Athena High School - Greece Athena Staff Blog

241. Teachers' grading practices shall be clearly communicated in understandablelanguage to students and parents or guardians in writing at the beginning of the course.2. Teachers shall use a criterion-referenced approach to determine grades (i.e., comparingstudent work to clearly defined learning standards) rather than a norm-referencedapproach (i.e., comparing students to each other or ranking student performance toassign grades).3. Teachers' practices associated with homework and its role as a factor in determining astudent's grade shall comply with regulation 8440R.(Appendix C)4. Students shall be afforded every opportunity to make up work that was missed due toabsence within reasonable time limits established by the teacher; these time limits,which may vary depending on the kind or quantity of work missed, will becommunicated to both parents and students.5. Teachers shall use criteria to ensure that classroom assessments meet standards ofquality and are used as tools for promoting learning, rather than simply measuring it.These criteria are as follows:Quality assessments shall incorporate a variety of methods and formats, and fulfillone of three clearly defined purposes:– Diagnostic assessments are used before teaching to gauge students' priorknowledge or skills and help the teacher to make decisions in designinginstruction; diagnostic assessments should not be used in the calculation of agrade.– Formative assessments are used throughout the instructional process to gatherdata about students' developing proficiency with knowledge and skills and to helpthe teacher make instructional decisions and tailor instruction to students' needs;formative assessments should be used to provide students with feedback on theirprogress and may be used in the calculation of a grade, but should be weightedproportionally to the summative assessment to which it leads.– Summative assessments are used at the end of a period of instruction and shouldprovide students with an opportunity to apply and demonstrate the knowledge andskills they have developed as a result of the instruction; summative assessmentsshould be used to provide students with feedback on the extent to which they havemet the standards for the unit and they should be used in the calculation of agrade.Quality assessments shall be clearly aligned to specific skills and concepts insupport of the learning standards and should provide an accurate measure of theseskills and concepts.Quality assessments shall be evaluated using clear criteria that are shared withstudents prior to the assessment so that they understand the standards of qualityrequired for a successful product or performance.Quality assessments shall be designed to avoid, to the greatest extent possible,sources of bias and distortion that can cause a misinterpretation of studentachievement (e.g., questions that are biased on the basis of gender, race, or class;results that are compromised by test-taking conditions, or unclear directions;performance that is impacted by a lack of alignment between the instruction andthe assessment).