By Katelynn Luu
Several Fountain Valley High School teachers have reformed their grading policies to favor assessments as opposed to regular homework grades.
For example, Honors Biology and Physiology teacher Lehua Werdel reformed her grading policy for the second semester of the 2023-2024 school year. Progress checks, unit tests and the occasional project or assignment now determine students’ grades.
Fellow Honors Biology teachers Deborah Brown and Erika Williams have also established similar grading policies in their classes.
This marks a shift from their previous grading policies where regular homework assignments, such as the digital notebooks containing classwork and homework, contributed points to students’ grades.
Baron Banner interviewed Werdel to see why teachers may be adopting such grading policy changes.
The new grading system
Digital notebooks were previously worth points in Werdel’s science classes, but she decided to change that this semester to incentivize students to be present in the classroom and do the work to learn, not just for points.
“I found that the notebooks were simply a method for students to pad their grade with points that they didn’t necessarily earn. They didn’t have to learn anything to get the notebook correct,” Werdel said. “They could plagiarize work and get an easy 10-point grade, but it wasn’t translating into high performance on tests.”
Werdel has used progress checks to take the place of the points that digital notebooks previously contributed to students’ grades. Progress checks are small assessments that are given once or twice a week in her classes, although they are not necessarily announced. They consist of questions from the classwork and homework on the digital notebooks.
Despite digital notebooks not earning any points for students, Werdel still requires students to submit them.
“If there’s any question as to why they’re doing a certain way in the class, I can look at their work ethic during the unit,” Werdel said.
To further engage students learning in her classroom, Werdel increased her use of daily warm-ups in class. They are self-quiz questions based on the prior day’s learning and a way for students to identify how much of the content they are comprehending and how much of the content they need to study more.”
Werdel also began to offer test corrections at lunchtime the week after the test grade was released. Students can earn back 25% of the points they missed on the unit test by writing the correct answers to the questions they missed on the test.
The reasons behind the change
Werdel took inspiration from fellow Honors Biology teacher Deborah Brown who tried a similar grading policy last year and the book Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms by Joe Feldman.
Her three rationales behind the new grading policy are to improve study skills, college readiness and equity.
Werdel hopes that the higher emphasis on assessments will lead students to learn in class and study in order to understand the content and perform well on assessments rather than completing assignments mindlessly.
“College classes do not give daily graded homework assignments,” Werdel said. “I don’t want kids to get used to that padding … and then be shocked by the fact that they can’t perform on an assessment because they’ve never learned how to properly prepare themselves to show knowledge on an assessment.”
In regards to equity, Werdel recognizes that students may have different responsibilities or circumstances at home that make it difficult for them to complete homework notebooks.
“If a student doesn’t have to do homework to understand the material, then moving away from giving points on homework moves away from punishing those kids that might not have access to consistent Wi-Fi, that might not have access to a room where they can sit quietly to do their homework, that might have further responsibilities outside of school where their homework takes a lower priority,” Werdel said.
Results
Werdel’s new approach to grading and teaching in her classroom has led to positive results in her Honors Biology classes, where test averages and student performance have improved
“I think there’s increased engagement,” Werdel said. “I find that [students] are more locked in during the class because they’re understanding the importance of paying attention and taking notes.”
She notes that her physiology classes, primarily composed of juniors and seniors as opposed to the mainly freshman Honors Biology class, have not achieved a similar improvement.
“The number of students doing better has gone up. So the kids who have bought into it are doing better,” Werdel said. “The kids who have given up are doing worse.”
Student thoughts
Students in Werdel’s class have varied opinions on the new grading policy.
One student commented on how notebooks no longer contributing points to the grade book was demotivating.
“I think the grading policy is a lot harder because it’s just hard for me to take tests and stuff. It’s also not very motivating because the notebooks aren’t worth anything,” junior Leyna Nguyen said. “So it’s hard to do every part of the notebook because I have so much always going on.”
Another student appreciated how the policy put the responsibility in the students’ hands rather than being held accountable by points.
“Yeah, I do [like it],” freshman Isabella Wong said. “It gives us the free will and our own responsibility to do [the notebooks] on our own, which helps our time management. Notebooks are like our study guide [to the test], so doing them helps.”
