At IHS, teachers generally are not allowed to give extra credit—work that is done in excess of usual classwork and is not required for the normal grade. Although this was permitted in past years, beginning in the 2022-2023 school year, extra credit is no longer an option for teachers and students.
The Tattler spoke to Mr. Hovey, who leads the grading team at IHS, about this issue. He stressed that the school doesn’t issue policies per se, rather they give recommendations or instructions as only the Board of Education (BoE) is allowed to issue policies. According to Mr. Hovey, the reason for this change is that the team believes that grading should solely be about measuring the understanding of the learning targets. The argument they propose is that if an assignment is important enough to affect the grade, then it should be part of the usual grade book, and if it is extra work unrelated to the learning target, it should not affect the grade. Mr. Hovey also suggested to teachers that they give both summative assessments, which measure students’ understanding at the end of a unit, and formative assessments, which measure understanding during a unit, to better evaluate students’ learning.
There have been a few other grading changes beyond extra credit in recent years. One notable one almost every student is familiar with is that the lowest grade a submitted assignment can receive is a 55, with the lowest grade an unsubmitted assignment can get being a 45. This is a change from the 2021-2022 school year, in which the lowest grade for any assignment, regardless of submission status, was 55. Mr. Hovey explained that number grades were simply a consequence of an electronic grade book, and not a useful system of measuring student success. The grading team is considering options for potentially addressing that, although Mr. Hovey could not go into detail on that. He explained that it makes little sense to have 0 be the minimum grade since that would mean there are more ways to fail than to succeed. Since a passing grade in New York State is 65, that would mean there are 36 number grades that pass and 64 number grades that fail. The minimum grade ensures that that is not the case. The change from 55 being the lowest grade to 45 being the lowest grade for unsubmitted assignments resulted from feedback from teachers, who believed that students should be encouraged to at least submit assignments.
The IHS grading team made these decisions to support more equitable grading practices and Mr. Hovey recommended the books “Grading for Equity” by Joe Feldman and “On Your Mark” by Thomas R. Guskey, which motivated the grading team’s recommendations to the school. Mr. Hovey has copies of these books in his office for people to read should they choose to. IHS’s grading system and recommendations will likely evolve over the coming years and the full effects of these changes have yet to be seen.