With the shift to in-person learning for the 2021-2022 school year, the grading and late work policy has changed to enforce deadlines.

 Assignments submitted after the due date and time are considered late and will receive a maximum score of 86 percent (B). The policy aims to encourage students to complete their work in a timely fashion.

In addition to the late work policy, teachers are now required to put two grades in Aspen every five days, or two grades each school week. This policy doubles the previous requirement from last year of two grades every ten days.

In the previous school year, the late work policy allowed students to turn in work late at any point in the advisory, without any point reduction. Students enjoyed the grading method as it gave them ample time to complete any given assignment.

“It gave students less stress last year when we had extended time, and in the end we all learned the same amount, so the matter of when you turn it in shouldn’t really affect us,” junior Jackie Wiechmann said.

However, without deadlines, students struggled to turn their work in on time.  “From talking to students last year, some expressed that motivation was difficult when there was no penalty to turning things in at any time,” English teacher Allison Conroy said.

“The ‘Makeup Whenever’ grading policy was in a way enabling [students] to procrastinate excessively and they had a harder time managing their class workloads,” added science teacher Daniela Munoz.

With the prior late work policy, students would wait until the last few days, even up until the last few minutes, of the advisory to turn in weeks worth of work.

“[The] late work policy might help to avoid the crush of late work at the end of the term, which can be really overwhelming for both teachers who are grading and students who are rushing to make things up,” Conroy said.

For junior Liam Ervin, however, “the new late work policy is infuriating for many students who are already juggling many things, and it doesn’t allow for many mistakes.”

Ervin adds that if he were the one to make the decision about the late work policy, he would wait to see how the new policy is affecting the students’ grades as a whole. “It’s hard to gauge whether it makes students more on top of things or if it just makes them less productive and more likely to fail,” Ervin said. •