Grading has been a real struggle for me this year. I am not sure if it is the fact that I've been busy with grad school or the changes in our grading policy, but I have struggled to really stay on top of grading. Our new grading policy is really good in some ways and really bad in other ways. Every quarter, we are allowed to assess students 9 times for a minor assessment and 3 times for a major assessment. Minor assessments are items that cover one topic while major assessments cover multiple topics. We are also supposed to have progress towards mastery grades. These are assignments that students do but that have no effect on their overall grade. This progress towards mastery group has been one of the major downfalls to the grading process. My students do a lot of practice and this should go in as Progress Towards Mastery grades. However, students are not motivated to complete these assignments because they do not effect their grade. Also, i give my students a lot of informal feedback.
The upside to the grading policy is that it is truly based on their mastery of a topic. They will not be successful if they do not understand the content. I believe that this grading system really looks at student content knowledge versus their compliance to completing assignments. I think as students get more accustomed to this grading system, they will understand the importance of the Progress Towards Mastery section and will be more willing to complete those assignments.
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