By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
Rockingham County overhauled its grading practices and screen-time policy, moving the district toward what school board members said they hope will be a more focused and fair experience in the classroom ahead of the 2026-27 academic year.
The new technology policy, which board members approved during last week’s meeting, creates a tiered system for screen use based on grade level, positioning technology as a “tool to support teaching and learning, not a substitute for high-quality, teacher-led instruction.”
“The spirit of this is really to be intentional about how we’re using it,” said Superintendent Larry Shifflett. “I think if teachers are using good professional judgement, it’ll be in a good place.”
Make no mistake, Shifflett said, the county recognizes the value of technology as a learning tool. But just as other school districts across the country are grappling with the issue, Shifflett said there needs to be a course correction after the pandemic and greater regulation of students’ screen time.
“You cannot — you cannot — attend to two things at once. It’s impossible, right?” Shifflett said. “We’ve gotten rid of the cell phones, which has been very helpful, now restricting and being mindful of how the laptops [are being used].”
Under the new policy, the youngest students won’t get their own devices and can only use one for a 30-minute computer science lesson each week.
Starting in third grade, students can use devices for up to an hour each day for research and online learning. Sixth- and seventh-graders will get their own assigned devices to work on at school but won’t be able to take them home until eighth grade except in extenuating circumstances.
High schoolers can take assigned devices home for work on assignments, research, assessments and more. There will be no time limits.
More rigorous report cards
A new grading policy fleshes out how student work should be evaluated, shifting the emphasis from students’ individual progress to their grade-level performance. It’s an attempt to create more consistency across the county, school board members said, after noticing and hearing from parents that grading systems felt different from one school to the next.
The board approved the policy, written in large part by teachers, unanimously after weeks of discussion.
One of the biggest changes will be that grades should “accurately reflect a student’s independent performance at grade-level” according to the policy. While there are considerations for special education students, English language learners and other circumstances, this provides more of a reality check to students and parents, said board chair Sara Horst.
“If you’re in fifth grade, your report card should reflect what you can do with fifth-grade level content independently,” Horst said. “We do lots of things to support students, but ultimately, a child who is not reading on grade-level and has an ‘A’ in the reading box, I think that’s misinformation for a parent and for the kid.”
Zeros are “back in play” for students who don’t turn in assignments, Horst said. Students will be expected to complete missing schoolwork if they’re absent from class, a change from previous language that made it optional.
There’ll also be clearer guidelines on who has to attend summer school. In grades K-3, children who are marked as high-risk on three consecutive assessments will need to attend. If they’re high-risk on six consecutive assessments, they’ll be held back to redo that grade.
In both the technology and grading policies, board members said they want to take a cautious step forward while soliciting feedback and intentionally reviewing their effectiveness.
“I think this is one that we revisit every year for a little while until we make sure we’ve got it right where we want it,” Horst said of the grading policy.
Continued debate on ‘inquiry’
As the school board weighs whether to expand a pilot of a new model of testing students, several teachers spoke in its favor.
The new assessments, often referred to as the “inquiry design model,” measure critical thinking skills over basic knowledge. They are already implemented in some world geography classes, enabled by a new Virginia law that allows school districts to use questions that aim to drive student engagement and curiosity rather than cut-and-dry memorization.
Teachers said they value a manner of teaching and assessment that garner more buy-in from students and test their intelligence rather than their memory.
Kimberly Dove, a middle-school social studies teacher, shared an example where kids were asked a question: Do students have free speech in school?
One student said yes, up to a point; another relied on a Supreme Court case to support their answer; another said kids have been punished for their speech at school before. But each gave evidence to support their claim, Dove said.
“Inquiry doesn’t hand students an ideology. It hands them facts and challenges them to make a claim, back it up with evidence and defend it with logic,” Dove said. “Students can arrive at completely different conclusions, yet every single one of them walks away knowing how to investigate the world for themselves.”
The school board hasn’t made any decisions yet about more widely adopting an inquiry-based model and is taking its time after board member Hollie Cave expressed concerns about academic rigor last month. They willl continue to discuss expanding the inquiry design model to fourth-grade social studies and eighth-grade civics and economics.
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