This year has been very chaotic so far because of the confusing nature of late work policies. This started in March 2020 because of COVID 19. Students were allowed to send in their assignments late without losing any points and students also could turn in all their homework by the end of the school year and would not be docked any points. The big question is: should work submitted after the deadline in 2022 be penalized or accepted without deductions?

BSM should implement a new late work policy system. Every day an assignment is late, 5% of the total points is deducted from the final grade. Students could still have discipline on each and every assignment, but if they slipped up one or two times during the whole semester it wouldn’t completely change their grade.

One of the advantages of having a school-wide standardized late work policy is that students will be forced to learn the importance of deadlines and accountability. As a college preparatory school, it is important for students to learn long term skills of responsibility and timeliness that will be developed with the help of a late policy. Also, from a teacher’s perspective, having all work completed in a timely manner enables the teacher to know which students are comprehending the material and which students need extra help.

These policies should be implemented into BSM so that students and teachers can be on the same page all the time. There would never be arguments about late work because students would have the rubric at the beginning of the year. That is all the teachers would need to show them if the students argued about their grade.

However, there are definitely some disadvantages to late work penalties. It can punish some students who are taking school seriously but occasionally make a mistake. The assignment’s low grade wouldn’t indicate whether or not the students understood the course material. This would be unfair because a student will receive the same amount of credit for submitting an assignment one week late as the person who submitted it the day it was due, but didn’t do well on the assignment.

In conclusion, the idea to implement a new late work policy isn’t too harsh on either the teachers or students. Students could be disciplined, and would never argue with teachers about their grade. This would take stress off teachers and they wouldn’t have to update late assignments constantly.