Perry Co. school to use new grading system - 14 News, WFIE, Evansville, Henderson, Owensboro

A school in Perry County will start using a new grading system, one that administrators say will be a more effective way to measure student performance.

Perry Central Assistant Superintendent Tara Bishop says a group of teachers has been developing a standards-based-grading system over the past four years. The new system involves rating every student's academic performance and then factoring rating averages into the final grade for each subject.

Bishop says the new system was used for kindergarten, first and sixth-graders, and next year the system will be used for levels K through 7.

"A grade means very different things depending upon who's classroom you're in. If we sit down and have these rich conversations about what good looks like, in a specific course, on a specific skill, what happens then is students are able to see how their performance relates to that skill, and then they can improve," said Bishop.

Bishop says that this year's sixth-grade class will carry the new system all the way through high school, and once this class becomes Perry Central's senior class, the system will be the standard for all grades K through 12.

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