Grading Guidelines

Providence Public Schools is committed to equitable grading practices that ensure every student receives accurate and meaningful feedback about their academic progress. This document provides direction and tools to ensure grading practices clearly represent what students have learned. Grounded in the belief that grades should reflect what students know and are able to do - not compliance, behavior, or effort - this document provides clear direction for implementing grading practices that promote transparency, consistency, and student growth across all PPSD classrooms.

These guidelines are derived and modified from PPSD Board Policy.

Grading Regulations

These regulations outline the specific procedures and expectations that enforce the overall PPSD Grading Policy and ensure consistency and fairness.

1. Grading Criteria and Standards

Align Grades to Standards: Assign grades based on students' progress towards meeting course standards and learning objectives. Each assignment and assessment must be linked to specific, measurable standards.
Use Rubrics: Develop and use clear rubrics for each assignment or assessment. Rubrics should define performance levels and criteria for each standard being assessed.
Avoid Non-Academic Criteria: Do not include behavior, effort, attendance, or participation as part of academic grades. These should be reported as comments on report cards or progress reports if necessary.

2. Components of Grades and Weighting of Assessments

Grades should focus on students’ mastery of course content and teachers should provide multiple assessments that vary in format to give students various ways to demonstrate their understanding. The following guidance applies to middle and high school.

Curriculum Based Tasks (60%): Use low-stakes assignments for practice, enabling feedback to allow students to learn from their mistakes and improve and to inform instruction. Below you will find a non-exhaustive list of assignments.
- Categories
  - Classwork (20%) - IM Warmups, IM Practice Problems.
  - Mid-Point Assignments and Benchmarks (20%) - ARC Mid Writing Benchmarks, IM Checkpoints, Amplify Benchmarks, Open Sci Ed and Eureka Mid Module Benchmarks, StudySync Mid Benchmarks, McGraw Hill CheckPoints
  - Problem and Project Based Tasks (20%) - Arc Final Projects, Generation Citizen Project, Curriculum Based PBLs, IM Lesson Tasks/Activities, OpenSci Ed and Amplify Simulations and Labs, DBQs, StudySync Research Report, StudySync Writing Process, Eureka Problem Sets
Major Assessments/Summative Assessments (6-8 40%; 9-12 30%): Use to evaluate cumulative understanding at the end of a unit or period, clearly aligned with the course standards.
- Examples: Eureka Math Squared and IM Mid and End of Unit Assessments, Social Studies End of Topic assessments, Standards Mastery (Form B), ARC mid post writing assessments, Amplify and OpenSciEd End of Unit Assessments
Non-graded: Pre-assessments and Formative Checks for Understanding
- Examples: IM Check Your Readiness, IM Cooldowns, ARC pre writing, Standards Mastery (Form A), exit tickets
High School Only - Mid-Term or End of Course Exams (10% Combined of Overall Grade): Used to evaluate mastery of major course content and skills. Can be one of the major assessments or PBLs from above.

3. Grading Scale

4. Work Revision & Learning Recovery

Opportunity for Revision: It is best practice for students to have the ability to revise and resubmit all work based on feedback to demonstrate their learning. It is recommended that students be given a minimum of 4 weeks to revise/resubmit based on feedback and that students not be penalized for revised/resubmitted work. These revised grades should then be reflected in Canvas.
- Students must be given the opportunity to make up missed work due to extenuating circumstances (i.e. a student is out on medical leave)
Learning Recovery: After major assignments, it’s recommended that teachers meet with students who did not pass the assignment to ensure that they have a plan for recovering the missing learning by revising and resubmitting work. It is also recommended that teachers meet with students to ensure that they remain on track and submit and monitor learning recovery plans for students who are consistently failing assignments.
Unit Recovery: The goal of unit recovery is to support students in successful completion of standards and requirements before their grade becomes a course failure.
- Unit recovery can be managed by the classroom teacher, using the methods and practices already in place.
- If a classroom teacher does not offer classroom level unit recovery, their students have the option to enroll in unit recovery in Edgenuity.

Differentiated Assignments: Provide differentiated assignments that consider the diverse needs of students, including Multilingual Learners and Differently Abled Students. Assignments should allow all students to demonstrate proficiency in ways that are accessible to them.
Bias-Resistance: Reflect on and minimize implicit biases by using standardized rubrics, blind grading when possible, and involving multiple evaluators for high-stakes assessments.

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In This Section

Grading Guidelines

Grading Regulations

1. Grading Criteria and Standards

2. Components of Grades and Weighting of Assessments

3. Grading Scale

4. Work Revision & Learning Recovery

5. Handling Missing or Incomplete Work

6. Feedback, Reporting and Communication

7. Equitable Practices

8. Grade Calculations

Links & Resources