Grading & Assessments

I’m passionate about the transformative effects that more powerful grading practices can & will have on Ss achievement.  I’ve been an educator for 5 years now and I’ve never had any building-level or district-level professional development on effective grading practices.  That doesn’t mean those sessions and conversations don’t exist, as they very well may.  I have just never had the opportunity to be a part of them, aside from a small group of teachers who met last year to investigate the topic (thank you Robin Stout @rsstout).  From what I have gathered and experienced, the reason the topic of grading and assessment is often neglected is because many building level administrators fear mutiny if they were to make any effort to ignite a conversation on effective grading practices, or worse, ineffective grading practices.  Perhaps many in leadership feel it’s a topic best left alone as the chore of admitting fault in traditional and long practiced grading procedures is just too monumental to overcome.  Also, it’s certainly possible that some administrators don’t feel qualified enough to stimulate conversations on grading practice.

If it weren’t for #sblchat on Twitter, I would still be exercising terrible grading practices and allowing my grades to communicate very little about student learning.  My wife would say I take on problems that I have no business carrying.  It’s quite possible I’m doing that with this post.  To be brutally honest, this is my way of engaging in conversation (with myself) and reflecting on my own grading practices.  I genuinely feel that the topic of effective grading and assessment needs to be an ongoing and constant conversation among staffs.  At the risk of looking like an accuser with gavel in hand, I cannot say that poor grading practices are in use everywhere or even that poor grading practices are rampant in our public schools.  I also can’t say that most educators are using grades to communicate learning as it is aligned to content standards.  The lack of quality conversations on grading and assessment in public education leads one to believe that grading practices are a teacher’s own business not to be shared with everyone else.  Yet, we’re all using the same A-F system to communicate learning progress to students, parents, and other teachers.  In addition to that thought, have you ever asked students or parents what an A means?  If you ask 10 students or parents, you’ll likely get 10 different answers.

The journey to improving grading practices and removing items in your practice that don’t reflect learning is not an easy one.  This is why I feel it’s imperative that effective grading practices be a constant and ongoing discussion, especially in secondary education where a teacher is responsible for measuring the learning outcomes of over 100 students in many cases.  The goal of this post was to ignite some conversation and I’m going to borrow many of these talking points from QualityInstruction.org but they are points that are discussed weekly at #sblchat Wednesday 9pm EST.

• Are behavior and attendance issues separate from student grades in my class?

• Am I familiar with the standards covered by my course and have I unpacked those standards?  What will I tolerate as mastery of each standard?  All teachers of the same grade level or course should have a unified level of tolerance for mastery.  In many cases, what one teacher identifies as mastery is far different from what another teacher accepts as mastery.  How often have you heard another teacher say “well I taught that for 3 weeks, they learned it before they left my class”?

• How often do I communicate learning targets for my students?  Do they know where to aim?

• Can I connect each mark in the gradebook to a specific learning target?

• Do I avoid grading practice worksheets and other formative assessments?

• Do you give zeroes?  Are they punitive or do they indicate a measure of learning?

• Do I avoid grading work on which students can copy or cheat?

• Can I assign grades that reflect learning rather than completion?

• Do I allow retakes and redos?

• Do I allow students multiple chances and ways to demonstrate learning?

• Do I provide descriptive feedback to every student after every assessment?  How do I communicate where they are, where they need to be, and how they can get there?

If you can confidently answer yes to any of these questions, congratulations for employing a measure of effective grading practices already.  If you can admit that you answer no to any of those questions, congratulations for being a reflective educator open minded enough to admit errors in your own practice.

Again, I owe my personal growth in the area of grading and assessment to #sblchat on Twitter.  Educators like @garnet_hillman, @WHSRowe, @drjolly, and many others who willingly share their advice, experiences, and most importantly, support.  I can also thank experts like Rick Wormeli @rickwormeli2 and Ken O’Connor @kenoc7 for being available to provide support and answer questions from novices like myself.

I just want to take a moment and reiterate my grading policy and why it has changed so much this year.  I have decided to take a step towards Standards Based Grading this year.  Before I explain SBG, I’ll tell you why.  Early in the year I had a discussion with all of my classes about what an A means.  I received responses such as: “It means you’ve learned everything you should have learned” or “It means you don’t need any help” or “An A means you’re awesome at what we’ve been doing.”  These are real responses from students.  I typically followed that response with “Then what does a B mean?”  Or “Do any students really learn everything, 100% on every single assignment?”  I think you get the picture.  It is extremely hard to define what an A represents, or a B, or a C, etc.  If you asked 10 teachers, you’re liable to get 8-10 different responses.  So I decided I wanted a better way to grade, and I wanted my students to know where they were at, what the needed to learn, and how to close that gap.  More importantly, I wanted them to know what they didn’t learn.  That’s really what SBG is all about.  It represents a style of grading based on mastery.

For several reasons, I’ve had far fewer grades this year than I’ve ever had.  When I reflected on how much of my class time was spent on trading papers to grade, passing out red pens, trying to provide feedback after the grading, and collecting all the papers (the typical process I went through to grade a HW assignment); I realized just how much precious class time was wasted on grading.  Not to mention how much time I was spending outside of class organizing late work, keeping folders for absent students, recording grades, updating LiveGrades, etc.  On top of that, I noticed that my students really don’t know what an A, B, C, D, or F really means anyways.  So instead, I decided to assign less HW and provide more feedback rather than grades.  If an assignment isn’t worth my feedback, it’s probably not a good assignment, right?  Why should the students even do assignments that receive no feedback from the teacher?

I have one class with only 5 grades so far this 9 weeks.  It’s not because they haven’t been doing anything.  In previous years, I’d give out an assignment and while handing out to the students, I could almost predict which students weren’t ready for the assignment, based on what I had seen from them in class or on the situation that existed at home.  As I walked around the room, that’s what I was thinking.  I probably cringed, literally, as I handed them their assignment.  Those students would usually cringe as well.  I would hand them the assignment, take the assignment on it’s due date, and record a terrible grade.  How ludicrous is that?  I could predict a student’s bad grade on an assignment, before that student even looked at the assignment.  Yet, I still gave them the assignment.  I even acted disappointed when it was returned half-finished or wasn’t returned at all!  Early in my career, I would commence with 10-20 minute dissertations about how students needed to consult their notes, read the textbook, practice at home, and spend more time preparing for these assignments.  I can now understand that what the students heard was “This is all your fault, next time you should at least cheat so you can get a better grade on this assignment, and how about paying attention in class next week.”  This caused me to seriously question the purpose of assignments.  Not just homework, but assignments, especially graded assignments.  Underneath the umbrella of SBG is this thought that graded assignments should be the students’ opportunity to demonstrate his/her learning (mastery).  Unless all students learn everything at the exact same pace, ideally assignments shouldn’t be given/collected at the exact same time.  This is where my feedback enters the discussion.  I do give assignments, but I rarely grade them.  I try to work hand-in-hand with each student to support them in such a way that allows them to learn how to do the assignment correctly, with 100% accuracy.  They turn in that assignment when they’re ready.  I firmly believe this philosophy has drastically decreased the amount of cheating in my classroom.  Students know they don’t have to cheat because if they return an assignment incomplete or unfinished, Mr. Oldfield will understand why it’s incomplete.  The why is very important and requires pinpoint monitoring of student progress on each specific learning objective (standard).  Thankfully, for me, technology does most of that monitoring (see https://derekoldfield.edublogs.org/blended-learning-training/ for more information about my classroom).  But believe it or not, most of my classroom instruction is without the use of technology.  My students use dry-erase boards and markers almost every day.  This is how I provide feedback and monitor which students are ready to demonstrate their learning and which students are not.  I can easily check a dry-erase board for the right answer and provide appropriate feedback when a wrong answer is given.  Students also serve as a “checkers” in my class, so at some points, there are 4-5 people providing feedback during problem-solving time.  All of this is an effort to move students towards mastery and provide them with the support they need to get there.

My assessments used to be 25-30 question exams that would generally take the whole period to complete.  They were designed to measure proficiency on a whole host of skills, sometimes 6-7 standards.  Now, my assessments are short and targeted.  They are typically 10 questions and I’ll make at least 3 versions.  These are assessments that can be completed in 10 minutes or less if the students know what they’re doing.  They are designed to assess proficiency on 2-3 standards.  Every assessment is a short-answer, explanation type of response.  All assessments are done in class, and they’re never sent home.  I allow my students to retake any assessment and record the grade that they earn.  Two weeks ago I had a student take an assessment and score 20%.  Would you say that student was ready for the assessment at that point?  I still scored it, and recorded the 20%.  But together, she and I looked at the 8 questions she missed and tried to apply the corrections.  She knew exactly which standards to go back and review/practice on Khan Academy.  She spent the following week practicing and strengthening her proficiency in those specific skills.  She completed the 2nd version of that assessment and scored a 90%.  I replaced the 20% with a 90% because that was a more accurate reflection of her learning.  I strongly feel that grades should reflect learning.  The most common misconception in many classrooms is that grades should also reflect responsibility, at least some measure of responsibility.  I whole-heartedly agree that students should be taught responsibility.  I also think they should be taught tolerance, empathy, perseverance, self-awareness, etc.  If we don’t give grades for those other worthy investments, why do we insist on giving a grade for responsibility?

In conclusion, I have learned that implementing SBG is not easy.  I’ll highlight these 8 principles I have relied on:

• Failure to learn is not always the student’s fault.  Take account of your own classroom, how engaged are your students?  What       modifications could you make to account for poor behavior?(seating arrangements, visuals, etc) What props could you include that would make your lesson more engaging?  What passions could ignite in your students by connecting your lesson to the real-world?  Could you dress up as a character to help your students connect your lesson to the appropriate time in history?  What could put inside a box that would excite curiosity among your students and increase engagement?  There are numerous questions to ask before each lesson.  Creativity comes from asking questions.

• Provide multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning and record the most accurate representation of that learning.
• Provide more feedback, less grades.  Feedback is the vehicle that drives students towards mastery.  With appropriate feedback, the student will want to improve, and know how to improve.  With no feedback, the student will know how meaningless the assignment was.
• Be transparent!  Let your students know where you’re going, what holes to fill, and how to get there.
• Be sure that your assessments are short and targeted.
• You want your students to be responsible?  Tolerant?  Empathetic?  That’s great!  Please don’t include grades intended to measure those character traits alongside the same grades intended to reflect learning.  Measure them separately and communicate that to the home.  I’m sure mom and dad would love to know how responsible, empathetic, and tolerant their child is in school anyways.
• Let them fail.  Failure leads to perseverance, a skill rarely measured, but ultimately valuable.  You can build this atmosphere of perseverance in problem solving in your classroom by allowing your students to fail.
• Praise!  Praise students for the effort and perseverance.  Most of communication with home should be in the form of praise.  Don’t get stuck communicating only negatives.

Let your child fail.  That was my initial reaction to a recent message that showed up in my inbox.  We live in a “little league” age of celebrating success.  In t-ball, every player gets to bat.  In little league, every player gets a trophy.  I don’t disagree with instructional league rules by any means.  However, at what age does failure begin to have value?

I was sitting in a department meeting recently when a district-level administrator asked me if I had analyzed test scores of last year’s students to determine if Khan Academy actually had any effect on those students’ test scores.  I replied honestly, and said that I had only checked on a handful of students’ scores.  But as I continued to ponder her request, I lost my appetite for looking up any more test results.  I realize that no matter what those test results may show, they don’t reveal one of the most important skills being taught in my class.  They might reveal which students learned how to apply the Pythagorean Theorem in a real-life situation, but what is not tested is perhaps the most important.  Tests of that sort do nothing to promote the value of failure.

Upon reading that recent message from my inbox, I wanted to shout out “let your child fail.”  The shouting was not due to frustration, rather to be sure that my voice was heard by many.  And when I say fail, I mean fall.  Let them fall.  How can we learn to get back up if we never fall?  Or if someone else always picks us up.  Too often today, students are given every possible opportunity NOT to fail.  But why?  Why are we afraid of failure?  Putting students in frustrating and uncomfortable situations is a tricky part of my job.  I have to find that zone where students are frustrated enough to seek out a solution THEMSELVES.  I hear this a lot, “Well I’ll just get my mom to help me.”  There’s nothing wrong with phoning a friend or a mom.  My message to parents, though, is to let your child fail.  Sometimes teachers put students in a certain situation so they will fail.  Because until they fail, they’ll never seek out that solution themselves.  Tests don’t measure whether a student has developed the fortitude to seek out a solution himself, or whether they’ve developed persistence in problem solving.  Even if a student doesn’t arrive at the correct solution, the journey or the number of attempts is often what is more important.  I always try to make sure that I’ve directed my students to places and opportunities where they can develop, create, or find a solution.  But I try to stop there.  Too often are students lead, directed, and told which solution is correct.  We call it “spoon-feeding”.  And students know all about this.  They know all about it, because it hits them like a brick wall the first time a teacher or parent shrugs their shoulders and refuses to help them at the first sign of adversity.  I want my daughter to be a successful, hard-working citizen.  I know that won’t come without learning to fail, get back up, and seek out a solution.

The picture below is a graph of a student’s last 35 problems on adding/subtracting negative numbers.  You’ll find the number of problems completed at the bottom the bars.  The red bars indicate a wrong answer was inputted first, but eventually the student arrived at the correct answer.  You’ll also see that the student’s longest streak correct was 11.  This particular student has been struggling adding and subtracting negative numbers for quite a while, but has just recently shown some progress.  We’ve exhausted ourselves on learning strategies.  We’ve talked about spending money, owing money, number lines, football plays, temperature, etc.  The student has struggled to find a solution that works consistently enough to stick.  However, it appears the student is finally getting it.  This particular student has learned a lot about persistence in problem solving.  The student has sought out the answer him/herself and used multiple resources along the way.  Consider what this student learned throughout this journey, in addition to learning how to correctly add and subtract negative numbers.  All because she was allowed to fail.

Since I began using Khan Academy in my classroom I’ve really embraced this concept that one pace does not fit all.  Sal Khan’s book The One World School House, highlights the fact that most every teacher teaches with a “one pace fits all” approach.  This fact is really of no fault of the teacher’s, because frankly, it’s extremely difficult to adjust the pace of every student.  It’s difficult enough to manage 100 students progressing at the same pace.

Fortunately, technology can do some things better than teachers.  Khan Academy was built specifically to manage 100 students learning math at a different pace.  Khan Academy liberates the teacher from managing multiple worksheets, quizzes, and tests of 100 different students.  Instead, that time can be devoted to doing what few teachers have time to do: teach students.  Believe it or not, most of my week is spent sitting or kneeling right next to a student or group of students solving problems.  This post is about how I adjust the pace to better meet the needs of all my students.  This doesn’t come without it’s frustrations, mistakes, and successes.  There is no manual for meeting every need represented in a middle school math classroom.  If you imagine a student’s math skills like a block of swiss cheese, they all have holes.  Some have many holes.  I have taken the approach that if I can fill as many holes as possible, that student will have a better chance for success.  We all know that students don’t learn at the same pace, so if given the opportunity to adjust the pace for all students, it needs to be done.  This is especially true in a math classroom where skills build one upon the other.  The pictures below represent ONE class of students and the topics they were working on during class.  In a class of 20 students, you’ll see about 6 different skill represented.  Each of these students is receiving the proper instruction and practice in the area specific to them.  They won’t move on to the next “level” until they’ve beaten this one.

If your student comes home and tells you that Mr. Oldfield is just moving too fast for me, you’ll know that’s not true.  Learning is my first priority, and if that takes someone extra time, then use the time.  Operating my classroom in this way also allows students the ability to work ahead if they choose.

I just want to communicate to you my plans for assigning grades during this 1st 9 weeks.  If you haven’t noticed yet, my class is probably very unlike any other math class your child has had previously.  I hope that’s a good thing 🙂  I’ve been teaching 8th grade math now for 4 years.  I’d like to share my views of public education, in an effort to help you understand my direction on grades.

First, since it’s inception, public education in the US has been about batches of students grouped by age progressing through grade levels together.  Every summer they get a break between grade levels, so the students can work on the family farm.  For the most part, that has been left relatively unchanged.  Students still attend school 180 days and then move on to the next grade, and very few students deviate from that path.  The problem, for me, is that teachers are forced to teach the entire year at ONE PACE FITS ALL.  And we all certainly know that not all students learn at the same pace.  As a result grades are given, in my opinion, to communicate to that student/parents just how much that student has learned.  At the end of the year, for the most part, regardless of what grades you earned, you get to move on to the next level.  There lies the problem, one that grows year after year.  If  a student has only learned “75%” of what he/she was supposed to learn one year, what chance does that give them of learning more than 75% the next year?  When you think about it, it would seem to put that student at a big disadvantage the following year, and so on.  Think about how that problem could grow year after year, particularly in a subject like math that builds year after year, gradually increasing in difficulty and skill set.  I have just described to you public enemy #1 for all math teachers 🙂  Unfortunately, in public education TIME is the constant and LEARNING is the variable.  I think that’s backwards.
As a result of public enemy #1, I feel that giving students a grade of A-F communicates very little about how much or what that student has really learned.  In fact, in previous years, the students who have demonstrated the most growth from September to May are my students that technically earned an F all year.  But unfortunately I feel that I failed at communicating to them just how much they had learned.  At what grade level were they on when they entered 8th grade?  What grade level were they on when they left 8th grade?  Perhaps they still didn’t make it to 8th grade level by May.  Being that I am “bound” to teach a set of topics and skills as an 8th grade math teacher, it becomes pretty difficult to remediate a number of skills to 120 students.  Not to mention the dreaded WesTest scores… I won’t go there yet.  But trying to teach 8th grade topics/skills to students who aren’t yet ready would generally lead to a lot of F’s in the gradebook.  So why should a teacher just record a bunch of F’s in the gradebook if the teacher already knows students aren’t ready for 8th grade math?  My philosophy is that I try to adjust the pace and allow every student the support they need and the time they need to demonstrate to me they can learn some of what I’m asked to teach them.  In fact, I think ideally a student shouldn’t move on until they can demonstrate that learning at 100%.  Would you want someone driving who scored a 75% on the driver’s test?

At the end of this 9 weeks, I intend to allow students the time to prepare a statement to me about what grade they think they have earned through the 1st 9 weeks.  I plan to present to them each standard that we spent time on during the 9 week grading period.  I also plan to present to them the HW assignments that were given to them as an opportunity to demonstrate their learning.  I’m going to ask that students consider each standard and reflect on how well they performed when asked to demonstrate their learning of that specific standard.  All of this communication will be done via Edmodo.  Edmodo is accessible at home and as a parent, you can even register via a parent code.  I plan to allow students adequate time to prepare their response and submit it to me.  My hope is that, perhaps for the first time, students may understand what that A, B, C, D, or F really means.  In addition to that, some students may be motivated to go back to something and prove to me that they can do better than they did the first time.  I’m OK with that and would certainly update grades based on improved performance.  I do all of this with one goal in mind, learning.  I hope to accurately communicate just what your child has learned throughout this year.  Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
Derek Oldfield