Grades show the competencies that students have developed, as well as their growth. At Summit Learning, we want grades to reflect the fact that students will be growing and improving in their abilities throughout the year.
For Focus Areas, students demonstrate mastery through performance on Content Assessments. Each type of Focus Area (Power Focus Areas, Additional Focus Areas, Challenge Focus Areas) contributes differently to a student’s grade. Students must pass Content Assessments in focus areas in order to pass a course.
- Power Focus Areas are required pieces of Content Knowledge. For non-AP courses, students must answer 8/10 assessment questions correctly to pass. For AP courses, students must answer 7/10 assessment questions correctly to pass. Keep in mind that students can take Content Assessments as many times as they’d like. Students must pass all Power Focus Areas to pass a course.
- Additional Focus Areas are supplementary pieces of Content Knowledge that make up a percentage of a student's grade if this configuration is enabled through your course weights. Students don’t need to pass Additional Focus Areas to pass a course, but keep in mind that the highest grade a student can receive in a course without passing any Additional Focus Areas is 100% minus the percentage weight of Additional Focus Areas.
- Challenge Focus Areas are not required, and they do not contribute to a student's grade. Rather, they allow students to go above and beyond, or prepare for standardized tests.
Note: If a student hasn’t yet passed all Power Focus Areas to the left of the pacing line shown on the Year section, they’ll be shown as having an off track grade. The grade shown will represent the percentage of Power Focus Areas that students have completed based on the pacing line.