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Grades are important, and it can be very upsetting when your child consistently brings home low grades. Especially when your child has a learning disability, you may be concerned about the impact that low grades have on their motivation and self-esteem. Or you may feel that low grades don’t reflect the huge amount of effort your child puts into their school work. Although there’s no magic formula for “fair” grades, there are guidelines for equitable grading practices for learners with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) that can help you advocate for your child.

An equitable grading system

When parents, teachers, or schools raise issues of grading fairness and equity, it is often the result of confusion regarding the purposes for grades, and whether a “one-size-fits-all” grading system can work for learners with disabilities. For a grading system to be fair and equitable, it must have as its philosophical basis a belief that fairness is defined as maintaining equity and meeting individual needs — not necessarily as “equality,” which is treating all students exactly the same.

According to Joe Feldman, author of ¹, an equitable grading system:¹

• shows what students have learned without including behavior or the teacher’s personal bias, which helps keep grades fair and accurate.
• evaluates students only on their level of content mastery.
• promotes mistakes as a part of learning in order to helps develop persistence and resilience.
• makes grades easier to understand and more transparent by using standard-aligned rubrics, scales, and grade books.

This article discusses aspects of grading that parents should be aware of as you advocate for your children with IEPs, especially when you’re concerned about low or failing grades. The second article in the series, Individualized grading for a student who has an IEP, provides a more detailed description of the process of developing a grading system for a particular student.

The “Non-evolution” of grading practices

While classroom instruction and assessment have undergone decades of change, grading has remained largely the same. Only in the past 15 years or so, has there been the type of that could lead to consensus on what is best practice in grading. New models or strategies for grading have been proposed and put into place that focus on grading systems that not only measure performance in ways that correspond to a state’s grade-level learning standards, but which also try to grade work habits and work product separately.

Ongoing debate regarding grading practices stems in part from the fact that legal, pedagogical, and philosophical perspectives all converge when a school or district decides how to establish a schoolwide or statewide grading policy or grading system. There’s also . In addition, schools and teachers may use grades for different purposes, including making decisions about who is eligible for special programs and who needs special help, or as a general indicator of how well students as a whole are performing in the curriculum.

Research suggests that grading practices vary considerably among schools and among teachers in the same school, despite attempts in many schools to build in more consistency and predictability. That means that teachers’ unintentional and unconscious biases can be a factor in grading. Parents should ask questions about the teacher’s approach to grading before engaging in problem-solving regarding a grading issue. Parents of students with IEPs may desire a grade to reflect how much progress or improvement their child has made during the marking period, or how much progress was made on IEP goals, but this is provided separately. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) says the school needs to provide parents information about progress toward those goals on the same timeline as reporting out on grades.

Anatomy of a grade

Classroom grading systems are typically designed so that learners receive points or individual grades in multiple areas of assessment, called “elements.” The following is a list of elements commonly found in grading systems:

• Quizzes, tests or exams
• Research or laboratory reports
• Projects or exhibits
• Portfolio
• Notebook or journal
• Oral presentation or performance
• Homework
• Class participation
• Work habits and neatness
• Effort
• Punctuality of assignments

Adapted from Guskey, T.R., & Bailey, J.M. (2001). Developing grading and reporting systems for student learning.

For a student with some types of disabilities, including specific learning disabilities, it may be the case that certain grading elements are more affected by their disability than others, resulting in lower grades even when they give their best effort. The first question a parent or teacher should ask in analyzing the case of a low report card grade is: Which grading elements are resulting in the student’s lowest grades? When certain types of assignments are more affected by a student’s disability and produce low grades, a parent can work with the Individualized Education Program (IEP) team to determine what types of accommodation can be provided to minimize the impact of the student’s disability on meeting the demands of a particular type of assignment. When a child has an IEP, discussions regarding low or failing grades should always pinpoint the barriers that get in the way of a student’s success, and whether the accommodations provided in the student’s IEP are appropriate and adequate.

Accommodations, modifications, and grading

When parents, teachers, and students discuss concerns about grading, everyone involved must have a clear understanding of what “accommodations” and “modifications” are. Accommodations and modifications can be made to:

• the content of the instruction,
• the way in which content is taught, or
• the way the student’s learning is assessed.

The following table highlights differences between these two types of supports for learners receiving special education services.

Individualized grading, based on modified goals or curriculum

When an IEP team decides to implement modifications for learners, they should do so only when the student needs more individualized instruction to match their present level of performance. For some learners, modified learning goals — often in a specific content area — may be required. In this way, they can receive instruction on content from an earlier grade-level standard that, when mastered, will allow them to perform better in the general education curriculum. The following are for development of an individualized grading system for a student with a disability.²

• The learner has a moderate to severe disability and works in an individualized curriculum (usually doesn’t apply to learners with a specific learning disability);
• The learner receives a series of very low or failing grades despite appropriate use of accommodations and modifications; or
• The learner has the potential to have increased access to and performance in the general education curriculum.

The last criterion above is the most complex, and requires careful consideration of options for individualizing a grading system. A process for individualizing a grading system for an individual student is discussed in the second article of this series.

Keeping it legal

• The use of different, individualized grading procedures, based on modified goals or standards, is legal only when such procedures are documented in an IEP.
• Students who are not eligible for special education services might benefit from individualized grading, but providing it is not legal. Special grading procedures cannot be made for individual students (without an IEP) unless the same procedures are made available to all students in the class.

When the IEP team chooses to provide modifications instead of accommodations for a learner, they should agree on how a learner will be assessed and graded on individualized goals before the student actually begins their work and is assigned grades. The learner and their parents should expect the teacher to clarify, usually in writing, that report card grades are based on individualized goals. Most school districts attempt to convey this information in a discreet way so that if learners compare report cards with their friends, peers are not immediately aware that their classmate’s grades are based on different criteria from their own. Again, parents should be aware, especially when your children enter high school, that modified curriculum may have an impact on the type of diploma your child receives and the range of post-secondary options open to your child.

Parents should be aware that terminology used in documents and discussion about individualized grading procedures is sometimes confusing because:

• An IEP form may include a checklist that mixes accommodations and modifications together.
• An IEP form may include grading procedures under either accommodations or modifications.

Make sure to ask the team for clarification if you’re unsure about whether a practice is an accommodation or a modification.

Class-wide grading practices that benefit all students

Grading practices that may benefit students with disabilities may also benefit other learners in the classroom. Traditional classroom grading systems are often neither fair nor equitable for all learners. The following grading practices are recommended for all classrooms:

Avoiding giving zeroes for missing work

Missing or incomplete work is a common issue in many classrooms, but may be even more of a problem for learners with challenges in executive functions skills, such as organization, planning, attention, or self-regulation, or those who have slow processing speed. Assigning a student a zero (0) for missing assignments can drag down their overall grade, and can thwart their motivation to keep trying hard. Even more importantly from a pedagogical standpoint, a zero does not accurately reflect the amount of actual learning that has occurred.

One approach is to develop a policy that allows for make-up work so that learners receive all or partial credit for turning in missing work later. Another approach is to give some points (e.g., 59 on a 100-point scale) for missing work so that one missing assignment does not count so heavily toward a final grade.^3,4 When school teams — whether pre-referral, IEP, or Response-to-Intervention — meet to discuss a learner’s low or failing grades, one of the first questions they should address is whether the student has received zeroes for missing work.

Using different types of assessments

Fortunately for all learners, differentiated instruction, including assessment, has been shown to be an effective approach for allowing students to demonstrate their learning in different ways. It can foster a student’s motivation and provide a more accurate picture of what they have learned.⁵ For a student with disabilities, the opportunity to demonstrate learning in more than one way may minimize or prevent the impact of their disability on the task demand.

In some cases, it’s debatable whether an alternative form of assessment (e.g., videotaped presentation of a student reporting on a science topic) represents an “accommodation”. For example, if a classroom teacher follows the practice of Universal Design for Learning and allows all students in the class to choose among a menu of assessment activities, then a video presentation might not be viewed as an accommodation for an individual student. But because there are teachers who may rely solely on traditional written tests for assessment, allowing a student to make a video presentation should likely be considered an accommodation requiring documentation in the student’s IEP.

Keep in mind

It is important for parents to recognize that individualizing a grading system will require additional time for a classroom teacher. Not all general education teachers will have had experience with special grading procedures, so getting support from the rest of the IEP team when you make a request for individualized grading is recommended.

References

1. Feldman J. (2018). School grading policies are failing children: A call to action for equitable grading. Oakland, CA: Crescendo Education Group.
2. Pozas, M., Letzel, V. and Schneider, C. (2020). “Teachers and differentiated instruction: exploring differentiation practices to address student diversity.” Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 20: 217-230 https://nasenjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1471-3802.12481
3. Welch, A.B. “Responding to student concerns about fairness,” Teaching Exceptional Children, 33, 2.
4. Munk, D.D. Solving the grading puzzle for students with disabilities. Whitefish Bay, WI: Knowledge by Design, 2003.
5. Wormeli, R. Fair isn’t always equal: Assessing & grading in the differentiated classroom. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2006.

Updated August 23, 2024