By Jeremy Johnson
For the 2024-2025 school year, many students seemed surprised to discover a change in our school’s grading system. Formative points were no longer worth 25% of our grade, but rather 20%, meaning that the value of summative points was now raised to 80%. This may be a small percentage and have little effect on the grades of students, but many students may wonder why this change was made. Thankfully Mr. Karedes was happy to expand upon the decision when I spoke with him.
When asked why this decision was made, Mr. Karedes was happy to share his reasons. Mr. Karedes explained, “Technically, [grades] should be 100% summative and 0% formative. Formative is to be used for student feedback. Formative should be specifically used to say ‘Hey these are the things I’m good at, these are the things I’m not good at.’” In other words formative grades are given while we are still learning and it is only the mastery of our learning that should be graded.
I asked Mr. Karedes if he planned to continue this change until formative grades were worth 0%. “According to the researchers,” he said, “the best way to transition there is slowly, taking 10% off one each year and adding it to the other.” So, this change to our grading system is part of the process to achieve research-backed grading practices.
Overall, these next few years at DDHS will be a time of adapting to this revised grading practice. Potentially, by the time our current sophomores are seniors, our grading curriculum may be fully dependent on summative assessments.
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