Sandburg Middle School Grading Policy

GRADING PHILOSOPHY

In our Professional Learning Community, our focus is on student learning.  At Carl Sandburg Middle School, a student’s grade should communicate academic achievement: what the student knows and is able to do as measured against the learning standards of the course.  Assignments must be completed to accurately assess what a student knows and is able to do, so that appropriate feedback can be given to every student. Practice and/or preparation (homework/classwork) is essential for learning.  

GRADING POLICY

Fairfax County and Sandburg Middle School’s grading philosophies are based upon best practices and research.  In middle school, students are at varying stages of development and readiness and are continuously learning.  We believe the purpose of grades is to provide information about a student’s achievement at a given time and about learning trends during the school year.  Additionally, we support that academic grades must be separate from work habit grades.

Students should:

• Experience frequent and ongoing assessment and feedback throughout each quarter. 
• Receive continual feedback on the quality of work as it relates to the course objectives.

Teachers are required to enter a minimum of seven grades into the gradebook each quarter. These should be a combination of grades in the summative and formative categories. Teachers may enter ungraded assignments as an additional layer of communication of student progress, but these do not count toward the seven minimum required assignments.

GUIDING PRINCIPALS

In FCPS and at Sandburg Middle School, grades must:

• Ensure that grades are based on student achievement, knowledge, and skill proficiency demonstrated in the classroom and are separated from work habits.
• Promote consistency in grading across teams, departments, and schools.
• Provide ongoing formative feedback to students.
• Promote practices that encourage continuous engagement in learning.
• Provide parents and students ongoing, credible, and useful feedback that conveys the expectations and achievement of identified standards of knowledge included in the curriculum.
• Ensure alignment of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

FINAL GRADE CALCULATION WITH MIDTERM AND FINAL EXAMS 

 All courses will have a final exam assessment or culminating activity that cumulatively measures student mastery of the course content and objectives.  Teacher teams will determine the methodology and essential course content for the cumulative assessment that will take place in June. 

Midterm assessments are optional and determined by the content team for  each course.  Midterm assessments will be administered in the middle or latter half of January. 

Final Grades will be calculated as follows:

If No Midterm Given

• Quarter 1 Grade: 22.5%
• Quarter 2 Grade: 22.5%
• Midterm NA
• Quarter 3 Grade: 22.5%
• Quarter 4 Grade: 22.5%
• Final Exam 10% 
   

Gradebook Categories

FCPS utilizes a uniform category weighting design in all of its secondary classes.

Note: Each quarter grading design must include at least seven assignments. Within a quarter, no single assignment can count for more than 35% of the overall quarter grade.

These categories are defined below: