The Equitable Grading Bill has been in the works since last school year and has gone through nine different revisions, but it was finally passed by student legislature during X-block on March 12, with a 21-11 vote. The bill seeks to create shared experiences across different sections of the same course.

The bill has three parts: for sections of the same class it will standardize the breadth and weight of midyears and finals, create a uniform late work policy and standardize the basis of final grades for the class. Student chair of legislature junior Eric Bardon has been working on the bill since the beginning of the 2023-24 school year. He said the bill aims to create a more equal environment for all students.

“A lot of the time, students will find that they either have the ‘easier teacher’ or the ‘harder teacher’ between different sections of the same course, and we wanted to reduce those discrepancies,” Bardon said.

Student Government Liaison and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator Jen Martin explained that for the midyear and final exam section of the bill, the tests need to cover the same range of content, but do not need to be completely standardized.

“So history, for example, there are some 10th grade teachers who do these really cool, very popular mid-year exams that are more experiential, like reenacting something, having a debate, and that counts as your midyear,” Martin said. “Then there are history teachers of the same course who give a pretty standard protocol midyear with multiple choice [and] short answer essays. And it’s basically saying kids should have to prepare in a similar way, but they don’t have to ask the exact same questions.”

Student council collected data from teachers at the high school regarding their views on different parts of the bill. 64.6 percent of teachers surveyed were in favor of the section on midyears and finals, 21.3 percent were opposed to it and 14.2 percent were undecided.

Martin said the second section of the bill devoted to late assignments proposes that teachers of the same course have the same policy for extensions and late work penalties with room for exceptions.

“It would standardize [the late work policy] for the vast majority of kids, and allow for teachers to have professional judgment on whether or not it makes sense to apply it to every kid,” Martin said.

Only 30.7 percent of teachers surveyed were in favor of the section on a unified late work policy, 48.8 percent were opposed and 20.5 percent were undecided.

The final section of the bill standardizes how teachers calculate a final grade for a class, according to Bardon.

“Essentially, some teachers say your quarter one grade is 25 percent of the grade, your quarter two grade is 25 percent, et cetera,” Bardon said. “But other teachers kind of combine all the points from the different quarters into one grading period. It’s as if there was one quarter for the whole year.”

63 percent of teachers surveyed were in favor of a standardized final grading system, 22.8 percent were against and 14.2 percent were undecided.

English teacher and faculty chair of legislature Peter Sedlak said he agrees with the idea behind the bill for faculty to work together to provide comparable experiences to students in similar courses. However, he is opposed to the bill for a few reasons, one being that the title is misleading.

“This isn’t about equity. In my mind, this is about standardization. Equity would be about providing students the experience the students need. And every student is different, and therefore they’re going to all have different sorts of needs,” Sedlak said. “So to have a policy that kind of shoots across the board, kind of denies me, the teacher, the opportunity to actually provide equity to some students.”

Bardon said the initial bill was much more broad and included other provisions like retakes and grade weighting. Those clauses were removed because the student council worried that they infringed too much on teachers’ autonomy. According to Bardon, the newer version is less comprehensive.

“It is simply trying to strike the balance between effective change for students so they can have a certain level of standardization to expect, but also give teachers the autonomy to use their philosophies to run their classes,” Bardon said.

Another reason why Sedlak opposes the bill is because the policies are regulating a teacher’s job and is not a bill that belongs in the student handbook.

“I think practices should be come upon by the professionals and the school leaders, which will be the curriculum coordinators, the administration and teachers themselves. We’ve gone to school and we’ve studied education,” Sedlak said. “I’ve got a master’s in education. Some people have doctorates in education, we should be the ones that kind of decide how those [policies] come together.”

Martin said having a policy in the student handbook gives students a concrete voice.

“There’s also a rule that says you can’t have homework over religious holidays, and yet some teachers persist in giving homework over religious holidays, and the ways in which students can advocate for themselves is through their student handbook,” Martin said. “That’s how they can have a voice to the person in the room who holds all the power to be like, ‘but it says right here, you’re not allowed to do that.’”

Sedlak said that if the bill is passed, he would have to change aspects of his class in order to keep his class consistent with that of his fellow teachers.

“I don’t like telling my colleagues what they should do in their classrooms,” Sedlak said. “This bill is very much about me saying how [teachers] should run [their] classroom.”

Student council member and junior Daisy Huang was one of the students who helped create the bill and said according to data collected by the student council, the student body is generally in favor of it.

“In the long run, it will make a big impact on course fairness, even though, right now, it would be a big change, but in the long run, there’s definitely more positive benefits,” Huang said.

Bardon said that the bill will emphasize to students that their classes are equal and fair.

“It’s no longer a matter of: ‘I got the good teacher, I got the bad teacher.’ It’s that we are in a fair class at BHS, which is a very academically-inclined school. It’s very competitive,” Bardon said. “So if you have this issue where a student says they’re in the ‘bad section’ because they have a hard teacher, it creates a very, very toxic environment where students will go to their guidance counselors and ask to switch. Students will find a lot of benefit in being able to understand that they are fundamentally taking a similar class to their peers.”