ because if I don’t survive this year, how am I going to be worrying about four years later?”

That being said, there is no way for teen mental health issues to be magically resolved by the start of the next school year.

With shortened class periods and asynchronous Mondays, valuable instructional time has been lost, creating deficits in students’ knowledge that will make some courses especially difficult next year.

“It’s almost like all bets are off in terms of what you can expect they will have mastered and retained [going into] the following year,” English teacher Anna Caponetti said.

Some students have struggled more than others in the virtual setting, and the stress of dealing with a pandemic has further intensified that struggle. No matter what, there will be obvious disparities between students due to the amount of information they retained this year.

“Next year poses slightly different but unique challenges,” Caponetti said. “Some students got a lot more out of this year than other students, often through no fault of their own.”

Teachers recognize that this school year has been taxing for the majority of students, and they have shown students leniency so long as they are understanding the necessary information.

“I think most teachers realize that we have to be extra forgiving this year because there’s all kinds of struggles,” math teacher Steven Walker said.

This level of empathy and understanding from teachers is necessary for students to benefit from school, both this year and next. Minimizing students’ stress about their grades allows them to learn and understand material better.

“Ultimately, the goal is that you learn as much as you can this year, and if that means inflating your grade a little bit, that’s fine with me,” Walker said.

For students planning to pursue a post-secondary degree, learning is the most important aspect of high school. Not giving students room to breathe during a difficult year puts immense stress and pressure on them, which negatively impacts their academics. With the current grading policies, students are able to prioritize learning over grades. “Right now, I could go back to assignments that I’ve been missing for two months and do them not because I have to, but because I want to understand,” Chowdhury said. If late work policies were to return to normal, students would be deprived of the opportunity to focus on gathering and retaining information over getting a good grade. In a normal year, it’s not uncommon to see students wanting high GPAs to the point of it becoming an unhealthy obsession.

“If [students are] this obsessed and worried, there needs to be reform [to the education system], and this new grading policy is the first step so everyone has an equal opportunity and feels less stressed,” Chowdhury said.

Changing the grading policies was one of the most responsible decisions FCPS has made for students’ mental health. If nothing else, this year has offered students a chance to reflect on their former attitudes about grades.

“If I’m crying my eyes out, then doing my work, was that A or B really worth it? Did I really learn anything?” Chowdhury said.

FCPS has already announced a plan to return to full in-person instruction for next school year. The changes they made during this school year helped to ease both the academic and mental health burdens on students, but returning to normal immediately will cause grades to fall and anxiety to spike.

The best way for students to return to school without major negative impacts would be to continue showing academic leniency throughout the next school year.