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...