Concord Academy crafted our distance-learning plan thinking we would stay with letter grades and that our plan created enough flexibility to accommodate students and their needs. However, as we approached the first day of online learning and heard from a variety of constituencies, we decided to move to pass/no credit. Concord’s mission centers equity of experience and love of learning. In this historical moment, we felt that students’ environments, needs, and obstacles to learning were more varied than ever and that letter grades would encompass many more factors than students’ actual learning, making letter grades inequitable and unreliable measures. We also recognized that the student online experience would be better if teachers were freed from their preexisting syllabi to adapt their courses fully to an online environment and asynchronous/synchronous routine. This meant removing the need to fit online coursework within their grading schemes. A pass/no credit policy allows us to deliver on Concord’s mission of “striving for equity” and being “animated by love of learning.”

See below for the letter sent home to families about our pass/no credit grading policy.