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Brighton Park Elementary
Grading Policy

Purpose: New for the 2022-2023 school year we are adjusting our grading policy to more accurately reflect how well students are understanding and mastering the standards for their grade level. Our goal is to ensure that grading practices and policies are consistent across grade levels and can be understood by all students, parents, and school staff.  

What “mastery based” means: Sometimes a student’s grade will reflect how much work they complete rather than how well they understand the content and material. This can both cause grades to be higher or lower, depending on the student’s work habits. Mastery based grading attempts to assess and score students only on what they know and are able to do rather than how much work they complete.  

What are the standards: All of our curriculum and what we teach is guided by state standards. This means that all students across the state are learning similar skills to help them eventually be prepared for high school and beyond.  You can learn about the state standards by visiting the Illinois State Board of Education website at https://www.isbe.net/Pages/Standards-Courses.aspx.  

What gets graded:  Once a skill or concept is taught, students will be able to practice both in class and at home.  After a student has had a chance to practice what was taught, the teacher will look for mastery.  This may be in the form of observation, and exit slip, or a formal quiz/test.  Teachers will assess students both on a specific skill/concept as well as how they can put these skills together.  Students will have a chance to make up work that they miss or retake an assessment that they did not do well on.

Grading Scale: Your child’s report card will continue to look the same, and reflect a letter grade (A, B, C, D, or F) for each content area. All teachers will assess and score student’s work and understanding of the standards based on the rubric below. 

Academic Behaviors

What are Academic Behaviors: There are many factors that affect how well a student will do in school and how much they will learn. These academic behaviors include things like work completion/effort, collaboration, organization, and attendance and affect how successful a student will be both in their education and future career. While they need to be in place for a student to reach their full academic potential, they are separate from how well your child may understand or be able to apply the skills being taught in their classes (reflected in their grades and benchmark test scores). 

How will they be reported or communicated: In order to help parents and students understand how well their child is doing with these behaviors, we will provide a second report with the report card called an academic behavior report. This report should be used in conjunction with your child’s report card and their benchmark test scores to help give a complete picture of your child’s academic progress as well as their academic behaviors. The scores and what each academic behavior looks like is outlined below.  ​

Homework Policy

Purpose of homework: Daily academic work done at home gives students an opportunity to practice and reinforce the skills and concepts learned during the school day. It also builds important academic habits that students will need to be successful later in life (time management, perseverance, self monitoring, etc.).  Family involvement in homework gives caregivers an opportunity to learn about what students are doing in school and how their child is progressing. Homework may not always consist of specific assignments, but may be daily reading or other practice. All students have an agenda in which they will write down daily assignments or expectations for homework/practice at home. See the table below for what you should expect your child to do at home each night.