My wife is not the only family member making topic suggestions for the April 13 Blogging Challenge. My two-year old son (born on April 13) is also providing topics. At dinner, my wife asked him for a topic. He answered, "Da-ay." We each asked him several more times to be sure, and he answered the same each time. So, Da-ay it is.Now, I immediately knew what my son was talking about when he said, "Da-ay." He wants me to write a blog post about Thomas Guskey and grades. You know, the A.
A while back, I attended a conference to hear Thomas Guskey speak about standards-based grading. I wrote this blog article in March 2010. It has been the most read articles on my blog, by far.
This winter, the New York Times ran an article called No More As for Good Behavior that tried to explain one school's transition from traditional grading to standards based grading.
Now, just the other day, Bo Adams reposted, on Connected Principals, Jill Gough's great inquiring post about grading. Jill presented a real dilemma that she is facing with her grades due after this weekend. Several of us commented either on Connected Principals or on Jill's Blog.
The bottom line seems to be that no one really can say what is the purpose of grades. If Jill and her community could make that crystal clear, then her dilemma would be much easier to solve.
I think that while we work in a system that is still so unsettled on the purpose of grades, then why not use the scoring system that will work best for each child. Use the system that will best report what progress the student has made towards the learning.
Maybe most helpful for Jill and teachers like her is the idea that effort and other compliance factors be taken out of the letter grade. Make the A, B, C reflect the learning and report effort separately. If the system doesn't allow for a separate effort grade then use the comments. Find out if you can add custom comments and explain what you are doing. Anything you can do to clarify what the grade actually means would be a big improvement.
We may not quickly be able to change the larger public's understanding of grades, but we can begin by clarifying them for our classes now.
What are your thoughts about grading? Please enter this debate. Thank you.
Image credit carosaurus
Hi Larry,
ReplyDeleteThank you for thinking with me about this. I am a big believer in separating proficiency (achievement) from work habits (effort). I also think we should give our learners feedback on other areas including collaboration.
I have been experimenting this year with comments to support the number that I am required to send home. The feedback that I have received is interesting. It is only from 5 of my colleagues and the jury is still out on if my time is being well spent writing these comments.
You can read details, with an actual example, in my post Grade Reporting: To comment or not to comment…that is the question! (http://bit.ly/ik5LDZ). I would love your feedback on the questions I have posed in this post. I, of course, still have lots of questions.
I have a new post coming about some of the feedback I have gotten from the parents of one of my learners.
Larry,
ReplyDeleteThis mine field called grading is alive and well here in Melbourne Australia. Some 3 years ago the Commonwealth government mandated all states and territories across Australia to adopt a letter based grading system [A-E]: A represented 18 months or more ahead of one’s equivalent year level standard, B represented up to 12 months ahead, C at the standard, D up to 12 months behind the standard and E more than 18 months behind the standard.
Of course all the States complied because the tied the grading system to funding grants for education. Now there were several problems one being the grade teachers provided was based on their judgement taking all the assessments completed [this was open to interpretation and therefore inconsistency] and the grading was based on a core curriculum different in each state. One large state applied the A’s to be outstanding work at the same grade level work so the confusion continues if one travels between states.
Of course parents failed to be impressed with lots of C’s which meant little Johnny was doing OK.
Teachers were often conservative in their judgements afraid to set their colleagues up in the following year; e.g. we have 40% of our students getting A’s with some students in year 6 therefore doing the equivalent of year 8 or 9 work. This presents lots of problems for teachers having the content knowledge to differentiate their instruction particularly in areas like Mathematics.
Of course we know that grading [note I am not saying assessment here] is rarely helpful in knowing what to teach the next day. I’ll leave my comments on feedback, mindsets and student effort to another post.
I’m busy trying to get teachers to use assessment data that has been triangulated to know what teach next. Did I say mine field or political field?
I write about this “stuff too” on my blog: www.mwalker.com.au
Thanks
Mark
Jill and Mark,
ReplyDeleteThank you both for reading and commenting. I am convinced that tackling the grading questions will lead to much greater thought about teaching and learning.
I am eager to read what you both have to say and to continuing the conversation as we all gapple with the ideas.
Thanks again.
Larry