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.