Gov. Greg Abbott announced April 17 that all schools in Texas will remain closed through the end of the 2019-20 school year and that districts are expected to continue to provide online learning opportunities for students.
According to Superintendent Randy Moczygemba, monitoring the integrity and accuracy of grades taken during the closures is difficult; as such, the district decided initially to track daily grades as a benchmark for student comprehension.
“We believe that grades are important for now as a tool to assess student understanding so that we can provide support to parents and students that need them,” Moczygemba wrote in a letter to parents April 6.
While the school district will not collect any major grades, such as tests or exams, during the fourth quarter, an average of student’s daily grades will be included on the fourth-quarter report card for grades 1-12.
First- and second-semester grades will be averaged to determine grade promotion and the awarding of course credit, Moczygemba said.
“Our goal is working with all students to make sure that they are promoted and that they do get course credit,” Moczygemba said at the meeting. “At the end of the day, we feel like this is the fairest and most equal system we can come up with.”
Additionally, class rank and GPA calculations will exclude the spring semester for both weighted and unweighted GPAs for students currently taking high school courses.
The NBISD Local Educational Improvement Council policy uses third-quarter grades to determine local graduation honors, and the final rank for the senior class of 2020 is determined by ranking at the end of fall 2019.
The board of trustees released several exceptions and details to the grading decision in a parent letter April 24.
- Prekindergarten will use Children’s Learning Institute information collected from August through March, as well as participation in fourth-quarter activities, to produce end of year reports for parents.
- Kindergarten will use daily grades and fourth-quarter information to complete end-of-year grade reports.
- Yearlong high school courses will use the overall grade from the second semester as the transcript grade for that semester. Grades from first and second semester will be averaged for a final grade. If a student fails the second semester, teachers will review third- and fourth-quarter grades as well as effort and participation in fourth-quarter work.
- For single-semester courses taken during the spring semester, teachers will review third- and fourth-quarter grades and participation to determine if students will receive credit for the course.
For additional questions and information, parents can visit the NBISD coronavirus response website.
