2026-08-27 · Board Packet · Page 32

GRADING  6XXX 
 Page  1  of 2 
 PURPOSE 
 The Board of Education establishes this policy to define the District’s philosophy and guiding 
 principles for grading and reporting student achievement. Consistent with the District vision and 
 strategic plan, grades shall serve students, families, and educators as an honest and 
 meaningful communication of learning. 
 PHILOSOPHY OF GRADING 
 The Board believes that a grade should communicate, as accurately as possible, what a student 
 knows and is able to do relative to grade-level standards and course expectations. A student’s 
 academic grade shall reflect demonstrated content knowledge and skills. Schools should 
 support continued learning by preserving meaningful opportunities for students to demonstrate 
 growth and mastery over time.   The Board affirms the professional judgment of teachers, who 
 know their content, their standards, and their students best, and asks that this judgment be 
 exercised in service of accuracy, fairness, and student growth. The teacher of each course shall 
 determine the student's grade. The grade assigned by the teacher shall not be changed by the 
 Board or the Superintendent except as provided by law, Board policy and administrative 
 regulation. 
 GUIDING PRINCIPLES 
 Grading and reporting practices throughout the District shall be guided by the following 
 principles: 
 1.  Accuracy and meaning.  A grade should be a valid reflection of a student’s learning. 
 Practices that distort the academic meaning of a grade—inflating it or deflating it for 
 reasons unrelated to demonstrated learning—should be avoided. 
 2.  Transparency.  Students and families should understand how grades are determined 
 and should receive timely, clear information about academic progress so that they can 
 act on it. Expectations should be communicated at the start of a course or grading 
 period. 
 3.  Consistency within a course or standard.  Students enrolled in the same course 
 should be assessed against the same standards and expectations, regardless of section 
 or teacher. Collaboration among educators helps a given grade carry comparable 
 meaning from one classroom to the next. 
 4.  Equity and fairness.  A grade should reflect a student’s academic performance and 
 demonstrated learning, rather than circumstances unrelated to learning. Students shall 
 not receive grade penalties or rewards, such as extra credit, for non-academic 
 compliance like bringing supplies. Every student shall have a fair and meaningful 
 opportunity to demonstrate learning. 
 Application Across PK-12 
 These principles apply uniformly across the District and are implemented in developmentally 
 appropriate ways at each level. The form that grading and reporting take—for example, 
 standards-based reporting in the elementary grades and letter or percentage grades in the 
 secondary grades—may differ, but the underlying commitments to accuracy, transparency, 
 consistency, equity, and support for learning remain constant from Pre-Kindergarten through 
 Grade 12. 
 Los Alamos Public Schools