As of March 23, 2020, the Illinois State Board of Education released a statement saying, “Student work completed during the mandated statewide school closure must not negatively impact a student’s grades or otherwise impact a student’s academic standing.”

Now that the decision has been made to close school for the rest of this academic year, minimizing the negative effect on a student seems like the best option.

The students’ grades are now frozen, meaning they cannot fluctuate negatively based on missing or late work, but when they turn in things on time and put full effort into it their grade should rise a considerable amount.

These rules for the COVID-19 school closure have been put into place to make it fair for all students especially since students may be experiencing mental or physical hindrances from completing and turning in work.

“ I think that it’s fair enough, considering there are a lot of things going on right now; it kinda takes a load off of us knowing that we have time and it can negatively affect us,” says Simone Bene, a Joliet Central Freshman.

Many students feel like this is going to help them in the long run to better complete their work in its entirety, the best way that they can. On the other hand, some other students take this as an opportunity to slack off thinking that it doesn’t affect them at all.

“We are still providing valuable work to move the curriculum forward and grading with modifications; whether a student can get the work done or not, we continue to send a strong message that learning doesn’t need to stop just because we aren’t in the classroom but more importantly, that we are still available to our students in whatever capacity they may need during this time,” said Ms. Galloy, Joliet West English and Journalism teacher. 

Not being graded is taking a negative turn as far as motivation for the students. Yes, it does help some students who are willing to be productive even without negative grading, but there are still students who see an easy way out of doing their work. 

“ It helps to a certain extent, but I feel like they shouldn’t have told the kids that they can’t be graded, they should still be graded even without being in school, cause now they won’t do it since they technically don’t have to,” Omegea French states. 

Some students no longer feel the need to complete work because they will not be penalized for not doing so. The rules have already been put in place and everyone knows about them now, it’s either going to overall be a negative impact or positive and based on attendance scores, it seems like it will be the latter.