This school year, a lot of changes have been brought to North Platte High School. One of them includes that the entire district has decided to integrate a new grading policy, eliminating the previously used percentage system with letter grades, and instead switching to a system where students are graded with points, a number between 0-4, instead of letters.

Another revision to the policy makes it possible for students to receive a 0% if the student demonstrated no understanding of the content, versus the previous system, where the lowest score a student could receive was a 50%. A similarity is that formative grades still account for 30%, and summative for 70%. “All these [numbers] are just placeholders for letter grades that can be averaged,” said principal Scott Siegel. The point system is just a numerical representation of letters that can be averaged. “It’s an improvement because it’s clear communication, but the way it’s calculated is the same as last year,” he said.

According to statistics of previous years, NPHS was failing students at a much higher rate than the average school. “[The statistics] showed that there were practices that we needed to improve, because we can’t just blame students. There are things that we need to do to make sure we’re giving the right opportunities to kids,” said Siegel.
According to students, they feel as though the grading scale makes them work harder. Freshman Anna Monie said that it was confusing at first, but it’s starting to make more sense. “It makes me have to work hard to get an A, and I feel like kids are going to start getting their grades up and focusing more,” she said.

Students seem to find that the biggest improvement with the grading scale is that there is more consistency between their classes. “I think it’s an improvement because last year the teachers were all on different grading scales and now everyone is on the same page,” said senior Jenny Lim.
Overall, according to staff, the main purpose of the new scale is to give every student a fair shot at success. “We need a grading system that actually tells us where our students are at,” said Siegel, “and that’s what this one, in the future, is going to do a better job of.”