All secondary classes will have homework next year(even PE)

[Anonymous]

We have gone from no homework to mandatory homework. Homework will now be worth 10% of our kids grades. How do I get them not to cheat or use the latest AI software and actually learn something.

[Anonymous]

Where are you seeing this? Link please where seeing this as I still only see the 70% summative and 30% formative and nothing about a 10% homework.

https://www.fcps.edu/academics/grading-reporting/secondary-school

[Anonymous]

By this link there is no requirement that must do 10% and actually the reverse to say no homework can count more than 10% if given. Also talks about homework being done during class blocks—so unless OP has something from School Board that is new, looks like n/a.

https://www.fcps.edu/academics/grading-and-reporting/secondary/homework-and-makeup-work

[Anonymous]

What are you talking about?

[Anonymous]

Secondary staff got an email today. Our training on Thursday is about the new grading (which seems silly as next year’s staff isn’t here yet to hear it, so it will all be repeated in August)

Dear Middle and High School Staff,

Thank you for all that you have done to make this a successful school year for our students in FCPS!

As Chief Academic Officer, grading and reporting practices are one of my areas of responsibility, and I am writing today to share some updates in this policy area for SY25-26.

As you may be aware, our School Board spent much of the summer and fall working on Policy 2418, which sets the expectations for secondary grading within FCPS.

Since the passage of Policy 2418 in December, the Secondary Grading Committee, made up of teachers, students, parents/caregivers, and school-based and central office administrators, worked to align our grading practices to Policy 2418. As part of this process, the committee reviewed current FCPS practice, best practice research, and data from a survey and focus groups that captured a large amount of staff, student, and parent/caregiver feedback.

Specifically, the committee reviewed the following grading practices:
Gradebook type
Category weighting
Minimum number of assignments per quarter
Reassessment
Homework
Technical systems (e.g., Schoology and SIS) that support grading

Based on the committee’s work, the following grading and assessment practices will go into effect for the 2025-26 school year:

Gradebook type: All high school staff will use a rolling gradebook beginning in SY26-27. During SY25-26, Instructional Services will support this transition with training for high school staff, and IT will support the related technical aspects. Middle schools will continue to use their current gradebook configuration at this time and will not have any professional development requirements.

Category weighting: The current district gradebook weighting of 70% summative assignments and 30% formative assignments will continue across all secondary courses.

Homework: Regular homework will be assigned as a part of each secondary course. Homework must be recognized within the course as part of the student’s formative grade and will count no more than 10% of the overall course grade.

Minimum number of assignments per quarter: The current number of minimum assignments per quarter will remain at 7.

Reassessment: The summative reassessment maximum will be set at 90%. This means that students who receive lower than a 90% on a summative assessment will be eligible for one reassessment attempt, and the maximum score which can be earned on the reassessment will be capped at 90%.

We will also continue to improve our technical systems around grading and will be making some changes to the middle and high school report card comments section over the summer.

Additionally, I wanted to provide an update around the grading scale for next year. In the adoption of Policy 2418, the School Board voted to amend the grading scale within FCPS. The scale will eliminate the use of the D- letter grade. The following numerical ranges will now be used: D+ (69-67), D (66-60), F (59-50).

Updates and additional resources have been uploaded to the Grading and Reporting Toolkit and will continue to be developed and posted throughout the summer.

I want to thank both the School Board and the Secondary Grading Committee for their hard work in helping us continue to grow in the area of secondary grading practices.

Thank you for all that you do in support of our students.

Sincerely,


Sloan J. Presidio, Ed. D., J.D.
Chief Academic Officer
Fairfax County Public Schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have gone from no homework to mandatory homework. Homework will now be worth 10% of our kids grades. How do I get them not to cheat or use the latest AI software and actually learn something.

My homework will count as 1 point. A classwork activity I can monitor and keep computers and phones away will be 10. A quiz will be 40. In a unit with 100 points of formative work, less than 10 will be from HW. If they want to cheat on 10% of 30% of their grade (3% overall), so be it. The other 97% of their grade will suffer if they don’t take it seriously.

I am going to use HW as a tool to teach practice for the sake of practice, not gaining points.

I will make HW completion a mandatory checkbox to take any retakes though. Missing it? No retake until it’s all done.

The rough part is going to be grading it. We have been told we cannot grade for completeness, only correctness, and grading an average of 75 HW assignments for accuracy every day isn’t realistic. That makes me want to go to whatever computer program they eventually contract for us, which the kids will probably hate.

[Anonymous]

“We have been told we cannot grade for completeness, only correctness,”

Well that is ridiculously stupid. HW is for practice. It SHOULD be graded for completeness not correctness. That other approach makes zero sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Secondary staff got an email today. Our training on Thursday is about the new grading (which seems silly as next year’s staff isn’t here yet to hear it, so it will all be repeated in August)

Dear Middle and High School Staff,

Thank you for all that you have done to make this a successful school year for our students in FCPS!

As Chief Academic Officer, grading and reporting practices are one of my areas of responsibility, and I am writing today to share some updates in this policy area for SY25-26.

As you may be aware, our School Board spent much of the summer and fall working on Policy 2418, which sets the expectations for secondary grading within FCPS.

Since the passage of Policy 2418 in December, the Secondary Grading Committee, made up of teachers, students, parents/caregivers, and school-based and central office administrators, worked to align our grading practices to Policy 2418. As part of this process, the committee reviewed current FCPS practice, best practice research, and data from a survey and focus groups that captured a large amount of staff, student, and parent/caregiver feedback.

Specifically, the committee reviewed the following grading practices:
Gradebook type
Category weighting
Minimum number of assignments per quarter
Reassessment
Homework
Technical systems (e.g., Schoology and SIS) that support grading

Based on the committee’s work, the following grading and assessment practices will go into effect for the 2025-26 school year:

Gradebook type: All high school staff will use a rolling gradebook beginning in SY26-27. During SY25-26, Instructional Services will support this transition with training for high school staff, and IT will support the related technical aspects. Middle schools will continue to use their current gradebook configuration at this time and will not have any professional development requirements.

Category weighting: The current district gradebook weighting of 70% summative assignments and 30% formative assignments will continue across all secondary courses.

Homework: Regular homework will be assigned as a part of each secondary course. Homework must be recognized within the course as part of the student’s formative grade and will count no more than 10% of the overall course grade.

Minimum number of assignments per quarter: The current number of minimum assignments per quarter will remain at 7.

Reassessment: The summative reassessment maximum will be set at 90%. This means that students who receive lower than a 90% on a summative assessment will be eligible for one reassessment attempt, and the maximum score which can be earned on the reassessment will be capped at 90%.

We will also continue to improve our technical systems around grading and will be making some changes to the middle and high school report card comments section over the summer.

Additionally, I wanted to provide an update around the grading scale for next year. In the adoption of Policy 2418, the School Board voted to amend the grading scale within FCPS. The scale will eliminate the use of the D- letter grade. The following numerical ranges will now be used: D+ (69-67), D (66-60), F (59-50).

Updates and additional resources have been uploaded to the Grading and Reporting Toolkit and will continue to be developed and posted throughout the summer.

I want to thank both the School Board and the Secondary Grading Committee for their hard work in helping us continue to grow in the area of secondary grading practices.

Thank you for all that you do in support of our students.

Sincerely,


Sloan J. Presidio, Ed. D., J.D.
Chief Academic Officer
Fairfax County Public Schools

Thanks for posting. Don’t see homework as big change and since still says not more than 10%, “regular” homework can be couple assignments a quarter so becomes effective non-event. The bigger change is retakes to be capped at 90% next fall 25-26 and in the year after that everyone in HS to move to rolling grade book in 25-27. Is rolling grade book preferred by students or teachers? If 1st Q a student gets D, is it easier to raise grade with rolling gradebook or the average of 4 quarter grades?

[Anonymous]

The homework is a small part of the grade and I don’t think that adding homework to all classes is a bad thing. MY kid had homework in 7th grade this year, 90% of the time he could finish it in school. He had friends who were working on it at home. I don’t think this is a huge change for Honors and AAP classes.

What thrills me is that they are starting to course correct the retakes. No more 100% retake options. You have to score below a 90% and can only earn up to a 90%. I would guess that they choose that threshold because the majority of retakes were kids scoring 90-93% and wanting an A.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“We have been told we cannot grade for completeness, only correctness,”

Well that is ridiculously stupid. HW is for practice. It SHOULD be graded for completeness not correctness. That other approach makes zero sense.

Seriously. My kid in math this year had to make a solid attempt on the homework, then could check the answer key and try to figure out what they did wrong. If they couldn't figure it out (which happened occasionally), they just had to show a good faith effort to get full credit.

Since working the problem out was part of completion having the answer key (which didn't have the steps) didn't really allow for cheating. It just helped the kids figure out mistakes for themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The homework is a small part of the grade and I don’t think that adding homework to all classes is a bad thing. MY kid had homework in 7th grade this year, 90% of the time he could finish it in school. He had friends who were working on it at home. I don’t think this is a huge change for Honors and AAP classes.

What thrills me is that they are starting to course correct the retakes. No more 100% retake options. You have to score below a 90% and can only earn up to a 90%. I would guess that they choose that threshold because the majority of retakes were kids scoring 90-93% and wanting an A.

If true that majority of retakes were kids who scored 90-93 and don’t want them to be able to retake, then stop ALL retakes. But if a B+ kid can retake to get an A- and a B kid can retake to get an A- and so on down the line, then an A- kid should be able to retake to improve their grade too. Either allow grade improvement for all or just shut retakes down entirely, which the latter is what assume teachers would prefer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have gone from no homework to mandatory homework. Homework will now be worth 10% of our kids grades. How do I get them not to cheat or use the latest AI software and actually learn something.

Model good behavior by not posting unsourced fake news

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The homework is a small part of the grade and I don’t think that adding homework to all classes is a bad thing. MY kid had homework in 7th grade this year, 90% of the time he could finish it in school. He had friends who were working on it at home. I don’t think this is a huge change for Honors and AAP classes.

What thrills me is that they are starting to course correct the retakes. No more 100% retake options. You have to score below a 90% and can only earn up to a 90%. I would guess that they choose that threshold because the majority of retakes were kids scoring 90-93% and wanting an A.

If true that majority of retakes were kids who scored 90-93 and don’t want them to be able to retake, then stop ALL retakes. But if a B+ kid can retake to get an A- and a B kid can retake to get an A- and so on down the line, then an A- kid should be able to retake to improve their grade too. Either allow grade improvement for all or just shut retakes down entirely, which the latter is what assume teachers would prefer.

I agree with this. It’s not fair the A kids are punished. If they get an A- they now aren’t allowed to improve their grade. Meanwhile all the other idiots can get up to an A-. Not fair.

[Anonymous]

Homework in PE would be ludicrous.

[Anonymous]

What you said and what you posted are two different things

Homework: Regular homework will be assigned as a part of each secondary course. Homework must be recognized within the course as part of the student’s formative grade and will count no more than 10% of the overall course grade.