Last summer, after receiving feedback from LCPS teachers, students, and families, Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) began revising policy 5030 on assessments and grading, which was found to be difficult to understand. After concerns about formative assessments, retakes, and a grading “floor of 50%,” LCPS began to make changes to improve the policies application to students’ classroom experiences.

Teachers are required to provide definitions for terms like “reasonable effort” and “formative” or “summative” assessments to provide clarity for families and staff. With this, the policy now allows for homework and formative assignments to weigh a total of no more than 10% of a quarter grade. History department chair Steve Hicks says that this policy will be “a teacher-by-teacher thing.” In order to keep continuity between classes Hicks said, “I will ask if I have two teachers teaching the same class, if one is going to do it the other one should do it.”

LCPS policy states “An assessment and grading system must be designed to motivate students and promote a growth mindset. Students who receive a grade below 50% often feel they have no chance of recovery and give up on achieving success in a course. For this reason, LCPS supports a floor of 50% when assessing student achievement in quarter and final grades.” The floor of 50% has been changed to apply only to quarter grades, not individual assessments. However, the 50% will no longer apply to Advanced Placement courses.

The current ceiling of 80% for reassessments has been lowered to 70%. Along with this students may only do a reassessment when they have received a grade of below 70% on a major summative assessment retaking up to a 70%.

Hicks explains that the department will “look at it and usually what we do is we’ll talk about implementation. It will be sort of an awareness thing, we’ll talk about it as a whole group then we will group with the courses and we’ll talk about what changes there are, if any, and how to best implement it.”