New Change: 70/30 Grading system

Jesse Alvarez • March 27, 2025

If you hate tests you shouldn’t look forward to the new school year.

The new grading system was introduced this school year, 2024/2025, for the Leyden District, since it was introduced, students have mixed feelings about it. Some teachers and students don’t care about it while some think it’s unfair. Before the new grading system, the grading scale had four different subjects: homework, participation, quizzes, and tests. However, the scale changed to only two subjects: formative (homework), which is worth 30%, and summative (tests), which is worth 70% of your overall grade.

According to AHS, another school who also implemented the 70/30 grading system, the reason why they did the 70/30 grading system was because they saw data and decided to push their students more. “The Secondary Grading Advisory]’s charge was to evaluate recent changes in grading policies and to continue examining our current guidance to determine the need for any additional changes. The overall aim was to increase consistency and clarity in grading practices across FCPS,’ the email stated, ‘During their review, the committee examined relevant research, district data around grade distribution, as well as data from focus groups with staff, students, and parents/caregivers held at a subset of middle and high schools.” Some people think the 70/30 grading system is unfair and too big of a jump. An anonymous sophomore said, “I thought it was stupid. Not everyone’s good at taking tests; some people perform better than others, and making it 70% of your grade ruins it for many people who struggle on tests” People also think that the grading system should be changed to a numbers system to make things easier. “numbers because you could do one. One would be zero to 49. Two would be 60 to 79, three would be 80-89 then a four would be 90 to 100. While you’re passing, it would be a great thing, since it would be easier to understand.”

Before the 2024/2025 school year, the grading system at the time was 50/30/20. 50% based on your tests, 30 on participation/projects, and then 20 on formatives.

While Leyden argues that the grading system is to challenge students’ capabilities. According to Leyden’s assessment framework, “Post-pandemic, we know that attendance is a major issue, and we have a record high number of failures, leading to a lower graduation rate than we’ve had. Additionally, many of our pre-pandemic practices included grading of behaviors. The goal behind these policies is to ensure that we are grading on academic performance, and that grades are clearly articulating student learning. Parameters have been built to account for student attendance as well, which are identified in the policies. The framework also states, “Formative assessments should engage students in targeted behaviors, providing low-stakes and mistake-tolerant opportunities to practice skills, receive feedback, and reflect on their learning goals” It goes on to state how summatives are more of a learning experience, “Summative assessments should engage students in targeted behaviors, providing opportunities to demonstrate understanding, receive evaluation, and consider current skill levels. While we are aware that initially, we could see lower grades than usual as students are getting used to these new policies. However, we firmly believe that long-term, the consistency and clarity in these areas will help us all see stronger scores and more success with assessment”

While students hope the grading system gets changed in some way, Leyden plans on keeping it the same in the future.

WORKS CITED:

70/30, the New Grading Policy. TheAblast, 23 Sept. 2024, www.thea-blast.org/

in-depth/2024/09/23/70-30-the-new-grading-policy/

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