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If your child has an Individualized Education Program (IEP) and consistently receives low grades, or if the classroom grading system just doesn’t seem to “fit” your child’s needs, individualizing the grading system may seem like an ideal solution.聽Although individualized grading can be a response to low grades, the goal isn’t to raise grades; the goal should be to help your child access the general education curriculum like their peers. As a member of your child’s IEP team, you may want to suggest an individualized grading system to the team. But even if the team agrees that individualized grading is appropriate, you’ll quickly discover that little is known about developing a grading system tailored to a child’s individual strengths and needs.

This article discusses the circumstances in which聽individualized grading may make sense, and some strategies for developing a grading system that also promotes your child’s advancement toward grade-level standards and progress toward their IEP goals. To get an overview and background on individualized grading practices, read the first article in this series: Equitable grading practices for students who have IEPs.

Keeping grades equitable and legal

While there is no single best way to individualize a grading system, there are some field-tested strategies designed to guide the process. When it’s done thoughtfully and systematically, individualization leads to a grading system that is equitable. This requires a system to be philosophically based in a belief that maintaining equity and meeting individual needs doesn’t necessarily mean “equality,” which is treating all students exactly the same. According to Joe Feldman, author of , an equitable grading system:

• 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 gradebooks;
• maintains high student accountability even when a grading system聽is individualized
• accurately matches grades to performance, even when accommodations are implemented

Legal guidelines for individualizing a grading system take into account the needs and interests of students with IEPs.

• An individualized grading system is considered a legal accommodation for students with an IEP, and documentation of accommodations must appear in their IEP.
• By law, a teacher cannot use any special grading procedures, including individualization, for a student who doesn’t have an IEP, unless such procedures are available to all students in the class.

What parents need to know about modification of IEP goals

Individualized grading almost always involves modification of academic goals, so parents should understand clearly:

• the differences between accommodations and modifications, whether it鈥檚 to content, instruction, or assessment in your child鈥檚 IEP;
• when it might be appropriate to use modified goals for a child with an IEP;
• the possible outcomes of that option.

When the IEP team chooses to provide modifications for a learner instead of accommodations, 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. The chart below presents basic information about the 鈥渨hat,鈥� 鈥渨hy,鈥� and 鈥渉ow鈥� of modifications to academic goals:

Modifications

Purpose

• Allow a student to work toward mastery of a non grade-level standard, one that is appropriate to their present level of performance.
• May involve a student working on less content, or parallel content at lower grade level.

Examples

• Expected to master 3 of 10 concepts in science class.
• Working on addition and subtraction while class works on multiplication and division.

Effect on grading

• Usually requires an individualized grading system, based on different grade-level standards or goals.
• Should be documented in the IEP and in the school’s reports to parents聽that grades are based on individualized goals or modified curriculum.

Potential implications for聽diploma and postsecondary applications

• Can affect access to certain college classes if prerequisites are not met.
• Can require an alternative to a high school diploma, which impacts postsecondary options.

For some students with IEPs, it鈥檚 more appropriate to change the elements of a grading system, like effort or 鈥渨eighting鈥� of assignments, than it is to modify goals.

How an IEP team makes the decision to individualize grading

When individualizing a learner’s grading system, an IEP team must carefully consider multiple factors. The following are for development of an individualized grading system based on modified goals or elements for a student with a disability.²

• The learner receives a series of very low or failing grades despite appropriate use of accommodations and modifications;
• The learner has the potential to have increased access to, and performance in, the general education curriculum; or
• The learner has a moderate to severe disability and works in an individualized curriculum.

This article focuses on the first two scenarios, which apply most often to learners with specific learning disabilities. According to the , this is the category under which the majority of learners with IEPs are identified as needing special education.

When an IEP team determines how to individualize a grading system, they must take into account the following questions:

• What are our concerns about the learner’s current grades (e.g., low grades, lack of motivation)?
• What purpose do we intend to serve with individualized grades?
• How does the learner’s disability currently affect their academic performance?

Options for individualized grading

It’s important for parents and other IEP team members to understand that, although consideration of an individualized grading system is often a result of concerns over a learner’s low grades, the goal should never be to simply find a way for them to get a higher grade. The goal of the IEP team should be to identify strategies that will help reduce the barriers that are getting in the way of a student鈥檚 ability to succeed in the general education curriculum.

have helped to identify best practices for for individualizing a grading system:

• Prioritizing content and associated assignments: As an example, a teacher may focus more time and support on three key assignments and make these assignments a larger part of the student’s grade.
• Grading based on the student’s work processes and effort: An example would be a teacher assigning a portion of the grade for a research paper based on the student’s use of planning and editing tools, to evaluate how effectively the student used a planning organizer, conducted edits on their first draft, and/or used tools like grammar and spell check.
• Including progress on IEP objectives in the student’s grade: For instance, if one of the student’s IEP objectives is to improve reading comprehension by summarizing main ideas accurately 80 percent of the time, the teacher would assign an A for a reading assignment if the student correctly summarizes the main ideas in 8 out of 10 passages (80 percent). Using this approach, the student鈥檚 improvement in organization is reflected in both the progress on their IEP goal and in the grade they receive for the assignment. Incorporating progress on IEP objectives into the grading system may provide a system to monitor progress toward IEP goals on a regular basis.
• Factoring in improvement measures when determining the student’s grade: For instance, if the student improves their homework completion rate from 70 percent to 90 percent, add 5 percent to their overall grade.
• Adjusting grading scales or weights: An example might be modifying the grading scale so that a student needs 90 points instead of 93 to earn an A or adjusting the weights of tests and homework to lessen the impact on students who struggle with tests, such as reducing test weight from 60 percent to 40 percent and increasing homework weight from 10 percent to 30 percent.
• Using alternatives to letter grades: This could mean moving to a pass-fail system, or using a competency checklist.

It鈥檚 important to know that while alternatives to letter grades may be an ideal worthy of discussion, implementing these types of alternate systems for evaluating student achievement can get in the way of postsecondary opportunities. Colleges and other postsecondary programs find it difficult to interpret alternative systems when making decisions on admissions, scholarships, and courses. The use of an alternative to letter grades should be used with caution.

Changing grading elements

Some individualizing a grading system by changing the elements that count toward the grade for an assignment or for a report card grade. Grading elements commonly found in grading systems include: quizzes, tests, or exams; research or lab reports; projects or exhibits; portfolios; notebooks or journals; oral presentations or performances; homework; class participation; work habits or neatness; effort; and punctuality of assignments. Examples of grading elements that can be added to a grading system for a student with an IEP include:

• A measure of progress on IEP goals that are addressed within the instruction.
• A measure of how effectively the learner used critical skills, such as learning strategies that can improve overall performance on a task

If a teacher incorporates in the grade a measure of how efficiently the learner applies learning strategies to complete a task, this may also result in the student building their skill in strategy use, producing a better overall product, and earning a higher grade. A related grading adaptation involves a teacher giving priority to classroom assignments that are linked to state learning standards, or assignments that are prerequisite to future assignments.

Why grading effort is controversial

The most controversial grading element is effort.聽Increasing the amount of credit a learner earns for trying hard may seem a logical way to encourage consistent effort. However, effort does not always translate into mastery. Raising a grade because the learner tried hard may confuse them as the work becomes more difficult and their past good grades don’t make sense in relation to their current learning struggles. In his book, , Rick Wormeli, argues that effort should be evaluated and reported separately from the letter grade, and should never be incorporated into a grade.

for middle school students with learning disabilities found that teachers perceived grading effort as a strategy for motivating learners with a history of low or failing grades. The key to effectively individualized grading in such cases is defining a learner’s effort as behaviors that would likely lead to overall improvement of their performance, such as increasing the number of questions they asked in class, problems they attempted, or聽times they requested help.聽This approach is more objective than a teacher evaluating a learner’s effort, based solely on observing the student working on an assignment.

Use strategies with caution

Most strategies for individualizing a grading system involve a proactive plan agreed to by the IEP team. However, two types of grading adaptations — changing the scale, and changing weights — can be implemented after scores on assignments have been collected, a more “reactive” approach. Changing the grading scale means lowering the percentage needed to earn a letter grade. For example, the cutoff for a B might be lowered to 70 percent from 80 percent. Similarly, changing the weight assigned to different elements so that a learner can get a higher grade is also a reactive strategy that should be used with caution. For example, an IEP team might decide that tests will comprise only 50 percent, rather than 70 percent, of a final grade because a learner gets very low grades on tests. This approach fails to address the real issue of why testing is so difficult for the learner.

Keep in mind

Although a child’s history of low or failing grades is often the impetus to request an individualized grading system, simply making it easier to get a higher grade is not a legitimate goal and can lead to even more confusion about what the learner’s grade means. When advocating for individualization, parents should help the IEP team focus on what types of adaptations and accommodations will lead to increased motivation and improve their ability to succeed in the general education curriculum.

Not all general and special education teachers have experience with formally individualizing a grading system for an individual student. That means parents should be prepared to discuss not only the options, but also the educational rationale behind them with the IEP team.

Updated August 2024