This school year’s new School-from-Home program due to the COVID-19 pandemic is a big factor in the end-of-year grading policy for the Hall County School System.
The school system detailed their grading plans for elementary, middle and high schools in a news release sent out on April 21st.
The release starts by stating the school system’s K-12 Hold Harmless Provision, “The lack of participation and/or poor achievement with School-From Home Learning will NOT impact student grading in a negative manner.”
Kevin Bales, Assistant Superintendent for Student Teaching and Learning with Hall County, said another major difference for this year’s grading is are the more flexible deadlines for student work.
Bales said one reason for this flexibility is to give all students more time to get caught up on their work.
“With the guidelines we put out for our School-from-Home grading, we also want to have a time component of a couple weeks to allow students to get caught up and to work with teachers if they’re struggling on certain assignments,” said Bales.
The final day for new assignments is May 7th, but students have until May 22nd to complete their work.
The release also states that unless “unique circumstances existed” before school from home, all elementary and middle school students will be promoted to the next grade.
All elementary students will receive an overall grade of Pass (P) or Retention Consideration (RC) for both their fourth nine weeks grade and overall grade.
Middle school students will receive numerical grades like usual. For semester or yearlong classes, the fourth nine weeks grade will be higher than or equal to the third nine weeks grade. For nine week-long classes, the final grade in the class will be the average of School-from-Home grades and the lowest possible grade is a 70.
High school students are exempt from finals or End of Course exams and their grades will reflect such. While movement to the next grade level will be determined by earned Carnegie credits, students taking semester and yearlong classes will receive a 2nd semester final average grade that is equal to or higher than their 3rd term progress grade.
High school seniors who did not meet graduation requirements before School-from-Home started will be able to work through May 22nd to qualify for graduation. Seniors can also take summer school classes to qualify for graduation.
