Grading Practices for Secondary Schools

1. 2014 New Mexico Assessment Conference Assessment Best Practices to Drive InstructionTom Hierck@thierckthierck@gmail.com Grading Practices for SecondarySchools

2. Outcomes/Objectives • Participants will: • recognize the need to critically examine established grading practices; • appreciate the complexity of grading; • identify the purposes of grading; • analyze the value of guidelines for grading; and • consider implications of standards-based grading for reporting student • achievement.

3. What are the main purposes of grading?

4. Purposes for Grading • Communicate the achievement status of students to parents, (students), and others. • Provide information that students can use for self-evaluation. • Select, identify, or group students for certain educational paths or programs. • Provide incentives to learn. • Evaluate the effectiveness of instructional programs Guskey, Thomas R. (Editor), Communicating Student Learning: The 1996 ASCD Yearbook, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 17

5. “Grades are not inherently bad. It is their misuseand misinterpretationthat is bad.”Guskey (1993)

6. Developments That Make Change in Grading Systems Imperative • The growing emphasis on standards and performance assessments makes current practices inadequate • Parents and community members are demanding more and better information about student learning progress • Advances in technology allow for more efficient reporting of detailed information on student learning • There is growing awareness of the gap between our knowledge base and common practice in grading

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8. What are report card grades based upon . . .. . . in a typical classroom?

9. Typical Grading Practice Sources • Policies and practices experienced as students • Personal philosophies of teaching and learning • District-, building-, department-, or grade-level policies on grading and reporting • What was learned about grading and reporting in undergraduate and teacher preparation programs

10. Typical Sources of Grading Evidence • Homework Completion • Homework Quality • Class Participation • Work Habits and Neatness • Effort • Attendance • Punctuality of Assignments • Class Behavior or Attitude • Progress Made

11. Typical Sources of Grading Evidence • Major Exams or Compositions • Class Quizzes • Reports or Projects • Student Portfolios • Laboratory Projects • Students’ Notebooks or Journals • Classroom Observations • Oral Presentations • Exhibits of Students’ Work

12. Grades are Communicated to… • In the elementary grades… • Parents • Students • Other teachers • Administrators • In middle and high school… • College admissions office • Scholarship decision makers • Potential employers • Juvenile authorities • Insurance companies

14. Pause + Ponder Should grading be based on "growth over time"?

15. “the primary purpose of . . . grades . . . (is) to communicate student achievement to students, parents, school administrators, post-secondary institutions and employers.“ Bailey, J. and McTighe, J., “Reporting Achievement at the Secondary School Level: What and How?”, in Thomas R. Guskey, (Ed.) Communicating Student Learning: ASCD Yearbook 1996, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 120

16. Reflecting on Your Grading Practices • What are the principles on which your grading practices are based? • What were or are the main influences on your grading principles and practices? • How do your grading principles and practices compare with those of other teachers in your school? • Do the grades awarded fairly reflect the results from which they were derived for each student? • If you answered "yes," for which students? Why? • If you answered "no," for which students? Why?

17. What do “grades" mean? Take a few minutes and write several Descriptors (point form or sentences) that clearly describe what an A (or 4 or whatever symbol is top of your grading scale) means in your grading scheme. (The word or symbol for per cent MUST NOT appear in your description.)

18. Questions for Establishing Appropriate Grading Practices Is it appropriate to factor the student's ...achievement ...intelligence ...level of effort or ...level of attitude when assigning a grade?

19. If all of these are factored into a grade, all with different weights, how can we expect the readerto factor all of those things out and understand what we meant? If you think it’s possible, you are living in a dream world.-Stiggins

20. Pause + Ponder When is grading counterproductive?

21. Where Do You Stand? • If a student gets a 100% on a pre-test, he should NOT have to do any assignments in the unit of study, and instead, he should do a personal research project related to the general topic of the unit while other students learn the original material. He gets an automatic “A” on the final unit test. • Danika is borderline between a C and a B grade. In order to choose one or the other for the final report card grade, it’s appropriate for her teacher to consider Danika’s outstanding attitude, behavior, and high homework completion rate when determining whether to record the C or the B on the report card.

22. Unidimensionality – A single score on a test represents a single dimension or trait that has been assessed Problem: Most tests use a single score to assess multiple dimensions and traits. The resulting score is often invalid and useless. -- Marzano, Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work, page 13

23. “No studies support the use of low grades or marks as punishments. Instead of prompting greater effort, low grades more often cause students to withdraw from learning.” Guskey and Bailey, Developing Grading and Reporting Systems for Student Learning, Corwin Press, 2001, 34-35

24. “There is no reward in punishment.” Barth, R., Lessons Learned

25. Three practices that deserve attention (because of) their potentially harmful effects are: averaging scores to determine a grade; the use of zeros; and taking credit away from students or lowering their grade because of behavioral infractions. Adapted from Guskey and Bailey, Developing Grading and Reporting Systems for Student Learning, Corwin, 2001, 139

26. “Averaging falls far short of providing an accurate description of what students have learned. . . . If the purpose of grading and reporting is to provide an accurate description of what students have learned, then averaging must be considered inadequate and inappropriate”. Guskey, Thomas R. (Editor), Communicating Student Learning: The 1996 ASCD Yearbook, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 21

27. “Assigning a score of zero to work that is late, missed, or neglected does not accurately depict students’ learning. Is the teacher certain the student has learned absolutely nothing, or is the zero assigned to punish students for not displaying appropriate responsibility?” Guskey, Thomas R. (Editor), Communicating Student Learning: The 1996 ASCD Yearbook, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 21

28. “In effective schools one of the most consistent practices of successful teachers is the provision of multiple opportunities to learn. 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.” Reeves, D., “Standards are Not Enough: Essential Transformations for School Success,” NASSP Bulletin, Dec. 2000, 11

29. If we do not allow students to re-do work, we deny the growth mindset so vital to student maturation, and we are declaring to the student: • This assignment had no legitimate educational value. • It’s okay if you don’t do this work. • It’s okay if you don’t learn this content or skill. None of these is acceptable to the highly accomplished, professional educator.

30. The Effect of Zero Mean = 68.8% Does this accurately reflect what the student knows and can do? Median = 86% Mode = 86% Student A 86 86 86 0 86 Mean calculated with 50% instead of 0 =78.8%

31. Imagine the Reverse… A = 100 – 40 B= 39 – 30 C = 29 – 20 D = 19 – 10 F = 9 – 0 What if we reversed the proportional influences of the grades? That “A” would have a huge, yet undue, inflationary effect on the overall grade. Just as we wouldn‘t want an “A” to have an inaccurate effect, we don’t want an “F” grade to have such an undue, deflationary, & inaccurate effect.Keeping zeroes on a 100-pt. scale is just as absurd as the scale seen here.

32. Time to Change the Old Paradigm: Grades are NOT compensation. Grades are communication: They are an accurate report of what happened.

33. Tom Hierck@thierckthierck@gmail.comThanks for the gift of your time!