Frosh: Weighting Grades by month rather than by the type of assignment.

I am playing around with weighting grades in a new way if I
get to teach frosh next year and I am looking for feedback.

When we assess the work that freshmen are doing at the beginning
of the year we are NOT assessing the skills they have learned in our class, we
are assessing what they learned from their teachers in 8^th grade.

An essay that a 9^th grader writes in September is
a bigger reflection of what they learned from their 8^th grade
teachers about writing than it is an assessment of what we have been able to
teach them. To me this leads to grades that do not reflect what a student has
learned in OUR CLASS and therefore are not really valuable assessments to
determine how effective we are as teachers.

We know that there are inequities in the quality of
education that our incoming 8^th graders are receiving. I know this
full well having been one of those incoming 9^th graders who came
from a K-8 where quite frankly my education sucked and I was way behind until
about junior year.

Here is what I propose: we weight the grades based on how
far into the semester we are. So in other words assignments and tests from
August count for 10% of a student’s grade. Assignments and tests in September
count for 20%. Assignments and tests from October count for 30%. Assignments and
tests from November to December count for 40%.

By giving weight to the assignments at the end of a semester
we are allowing students to grow and demonstrate content mastery without being
so heavily penalized for work that was subpar at the beginning of the year. A
student who cannot write a coherent essay in August should not have that essay
count to the same degree as the writing that they are doing in December.

This also put more responsibility on US – to make our grades
reflect what we have taught them instead of how much skill they already have
coming into 9^th grade.

What do you think – has any one tried this?? Do you hate the
idea?? Is it worth a shot??