Personal Best Staff Bulletin
Volume VI Number 6 January 23, 2019
Standards based grading Twitter debate
Found myself in a friendly Twitter controversy last weekend. It all started with the above post about an important aspect of standards-based grading, the “do-over”.
I was at my son's gymnastics meet at West Point and so at first, I didn’t realize that my tweet had garnered so much attention. I’m pretty sure our students would not be so fresh as to actually say this to anyone here. And besides, because we use standards-based grading, our kids wouldn’t need to say this to us. They know that we are clear on the purposes of grading and that they do not have to beg us for another opportunity to demonstrate learning.
Discussions about grading hinge on the agreement about the purposes of grading. I’m going to offer multiple choice options from which you can choose as many as you wish:
The purposes of grading are to…
Communicate to students and parents information about learning and achievement of the standards
Provide data to use in making instructional decisions
Punish students who misbehave or fail to do their work
Sort students so we can place them in the appropriate classes
Get students to comply with our requests to do certain things.
Motivate students to participate in learning
Create a school climate in which students strive to earn good grades
Hold students accountable
Encourage competition between students’ grades so that everyone tries and exerts their best efforts at all times.
Which ones did you choose?
Because we embrace a standards-based approach to grading, we know that the only valid reasons for assigning grades to students are choices one and two. Grades are meant to communicate about learning and to provide data to use in making instructional decisions.
So much of the philosophy underpinning standards-based grading supports the notion that students should be given multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning. I would argue that to do otherwise is educational malpractice.
Think about it, every one of us went to school for at least four years to earn a bachelor's’ degree, most of us have our masters degrees and copious graduate credits, all for the purpose of improving our ability to meet the needs of our students as learners. When a student asks for another opportunity to demonstrate that they, in fact, have learned content or can demonstrate a skill; how can a teacher, in good conscience, look that student in the eye and reply, “No, I’m sorry, your only opportunity to demonstrate that was on the test I gave Tuesday.”
There are so many implications to the standards-based grading philosophy that support growth mindset thinking and learning. The tweet above has now been retweeted by educators almost 100 times and liked almost 500 times. Obviously, we’re doing a lot of things right.
Best Practice
Tracy Catalano uses Flipgrid for her students to demonstrate their learning. Great way to offer an avenue for formative assessment that is not just a pen and paper task.
I wrote a blog post about work that Bess Murphy and Lauren Douglas are doing to bring a home-bound student into the classroom. So inspired! Hope you’ll read. The future is here!
Links and resources
"Eighth Grade"
Screen Time
Cause that's helpful...
Student to Josh Smith (Josh was absent the previous day) :
“Mr. Smith, where were you yesterday, I missed you so much. I don’t know anything anymore!”
(Josh, you cannot be replaced!)
Principal's Staff Bulletin
Email: dgately@jerichoschools.org
Website: dfgately.com
Location: 99 Old Cedar Swamp Road, Jericho, NY, United States
Phone: 516-2-3-3620
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JerichoMS/
Twitter: @Donald_Gately