Grading Options To Be Discussed At AACPS May 6 Virtual Meeting

ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, MD — Grading options for Anne Arundel County Public School students will be discussed at the board of education's May 6 virtual meeting. In April, AACPS Superintendent George Arlotto told the board he intended to issue satisfactory or unsatisfactory marks for the third and fourth periods as a final grade, which would not factor into the GPA. But the board didn't agree.

Instead, the board supported offering students the choice of a letter grade or satisfactory/unsatisfactory option. Arlotto will be sharing the following three possibilities for students:

• Option 1: AACPS would purchase a PowerSchool application to collect and document the choice of students and parents/guardians for each course for the second semester. Families would be required to use the PowerSchool portal to complete their choices. Installation and activation would take approximately four weeks and come at a cost (the most beneficial to the district being a three-year, $321,750 contract, plus a customized calculation program expected to cost $7,000). Teachers would be required to spend time reviewing student/family choices and manually overwrite fourth marking period grades for each student in their gradebook based on the choice each family makes for each course. Other school staff would have to assist families currently not enrolled in the parent portal.
• Option 2: An automated option in which a customized program is developed in PowerSchool to examine every student’s situation and determine, course by course, whether a letter grade or a satisfactory/unsatisfactory designation would best benefit the student’s grade point average. Students who have letter grades as a final second semester grade would have that letter grade figured into their GPA. Students who have an “S” or “U” as a final grade would not have that grade figured into their GPA. The cost estimate for the customized calculation is $7,000 and the project will take approximately one week to complete.
• Option 3: A student’s final second semester grade in a course would be equivalent to or one grade higher than the third marking period letter grade. A student who engages in eLearning and earns a satisfactory designation in the fourth marking period would have their third marking period grade raised by one letter grade. A student who earns an unsatisfactory designation in the fourth marking period would receive the third marking period grade as the final grade for the semester. Letter grades would be calculated into a student’s GPA as they would in any other semester. The cost estimate for the customized calculation is $7,000 and the project take approximately one week to complete.

Also at Wednesday’s meeting, Arlotto will recommend extending the 2019-2020 school year to June 18 to account for five of the 10 student instructional days missed at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic. AACPS would then be eligible to apply for a waiver of the remaining five student instructional days. The five-day waiver, if obtained, would not impact teacher work days.