Grading Committee: Research

Questions to Discuss:

• Do we want to survey the staff?  (Sample Grading Survey taken from 2 sources.)
• 1st conversation:  What meaning do we want grades to convey?  Who is the primary audience?  
• Discuss principles before policy.  Discuss constants before change (EL, 76)  (Don't get side tracked by other conversations until this one is established (EL14).)  Use these discussion points to start a conversation about grading:
• Principles:
• Grades should reflect achievement of intended learning outcomes - whether the school is using a conventional, subject-based report card or a report card that represent these intended learning outcomes as standards.
• The primary audiences for the message conveyed in grades are students and their parents; grading policies shoudl aim to give them useful, timely, actionable information.  Teachers, administrators, and other educators are secondary audiences.
• Grades should reflect a particular student's individual achievement.  Group and cooperative skills are important, but they should be reflected elsewhere, not in an individual's academic grade.
• Grading policies should be set up to support student motivation to learn.  A student should never reach a place where there is no point doing any more work because failure is inevitable (EL, 14)
• Three teaches revamped their grading:  "Big Changes in a Small School" www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/nov11/vol69/num03/big-changes-in-a-small-school.aspx
• What PD/learning opportunities are needed?  Grading research, effective classroom management, assessment, and instruction.  Teachers should share their research as well as their own experiences.  "The better I teach, the better my students' grades will be (EL, 86)."

Definitions (from Marzano):

• Assessment:  vehicles for gathering information about students' achievement or behavior.
• Evaluation:  The process of making judgements about the level of students' understanding or performance.  (The teacher uses data provided in the assessment to make a judgment - an evaluation - of each student's achievement.)
• Measurement:  The assignment of marks based on an explicit set of rules.
• Score:  The number or letter assigned to an assessment via process of measurement.  The terms mark and score are commonly used synonymously.
• Score:  Observed score = True score + error (from teacher and/or student)
• Grade:  The number or letter reported at the end of a set period of time as a summary statement or evaluation made of students.

Summary of Readings:

1. A Repair Kit for Grading - 15 Fixes for Broken Grades - Ken O'Connor (pg #)
2. Transforming Classroom Grading - Robert J. Marzano (Marzano)
3. Educational Leadership, "Effective Grading Practices" published November 2011, volume 69 No. 3, www.ascd.org (EL)

"The best thing you can do is make sure your grades convey meaningful, accurate information about student achievement.  If grades give sound information to students, then their perceptions (and) conclusions about themselves as learners, and decisions about future activity will be the best they can be." ~Brookhart, 2004 (135)  

• Goal:  grades should not be conflated and conflicting, they should consistently tell the same story.  (Story:  What the student knows and is able to do - connected to standards) Grades should not be about what students earn, but what they learn.
• Goal:  grades should be accurate, meaningful (connected to learning goals/standards), and consistent (across teachers), and they must support learning (3).
• A single letter grade or percentage score ... simply cannot present the level of detailed feedback necessary for effective learning (Marzano, 106).
• Myth:  grades are motivating.  "Confidence is the key to student success in all learning situations (10)." To change student behaviors:  use noncoercion; prompt the person to self-assess, have student own all consequences
• Kohn:  Grades tend to reduce students' interest in learning, students' preference for challenging tasks, and the quality of students' thinking (Marzano, 24).
• No research supports the idea that low grades prompt students to try harder.  More often, low grades prompt students to withdraw from learning (EL, 21).
• ("The Case Against Grades" by Alfie Kohn at the bottom of this post.)

15 Fixes:  Most Important!

1. Don't include student behaviors in grades (include a behavior report instead, ex 19)
   1. For grades to be meaningful, they must directly reflect specified learning goals (4).
   2. Wait...what about effort?  Article provided by Nancy.
   3. "We determined that behavioral infractions are legitimate concerns and should be addressed - just not with grades.  When grades cannot be used to control students, we must replace them with sound classroom management and students engagement strategies (EL, 68)."
2. Don't reduce marks on work that is late (provide support, give an Incomplete until it's turned in, use comments)
3. Don't give extra credit (seek more evidence for higher levels of achievement, must reveal new or deeper learning, or ec is opportunity to retake assessments)
4. Don't punish academic dishonestly in grades (other consequences, different effort to prove learning, prevention through honor code (attached to all assignments), consequence includes how to reestablish trust)
5. Don't consider attendance (report absences separately)
6. Don't include group scores (use group work, grade individual exit tickets)
7. Don't organize information by assessment methods (use outcomes/standards)
   1. For grades to be meaningful, they must directly reflect specified learning goals (4).
   2. strands (outcomes) are an organizing structure.
   3. 5 scores/strand is sufficient evidence to make summary judgments for that strand.
   4. Resources:  http://teachscience4all.wordpress.com , www.asdk12.org/depts/cei/sbar , http://blog.whatitslikeontheinside.com , http://ospigrading.pbworks.com
   5. Get rid of the omnibus grade (EL, 34).  Create bar graphs or different score for one class.  etc...  One grade for academics and one for "Responsibility for learning"
8. Provide clear descriptions of achievement expectations (rubrics)
   1. 2 types of rubrics:  information-based and process or skill-based (Marzano, 49).
   2. Create benchmarks for each quarter or you cannot give A until the end of the year.
   3. Language should be descriptive, not judgmental
   4. Limited number of clearly described levels based on proficiency/quality
   5. Vocabulary words:
      1. 4, A, Excellent, Exceptional, Exemplary, Advanced, High quality, Superb, Outstanding, in-depth, "Wow!"
      2. 3, B, Proficient, adept, skilled, solid, appropriate, capable,  "Yes."
      3. 2, C, Minimal, basic, limited, minimally acceptable, "yes, but..."
      4. 1, N, Insufficient, partial, beginning, approaching, well below, below, misperceptions, omissions, errors, "No, but..."
9. Don't rank students against each other.  (use rubrics)
10. Rely on quality assessments - The 5 Keys for Accurate Assessment:
    1. Clear purpose: What's the purpose? Who will use the results? What will they use the results to do?
    2. Clear Targets: What are the learning targets? Are they clear? Are they appropriate?
    3. Sound Design:  What method? Quality questions? Sampled how? Avoid bias how?
    4. Effective Communication:  How to manage information? how to report? To whom?
    5. Student Involvement:  Students are users, too.  Students need to understand targets.  students can assess.  Students can track progress and communicates.
    • Assess and grade less if they improve the quality of their assessments.
    • A few well-planned and well-formatted assessments provide far better information about student achievement than do multiple assessments poorly planned and formatted (Marzano).
    • Idea:  assessment conferences - where students defend their learning.
    • Assess is a form of the Latin verb assidere, to "sit with."  In an assessment, one "sits with" the learner.  It is something we do with and for the student, not something we do to the student.  The person who "sits with you" is someone who "assigns value" - the "assessor" ...but interestingly enough, there is an intriguing alternative meaning to the word, as we discover in The Oxford English Dictionary:  this person who "sits beside" is one who "shares another's rank or dignity" and who is "skilled to advise on technical points" (Marzano, 104)."
    • 7 forms of assessment:  (Marzano, 86-chapter 6). 
    • forced choice - if use, do not grade each one, score them as if "taken as a whole"  Use at least 4 questions to evaluate a student.
    • essay -  Use 3 rubrics:  content, process/structure, and communication
    • short written response - Use only one rubric - content
    • oral reports - *conferring with students - "This form of interaction is potentially the most valid type of assessment a classroom teacher can use (Marzano, 99).  (Also assess speaking ability.) 
    • performance tasks - 
    • teacher observation - "One of the most straightforward ways to collect classroom assessment data is through informal observation of students...teacher observation is highly effective for assessing process-oriented topics and nonachievement factors ... teachers need clarity about the skills they are observing  (Marzano, 99)
    • student self-assessment - "probing discussion"
    • Student-generated assessments (EL, 37) - student determines what will exhibit a specific level of proficiency.  
    • How to determine if two assessments are comparable and show student growth?  We can use prificiency scals to delineate both the topic and the level of complexity being measures.   Create an assessment that measures 2.0, 3.0 and then 4.0 achievement.  
11. Don't rely on the mean - use other measures of central tendency and use professional judgement.  What do the numbers mean regarding student learning? mode? range?
1. A student's understanding or skill should increase over time (Marzano, 73).
2. "In some ways, (measuring individual change over time) is the most important topic in educational measurement.  The primary object of teaching is to produce learning (that is, change), and the amount and kind of learning that occur can be ascertained only by comparing an idividual's or group's status before the learning period with what it is after the learning period. ...  I strongly recommend AGAINST the use of average scores as the final topic score for a unit of instruction (Marzano, 76)."
12. Don't use zeros.  If work is missing, give student an Incomplete.
13. Formative assessment data should not be included in the grade.  (Maybe recorded on PS, but not included in the grade.)  "The philosophy teach, test, and move on should be replaced with teach, test, and now what? (EL, 66)"
    1. the primary purpose of grades is to communicate a summary of student achievment at a particular pint in time; that is, what students know, understand, and can do as a result of their learning.  It is important that teachers, students, and parents recognize that learning is a process in which learners increase their knowledge, understanding, and skills as a result of effort, instruction, feedback from teachers and peers, and self-assessment and adjustment (106).
    2. Jay McTighe, "We know that students will rarely perform at high levels on challenging learning tasks at their first attempt.  Deep understanding or high levels of proficiency are achieved only as a result of trial, practice, adjustment based on feedback, and more practice.  For this process to work well learners must believe that it is important and worthwhile to try and that it is acceptable to take risks and make mistakes; it is not necessary to always get it the first time (107).  If we want homework to be about learning, we need students to understand that it is for practice if they need it, not compliance or grading, because then the person who benefits from homework is the learner (110).
    3. Types of assessment:  diagnostic (takes place prior to instruction, not graded), formative (takes place during instruction, drives instruction, provided feedback to students, the thrust is to improve teaching and learning, assessment FOR learning, not graded), Summative (designed to provide information to be used in making judgements about student's achievement at the end of a sequence of instruction, assessment OF learning, graded) (107).  The must be a clear link between the three (112).
    4. Most critical area is student involvement.  "Consistent, specific feedback on a student's competency in essential goals is a more potent teaching tool than a letter or number grade will ever be (EL, 86)."
    5. Goal:  Assessment Plan (see attachment) (112 & 117 & 128 (Lara))
    1. start with Outcomes derived from the standards
    2. list the summative assessments:  used to determine whether the students "know and can do" the outcomes
    3. list the diagnostic assessments:  help to determine the what and the how for teaching and learning
    4. list the formative assessments: help students achieve the learning goals through which the teacher will adjust teaching and learning activities
    5. *Show the clear link between the 3 types of assessment
    6. Goal:  Teachers are determining, not simply calculating, grades.  "...I propose that we see grading as an exercise in professional judgment, not just as a numerical, mechanical activity (121)."
    1. Computing averages provides a false sense of measurement precision (Marzano, 62).
    2. Guskey concludes, "Because teachers know their students, understand various dimensions of students' work, and have clear notions of the progress made, their subjectie perceptions may yield very accurate descriptions of what students have learned (Marzano, 63).
    7. Student involvement is most critical in this area.
    1. Although the most underused form of classroom assessment, student self-assessment has the most flexibility and power as a combined assessment and learning tool....An authentic education makes self-assessment central...Hansen (1994) notes that self-assessment is central to the development of higher -order metacognitive skills and that it also leads to the identification of individual learning goals, which are at the heart of the assessment process (Marzano, 102).
    2. Teachers can use student self-assessment in at least 2 ways:  1) individual assessments and 2) for final topic scores (Marzano, 103).
    3. Goal:  "the test of a successful education is not the amount of knowledge that a pupil takes away from school, but his appetite to know and his capacity to learn.  If the school sends out children with the desire for knowledge and some idea about how to acquire it, it will have done its work...." ~Sir Richard Livingstone, 115
    4. One strategy:
    1. Engage students in reviewing strong and weak samples in order to determine attributes of a good performance/product
    2. Students practice using criteria to evaluate anonymous strong and weak work.
    3. Students work in pair to revise an anonymous weak work sample.
    5. Another Strategy:  Help students to be reflective  learners by providing them opportunities to think about their performance on summative assessments using test analysis charts:  my strengths, quick review, and further study.  Sort test questions into those categories.
    8. "If we're living up to the promise of teaching every student, we could turn all summative assessments into formative ones (EL, 44)."
    9. "When practice work is part of the overall grade, students don't take risks, and teachers don't get valuable glimpses into their understanding (EL, 50)."
14. Emphasize on most recent achievement when measuring growth.
1. "What matters is not what you have at the starting point, but whether and how well you finish." ~Gardiner  (123)
2. This approach is a powerful motivator for students achieving at any level, because every students will know that improved achievement will get full recognition.
3. "The consequence for a student who fails to meet a standard is not a low grade but rather the opportunity, indeed the requirement- to resubmit his or her work (121)."
4. Redos and Retakes can be done right (EL, 22):
1. Submit the original attempt with the new one and to write a brief letter comparing the two.  What is different, and what did they learn as a result of redoing the work?
2. Reserve the right to give alternative versions of the assessment.  Don't be afraid to make the redone versions more demanding.
3. REdos are permitted at teacher discretion.  This means that students and parents may not take the redo option for granted.
4. REquire a plan of relearning and to provide evidence of the relearning before the work can be redone.  (Calendar, list of activities, etc)
5. If the relearning is not done, require a letter of apology for breaking trust.
6. Require parent signature on the original version of the assignment so they're aware that their children have required multiple attempts to achieve the standard.
7. At 2+ attempts, considering shelving the push for mastery of this content for a few weeks.  Take a break and pursue this content in a later unit of study.
8. If redos are repeatedly needed, something is wrong.
9. Redos should be saved for the most important curriculum standards and less so with work associated with less important standards.
10. All students should be allowed redos - not just those who "learned" at a D or F level.
11. Cut off redos at a certain point to save your sanity.  They can learn the material later in the year after this reporting period.
12. Replace the previous grade or mark with the most recent one; don't average the two attempts together.  (Consider passing driving test or bar exam...)
13. Allow redos of just the material that was not proficient instead of the entire assessment.
14. Tracking Sheet (EL, 74):
1. Test - broken into assessment topics - value, score, retest?
2. Unit terms/preparation:  I did or did not complete all the terms for this unit OR I did complete a different form of preparation - explain
3. Goals and Strategies:  I want to achieve _____ in this unit.  I did all that could to achieve my goal OR I plan to make the following adjustments to increase my grade:  (student lists with date of completion)
5. Allow students to continually update their scores on previous measurement topics (EL, 38) - this would mean that each quarter would introduce new content and continue to assess old content.
15. Don't leave students out of the grading process.
1. We must constantly remind ourselves that the ultimate purpose of evaluation is to enable students to evaluate themselves.  Educators may have been practicing this skill to the exclusion of learners; we need to shift part of that responsibility to students.  Fostering students' ability to direct and redirect themselves must be a major goal...or what is education for? ~Costa (126)
2. Summative:  teacher evaluates, student reflects upon
3. Formative:  students are involve din peer and self-asssessment in order to practice the skills of self-assessment and to deepen their understanding of the conditions of quality.
4. Chappuis (2009):  "Providing students with opportunities for a combination of peer feedback and self-assessment causes them to achieve at significantly higher levels, without more instruction.  These two practices increase their sense of ownership of the responsibility to learn (127)."
5. Self-assessment increases student ownership - it teaches students how to learn. (ASCD)
1. "I am able to discover what I know and don't know before I take the test," one student shared about self-assessment (EL, 73).
2. "I need to teach them how to plan to improve their performance."
3. "I need to regularly - relentlessly - show students the connection between the quality of their habits of mind and their work, their progress toward performance goals, and their achievement of those goals - and beyond.  In other words, I need to help them exercise their capacity to determine their own success (EL, 87)."

Homework (EL, 60):

1. Myths:  If I don't grade it, they won't do it.  Hard work should be rewarded...with grades. Homework grades help students who test properly.
2. Most important reason for homework:  to help students reach their learning goals.  It's not about homework's value for the grade, but homework's value for learning.  It's not about the student's responsibility for the task, but the student's responsibility for his/her learning.  Possible:  Tie homework to summative assessment by letting students use it during the assessment.
3. No homework?  Call parents, pull students from other classes/activities to complete their work, or make available after-school programs in which students can catch up on homework.
4. At the top of each test or quiz write two numbers:  the student's test score and student's number of missing homework assignments.  EX:  100% & 0  VS 75% & 3  This helps the student develop an causal relationship AND helps the teacher recognize if homework tasks are helping in the learning.  "When the focus switches from working to learning, students understand that they can improve their final grades by demonstrating mastery.
5. "Homework is an important part of teaching, learning, and parent involvement.  Student work should always receive feedback to further student learning.  Teachers will exclude homework from the course grade if it  was assigned for pre-assessment or early learning guided practice.  Homework assigned as a summative assessment may be included in the course grade based on curriculum guidelines (EL, 63)."

"The Case Against Grades" by Alfie Kohn (EL, 28)

• Grades tend to diminish students' interest in whatever they're doing.  (Instead of motivated to learn, they are motivated to achieve.  Students become more interested in how well they are doing than in what they are doing (EL, 30).)
• Grades create a preference for the easiest possible task.  Students avoid taking unnecessary intellectual risks.  This is "not because they are unmotivated, but because they're rational."
• Grades tend to reduce the quality of students' thinking. Instead of "How do we know that's true?" they ask, "Will this be on the test?"
• Zen Master:  "If you have one eye on how close you are to achieving your goal, that leaves only one eye for your tasks."
• Worries:  Assessment consultants worry that grades may not accurately reflect student performance; educational psychologists worry because grades fix students' attention on their performance...  Kohn:  "Once we're compelled to focus only on what can be reduceed to numbers, thinking (will be) severely compromised (EL, 30)."
• We should not:
• sort students into piles
• tell them in advance what they have to do because it "reinforces the assumption that school is a test, rather than an adventure in ideas (EL, 31)."
• post grades online because it gives them even more power and opportunity for misuse
• spend time writing comments that only justify the grade.  (NOTE: Narratives are only read and useful in the absence of grades.)
• give disproportionate attention to performance (at the expense of learning) that researchers have found damaging...
• We should....
• replace grades with narrative reports and detailed descriptions of the curriculum
• Add recommendations, essays, and interviews (to offer a fuller picture of the student)
• Create a "de-graded classroom" and stop putting letter grades on individual assignments - instead offer only qualitative feedback.
• Include students in determining grades - either as a negotiation or by simply grading themselves.
• Why?
• Students are more motivated and involved.  "this changed their attitudes about school.  It was not happening to them, they were involved with what was happening."
• Prepares students for the real world where "Interest in learning and quality of thinking is important."
• Teachers and students have better relationships.
•