There isn't one answer to this question. It depends a lot on district, school, teacher, and grade.
In general what I have found is the more advanced the class the less weight they put on homework seatwork and the more emphasis they put on tests/essays.
My DS who is a junior in H.S. is in two AP classes for math & science. In those classes most of the grade is based on tests/quizzes/labs and only 10% is based on homework/seat-work. Tests are more about 70% of the grade. His AP Bio class is as close to a college class as the teacher can make it. (Excellent teacher.) In math at DS's level homework is only graded on if you tried every problem. In comparison when my DD took the easiest Algebra II class her junior year more than 40% of her grade was based on homework but it was graded by the teacher. And for DS in 8th grade science (no honors available) homework/seatwork was 35% of the grade, tests 35% of the grade, 40% of the grade were "projects".
For English our H.S. requires that at least 60% of the grade is based on writing, some of it formal other informal in class work. This rest is broken up between homework, classwork, and tests. (Test don't count much at all.) At DS's H.S. finals can't be more than 15% of the grade. Students don't take finals until H.S. except for those in a H.S. math class in junior high. Grades in junior high didn't really matter EXCEPT without good grades you couldn't get rec's into honors classes in high school.
I have the same challenge with my DS in getting classwork finished completely. This was a BIG issue in 8th grade science and why I can still pull up his EXACT grades for that class. What I did wrong that year was I didn't bring this up with his counselor or vice-principal till the end of the year and it was time for class recs. for High School. He didn't get a 504 till the beginning of last year. At that time I tried get an accommodation on his 504 to get his science teacher to weight homework less... he was put in non-honors class. The honors class weighted the tests more and the non-honors class weighted homework at 25%. (At the time I tried DS has turned in zero homework 1/4 way through the first semester (~6% of the grade) for a class should have gotten an A. He did eventually get a B+ that semester and an A in the spring. In last years science class it was a case of a disorganized teacher and that didn't work well with a EF challenged & bored student. We did a contract with this teacher which helped enormously.
Last edited by bluemagic; 09/21/15 05:50 PM.
