Students go through enough stress, most have work or sports or both outside of school alongside all the homework. But what if you were rarely rewarded for all the effort you put into the homework? Here at Leyden, we have a 70/30 grading system where tests are 70 percent of your grade and everything else is 30%. Here at Leyden, they issued a new grading policy (70/30). This new system was implemented to improve grades but in fact, this has not helped; it causes tests to hugely impact grades, causes other work besides tests to lose value, and causes students to become stressed out for tests

First off, with this policy, tests gravely impact grades. I had this unit for AP Gov about the legislative branch, executive branch and the judicial branch. While I did all my work on time, finished notes, did every assignment I needed to do, and even studied. Every branch of the government had its own test. The grading policy in Leyden is a 70/30 ratio where 70 percent is all the test you take and 30 is the rest (homework, schoolwork, notes etc.). It doesn’t make sense to me that a student can sit there and learn for over a month having a perfect grade, and get their grade dropped a huge amount just because of one test. My grade dropped almost 10 percent down to 84%. That’s like one day of testing is worth more than a month’s worth of work. This did not only affect me but affected a friend as well. We share a class in Automotive Tech together, and we end up with a lot of work. But most of this work, he never does. He has multiple zeros in his gradebook but due to the grading policy, his grade is at 93%. He only ever studies for the test and that’s it, no other work or labs. This grading policy takes away the value of the other work and actually getting to learn, instead it makes students focus on remembering certain material just to perform well in a test. This leads to the next reason for the negatives on the policy. 

Not only do tests gain value but homework and other work lose value.  An article written by Britannica says, “Students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69 percent of students who didn’t have homework on both standardized tests and grades.”(The Homework Debate: Pros and Cons.) Taking away the value of the homework and class work is like rating athletes 70% on game performances and 30% on everything else. Anyone can tell that this isn’t an accurate rating on how good a player is. There is more to just displaying good performance. It’s about the hard work you put into achieving that performance. It’s expecting students to try hard in classes but shows that tests are that more valuable than these assignments. As seen in the research, homework and classwork adds a great deal of importance in learning the topic. Proving that this is more valuable than a single test. This gives a sense of uselessness of the work and many kids have started to stop doing homework all together. This is a sign of the stress that this new policy has brought to the students. Which leads me to the last reason. 

Additionally, the policy stresses out students for tests. An article by UCLA says, “…it is estimated that 40-60% of students are negatively affected by test anxiety”(Adelman, Howard S., and Taylor.) You ever get nervous right before a test, you stay up all night trying to remember a couple words and formulas. Then the next day, you see the paper on the desk and realize you might not be ready for it. Then you start looking around the room to see if you’re not the only one lost, then you start tapping your desk with the pencil in your hand looking like a metronome. Then you start thinking about how much trouble you’ll get into if you fail the test by your parents. All of these symptoms are what most students face during tests. The weight of the test takes a huge toll on the students and most tend to get anxiety right before a test. Yet at Leyden, not only do students have to take the test with this in mind, but have to remember that 70% of their entire grade will be affected by this one single test. 

Although the new grading allows consistency on how each class is graded and ensures the grade accurately reflects what the students have learned; the tests still vary by class thus not making the tests very consistent. Also, most of the tests are made purposely confusing to make students struggle more. How does a weirdly worded test accurately show what you learned? But all the other assignments that have led up to that one test are less than half of the grade of the test. Makes no sense that board members see this and think to themselves “Yeah it’ll bring the grades up”. This just made the students’ life way harder than it already was. 

So as we can see not only did this new policy not help but instead causes more trouble than benefits. Causing more stress on kids will never improve grades, it’ll make them less intent on coming to class, which we have seen in this school year at Leyden. Hopefully this changes in the next year, and I bet the attendance rate will go up. 

WORK CITED:

“The Homework Debate: Pros and Cons.” Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 Aug. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/procon/homework-debate. 

Adelman, Howard S., and Linda Taylor. Test Anxiety: The Problem and What Can Be Done About It. UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools, 2002, https://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/testanx.pdf.