For juniors and seniors at NASH, the summative/formative grading system was all they ever knew about high school grading. In its place now, however, is a system in which all types of assignments are weighted equally.
In other words, grading has returned to a total points system, the way it was before Covid.
“I appreciate the current grading system and believe that it is the most effective approach to assess student performance,” Social Studies teacher Jamey Pirring said. “It certainly has some flaws, but all grading systems will have flaws.”
Summative/formative grading divides assessment into two types that are not necessarily weighted equally. In a total points grading system, a point is a point, whether it is earned on a test, an essay, or a homework exercise.
Pirring’s opinion about the ineffectiveness of the old system stemmed from the pressure on students to try harder on certain assignments over others.
“I believe the previous grading system based too much emphasis on how students performed on summative assessments,” he said. “I was not fond of the fact that once a student received a perfect score on a formative assessment, any subsequent perfect scores did not contribute to improving their overall grade. That was frustrating for both the students and most teachers.”
As for the new system’s impact on students’ grades, Pirring thinks discernible differences are bound to occur
“I do believe there will be noticeable changes in students’ performance,” he said. “However, I do not believe that they will be drastically different. I hypothesize grades will increase but only by a small percentage.”
NASH English teacher Darrah Rhinehart holds a similar view..
“I prefer [the traditional grading system] to the summative/formative system because it is more straightforward. Everything is weighted equally,” she said.
Rhinehart believes that the split of the summative/formative is not a reliable way to show student potential.
“The 80/20 system for AP classes dramatically weighted assessments, and students who were good test takers benefited,” she said. “Using the total points system is a more balanced approach.”
On the other side of the argument is the view held by NASH Math teacher John Fellers, who saw the summative/formative system as a much more structured and fair method to assess student grades.
“I preferred the previous grading system using the two categories,” Feller said. “The new total points grading method will result in each nine-week grading period being weighted differently. With this, students will have to expect the unexpected. Nine-week grading periods percentages are no longer averaged to get semester grades, and semester grades are no longer averaged to get final grades.”
Fellers is prepared to adapt the total points system, but he sees a missed opportunity.
“Research shows this method to be predictable and fair,” he said. “This method is used for college courses, so students should learn to work with it at the K-12 level. Also, it is used in other schools locally and nationally.”
Either way, the reality is that summative/formative is gone, at for now, at NA, as we return to total points.
