Edsel Ford High School

Grading Policy

Grading Policy 24-25

Grading Philosophy

All Dearborn Public Schools grading and reporting will support the learning process and encourage student success. Grades measure a student’s mastery of the course content expectations.

Purposes for Grading Students’ Work

Primary Purpose

  • Communicate achievement to students, parents, and others

 Secondary Purposes

  • Provide information that students can use for self-evaluation and growth
  • Encourage student growth and progress in learning
  • Identify students for available educational opportunities (e.g. AP courses)
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of curricular, instructional, assessment practices and programs

Assessment Categories

Summative assessments demonstrate the student’s knowledge of a subject after instruction. Summative assessments include tests, projects, products, and demonstrations.
 
Formative assessments demonstrate the student’s progress in mastering subject content during the course of instruction. Formative assessments include homework, participation, daily quizzes, and inquiry activities.

These guidelines emphasize summative assessments. The final grade is determined by at least 80% summative and at most 20% formative.

Summative Assessment Retakes

Except for AP classes and honors classes beginning with the second semester of ninth grade, teachers will make summative assessment retakes available to students based on the following principles and process:
  • Only one retake per summative assessment is permitted.
  • The higher score is the score of record.
  • Students must follow the retake process established in the respective school, but each process should include the following:
    1. A written request by the student, including an explanation for requesting the retake
    2. The student’s demonstration of effort to attain mastery learning, which might include test corrections, caught-up homework
    3. The teacher’s approval for retake following 1 and 2 above
    4. The student’s arranging with the teacher for retake
    5. Completion of the retake within a reasonable time frame, e.g. within 1.5 weeks of the original summative assessment
  • Retakes may be in a different format from the original summative assessment.
  • End-of-semester exams cannot be retaken.

 Zeros and Late Work

  • Zeros are allowed on formative assessments. Each teacher will decide how to handle late work and partial credit.
  • Zeros are not allowed on summative assessments. The student is responsible for arranging with the teacher to take any missed summative assessments.
Cheating, however, is a disciplinary issue which may result in a zero, whether the work involved is a formative or a summative assessment.
 
 
(*From GIPS Grading and Reporting Practices, 2006)

The mission of Edsel Ford High School is to educate all students to high academic standards within a safe engaging environment and ensure they are prepared to become lifelong learners and productive citizens in the 21st century.

Therefore, all Edsel Staff will adhere to the same grading practices. All staff will follow the standard based grading scale in order for our students to focus on growth. ***PLEASE NOTE***This is a work in progress and therefore may need to be adjusted throughout the school year. We will communicate with students and parents if that occurs. 

To achieve this mission, grading and feedback at EFHS will honor the following beliefs and practices:

  • Grading practices will foster a growth mindset and student self-efficacy
  • Grades will accurately indicate academic progress on skills/standards at a given moment in time
  • All students will have multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning over time
  • Timely, descriptive, and actionable feedback will be clearly communicated to all stakeholders

To this end, all EFHS staff will adhere to the following:

  • Students will be well-informed (i.e. feedback, knowing the standard, self-assessing their learning, etc.) prior to receiving a summative grade
  • All scored assessments and assignments will represent student performance on one or more skills/standards/learning targets
  • Communication will occur with students about their individual progress, including weekly MiStar scores and/or comments
  • Trends or modes, rather than averages, will be used to determine final grades OR averages will be used to determine final grades while providing frequent opportunities for reassessment
    • Note: AP and collegiate-level courses may not use trending or reassessments
  • Overall letter grades will be displayed in MiStar
  • All staff will report students’ levels of achievement via a common scale:
4 Mastery Student demonstrates a deep understanding of knowledge/skills as applied to new/unfamiliar situations.
3 Proficient Student consistently understands and accurately applies knowledge/skills in familiar situations.
2 ApproachingProficiency  With support, student demonstrates an emerging level of understanding and ability to apply knowledge/skills.
1 DevelopingProficiency  With support, student attempts to demonstrate a basic understanding and ability to apply knowledge/skills.
0 NotProficient Student has not submitted the requisite amount of evidence to justify a level. Either whole pieces of evidence are missing or the submitted evidence is incomplete or wholly inaccurate.

As teachers enter assessment results into our MiStar Gradebook, 0-4 scores will be converted and used to determine an overall letter grade for the class on a traditional, 12 letter-grade range of A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D- E

Questions about grading at Edsel Ford HS can be directed to Ms. Dana Addis (addisd@dearbornschools.org) or Ms. Gretchen Bajorek (bajoreg@dearbornschools.org).