Evidence-Based Grading

Evidence-based grading was a new grading system introduced in the 2024-25 school year aiming to take the focus off counting points and shift students' focus to learning, mastery, and growth in a subject.

Mechanics

Under this system, for each test taken, students are given a score of 4, 3, 2, 1, or No Mark in each of several skill areas. A score of 4 represents a skill level exceeding understanding, while 3 is showing understanding, 2 is approaching understanding, and 1 is developing understanding.

At the end of each semester, the test scores in each skill area are composited into a single score based upon a recency-biased mode. That is to say, the final score in a skill area is given by the score that appeared the most often, with a bias towards recent scores. Then, a letter grade is assigned based on the combination of skill area scores. Exact details differ between teachers, but generally scores of 3 and 4 are treated as more or less equivalent, and getting 3s and 4s in every category gets the student an A.

Additionally, evidence-based grading systems tend to focus less on homework and also allow for test retakes as a logical method of determining students' academic mastery without being held to a rigid timetable and reduce student stress.

Benefits and Drawbacks

As stated earlier, the system is intended to better gauge students' learning and improvement over the semester. It also reduces the incidence of students desperately seeking points rather than learning itself. However, the fact that numerical scores which determine their final grade by a precise mathematical formula are assigned still leads to students seeking constantly to jump the barrier from one score to another. Also, the system is somewhat less concrete than the traditional points-based system, leading to a certain ambiguity over what scores a student deserves, though in theory this is offset by the holistic process used to determine final letter grades. It is certainly as of this time new to teachers, who are having some trouble adjusting.