Indian Prairie School District 204 is piloting a weighted grading system this year, with the goal of standardizing grading and promoting equity across the district, according to district administrators.
The district will be testing out the new weighted grading practice at the middle and high school levels, according to a presentation to the school board on July 7 by Deputy Superintendent Louis Lee and Waubonsie Valley High School Assistant Principal Montrine Johnson.
Under the recommended grading practice, student work is divided into two categories: formative and summative. Formative assessments, including things like quizzes and entrance and exit slips, would be weighted at 20% of a student’s grade. Summative assessments — cumulative evaluations, such as unit tests, final exams, projects and essays — would be worth 80% of a student’s grade.
This recommendation came out of research done by a committee of educators and administrators, according to the presentation. The committee looked at grading-related topics like re-takes, zero’s, formative and summative assessments, the role of homework and extra credit in grading and resources for students with 504 plans and Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, and multilingual students.
Formative assessments are “low-stakes,” Johnson said at the school board meeting on July 7, and show students “exactly where they are, what their strengths are and the areas in which they need to grow.” Summative assessments, on the other hand, are meant to measure the knowledge and skills that a student has learned.
The rationale for the weighted grading system includes a focus on more equitable grading, Johnson said, since the grading system looks at students’ mastery of topics and skills and lets students know what they’re aiming for and what their grade represents.
It also standardizes grading practices, Lee told the board.
The district currently has over 250 different gradebooks, he said, to track and measure grades.
“That many, just, different forms of how we’re valuing work…is inconsistent, sends the wrong message to students,” Lee said.
Both administrators acknowledged that criticism of this sort of grading practice exists. Lee noted that, for example, weighting can devalue formative assessments, and impact student motivation to do daily work.
But the district’s sub-committee looking at formative and summative assessments, for which Johnson was a co-facilitator, ultimately landed on recommending this 80% and 20% grading system. A couple middle schools already have similar weighted grading systems, the district administrators noted.
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The board responded with numerous questions about the proposed system — and some concerns.
Board member Susan Demming, for example, asked about the specific percentages that were decided on. Johnson said these percentages were common in looking at neighboring schools, and said that the committee felt the percentage for summative assessments couldn’t be more than 80%.
Board vice president Supna Jain asked if the idea is for this grading system to be a guideline or a requirement. Lee said the long-term plan is for it to be a requirement, but that there would be flexibility as to, for example, how assignments are categorized and how they’re designed.
Board member Mark Rising expressed concern about the weighting of formative and summative assessments.
“We have very different learners across our district,” Rising said. “And when we’re setting an 80/20, formative-summative (system), we are automatically setting up kids for failure, in my opinion. There are kids that their homework, their extra credit sustains their grade. There are some kids that have test anxiety. I fear we are creating not a more equitable system, I fear we’re creating a more inequitable system.”
To the board’s questions, Talley noted that this sort of grading already exists in the district, meaning it’s not an entirely new system, but it isn’t standardized across district schools and classrooms. He said he asked this work to be done over three to five years because “of the questions that people are asking” and that this is the beginning of the process for the district. Lee, too, pointed to the timeline as board members shared their questions and concerns.
“We want to provide a long runway for this,” Lee said.
Meanwhile, the sub-committees are continuing to work on grading and implementation, Lee said.
Re-takes, for example, are one point of concern. Lee noted that re-takes are common in college, for standardized tests and post-graduate examinations, and said they are evaluating what role they should have in classes in the district going forward.
The weighted grading pilot will be starting in the fall, according to the presentation, and is set to include both teachers already implementing a similar system and some that aren’t, Lee said. The total number of classrooms and teachers participating in it will not be finalized until teachers return in August, Lee told The Beacon-News.
From there, Lee said the plan is to present data from the pilot to the school board in the spring, train teachers starting in August 2026, and potentially implement the grading system as standard policy in August 2027.