At the start of the school year, Mounds View implemented an adjusted grading system compared to previous years. The change shifted the parameters of the grading scale, including increasing the minimum grade for an A from 3.4 to 3.51 and decreasing the minimum grade for passing a class from 1.5 to 1.0. The move has received mixed reception from students, staff and parents, with many wondering why the grading scale changed. 

According to Principal Rob Reetz, there were numerous reasons why the scale changed, including the need to have the same grading scale as Irondale. For years, the two schools had different systems, and Reetz believes this caused consistency problems within the district. “Mounds View and Irondale had different ideas as to how to ensure rigor on a four-point scale,” said Reetz. “It created, in my mind, a disadvantage for students here because they were failing courses that they would have been passing had they taken them at Irondale.”

Reetz saw that something needed to change in order to make the grading system fair. “We have an equity promise that says the school a student attends will not be a predictor of their success,” he said. Before the change, the minimum grade needed to pass a class at Mounds View was a 1.5, while it was a 0.8 at Irondale. To make the scale more equitable, the district changed the passing grade to 1.0 at both schools and established an equal-interval scale, using a 0.75-point difference between each letter grade including pluses and minuses, which resulted in an A moving to 3.51.

The change has generated mixed reactions from the school community. According to a survey of 142 Mounds View students, 78.9% said that they did not like the new scale, and 73.2% felt that it hurt their grades. These students feel that it brings more students’ grades down in the process. “Instead of changing the grading scale, I would focus on helping the people who need help, instead of bringing everyone down to the same level,” said junior Emmett Heilman.

However, Reetz pointed out other parts of the system that benefited students this past semester, including the effort to reduce implicit bias from teachers by standardizing the weight of assignments. In the past, teachers could weigh assignments however they wanted. “We had one teacher weigh an assessment at 70 and all other assessments at four. So the overall score grade for that teacher in that course was a single assessment,” Reetz said. “That, to me, was not fair.”  Now, performance assignments can only be weighted either two or four performance points.

The impact of assignments on a student’s grade also shifted, with performance assessments originally being worth 80% of their grade and practice assignments being worth 20%. The new plan changed that to 85% performance and 15% practice, or 75% performance if there is a 10% final assessment. 

Although many students find it more difficult to get an A, Reetz believes that the change to assignment weights, in general, counterbalances this shift. “I think actually the 0.11 difference, if you start talking to math teachers, is almost negligible in comparison to the huge swings in a kid’s grade based on how heavily weighted a single assessment was,” said Reetz. “The grade a kid is most likely to receive in this school remains an A, and it’s not close [to other grades].”

Mounds View changed the grading system with the goal of creating equity and giving all students a fair opportunity to succeed. Reetz hopes that the changes make the system more understandable and help the student body as a whole. “The idea is we’re focused less on points and grades and focused more on what learning you need to do in order to get this score,” Reetz said.