Checking In With Checkpoints

Beginning this school year, the marking periods here at WUHS have been shortened from four quarters to eight checkpoints.

Checkpoint grades are released at the time previously designated for progress reports, but unlike progress report grades, checkpoint grades stick around on report cards, at least for proficiency-based students.

This new system has caused some questions among juniors and seniors who are still on the traditional grading system; since checkpoints are so short, there isn’t as much time to remedy a low grade or turn in late work.

Junior Alivia Salls says that the checkpoint system, “...makes grades a lot more stressful because you have a lot less of them to average out your overall grade.”

The good news for those worried about this conflict of interests is that there is some teacher disgression involved in traditional grading between checkpoints. Because traditional grading doesn’t have the same required formative/summative system and there are often less grades in at the end of a checkpoint, teachers of traditional grading classes can go back to the previous checkpoint and change grades if they feel it is appropriate.

Checkpoints were originally established in relation to the proficiency system currently used for sophomores and freshmen, but have simultaneously changed experiences for people across all grades.

The idea was born after a team of Woodstock teachers traveled to Montpelier High School to gather data on how the eight-checkpoint system has worked for them. The idea behind these checkpoints is that students see how they are scoring throughout the quarter instead of scrambling to keep up at the end of a quarter, thus promoting more communication between students, parents, and teachers.

WUHS Curriculum Coordinator Jennifer Stainton called the checkpoints a “...more frequent independent work feedback mechanism”.

For Martha Perkins, English teacher here at WUHS, this more frequent check-in system does mandate practice and helps students to gain experience, but the short checkpoints break up the normal flow of her assignments and the literature with which she teaches.

Ms. Perkins says that she often finds herself, “counting assessments, letting three formatives drive the curriculum and instruction, so I can ‘have’ a summative experience” and notes that “sometimes I find myself asking students for a ‘performance piece’ so to speak at a juncture in a text where I wouldn't ‘naturally’ or ‘normally’ ask for one.”

This is not the case for Spanish and French teacher Colleen O’Connell. She finds that the units that she uses in her language classes are just about the right length for a checkpoint anyway, and therefore the new system fits well with her existing curriculum and facilitates flow instead of cramping her style.

Ms. O’Connell believes that the standards for learning don’t change with the checkpoints. She says, “Whether it’s a quarter grade or a checkpoint doesn’t matter, it’s the idea behind it”. However, she does think that the checkpoints give more weight to what students are doing throughout the year instead of just a mad scramble for a grade at the end of a quarter.

With just two checkpoints behind us so far, it may be too early to fully assess the new grading system. Time will tell if the advantages will outweigh the drawbacks, but it is the overall goal of the administration that these checkpoints will prove beneficial to students and staff as they progress through the school year.