I was a freshman at Lewiston High School last year. With a new school year coming, I would like to share my thoughts on the past year’s grading system.

The system had two different sets of grades: habits of work and summatives. One controlled work habits, while the other controlled what students knew.

That indicated to students that formative assessments were not required for their final grade, which gave them a choice to do it. That let some students be lazy and not do work, or show that they were responsible and bring up their habits-of-work grade.

In the beginning, parents and students alike may have been a little misinformed, but through the year the school made countless efforts to clear up the confusion. School personnel also worked to fix kinks in the grading system. It was difficult because everyone was confused.

Although the school system may have implemented proficiency-based learning in a poor way, I believe it will work for the betterment of the students. The new system made it so that students had to be proficient in everything instead of getting an average in all areas of a specific course.

I say keep proficiency-based learning.

Ryan Handlon, Lewiston

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