Some schools throughout the country have been going back and forth between a rolling gradebook compared to a quarterly gradebook. A rolling gradebook is a cumulative document that includes all of the assignments throughout the entire semester/ school year while a quarterly gradebook is just the assignments through each quarter. At the beginning of the quarter, the gradebook restarts back with no assignments. The difference between these gradebooks could either hurt or help students’ grades. Just like everything else, there are pros and cons with this practice.

Some pros of the rolling gradebook are creating more opportunities for students to increase their grade throughout the entire semester since there is no cutoff at quarters. This gradebook also benefits teachers because this is easier for them to measure the actual mastery of the students’ learning. With a rolling gradebook, it shows a more accurate representation of what the students really know.

Another pro of the rolling gradebook makes it harder for students to slack for most of the semester and work hard for a small bit at the end of the semester to still achieve a passing grade. This helps teachers enforce students to work hard throughout the entire semester. 

On the contrary, the cons of a rolling gradebook could also hurt good students. For example, a student that works hard throughout the entire semester, especially in a hard course, could struggle more because it is harder to keep the grade up when there are more points and assignments in the gradebook. 

“I feel that the semester long grading system has benefits as well as downfalls. But I think it makes it harder overall because if you do poorly the first quarter, it is a lot harder to get the grade to what you want it to be by the end of the year. That’s why I like the quarter idea because you have a fresh start,” said sophomore, Armaan Dhillon.

Quarterly gradebooks can help students try and balance out their grade. Students have an opportunity to restart the quarter back at square one. This helps most students because it makes it easier for them to balance out their final grades. But this grading system can create a problem for some teachers when students only try for one quarter just so that they can accomplish a passing grade. 

“I do think the semester grading is harder because if you did really good 1st quarter but not so good 2nd quarter it is going to lower your grade if you had like a low A it would be a B,” said sophomore, Rylie Alberts.

Overall, these systems have pros and cons to them that could either help or hurt the students and their grades. These factors should be looked into more to see if they are overall, benefiting or hurting the students.