17 December 2007

More on what a zero does to a grade

December 2007

A friend emailed me a PowerPoint created by Rick Wormeli that included some interesting ways of thinking about assigning zeroes. I've been discussing it for more than a year now but I really liked these two new (to me) takes on it.

The first one he called Imagine the Reverse. What if you did for A's what is currently done for F's.

100-40=A
39-30=B
29-20=C
19-10=D
9-0=F

Just look at it--no one in the world would go for it. Because we know what it would do to students--especially high achieving students. If we sent home report cards where everyone had an A and there were just a few F's parents would be outraged. (This brings up another post issue related to the Bell curve and students being trained by us to want to be separated into groups--the winners and the losers if you will--but that isn't for today.)

Another way of thinking about it would be to compare rubric scores to a 100 point scale. (Also from Rick Wormeli via Doug Reeves.)

4=100
3=90
2=80
1=70
0=60

There may be some disagreement on how these are assigned but it seems that thoughtful educators could agree that it at least makes logical sense. What if we continue the transition down to zero.

-1=50
-2=40
-3=30
-4=20
-5=10
-6=0

Wormeli, who I assume was paraphrasing Reeves, argues why would a teacher want to assigning such a low score for a zero. Doesn't zero mean that one is 6 times worse than the 60?

Yet another argument for thinking about the assignment of a zero for a grade. If it can be defended I suppose it can still be used, it just seems that the case for zero is getting weaker and weaker. Especially if the zero is being used as a punishment. Not turning in homework is a behavior so should be punished with a behavioral penalty not a grade penalty. As I have said before I am not telling anyone how to grade. But no one should grade or calculate grades without thinking about how they are doing it and why. At the end of the day the teacher (the expert in the subject) should know that the grade is a accurate and fair reflection of what a student is able to do.

01 December 2007

Bench Press

3 December 2007

I was listening to the sports talk radio show Mike and Mike in the Morning the other day and one of the hosts Mike Golic said, "They don't do the bench press on the 50 yard line." He was making the point that the game of football is more than speed and strength. Those things are important and need to be trained for but doing only those things would miss out on the big picture. It is necessary to play together as a team to be successful with the ultimate goals of football teams.

I always find a way to relate everything I hear to work but I don't feel that it is too much of a stretch to see how this analogy works with the CHS work this year. It is a vast over simplification of the process that we are going through but it does help explain what we are trying to achieve.
In my last post, "The Circle," I spoke of the path that we are following, 1) District Goals, 2) CHS Mission and Graduation Expectations, 3) Overarching Competencies, 4) Courses, and 5) Competencies. Each of these steps, from 1 to 5, act as filters for the next. Each filter needs to inform the step that comes after so that the main goals of the school will be fulfilled. (Fulfilled? Yeah, that's a little over the top by you get the point.)

To continue with the football analogy, consider an extreme example. What if all a team did was work out in the weight room? They could work out to the point that they were the strongest team in the league. This would help them and they may win a few games based just on strength. But they could probably be beaten quite easily by a moderately strong but cohesive and well coached team. The team that only worked out in the weight room would have missed the big goal in favor of focusing on one of the smaller aspects of football preparation.

When you have an ultimate goal it is also sometimes necessary to filter out some other goals and that is what we are doing this year at the high school. With our work on graduation expectations we are trying to always filter what we do by thinking about the graduate that will walk across the stage in June. What do they need and what would we like them to be able to do? This year in the NFL the New England Patriots may have to do some filtering as they near the end of their season. Their stated goal for this year, and every other year, is to win the Super Bowl. This year, though, they also have the chance to go undefeated. This has not been done since 1972 (or somewhere around there) and would be an amazing achievement. But going for the undefeated season might actually hurt New England's chances to win the Super Bowl. If an important player was hurt in chasing the undefeated season and was not available in the playoffs it might cost them their larger goal.

I remember a game in the 90s where the 49ers were 14 and 1 and going into their last game. They had a chance to win at one point but didn't push too hard, wound up loosing the game and ending the season with a 14-2 record. At the time I was young and didn't understand the big picture. I was confused as to why they had not put in all their best players to try and win their last game. After they won the Super Bowl that year I realized that they had been filtering their goals. 15-1 would have been nice but a total waste without a Super Bowl victory. They chose 14-2. They sacrificed one smaller goal to achieve another larger goal.

As we continue with our high school work this year there will be times when we have to do the same thing. We aren't trying to win a football game of course but we do have the ultimate goal of preparing that student that walks across our graduation stage. Just as a teacher would consider all of the little details of their course that they could teach--but don't because they miss the big goals. In biology teachers have decided in recent years to not focus so much on very minor details like alleles. (Do you know what alleles are? Don't worry about it, most likely you are still a highly functioning member of our society--and that is the whole point.) They looked long and hard at their course and decided to leave out (or de-emphasize) some details in favor of the big goal of having biologically literate students. Now as a school we are trying to work with doing the same thing. What are the big goals that we have and what are the smaller things that we can filter out so that they don't interfere with students meeting those goals?

These are not easy questions and this will not be easy work.





29 November 2007

The Circle

29 November 2007

I was looking at the CHS plan the other day. Here it is from top down. Each one is designed to inform the one below it.

  1. District Goals
  2. CHS Mission and Graduation Expectations
  3. K-12 Curriculum Guides
  4. Programs--The Departments at the School
  5. Overarching Competencies--the ones that are specific to a subject area or department. Like graphing in science.
  6. Courses
  7. Course Competencies

As I looked at it for the hundredth time and compared it to books and planning guides and my notes from the past few years I began to think of it differently than I ever had before.

First, I began to realize that in this year of work CHS has literally gone from number 1. right down (or will go) to competencies. Because of the way the year has been organized and because of the pressure from our accrediting body this has been the way we have had to go about it. The thing is--we went about it exactly the right way. Why in the world would you start to think about course competencies before you had thought of the overarching competencies of a subject area? Wouldn't you want to know which competency type things were going to appear in every course? Well we have done the same thing with our whole school. We have identified what we want graduates to look like and are working on seeing how they get there.

Second, I came to see that in designing our process to go over many years what we really are doing is going through the steps from 1-7 and THEN going back to number 1 to revise from the top down again. We will use the data that we have collected this year to inform what we should do, how we should change things to make them better.

Each time I look at it it becomes more clear that we are doing the right thing. How many people believe that? I'm not sure--but I am confident that we are doing the right thing.

21 November 2007

Anatomy Teaching Idea

November 2007

Just thinking about a way to teach anatomy without dissecting cats.

The theme of the year is building an organism. Students can build any mammalian organism that they want. A whale, a cat, a monkey, etc. Clearly some organisms will be more difficult because the available literature will be limited. It will change the order of the course from exterior of organisms to the interior but the change will be a logical one.

Overarching themes:
--appreciation of the beauty and functionality of the living mammalian organism
--appreciation of life
--yes it is hard to show appreciation so students will need to demonstrate their change in thinking over the course of the year.

Rules about supplies
--teams of 2 or 3
--same money that would have been spent on cat $30 per student
--cannot spend more than that and must have receipts as part of the project

Units:
1. Bones and Joints
--Big Goal--The skeleton is the support and protection system for organisms.
--Learn bones and joints as units. For example bones of the arm, rib cage, leg, pelvic girdle, vertebrae--how they all fit together. Not in isoloation.
--Build skeleton of organism--4 class days (90s)
2. Circulatory and respiratory
--Big goal--circulatory system moves oxygen to needed parts of the body.
3. Digestion
--Big goal is break down of nutrients for use in the body.
--Build 2. and 3. as part of one building session--2 days (90s)
4. Muscles
--Big goal is movement and how it works in the body.
--Build musculature--4 days (90s)
--Zoo field trip or similar--looking at live organisms. It would be best if it could be a petting zoo or something where students could look close up at organisms.
5. Integumentary
--Big goal is the role of skin in protection
--build skin
6. Microscopic
--Big goal is what is happening at the microscopic level.
--immunity
--histology

15 September 2007

Questions

Some questions that keep coming up....

1. How do I receive scores like 5,4,3,2,1 and get into college?
2. Where is the F?
3. We need to punish not turning work in, how do we do this in this system?
4. What does this mean in terms of GPA?
5. What does this mean in terms of graduating?
6. What does this mean in terms of passing a course?
7. Why do we need a new system?
8. How do I compare myself to other kids so I can ensure that I am on top? I want to go to a good college.

Achievement Categories

A colleague asked me the other day for my explanation of the grading levels that I used last year.

I used the following achievement categories:

5=Wow!
4=Great!
3=Got it! (met the standard)
2=Nearly there!
1=Oops!
INC=not handed in.

What I wrote for last year:
Look for these categories on all progress reports that are given to you (the student.) They are much more important than the single grade that you will receive on a report card. These are indicators of how you are doing in relation to specific things that you need to know. If you see a score of a 2 it means that you are close but you need to do a little more work to reach at least the 3 level. If you score a 4 or a 5 it means that you are really putting it all together. Not only do you know the material but you can transfer it to new situations.

The point about using levels instead of traditional grades is to you and I can work together for you to improve. If you score a 1 on something at the beginning of the unit --THAT IS OK! This is just a signal that you and I will need to work together to improve what you know about that subject.

If you see an incomplete (INC) this means that you have not handed something in. I can't give you a grade on something if I can't see what you can actually do so if you have an incomplete you will need to get your work in. Once you hand in the work then I will be able to give you your score on that piece.

03 September 2007

What didn't work?

Following up the post on what did work here are some of the strategies that did not work or more likely need more time and more support to work.

Grade Recovery Days.
My plan was to have everyone who was not meeting the standards stay after on Monday afternoons. This is a great idea and supported by research. This is the idea of giving a behavioral penalty for a behavior rather than a grade penalty for a behavior. My students that needed the most help would not come to this afternoon day. I would try this in another year but I would make some changes. I would start from the very beginning of the year. If students did not come after school I would immediately call home on the first offense. After that I might start a line of email communication to keep parents updated on their student's progress.

Incompletes going on after the end of the quarter.
Students are so ingrained to think that the end of the quarter is the end that they would not do anything about incompletes on their report card. If they had previously received an incomplete in another class they knew from experience that eventually the incomplete would turn into a number grade. So all they had to do was wait and not think about it and it would go away. My fault with this was not being systematic enough about providing opportunities for them to fix the incomplete after the quarter had ended. If I had it to do over I would take the day right after the quarter ended and have students with incompletes work on finishing their work. With other students I would look back at the big areas where they might need help and tell them to focus on the cumulative semester exam. The next day we would move on to the next unit. Students who still had incompletes would have to come after school until their incomplete was taken care of. If they did not come or did poor work I would call home. This is not a great plan but it is what I would try next.

Integrade Pro (IGP).
IGP is a powerful grade-book program but it falls woefully short when one tries to use it with standards grading. The biggest downfall is that no matter how hard I tried to avoid it IGP is set up to, at the end, deliver one number for a student grade. What I wanted was many grades. Grades in relation to certain standards. Imagine a course on chemistry with 10 major standards for the year. Within each of those goals there might be 2 mini-standards. So at the end of the year a student report card would have 20-30 marks in relation to those standards. This report card would also contain a narrative section about the student. I imagine this to be one page front and back--growing the total report card from 1/2 a page for all classes to 1 page for each class. IGP cannot do this. Well it can do it but it can't do it easily and it can't do it in a way that is clear for students and parents to understand.

There are some other little ones but those were the big frustrations I had last year. Even with these I would absolutely continue down this road. A road to standards grading that tells me so much more about students than giving them just one number.

02 September 2007

What Worked?

A few people have asked me what worked with the grading I tried last year. Here is an attempt at a summary.



Incomplete instead of zero.

As mentioned in earlier posts I decided at a point last year that I would give incompletes rather than zeroes. This made sense to me since in my experience a zero had never resulted in what I wanted. I was operating under the assumption that every student would do what I had done when I was a kid. If I had received a zero I would have done something about it--immediately. But I had found over the years that giving a zero was not the motivation that I thought it would be. Most of the time (and I mean 9 out of 10) kids would do nothing about a zero. They would especially do nothing if a zero had only made their grade an 83 rather than an 87. But I also had many students that would do nothing even if said zero made their grade a failing one.



I found that giving incompletes worked to give the result that I had always wanted zeroes to give. In the past I saw zeroes as a symbol that meant, "Look at me! This is bad! Get work in!" But kids did not see it that way. They saw the number as a done deal that they couldn't do anything about. Giving incompletes sent the right message and I saw results from it. It worked in two ways. First, when it came out on bi-weekly progress reports it made students come to me and ask what they had done wrong. I would tell them over and over that the piece of missing work was so important that I could not give them a grade without it. [As a teacher in the real world I had to make judgements on which assignments truly met this standard. What I did was simply think in my mind if I could truly say what a student knew and understood without a particular assignment.] Second, when an incomplete was given on a report card it sent a clear message that something needed to be done. Students would often come see me right after report cards were handed out. This is somewhat due to the novelty of the incomplete grade but it also shows that it works as a signal for--"You really need to finish this work."



Grading work by section.

Grading each section of a paper or test to the standard that it was created to measure is one of the more successful ideas that I tried. It seems so logical but I had never done it before. If I gave a test I would just lump all of the various questions together and give one grade. I never had much of an understanding of what the student knew about specific standards I only knew how they did on an overall basis. Grading by section I was able to see exactly what the student did or didn't know. I was able to see where they knew the work and where it may have come apart for them. This was an amazing insight. As I graded papers and tests I would see a progression leading to the point where their understanding faded away. I could look at individual students and truly know what they needed as a next step. I don't know why I never thought of doing this before--it just seems so obvious. This allowed me, after the test, to focus in on specific knowledge for each student. If Sueta knew how to graph but did not understand the parts of the atom I would have her work on understanding the atom--not on more graphing.

Comments.
Our electronic grade book (IGP) is not set up to lend itself to easy standards grading. It is a tool that seems amazing because it can crunch lots of numbers but it really is a tool that guides how we grade not a communication tool that allows us to explain what students do and do not know. (More on electronic grade books to come.)

Our grading program can be forced to do some of the things that I want it to. In a perfect world I would like to see a program that allows marks on levels of achievement versus certain standards and narrative sections to match. I was able to force a passable mimic of this using IGP last year. I relied heavily on the comments section to do this. I spent a great deal more time writing both group and individual comments and I spend much more time explaining to students how they should use them. Every 2 weeks I would print out a sheet for every student and bring it to their attention. Usually I would go around while they were doing a lab. I could keep an eye on what they were doing and give them a quick update on what they needed to do.

For group comments--comments that were the same for the whole class--I would make a spreadsheet note that explained what we were working on that unit or quarter and give a reminder of what the level scores meant. (5=Wow!, 3=Got it! met standard, 2=nearly there!, 1=oops!) I would also outline what the big goals for the unit were. I forced myself to keep saying these goals aloud and to keep pointing to them so that we tried to keep focused on them. For assignments I would give descriptions, page numbers, where the work was located online, etc. This allowed students to have the information on how to finish the work if they did have an incomplete.

For individual comments I would keep running lists of comments for individual students. I tried to keep a balance between positive and negative. These comments were short but they were truly individualized. I felt that the comments helped in a couple of situations. If I had a student that was a hard worker who was not meeting the standards I was able to write to them and say that their work ethic was good and that they should keep up that kind of work. I still gave them an honest assessment of where they were in regards to the standard but the written comment gave me a chance to also say something about how they were attempting to reach the standard. Used another way the comments gave me a record of student work ethic. Often I would check homework but instead of marking a grade for it I could record something about it in the comments section. When I looked back over these for a student who never did homework I could compare their performance versus the standard to the amount of work they had done. If they did not meet the standard and had not ever done the homework or classwork then I had the explanation for their mark.

These are the big 3 that really helped me become a better teacher last year. These were the ones that made me know my students well enough that at the end of the year I felt like I would have been able to write a page about each of them telling what they knew and what they needed to work on. In the next post...some of the things that did not work.

12 June 2007

12 June 2007

Today I was looking at Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. I've read it before but I was going back through it for the first time in a few months. Somewhere in it they referenced a book by Caswell and Campbell. They included a quote about how many aims, in Caswell and Campbell's words, that teachers had to try and accomplish in each class. The basic message was that there were incredible amounts. Too many by a factor of 10 to truly accomplish. The kicker was in the line after the quote where they gave the date of publication. (I'll give you a clue thier first names were Hollis and Doak.) It was from a popular curriculum guidebook from 1935.

I looked up the book on the online library questia.com to see what it was all about. It runs 600 pages and instructs how to set up a curriculum and how to assess that curriculum. If you showed someone in 2007 the table of contents they could easily think it was a modern book. I read some selections and quickly found that this book was not off the mark in any way. Yes it had some very outdated sections but at its core it was as sound as any modern work on the subject.

A common complaint came to mind. When I explain some new strategy DI, formative assessment, UbD there is always someone in the room who says, "Oh yeah, this is just like ____. Why do we have to do this all over again we did it in 1983." I finally came to truly understand the cyclical nature that is needed and intentional in curriculum design and reform. Teaching by its very nature requires that we do something, assess whether it worked and then modify for the next time around. I need to do more research to back this up but the history of education is bound to work the same way. In education we keep what worked and drop what did not. This applies to the day to day lesson and to an entire array of curriculum. Each year we modify. Each decade. The process must be continual or it won't work.

When I looked at the 1935 book I saw aspects of understanding by design in it. I saw aspects of many of the great things that I have learned from teachers like Anne Davies, Tom Guskey, Jane Bailey, Bob Marzano and Ken O'Connor just to name a few. My point is that this is necessary. When we see a new approach that looks similar to an old one that we have heard of before we should say, "Yes, I see it." We should not be disheartened by this revelation we should be excited by it and we should use what we already know to make the process better.

And the process will continue beyond understanding by design. Fifteen years from now we will be modifying our curriculum again. But should we want it any other way? Shouldn't we be excited about the chance to continually try to become better at doing what we do, continuing to teach students in the best way possible?

28 April 2007

Anne Davies

27 April 2007

Thursday and Friday I attended a conference on assessment with Anne Davies of the Assessment Research Group or ARG. I refrained from pirate jokes for two days but it was difficult. Thoughts aren't organized yet and I haven't gone through my notes but here are some scattered reflections.

One important thing that I learned was to involve students more in setting criteria. Davies reminded us that it is the person that makes the criteria or rubrics that really understands them. This has certainly been true for me as I agonize over criteria for various assignments.

Another interesting thing that I want to work on is the idea of continuum ranges of examples. This would be a booklet or a set of pieces of work on the wall that would show a progress continuum. In a writing example it would go from a low level, maybe two levels below grade level, to a high level. Students would move along the continuum and it would be clear that there would be no end.

Davies also showed us many great examples of students self assessing. A way to assess student work more, to give more feedback, while not increasing teacher time in doing it. With good criteria it is possible for grade one students to do this kind of work. She had many videos to show it.

Need to think more on what to do with it all. She and her colleagues recommended an approach that might be helpful for our graduation standards and competency work. Every time we add something we should be clear as a school what we are then going to not do or to do differently.

How to fit this all in, how to use it without overwhelming is the key.

19 March 2007

Give me one number!

Give me one number!

I gave a test recently on conservation of matter. The test had six parts and all of the parts were based on state standards. Students did not receive and overall score they were just told how they did on each section. I told them that it was like taking six small tests. They didn't like that explanation. After years of being given one number on tests they really wanted to know what their one number was. I tried to convince them that the way I had assessed them told them more about what they knew but they were resistant to that take on the grade.

One reason that students want the single number is because they have been raised in a norm-referenced education system. They have always been compared to one another. From birth when parents are told in which percentile their baby ranks in length and weight they have been compared to how everyone else is doing. In a criterion-referenced system they are being compared only to an expected understanding or standard and this is understandably new for them. The only useful comparison is a self comparison to how they are doing versus the standard. This is a totally new way of thinking for many students and accordingly they are poorly equiped to deal with the new kind of information.

The other reason is that one number has been defining their performance for all of their academic lives. Their evaluations may be based on what they know and are able to do but they are all reduced to one number or one letter at some point during the process. The idea that I would give them five grades for one test is just too much for them to adjust to at one time.

Another adjustment for students is that I have been trying to do something with the test scores. Since each student had 6 scores they could see how they did in each section. There were many students that had very high scores in some sections but very low scores in others. On one of the days after the test I divided the room into 6 locations and had a makeup area for each of the sections. The idea being that students would look at how they did on a section and figure out where they had to go to make it up.

Two issues immediately arose: teacher help and motivation. I created a situation where everyone was going to an area where they needed help. The question then becomes how do I help if everyone needs help? The other question is how do I motivate students to actually want to do something about their grade? The first of those questions might actually be the easier one because I know that I am motivated and I know that I will work to help the students learn. The more difficult part is an individual student's motivation. How do I find ways that will motivate them to do something about their understanding once they know where it is?



22 February 2007

Zeros

We believe that students should learn to accept responsibility and should be held accountable for their work. Nevertheless, we know of no evidence that shows assigning a zero helps teach students these lessons.

From Developing Grading and Reporting Systems by Tom Guskey and Jane Bailey.

This aspect of standards grading has been a tough one for me to get my mind around and is by far one of the toughest to sell to other teachers.

I had encountered this idea in passing before but it was not until I saw a complete presentation by Grant Wiggins, Ken O'Connor and Tom Guskey that it became clear to me that zeros were not the way to go. In my own teaching I had used zeros as motivational tools for 5 years. Or I should say that I thought I was using them as motivational tools. When students would not turn in an assignment I would give them a zero. My thinking, and the message that I conveyed to students was that they would see what the zero had done to their grade and they would be motivated to turn in the work. This rarely happened but I knew that I had to do something to them for their lack of work.

What Ken O'Connor explained in his presentation and in his book is that this does not motivate students. And it does not give a fair representation of what students can do. It is a grade of behavior not a grade of student understanding. It should be made clear that doing homework is an important aspect of being a student. Doing homework should be a behavior that is encouraged but it is not something that should be part of the grade.

And here I talk about the grade and the student ability as the same thing. Study habits, effort, doing homework are all indicators of success. As teachers we know they are important and that is why we encourage those habits in students. At the same time those types of student efforts are not measures of what they know and understand. For a long time a grade, a single letter or number, has been a measure of student ability and effort all combined together. I am suggesting that we move to an approach where we measure and report on all of these but we are clear to students and parents about which are student abilities and which are measures of student effort.

This year I have tried the following. I have firm due dates for all of my assignments. These due dates are published in my online grade book and on our class website.

1.The day assignments are due I collect them and grade them on whether the students know and understand the concept.

2. For those students that do not hand in homework I assign and incomplete. In the notes section of the online grade book I record that they have not turned the assignment in on time. A grade of incomplete immediately makes their total score, even if they have handed in everything else, an incomplete.

3. Three or four times in a nine week grading period I have all students with incompletes stay after school and either finish their work or come up with a plan to finish their work. If students skip this time I contact parents. And if parent contact does not help I enlist the help of their assistant principal or their guidance counselor.

Reflections so far

Grading students only on what they are able to do in relation to standards really makes it clear what a student can and cannot do. When I used to have zeros in the book for behaviors, (i.e. not turning in work), it would cloud the picture because measurements of their effort and measurements of their science abilities would all be mixed together. I have never had a more clear understanding of what my students actually know about science.

Having students, especially the students I teach, come in after school has always been a challenge. I have had limited success with students coming in after school on the designated incomplete days. Mainly I have had to spend a lot of time emailing parents and nagging students before I finally received the work that I wanted to grade. All of this behavior gets noted and is included in their progress report but it can be a lot of work. Grant Wiggins and Ken O'Connor suggest school wide policies where students always have to stay after school if they have not turned in work. They said that they have seen this approach work that way but not when individual teachers do it alone. So far my findings confirm their statements.

Even with the difficulty I still find the work worth it. The clear knowledge that I get of what students know about science is worth the time I have put in.










Standards Grading

An Introduction
For 4 years our science department has been working on formative assessment. We have read tons of articles, attended countless conferences and tried many approaches in our classrooms. Near the end of 2006 we had come to a point where we knew more about our students than we had ever known before. But we didn't know what to do with all of that knowing. We knew a lot about our students but we were unsure of how to best use all of the information.

In November 2006 I was fortunate to join with seven other educators from our district and attend a grading conference in Princeton, NJ called Beyond A, B, and C. Led by Grant Wiggins it opened my eyes to where to go next with our assessment work. Mr. Wiggins along with Tom Guskey and Ken O'Connor made some eye opening statements but when I thought about them they really made sense.

Based on their work I decided to try a new approach to grading, which would lead to a new approach to instruction. I have called it standards grading for lack of a better term but it mainly entails grading students on what they know, understand and are able to do. It also means not grading students on effort. They may turn in all of their work, they may be incredibly nice but this new system would grade them only on what they could actually do.

A new approach
Here are the changes that I am trying and will continue to try this year:

1. Grading only on what students can do. No effort grades only grades based on the standards for our class.
2. No zeroes for homework. Ken O'Connor detailed many research studies that tell us that giving zeroes for missed work is no motivation for students.
3. Incompletes--I have greatly increased the use of incompletes. My goal is to encourage students to give me work so that I can grade them on their work. Incompletes in this model are a good thing. It means that students still have the chance to complete the work and receive a grade based on what they can actually do.
4. Grades based on the most recent evaluation of a student. If a student shows improvement their grade will reflect it. And their grade will not necessarily be the average of the two grades. Once they know it their grade will be closer to the higher grade.
5. Standards categories in the gradebook rather than assignments. The goals of the class are for students to meet certain standards so they are graded on whether they meet those standards or not. In this way one assignment might include several standards. They might score great on one section and poorly on another. The grade in the book will reflect doing well on one standard and poorly on the other.

What will happen?
The idea is that I will use these standards grades as I go along. I will be able to identify which students need help in which areas and I will be able to get them the help that they need. Students will also not spend as much time working on standards that they have already demonstrated they understand. Skills like graphing using a balance will of course be used over and over but if a student understands balancing equations they will not repeatedly have to fill out balancing equation worksheets. They will continue to need to balance equations from time to time but they will spend their learning time working on areas where they still need help--not on areas where they already know what they are doing.







Tricky Case Studies

What follows is a discussion of a recent test that I gave.

The test was made up of six categories; balancing reactions, understanding reactions, graphing, conservation of mass, bonding and understanding bonding. I have been using standards grading this year and for the most part it has been incredibly useful. These 3 case studies explain some of the ways that it can be tricky.

The Grinder
Karl (all names are changed) grinds out his work. He has had fairly good grades throughout his career in school but those grades have largely been based on effort. Karl does everything a teacher asks. He turns in homework on time, he participates in his group, and he is kind to other students. These are all positive and worthwhile traits to have but they do not show up when he is graded only on what he knows and understands.
On the test he did not meet the standard in 4 of the 6 categories. And he scored at the lowest possible level on the conservation of mass questions. Since the whole unit was on conservation of mass it was especially disappointing to see Karl score so low on those questions. Further it was clear by his written reasoning in those questions that he had no grasp at all of how conservation of mass worked.

The Absentee

This student, Liza, is habitually absent. She has major attendance issues missing more than 20 classes this year and missing a greater amount last year. She is in her second year of taking the same chemistry class. But somehow along the line she has learned a good deal about chemistry. On every assessment this year she has met the standard level in all of the big categories and has done fairly well in what could be called the supporting categories.

The Problem Student

Dave is a great kid. He is respectful of adults and he helps other students in class. He has great questions about science and he seems truly interested in the class. Dave, however, does not ever turn in work. He does not even turn in classwork--classwork that he completes quickly and then goes to help other students in the class with. He somehow loses this work too. When he is assessed, [Tests are the only way because he is captive, he has many times declined my offers to give him oral exams or other kinds of assessment.], he does great, usually scoring at the top level on all standards.

Questions
I can say that the approach of standards grading is really working. It makes it very clear for me and for the students what is understood and what is not. These cases are outside of the expected though and they are the ones that for many reasons I am the most concerned with. I don't want to ruin Karl's spirit with all of this. He is in 10th grade and has found success by doing what his teachers told him to do. I want to be honest with him about what he knows but at the same time I want to be clear with him that his effort is very much valued.

And Liza is a really tough case. Few of my colleagues would say that granting her credit would be the way to go but I wonder if she needs to take chemistry for a third time next year. Are there new creative options that will also meet the test of fairness?

And Dave is the kind of student that drives teachers crazy. He is really a nice young man but he will not play the school game. The question is--do all students have to? Or should we change it so that it is less about the game? How can we tell students that really need to do homework to do it and at the same time allow Dave to score well and not do the homework.

I don't have these answers yet...