{"id":4542,"date":"2019-10-27T18:45:09","date_gmt":"2019-10-27T18:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/?p=4542"},"modified":"2019-10-29T17:21:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T17:21:31","slug":"midterm-grades-are-here-and-students-dont-know-what-to-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/2019\/10\/27\/midterm-grades-are-here-and-students-dont-know-what-to-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Midterm Grades Are Here, and Students Don\u2019t Know What to Think"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Charlie Wright \u201820 reacts to seeing his midterm grades on PowerSchool (Photo courtesy of Adam Rogers \u201820)<\/p><\/div>\n

Midterm Grades Are Here, and Students Don\u2019t Know What to Think<\/h3>\n

By Adam Rogers \u201820<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s that time of year again. School has started to settle in. Teachers have been diligently educating, testing, and grading their pupils. But now we have finally reached the first checkpoint of the school year: midterm grades.
\nMidterm grades are the first sample of grades the students and parents of Wyoming Seminary see halfway through each term. They include the overall academic grade, an effort grade, and teacher comments from each class. These types of grades are used as a way for students to check their progress and see where they should improve before the end-of-term grades are completed.
\nUntil the spring of the 2018-2019 school year, midterm grades were filed in the same format as the transcript at the end of each term. It included the letter grade, the effort grade, comments, and the student\u2019s current and previous grade point averages (GPAs).
\nNow, however, the format of these has changed. In the midterm, students temporarily gain access to PowerSchool for ten days, which includes individual assignment grades, letter grades, and grade percentages. This program does not calculate GPA.
\nMany students have come to like the new changes. Phil Gristina \u201820 describes it as a \u201c…more in-depth analysis of my grade. I get to see every class and every grade individually.\u201d One of the features of PowerSchool is being able to see the grade of every assignment in each class, giving a more detailed break-down of the overall percentage grade.
\n\u201cI like how I\u2019m able to see my individual grades so I can know how to improve my GPA,\u201d says Jared Weisenberger \u201820. Knowing why you are struggling in a class can help you focus on what you need to fix.
\nThere are some downfalls to using PowerSchool to report midterm grades. \u201cI have to calculate my own GPA, which can be scary if I get it wrong,\u201d says Owen Li \u201820. Li, among many other students, find it nerve-wracking to guess their GPA based on their grades.
\nTeachers are also not entirely on board with reporting midterm grades with PowerSchool. Anne Lew believes \u201cthe ability to see your grades as a student might prohibit a really good conversation with your teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Midterm Grades Are Here, and Students Don\u2019t Know What to Think By Adam Rogers \u201820 It\u2019s that time of year again. School has started to settle in. Teachers have been Continue Reading \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":4545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Screen-Shot-2019-10-27-at-1.31.34-PM.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4542"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4555,"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions\/4555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theopinator.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}