R.+Fox

Rochelle's musings about //A Repair Kit for Grading

Chapter one

Chapter two See Chapter 2 page

Chapter three//
 * Major Points** from After School Meeting, March 7th:

Chapter 3's fixes covered **LOW-QUALITY or POORLY ORGANIZED EVIDENCE:**
 * //Fix 7 - Organize and report evidence by standards instead of using other category types- I agree if we are going to focus our teaching here, we need to report on it.//
 * //Fix 8 - Grades should be assigned based on clear performance standards w/clear descriptions of achievement expecations - We do have the performance descriptors. It just makes sense to base grades on them and use what we have. It should improve our familiarity with the standards and what we want kids to be able to do and to know.//
 * //Fix 9 - Grades should be criterion-referenced, not norm-referenced - I cannot disagree. Nuf said.//
 * //Fix 10 - High quality assessments are a must - I believe we have pretty good district assessments. I don't know what the assessments in individual classrooms look like, but it is another weak point in teacher education. Most teachers in training take one class in tests and measurements.//


 * Major Points** from After School Meeting, March 10th:

Chapter Four Summary -- Fixes for innappropriate grade calculation
 * Fix 11--Don't rely on the mean; consider other measures of central tendency and use professional judgement. - //I like the freedom using professional judgement gives me. Although my grades are more often on target, I like having the ability to change a grade that reflects inaccurately for some reason. I can't buy into going with the mean without question.//
 * Fix 12--Don't include zeros in grade determination when evidence is missing or as punishment; use alternatives, such as an I for incomplete or missing evidence. //- I liked our conversation about this topic. We actually do use an I, but it hurts the overall grade. This boils down to communication. When a student doesn't turn in work or do the work, we as the teacher of the class must track him/her down and get it.//
 * Fixes to Support Learning:**

Chapter Five Summary
 * Fix 13: Use ONLY summative evidence, no formative assessments and practice - //I think this could work. I'd like to try it.//
 * Fix 14: When learning is developmental and grows with time, older evidence should be replaced with new evidence //-// //I really like this in theory. It would take me some time to figure out how to make it work smoothly.//
 * Fix 15: Involve students - they should play key roles in assessment and grading that promotes achievement


 * Rochelle Fox**
 * Grading Practices PDP paragraph summary/response/reflection/ad nauseum**

Several years ago I began to question some of the grades my gradebook program spat out onto student report cards. Sometimes I was surprised or downright befuddled by the final grade the computer program would assign students because I could’ve sworn this kid or that kid had performed better or worse than their grade actually reflected. I would sometimes feel sorry for that in-the-middle kid who got no help from a teacher assigned to him by an IEP and who had to figure things out on his own only to receive a C when another student, who performed on his own at a much lower level than the first student and showed less verifiable growth but got assistance from a resource teacher, received an A. All of this was an enigma to me, and as the words I used to explain the perceived problem reveal, I saw it as a distant problem, separate from me. It was the gradebook, after all. It wasn’t the grading procedure. I had done my part in the teaching, assigning, scoring, and entering of grades in the book. Whatever grade the computer program handed out must be right. Then one year when I found myself at the end of a term wanting to tweak grades so they reflected more of what I believed a student had done in class, I discovered an inherent fault in my grading procedure. I had great students who had grown as writers over the school year who may have not been terrific homework doers and therefore received very low marks for the semester on account of their having failed to turn in the menial practice tasks I’d assigned to them. They may have done well on tests and essay writing, but the work they were supposed to have completed on their way to preparing for the test or essay was incomplete and therefore their grade was low. I wondered about that. Was that the way it was supposed to be? Of course it was, I would tell myself. That is how my teachers determined my grade when I was a fledgling student. Why would I question it? Perhaps that is why my teachers would sometimes tell me my grade didn't reflect my ability. I wasn't one of those students who could buy into busywork and preferred to avoid it. Well, I would question my grading system again when I began to give assessments on which students would demonstrate their level of proficiency or lack of proficiency and the scores they received would be quite different from the grade they would receive in class for the semester. I began to see that perhaps my grading practices were illustrating how much work a student had completed satisfactorily more than illustrating what a student had learned that year. The next question? How do I fix this? The answer, after reading a book and studying with a group of teachers who are in the same quandary as I am in: It ain’t easy. After reading this book, at least now I am aware of the potential breakdowns in my practices. I have developed stronger convictions about what should and what should not factor into a grade. I also have given myself permission to change a term grade that isn’t reflecting accurately the learning I see with my professional teacher’s eye. That is a liberating thing. But with parental access to my gradebook, I have also to be clear and certain I can back up the grades I determine that way.

Additional thoughts:

When we take into account all that grades mean about a student and FOR a student it is important that we don’t take grades lightly in how and what we factor into them or by the same standard, assign them unfairly.

Not only does how we add grades together matter, but the assignments and tests we use must include the kinds of work and activities which show or test what they need to. These are ideas which a new teacher could easily feel overwhelmed or discouraged by, but an experienced teacher should be ready to make this happen and continue to build and improve our measures and methods.

Just wait until we tell everyone else about this PDP. They'll be so happy we shared with them this information. “Yeah, wha’eva.”