If you are familiar with board games, chances are, you are most likely familiar with the game Monopoly, which is a game where the goal is to dominate the market and to marginalize or annihilate opponents. 

Coincidentally, this is the same strategy that District 86 uses when grading assignments since summatives dominate almost all of your current grade while formative assignments are marginalized for a small percentage of your grade. 

In Monopoly, if a player is able to build a hotel on Boardwalk, this one property will dominate over all the remaining properties controlled by the other players. Similarly, if you currently attend Hinsdale South or Central or have attended, you are most likely familiar with the grading system of certain departments and how summative assignments like tests, quizzes, etc. play a disproportionately heavy role in your grade. 

For example in Social Studies, which is on the lower end of the scale, 70% of your grade is summative while 30% is formative while in Science, on the higher end, 90% is summative while 10% is formative.

Now, just to note, I am not here to criticize the grading system of District 86 nor am I giving a suggestion for a more fair grading system; rather I am only giving my empirical evidence on its effects on one’s grades. In fact, I believe that summatives having a higher role in your grading is most accurate given that it tests your formative knowledge on things you’ve learned.

One benefit regarding the high influence of summatives is simply that a summative assignment is a test on what you have learned over the course of a unit or particular lesson. Therefore, having it as a large majority of your grade would be somewhat fair in the sense that it combines all of your formative knowledge into one exam. It gives you an accurate depiction on how well you would be at a particular topic or class. 

Additionally, summatives offer a wide variety of ways to test your knowledge on a designated topic outside of a test including quizzes, labs, or even projects, giving you the opportunity to boost your grade without having to study as much as you would do on a traditional assessment. 

However, if a class only offers assessments for the summative portion of your grade and excludes smaller assignments like quizzes, projects, or labs, it can have a higher influence on the jeopardization of your grade, either in a positive or negative way. 

While it may not be a huge deal if the class you take is not too hard, it could increase pressure for you to do better on assessments regardless of if the class is too hard or not. If the class you are taking is too challenging or you don’t have a good memory of what you learn, it can worsen your grade more than it normally should. 

This challenge can prevent you from being able to achieve the grade you desire or in worst cases, even passing the semester for that class altogether. 

Another part of your grade that was not previously mentioned is the final exams that take place at the end of the semester. Despite only playing a minor role in your grade when compared to your term grade, it is one of the most important and influential assignments that can change your grade for better or worse. 

This could act as a motivating favor for students on the borderline of a grade. For example, someone with a 79 could use finals as an opportunity to show their true understanding of the content by performing well on the test. 

On the other hand, if a student has a B until December, one might consider if it is truly fair that they will drop a letter grade or two if they simply have a bad day on the day of their final. Weighting one exam so high is potentially a major benefit or burden to a student’s grade.