RM has recently unfolded a new grading policy, which changes the 50 percent policy and specifies due dates and deadlines. As well as removing the limit on the amount of quizzes a teacher can give. With all these new changes happening in the middle of the year it can be panic-inducing but is there that much to worry about? The new grading policy may look overwhelming but in practice, nothing changed. 

The changes to the grading policy were announced towards the start of the second semester and brought with it panic as to what this would mean in the future. But this was mostly fueled by uncertainty and now the new grading policy is not that impactful. One thing the grading policy did was change how the grading rule works. Previously, that rule made it so that the lowest grade a teacher could give was 50 percent on an assignment or test unless they contacted the student’s parent.

The new policy allows teachers to award zero percent for assignments not submitted by the cutoff date and fifties for assignments submitted after the deadline of the assignment with no parent contact. While this change sounds impactful on paper, senior Carolyn Conner said, “As a student who normally doesn’t turn their work in very late, it doesn’t make that much of a difference to me.”

The policy does not affect how teachers grade the work done by students simply how late work can be turned in and the policy only gives a universal deadline to all teachers that is already similar to the original policy.  

In fact for some teachers, the new grading policy benefits the student. As AP environmental science teacher Stacey Boccher said, “It has extended the length of time that I will accept work for partial credit. So previously, after the deadline, students would receive a zero for work they didn’t submit and now there’s a new window between the deadline and the cutoff where they could submit work for half credit.” 

Another thing the new policy has changed is it removed the limits for the number of quizzes a teacher could assign in one quarter. This policy may seem like a big change but the previous limit for quizzes was already set at a high number of 12 with most classes assigning well below this number of quizzes. This policy also lacks impact.

When comparing both the new and old policies together nothing seems to have changed. Junior James Krinsky said, “Honestly, they both seem pretty lenient. I don’t think it’s made much of a difference. I mean, it’s not. I don’t think there was really a purpose and change because there’s a lot of hype around it but for no real reason.

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