While the impacts that Covid has had on schools are beginning to slowly fade away, one that remains is the new grading system. Because there have not been final exams this year and last year, students have had an easier time with increased importance on homework, with the weight increasing from 10% in honors or 20% in regular, to 40% for all classes.
Due to final exams most likely making a return for the 2022-23 school year, the debate has sparked whether to keep the grading scales that have been used for the last few years or to go back to the system pre-covid.
The current grading system is better than the previous one for weighted classes. For honors and AP classes, the pre-covid system was 70% assessment, 10% homework, and 20% final exam. The problem with the old grading system is that homework is basically useless when it comes to the final grade in the class. There is too much-stressed importance on assessments.
A consequence of this is that it is difficult to raise a grade after a bad quiz with homework assignments and the student is forced to wait and study hard for the next test, which can cause stress because they know if they do bad again they dig themselves a deeper hole to climb out of. The system for non-honors classes did a better job of making homework more important towards the overall grade as the system was 60% assessments, 20% homework, and 20% final exam, but that is too much weight on homework. There should be a happy medium for them to give homework more importance while also not being too important, because assessments and final exams should still have the most impact on the final grade.
A good system to do this would be 55% assessment, 25% homework, and 20% final exam for normal classes and 60% assessment, 20% homework, and 20% final exam for honors and AP classes.
Due to final exams not being given since 2019, students have become accustomed to the new grading system. Some students in the school have never even experienced the old system. Changing the system back would cause the majority of students to have extra stress, especially current sophomores who need to adjust as juniors in an already important year for them in their high school career.