Grading Policies......

What are the grading policies where you teach?  Ours? No zeroes. Now I leave zeroes in place for the midterm progress report, but for the final report card, I replace the zeroes with a 50 as board policy dictates.

As for other grades:

• Homework/Classwork - Introduction to skill/rough drafts: This is where students practice new skills or get their thoughts on the paper.  Students should not be afraid of making mistakes. This is how any person learns, making mistakes and how to correct them. Most of the time students grade their own papers. On occasion, I mark the incorrect answers for students, rather than letting them grade their own. These are turned in for a participation grade. 
• Homework/Classwork - Review: These are graded for correctness. Most of time students have already been tested on this material. It is purely review. Students are also usually told the assignment will be graded for accuracy.
• Sub Work: These assignments are usually graded for accuracy. Most of the time they are critical thinking skills (i.e. puzzles, riddles, following direction word games, etc. that review skills already learned this year or previously) or review of skills already completed.
• Tests/Final Drafts/Projects: These are graded right/wrong or by rubric. If they are graded by rubric, the rubric is discussed with students prior to the assignment.
• Retake Tests: Any written test (not final drafts, projects, speeches) students are able to retake a test, if they show they have completed additional study. Since this was the first year I have tried this, it seemed to work well. The two test grades were averaged, and the higher grade replaced the lower grade. Many students took "retake" tests. 

One other topic with grading: if I notice that several students missed the same problem, I will usually add that number of points back into the grade OR drop that problem as an outlier and recalculate the percentage. For example, the word puzzles my students did with a sub last week. There were several that had the same answer for several of the problems. The answers were incorrect. I added those points back into the grades of every student. 

Perhaps in preparing students to be College and Career Ready, I should look at homework/classwork as most of my college classes did:

1. It needs to be completed, but no grade is assessed for the classwork/homework. Continue grading as participation OR
2. Every problem is graded right/wrong AND
3. No retake tests.

I am not sure. I guess I always assumed classwork/homework is practice, learning where the breakdown of skills may be or where skills are weak. This could even show strengths the students have with a particular skill.  I also know that many students will not do homework/classwork unless there is a grade associated with the assignment. 

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I am facing a conundrum. /sigh

EDIT: Board policy states that tests/assessments are 70% of the grade and classwork/homework is 30% of the grade. So, classwork/homework is not going away. It will be graded. The conundrum is whether to continue using as a participation grade or to grade for accuracy.