To whom it may concern, 

During the recent school year there has been a detrimental change to our grading system for how assignments will be weighted towards your overall class average. The introduction of the formative and summative assessment weighting negatively depicts a students grasp on a subject, and does not allow the proper room to show growth and increasing knowledge in different academic areas. A grading system that prioritizes test grades does not allow students to show academic successes in different areas of the classroom. 

When we take into account that high test anxiety roughly affects 20% of highschool students with another 18% that experience moderate test anxiety (Linan, 2017). The school system is directly adding an increased pressure and stress factor on already anxious students by making tests and exams a summative grade that is worth more than 50% of your overall average. In order to properly combat test anxiety, we would one need to reduce the overall stress regarding a test/exam and allow for students to make mistakes and offer growth once they are made (Hoffses PhD, 2018). Rather then properly combating test anxiety within a school that already suffers from a notoriously low testing average our administration has facilitated for a system that will highlight the mistakes students make within a test setting, and instead of offering for students to grow and show their academic proficiencies within different areas they have made it nearly impossible to improve upon mistakes previously made. 

Furthermore, for the students that do excel in classwork and fail a test, it is extremely difficult to improve upon oneself . A student could know the material extremely well, turn in every assignment and maintain an A average yet one bad test day plummets their grade extensively. This grade system requires a student to do well on a test to bring their grade back up again, inevitably setting people with test anxiety up for failure. The previous grade system focused less on summative grades, and gave students almost an equal opportunity to show their knowledge with classwork assignments. Which also allowed for course content to be focused on real world knowledge that can be implemented outside of the classroom, instead of teaching students to simply memorize knowledge for a test. The fact of the matter is, not every student learns the same and will perform the same; our grading system should be broad enough to  give students from all learning backgrounds a chance to excel. 

By returning our grading system to the one that was previously in place, we can not only allow for ample growth of students' grades, but we can properly show their academic knowledge based on more than a heavily weighted testing grade. Allowing for a multifaceted grading system rather than a two way system, we can amplify student achievement in areas beyond a test setting. 

Sincerely, 

John R. MacCallum IV & Destinee A. Goodly 

Student Feedback Pertaining to the New Grading System:

"60% and 40% puts more unnecessary stress and anxiety on students lowering their mental health. Tests don’t show what students know, thus they should not be the majority of their grades." ( Anonymous, 12 grade ) 

" I personally am bad at tests, therefore this new grading system does not offer many opportunities for me to improve my grade or showcase how well i do in classes. I could do great in a class and get high grades on class work and do bad on a test which plummets my grade." ( Anonymous, 11th Grade ) 

"To have such a tiny part of the class be worth so much is annoying… trying to increase your grade gets extremely hard since only another test grade will raise your score; and you'd have to score high enough to average out the previous bad grade. Students were already stressed enough when it came time for a test, well now those tests are worth most of their grade, I wonder how stressed they are now? This grading system is also bad because I, like many others, struggle with tests because of how stressful they can be. I tend to make stupid mistakes or forget something I later remember. And my grades are really feeling the effects of my test taking flaws right now." ( David Isreal, 12th Grade) 

" It is difficult when summative assignments are made 60%, when getting a low grade on an assessment it drops the grade completely. Personally as a bad test taker, I always feel as I do better on homework and class work. Making tests worth so much, it's hard to even use those other grades to bring up the overall grade. It makes homework & classwork feel useless and not considered as serious. " ( Victoria Donelson, 12th Grade )