The Loudoun County School Board passed an updated version of the assessments and grading policy on Tuesday, April 8, that is to go into effect at the start of the upcoming school year. The changes have already sparked conversations about the significance of academic accountability and scholastic rigor for LCPS students.
The original policy, Policy 5030, was first adopted in 1985, and like all Loudoun County policies, it was due for the same review all policies receive every five years. However, the recent iteration of this policy in particular has been under additional scrutiny, spending over a year in review, following the recent pandemic’s supposed effect on lowering academic standards.
The most recent update of this policy was requested by school board representative Lauren Shernoff in February of 2024 for the purpose of bringing clarity to the policy’s 12-page document, including redefining what “reasonable effort” looks like and how best to distribute grades to LCPS students.
“The entire subject of grading has different opinions, and grading is all subjective,” principal Dr. Timothy Flynn said. “The change to this policy was important and not just a routine review because this policy is critical to students. An important part of this policy was to support teachers who had some concerns with the original policy that created a situation that they didn’t think was fair to all kids.”
The changes to Policy 5030 contain four key components: the completion of formatives will now count for up to 10% of final grades; late work will not be accepted beyond its respective summative assessment; a 50% floor grade will no longer apply in all Advanced Placement (AP) classes or during the fourth quarter in any class; and retakes will only be accessible to students who score below a 70% on a major summative assessment. These updates represent a broader push for consistency and scholastic cohesion across LCPS classrooms.
This first change regarding formative assignments startled many current students because in recent years the delineation between summative and formative assessments has always been that formative assignments were never counted toward an individual’s grade.
“Formative is practice,” Dr. Flynn said. “If you don’t do the practice you get a lower grade. Adding them to the grade is an incentive to show that it counts. These matter. I want every kid to buy into that. We’re not just giving you random assignments for no reason.”
The policy revision removed the 50% floor grade that had been implemented post-pandemic to support struggling students. On a 100 point scale, an F is worth 60 points, from zero to 59. Without the assistance of a 50% floor grade, more students will be forced to acknowledge lower grades earlier in the quarter, a change that administrators see as advantageous.
“A grade is just a communication of your mastery of the content and [Policy 5030] looks to define that,” Dr. Flynn said. “If you get a zero, it’s hard to recover from that. We don’t want folks that are struggling to think, ‘I’m just going to give up.’ That’s the intent of the floor. I think that mathematically it should be equal. Each grade letter should be equal.”
The third change intends to lighten the load for teachers. High school teachers have around 150 students, and even if only 10% of them submit late assignments, that is 15 additional projects, tests, or essays a teacher is expected to grade at the last minute to keep students on track. Curbing late work also allows for students to shift their focus from completion to comprehension.
“Turning things in months later, respectfully, I think that’s nonsense,” Dr. Flynn said. “Now it’s not about your learning anymore. It’s about how you didn’t like your grade. I want you to intrinsically want to do the work all along and the grade takes care of itself. Sometimes life is last minute, but those are hard lessons especially in the workforce. There are very few employers who want things done at the last minute.”
The most divisive and significant change implemented by the rewrite to Policy 5030 was the lowering of the retake ceiling from an 80% to a 70%. While some students are worried about how this would affect their GPAs, others gladly welcome the change.
“Many people slack off and then say, ‘Well, I can just retake for 80%,’” junior Ummaima Amir said. “An 80% is a passing score. If colleges see an 80%, they don’t know if you just failed every test and retook it or if you genuinely were scoring a consistent 80%…If they see a student at a 70%, it’s easier to differentiate. Usually, students with 70% are trying to get that grade up, and colleges will start to see if that’s a benchmark for you.”
Students are only eligible for a retake of up to 70% if they display ‘reasonable effort,’ or as the policy states, “they have made an attempt to complete [assignments] using the information provided during instruction.” This new definition further expands on the barriers for retake eligibility.
“As an AP teacher, some kids survive because of the retakes,” history teacher Alice Arnold said. “It encourages more kids to take a higher level course, which is good if you want to try to get that. The grade change policy to me is just a different percentage in my grade book…limiting retakes is going to make some teachers’ lives easier just because there’s less grading.”
The retake ceiling is anticipated to shrink AP and higher level class sizes. The change has already caused many students to reevaluate their course load.
“I was pretty upset, just because it felt pretty unfair,” junior Alex Nystrom said. “I understood why they were doing it, but it also felt so extreme in contrast to what we have been doing. I think that’s why I was initially really angry. It’s also that it’s our senior year next year, and that’s a really important time for a lot of people. Now, there’s this added layer of stress with worrying about grades and not being able to retake certain things.”
As with all new policies, including the recent update to the phone policy, implementation will be gradual, and it will be hardest for upperclassmen students to adjust because they have already grown accustomed to the previous expectations.
“It’s trying to address the human nature of teenagers,” Dr. Flynn said. “I’m working with all kids from the valedictorian to the kid that I have to drag to the graduation stage…Not completing a high school degree in the United States in 2025 is a barrier that we want to try to avoid for every kid…What I like is that there’s language in [Policy 5030] that notes students learn individually at different rates.”
To best understand Policy 5030’s implications, there are two different perspectives. For high achieving students, the changes should have little-to-no impact on performance because they are already putting in the work. For students that are struggling or procrastinating, the changes should cause them to reevaluate their approach to education.
“Education is cyclical,” Mrs. Arnold said. “It swings like there’s a pendulum, so in five years it’s going to go back to a different policy, and in five years it’s going to change again…I’m not surprised that we’ve been in this cycle for a while, because we’re in a society where every kid needs to be super successful. That’s the reality of it. I think this is going to be a check on us to see if we can handle going back.”
