New York City has yet to issue guidance or how to handle Spring report card grades –whether it's numerical, letter-based, pass/fail/incomplete or some combination.

Here’s your chance to weigh in.

Community education councils throughout the city are conducting a survey asking parents what kind of grading policy the Department of Education should adopt for the spring semester.

The survey asks parents to select from several options such as “pass/incomplete,” and “pass all students” and even provides space to pitch your own solution.

One option parents may not be familiar with is mastery-based grading, which some schools have been using with promising results. With the mastery -based approach, students get more than one chance to learn skills and they get full credit for each skill mastered no matter when it happens, be it in February, April or the middle of June.

For example, students at MS 442 in Brooklyn get detailed feedback instead of grades on a range of skills they’re expected to learn. At the end of the year, each student’s record of skills achievement (both mastered and needing improvement) is converted into a numerical grade.

There’s no one right approach.

All we know is students need better support for this new kind of learning and they need a break. Tell the Department of Education what you think is a fair grading policy in a time of crisis by taking the Grading Policy Survey here.

After you answer the survey, tell us in the COMMENTS what you think is a fair grading policy for this semester.

Photo of children working at home courtesy of the Thurgood Marshall Academy.