Parents, Students, and Other Stakeholders,

Below you will find an explanation of my grading system and policies. If you have any questions
regarding it, please contact me. You may also visit my website for a more in-depth look at my
system and policies and the research that supports it:
http://msmollygorczyca.weebly.com/purposes-and-principles-of-effective-grading.html
Sincerely,
Ms. Molly Gorczyca
XXXX School Address
(XXX)XXX-XXXX
molly.gorczyca@arbor.edu
http://msmollygorczyca.weebly.com/

I will be dividing grades into product, process, and progress.

*Product: composed of most recent summative assessments, ex: tests, projects,
presentations, etc., reported as standards-based grading
*Process: composed of participation, positive work ethic, positive
behavior/cooperation, practice work completion, practice work quality, and practice
work timeliness in the process grade, ex: homework completion, number of late
assignments, number of times student participated in class discussion
Progress: composed of comparison data between pre and post-assessments, comparing
beginning student work and ending student work, this information is available to you
upon request, or I may occasionally include it in the comments section of progress
reports or report cards, no formal scale will be used for the progress grade
Students will occasionally be involved in self-assessment or tracking their progress, and I
will take student self-given grades/assessment into consideration when grading myself.

*Grades that will appear on progress reports and report cards.

Please note that fair is not always equal (Wormeli, 2006). Grading can be subjective;
grades are a means of communicating how the teacher perceives the students levels of
proficiency; they do not define a student. Calculating grades is not the most accurate
representation of student learning and mastery of standards. All students are different,
and so we differentiate our instruction; so, it only makes sense to recognize these
differences in assessments as well. There is more information on this idea in the purposes
and principles of effective grading portion of my website if you would like more reasoning
or research on the idea.

Redos and retakes: Not all students are created the same or learn how I expect them to,
like little machines, all the same time. Thus, I will allow students to redo assignments under
these conditions:
o Students may retake/redo assignments up to 2 weeks before the end of the
semester, not including new content learned in the last two weeks of the
semester. So, if it is new content learned in the last two weeks of the semester
that you want to do, please come talk to me and ask for my permission first. This
part of the policy is due to time constraints on my end of the grading and
scoring. If you are unsure if an assignment can be redone at a certain time,
please ask me.
o Write 3 paragraphs indicating:
Why you felt it necessary to redo/retake the assignment
What differs between the two assignments
What you learned from this process.
o Turn in both the old assignment/assessment and the new
assignment/assessment.
o After 2/3 redos on the same assignment/assessment we will pause the process
and have a conference about why you are struggling, and we will determine
what steps need to be taken next. Most often, in this case, we will pause the
process for a while and come back to it at a later time. If the frequency is
occurring so much in a way that the policy is being abused, just to earn 100,
and the student has already shown mastery, I have the right to not allow any
more redos/retakes for this assessment from this particular student.
o The students previous grade/score will be replaced with the new grade/score.
o The student may redo/retake only a portion of the assessment or assignment
only if they first talked to me about it, since my assessments are designed so
each item corresponds with a specific learning target.
(Wormeli, 2011)

Incompletes: The consequence for missing work will be to complete the work. You will
earn an I in the gradebook for that assignment, and you are expected to do the work to
change the I to a score. If 50% or more of your product grade is composed of I you will
receive an I overall for your product grade throughout the semester, and if 50% or more
of your product grade is still composed of Is at the end of the semester, you will receive
a failing grade in the course and/or subject area. See the redos/retakes policy above for
more details of how to do so. Note: Most redos/retakes are not permitted during the last 2
weeks of the semester, due to time restraints of the teacher.

If you have any incompletes for practice work, you will receive an I under practice work
completion under your process grade as well.

No Extra Credit: There will be no opportunities for extra credit. This is because I report
standards-based grading and extra credit inflates a grade in a way that does not accurately
represent the learning that has taken place on the given standards. I have designed items
on assessments in a certain way to demonstrate standard mastery. Extra credit does not
provide an accurate representation of student learning.

I will personally grade assessments and assignments to ensure confidentiality of your

grades. There will be times where we will peer-assess or give peer-feedback, however
feedback from peers is not the grade that will go into the grade book. Peer
evaluations/feedback will be solely for the students own self-reflective benefits.

Some formative product feedback (such as on homework) will be in the form of Marzanos
four-point scale. This four-point scale-score will not be integrated into the students
progress grade, as mentioned above. The score received is solely for the benefit of the
student and teacher, to know where student is at in working toward reaching the learning
target; it will not translate into the product grade. The student will also, as frequently as
possible, receive written feedback on formative assessments as well.
However, if the student is not proficient on the Marzano scale, but it still appears they
were giving their best effort, they will receive ++ under practice work quality; students
will not be penalized for trying and working toward learning goals. Quality is assessed to
prevent students from quickly writing somethings down for completion points. I include
this factor because I strongly value practice work, because it leads to success on
summative assessments and mastery of standards.

Below are the scales I will be using for product and process grades.

(Guskey, 2011, p. 54)

(Guskey, et al., 2011, p. 54; Marzano, 2006)