At the beginning of this year, many Flint Hill students were surprised to hear that the Upper School’s late and missing work policy had been completely overhauled. Together with the newly implemented Formative/Summative assignment system, the reforms enormously changed the process of completing assignments. Though designed with noble goals in mind, could the new policy have harmful effects in the long run?
The new missing work policy is built on the fundamental idea that students should be graded on their mastery of the material, not their behavior or scholastic habits. This way, grades would become a reflection almost exclusively of academic results, not the process taken to achieve them.
As of this year, when a student misses a submission deadline, an email is sent out to them, their advisor, and their parents, and a “Missing Assignment” marker is activated in their Husky Hub until they turn the assignment in. When they do, the work is graded by their teacher as if it had been done on time, with no grade penalties whatsoever.
In theory, this system’s benefits are obvious. It is immensely empathetic towards students who may be struggling with study habits, and it makes their level of academic mastery more immediately obvious through their grade transcripts.
Another benefit of the new system is the time management opportunities it gives students. “When I’ve had a lot of work and am frantically completing assignments after school, I don’t have to sacrifice sleep to submit fully on time,” Paulina Dackiw ‘26 explains, “Instead, I can simply finish the rest in the morning.”
This strategy can work wonders for stress relief if employed in moderation, but unfortunately, it does not seem to have been used wisely. When the Upper School reconvened after Winter Break, Upper School Dean of Students Jeremiah Shepherd revealed that there were still over two hundred missing assignments active from the previous semester. That number suggests something far beyond occasional stress management.
The missing work policy includes a provision for long-overdue assignments. When a student does not turn in work on their own, they are required to do it in their classroom during Office Hours, or even in a special workshop in the Multipurpose Room. However, the sheer volume of missing assignments suggests that these requirements have not been flawlessly fulfilled. As a result, a large part of the burden of making sure these assignments get done has fallen to teachers.
The Flint Hill faculty is one of the most important parts of the school community, and the new policy has been just as much of an adjustment for them as for the students. Certain departments, though, have been affected more than others.
In the science department, where most graded work is in the form of labs and assessments, there has been less of a jump. “It works for me,” says US physics teacher Tim Uher, adding “it hasn’t drastically changed my life or my classes.”
The humanities, however, have been another story. In History and English classes, where projects are more prominent, there is a lot more opportunity for late submissions. Unfortunately, this has led to an undue amount of stress on teachers, especially in courses where there is more work to be done. “The new policy has not resulted in more timely submission of work, but has encouraged students to delay longer than they would under the old policy,” said one teacher in the English department.
The untimeliness of submissions forces teachers to constantly remind students to complete their assignments, as well as keep track of who has or hasn’t done what. This adds a lot of strain onto teachers by delaying material, feedback, and grading, which is frustrating for everybody involved.
In addition to giving teachers more work to manage, the missing policy creates an environment for students to develop bad academic habits. The refrain I heard most often when I asked about the system was that both teachers and students were worried that it could lead to habits of procrastination that would end up making the transition to college more difficult. As a college preparatory school, Flint Hill should be doing its best to ensure its students are ready for further education. Being able to turn in work on time and manage assignments is a critical part of that preparedness. When late work isn’t penalized, it is much harder to stay motivated enough to complete it on time, and therefore exponentially more difficult to develop a habit of doing so.
This new policy aims to remove student behavior as an influence in grades. However, beyond high school, mastery is not the only metric on which performance is assessed. Time management and responsibility are all critical to every career on the planet. The current system effectively isolates the school from most other academic and professional environments, which, in the long run, may harm students’ habits post graduation.
In my own experience, I can confidently say that the new missing work policy has made my life a lot easier, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I’ve been less stressed to complete assignments, but I know that my peace of mind comes at the cost of my teachers’ time and effort.
I strongly empathize with any strategies to decrease the number of missing assignments. If the data, when analyzed at the end of the year, suggests that the new system has been beneficial to that end, it should by all means be continued and refined to ensure Flint Hill provides the best education possible to its students. However, as it stands now, the reforms don’t look to be accomplishing what they initially set out to do. Despite the best of intentions, this policy may be doing more harm than good.
