The leadership team appreciates the respectful advocacy that our community has offered regarding our exam schedule. The team wrestled to find a solution that both preserves the integrity of our instructional program as well as recognizes other real issues such as student stress and co- and extra-curricular commitments. As you know, assessment is an essential factor in the recursive cycle of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. In addition, assessment develops the academic stamina necessary to perform on AP assessments, the SAT, Dual enrollment exams, etcetera. This issue has several plausible solutions and the team considered a number of them.
The team settled on cancelling exams and waiving the 20% exam grade (10% in the case of freshman core classes); however, teachers have the autonomy of administering a summative assessment (i.e., test) in lieu of the exam, which will count as part of their nine weeks grade.* Teachers may choose to administer an assessment in the course of their 80 minute class period(s) as they deem it essential to content mastery prior to the end of the semester (February 5, 2016), or they may choose to administer an assessment following the start of the third quarter. There is no exam exemption for seniors since there is no exam requirement.
*Per VCU guidelines, students in dual enrollment courses must be offered the opportunity to take the exam (student choice). If the student chooses to take the dual enrollment exam, then the score will accrue @ 20% toward the semester grade.
This means that we will run a regular odd/even schedule (not an exam schedule).
Calendar (https://mlwgs.com/calendar)
January 28 Even
January 29 Odd
February 1 Odd
February 2 Even
February 3 Odd
February 4 Even
February 5 Student Holiday/Teacher Workday (grades)
February 8 Odd
February 9 Even (grades will be stored)
February 10 Odd
February 11 Even (report cards distributed)
February 12 All Periods
