Recommendation from Leading Folks on Assessment and Grading

List of Recommendations:

Feedback and Assessment from Bob Marzano and Tom Guskey
1. Classroom Assessment Feedback should provide students with a clear picture of their progress on learning goals and how they might improve.
2. Feedback on Classroom Assessments Should Encourage Students to Improve
3. Classroom Assessments should be Formative
4. Formative Classroom Assessments should be frequent.

Grading Scale--From Bob Marzano
5. A grading scale should measure learning over time.
6. Rewrite the standards (competencies) according to this scale

Grading--From Ken O'Connor
7. Grading is not essential for learning
8. Grading is complicated
9. Grading is subjective

Base grades on intended learning goals
10. Use criterion referenced performance standards as reference points to determine grades
11. Limit the student attributes included in grades to individual achievement—not on effort, participation, etc.
12. Sample student performance—do not include all scores in grades.
13, Keep records that can be updated easily—meaning they can change if a student shows you new evidence.
14. Crunch numbers carefully if at all. Consider the median, mean or Olympic (throw out high and low.)
15. Use quality assessments and properly record evidence of achievement.
16. Discuss and involve students in assessment throughout the teaching and learning process.

A Good Friend

I have always hoped that they will put the title of this post on my tombstone.

I have always worked hard on my friendships. I have tried hard to keep in touch

Thinking about grading and feedback

 I was thinking about grading and feedback after a meeting I had this week.

I wandered around the house this weekend looking for books that spoke to this very thing. I wound up scanning several pages from great works by Wormeli, Guskey, O'Connor, Wiggins, McTighe, Vander Els, Stack, and several more.

Here are the clips I took.

On Feedback and Grading

I think it is the science teacher in me but I really like things like the Marzano complete scale.

Movies to play if I'm at the end of life

 Not a fun subject -- maybe -- but if I'm in a coma or in a place where I'm still alive but will pass away soon....I don't want music. I would like you to play movies.

• The Original Superman with Christopher Reeve
• Lonesome Dove -- Especially anything with Augustus McRae
• Any Spiderman movie
• She Said
• All the President's Men
• Spotlight
• Any of the Lord of the Rings
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• You could do the whole MCL from Iron Man to Endgame
• North by Northwest
• Rear Window
• Devil Wears Prada
• If the girls are there watch something we used to like together like Father of the Bride or the Parent Trap
• Crazy Stupid Love
• Star Wars 3,4,5,6,7,8,9 NOT 1 or 2.

Books you should read Part 3: The Souls of Black Folk

 The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Dubois

    I knew of this book but I was encouraged to read it after listening to Yale Professor David Blight's lecture series on the Civil War. He said that reading the book should be required for citizenship.

    I can only say that I agree -- read it.

Books you should read part II: Fredrick Douglass

 Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass an American Slave

    No matter when you read this book your eyes will be opened.

    We all know the Fredrick Douglass that is celebrated in February. But what he went through from birth through about age 20 is incredible. Slavery of course is an evil condition to be in. But Douglass was tormented by his masters. Tormented -- all slaves were tormented. His masters tried to break him and then he was sent to a slave breaker. He survived it all.

    There is a heart wrenching story where he is worked to exhaustion by his slave breaker master Covey to the where he collapses in the fields. Covey beats him and Douglass runs away to his former masters the Aulds. They convince him to go back because there is no choice. He hides all day on Sunday and on Monday Covey tries to tie him up and kill him. In a two hour fight Douglass finally bests Covey and is never touched by him again.

Books you should read Part 1: Wormeli Fair Isn't Always Equal

     Rick Wormeli's Fair Isn't Always Equal is a fantastic book. The second edition builds on the first and has so much more useful information that it could have been its own edition.

    When teachers and educators ask me for advice on what to read to learn about fairness, feedback, and grading this is one of the first books I think of. I also remember that the second edition is the orange one and the first edition was blue.

    Chapter 19 is particularly useful it includes 13 recommendations for what to look for in a grading system.

• "Discern between formative and summative,"
• "Set up according to standards,"
• "Report behavior, effort, attendance and work habits separately,"

    These concepts have become commonplace in how teachers work but grading and reporting systems have been slow to catch up. The second edition of this book came out around 2018 and many of the suggestions are still not available in gradebooks.

    

 What a Good Assistant Principal Actually Does Write 500 words on the gap between the job description and the real job. What does it actually take to hold a building together from that seat? What does nobody tell you before you're in it?

When I applied I talked about improving how students understand what they are learning. I wanted to primarily focus on how I could support teachers in guaranteeing the curriculum for students.

The superintendent who hired me worried that I wouldn't like the discipline part of the job -- but that wasn't the case at all. I loved working with students who were struggling a little bit. I remember someone in particular. He always had trouble making it through the day but he would come to my office and blow off steam...and then he could get back to school

Looking for Buckeyes

 The other day I walked around Whetstone Park in Columbus looking for Buckeyes. Many people don't know that the Buckeye is actually the seed of the eponymous tree. When I talk to people in New Hampshire they have no idea that the "Buckeye" that they hear about in relation to the very good football team is a real thing.

It was a nice walk around the park but I didn't find a single tree.

I did find an interesting tree that had dropped very green pods that were just smaller than a ping pong ball. At first they appeared to be solid round balls. On closer inspection they were similar to an armadillo in the way that they unfolded. The parent tree also looked coniferous so I wondered if the pods were a variant of a pine cone.

Pool Rules

Years ago, I vacationed with my wife and three young daughters at a fine hotel in the mountains of New Hampshire. The place caters to the winter sports clientele and has lots of free hot chocolate and coffee.  It also has both an indoor pool and a heated outdoor pool with a gigantic attached hot tub. Like most hotel pools the establishment also displayed their affinity for signage. When I counted I totalled seventy-three safety rules between the two pools. 

I have long been fascinated with pool signs. I became a lifeguard just after my sixteenth birthday and worked around pools, on and off, for the next ten years. Swimming pools inside and out are festooned with signs on all of their walls. Small signs, big signs, sometimes the same sign on every wall.  And when you begin to look carefully they make very little sense.

One of my favorite themes is graphic descriptions of what you can’t do with your body. On one sign, “14.  Spitting, blowing of nose, urinating or defecating into the pool or onto the deck, improper public displays of affection, and profanity are PROHIBITED.”

Most of the rules take this form. Little parallel structure within the rule or from rule to rule and a low bar for what belongs together. Why don’t public displays of affection have their own rule?  If they are codifying that one cannot poop into the pool or on the deck, what about the grass around the pool? Does capitalizing prohibited change much?

The other characteristic of pool rules is that they often are long. Rule 14, above, above comes from a list of thirty at the Gurney Park Pool in New York. new year’s eve at an indoor/outdoor pool complex that had 75 distinct rules.  The point of all of these rules seems to be to cover everything that could possibly go wrong.  But in trying to do that, lists are created that don’t hang together around any kind of central theme and often the posted rules are not the real rules.  Our local pool in Concord, New Hampshire just put up brand new pool signs with fifteen rules.  They include the typical fare, no diving, no open sores, shower before going into the pool, etc.  But the biggest rule that lifeguards are told to enforce is no pool toys. Why didn’t they put the rule that they care most about on the new signs?

In addition to missing rules it is often the case that the posted rules aren’t the rules at all.  When we went to the pool for New Year’s there were many signs about no alcohol at the pool.  But the lifeguards themselves handed out red cups to those swimmers that were drinking out of cans or bottles.

Top Gun -- Maverick

Imagine if you had never seen a movie. You are invited to see one and your host brings you to wonderful theatre for a showing to Top Gun-Maverick.

Those of you who have seen movies understand all of the history involved with a Tom Cruise movie. Scientology, couch jumping, etc.

But...in this thought experiment the person has never seen a movie.

I appreciate The Old Man and the Sea -- I understand it's greatness. 

Day 11

 Day 11 Fixing Up Assessment

I did the comment only grading over the weekend. Handed it back and asked them to fix what I had noted.

I had mixed results with this and I think it was because along with the comments I included a grade for each of the four sections of the test. This caused some students to say, “I’m OK with that grade,” and not address the comments that I had made. 

This makes me reflect on a conversation that I have been having with Kaileen and other school leaders about whether students in the 14-18 age range can conceptualize the idea that practice is important and that they need to work on reacting to feedback. That is the real world skill they will need.

Day 10

 Day 10 Sept. 27, 2023 Assessment Day

This was assessment day. They don’t call it a test anymore. As I passed out the test I realized that I hadn’t given a test to a group of my own students since the 2011-2012 school year. When I taught in 2020-2021 it was the pandemic so the experience was completely alien. There weren’t traditional tests that year because it made no sense.

It made no sense on a human level. Putting kids who are in a daily state of low level panic through a test—whether timed or not. 

It also gave us the freedom to stop giving tests. With the upheaval of how we were even getting kids into the school parents did not care at all if their students were taking tests or not.

Day 9

 Day 9

One unexpected aspect of a return to teaching is doors. I’m not exactly sure why we are so assiduous about locking doors in the science wing but every door is locked and closed all of the time. It could be due to some bad break ins that the school had back in 2018-2019 or it could be pandemic related but I don’t know.

For someone coming from a more office-like environment the amount of doors to unlock and go through really threw me off for the first couple of days. It was accentuated by the temperatures and the gross sweatiness of my hands trying to extract my keys from my pockets. But on the way to get in the building I swipe my key card. Use key to open classroom door, key for copy room door, key open storage room, key open adjoining storage room, key open chemical storage room, key open the other classroom, I teach in, then key open the door inside of that classroom to get other materials, go back to the classroom where I teach first and key open that door.

This repeats throughout the day.

Day 8

 Day 8 September 23, 2023

Plate tectonics day and more with S and P waves. I led the students through the plate tectonics questionnaire from the book I used and then I had them get the same information from a 20 minute video that I was hoping would be a good double up. But it was way too hard and I think it just led to confusion.

In my period 7 class there are two students who can’t read beyond grade 2. I worked to organize the rolling cart.

Day 4-7

 So I know I shouldn't start sentence with that but so far this week I've been struggling with classroom management. I've been going back and forth with loose and tight in terms of teaching the students.

 I did something with period 3 and it worked perfectly and then I did the same thing with period 7 and they were all over the place specifically I said I was creating classroom guidelines I really don't want to micromanage going to the bathroom and with. three I said that exact same thing I don't want to micromanage going to the bathroom you shouldn't be needing to go to the bathroom every time or several times during a class and period 3 was able to manage that

I gave the exact same directions. Period 7 and they were unable to manage it. I had multiple students trying to leave and at one point there were seven students out at the bathroom. and as Educators we know they were not out at the bathroom even if they were. hopefully they were not leaving but they were just needed to take a walk.

 Another thing that I've been experiencing is the balance of how much I describe exactly what students need to do and how much I've let them explore what they need to do.

Today I was teaching and I knew it was something really hard like Milankovitch Cycles and then there had to be a lot of talking from the front of the room. I tried to mix it up by using really short videos and then coming in and explain things myself and I'm talking in 2 minutes videos where I would stop at and then I draw on the board. then I would ask them to look at what I was asking them in terms of an assessment and it was just really hard. new line new line

We also talked this morning about an assessment. The current assessment has some matching questions and then some open-ended questions. I can tell you I am completely torn about what to do about Completely torn about what to do about an end of unit assessment. I was brought up on the old fashioned test I totally understand why we have transitioned away from it there are times when I just want to get information about how each student is doing so I have actually thought of as sort of old-fashioned test with multiple choice questions short answer and longer answer at the end I'm not sure what to do about this but it is what I thought about because I want to gather what students know

Day 3

 So hot. Classroom temperature was 85 F.

I finally slowed down a little bit – both because of the temperature – and because I was so nervous I was going too fast.

I started class with a problem solving puzzle – the one where there are a bunch of triangles shown and you ask students to ID how many triangles there are. The challenge being that students need to see that there are triangles within triangles. I wasn’t sure if it would work but it led to a great discussion. I had all the students stand and then have them sit based on how many triangles they saw. I was surprised at how engaged they were.

I dug deep on Friday night into the IEPs, 504s, and just what I could find out about each kid. I combined it with what I had seen so far in class and created a seating chart for each class.

Day 1

 30 August 2023

I was moving in slow motion. Everything I was trying to do was taking four times longer than it normally would have. I was trying to cut up poster board to create 4 inch by 8 inch cards that students could turn into name tents for their desks. Not only was it taking me a long time to use the paper cutter but I was creating all kinds of waste. I couldn’t do the simple math even though the paper cutter had that little ruler that comes on all paper cutters. I finally had a pile of what I hoped was 50 cards but I had an even bigger pile of waste to take with me.

I had been so nervous the night before. My first day returning to teaching was complicated by the fact that my middle child a daughter age 13 was returning to school in 8th grade after a long absence due to a mental health issue so I could not arrive on time for my very first day returning to teaching

I had prepared as much as I could in terms of getting ready for the first day and I had talked to colleagues about what they were imagining doing on the first day. But I was still really nervous when the hour of 9:15 arrived and students started arriving for what was their second period of the day and my first period teaching. things were going well. I had planned things out. I had something on the board projected directing them to pick up things in the back of the room that we're going to be part of what they needed to do for the day. but little by little I noticed that more students were arriving first there were 24 which is what I expected and then others began to arrive I knew that sometimes classes or students needed to be added to classes at the last minute so I thought okay maybe instead of 24 I'll have 27 but the students kept coming and I ran out of stools at the lab benches and I finally did a finger count on my own and there were 32 students in the room

I didn't totally panic but I went next door to the department head and told her what was going on. She is suggested maybe they're in the wrong place and then I said okay let me take a 10 minutes and it's sort of shock to me out of my insanity. so I went back to the class I took a ten minutes and then said those of you who I didn't name your name come on up I finally realized they were supposed to be in a nearby classroom. 

Period three was scheduled for 90 minutes but there was an assembly that was going to happen I nervously work through some of the things I wanted to do. I was later told by my daughter who was a friend with one of the students in the class that I had accidentally called a student Lily when she actually goes by Libby. I did not even realize this I don't remember doing it I fully know that her name is Libby but I am also sure that it happened.

Introduction to The Return Book

Humanity is at a low point. We can’t stop killing each other over arguments.

Bonobos are a matriarchal society who are friendly to each other and to strangers.

Chimpanzees brutalize all of the females in their group and hold grudges across generations.

So I've been thinking about how I could begin this and I keep thinking back to my experience over the last many years I guess since 2017-18 was the last completely good school year where I felt like I don't know what my next steps were but I was on a pretty good path and then of course we celebrated Heidi's Teacher of the Year Award with a trip to the college football final in January of 2019 and it was really at that point where things began to accumulate in a way that began my reflection on what was happening with Humanity. and I know that sounds too grandiose for what I was doing which was being an assistant principal of a high school but if you think back to when President Obama was elected and what students were like in the years from 2008 to 2016 it seemed like there was a general positivity about the world that might be possible. 

 

Now I know of course that horrible things were still happening drone strikes and things like that and even worse. And the proud boys were gaining prominence and people who felt comfortable speaking as racists became more comfortable. But it felt relatively okay and my personal life and my work life felt okay. My kids were young and they were growing. Things were wonderful. Overall it seemed like my life and the world were going in a generally positive direction.

But a lot of things were happening at the end of the 2018-2019 school year there was a Concord High School teacher who had raped a 12 year old and he was getting arrested. but then that summer all public anger turned on a wonderful man named Tom Sica and he was eventually fired. It was as though the public turned their anger not on the rapist but on a wonderful man who had no way of knowing what the criminal could have been doing because the criminal was a psychopath and a psychopath is effective at covering up what they're doing. 

At the same time the public seem to be having an ever-increasing difficulty with their role in public education. The days of parents trusting and administrators were long gone but the ability of them to completely go against teachers and administrators and give them no respect were fully upon us by that point. Over the course of the spring of 2019 on the fall of 2019 I was accused of being an anti-semite, a misogynist, a friend of the teacher rapist and someone who would have defended Owen LaBrie who was a Saint Paul student who forced himself on a 9th grade student when he was a senior. 

 

In the world at large I saw more Confederate flags flying than I ever had before and I don't mean belt buckles and stickers I mean people who had a flagpole in their front yard and had a Confederate flag on it most of these weren't in New Hampshire but seen them as I drove around upstate New York certainly concerned of me. I even saw someone wearing a hat that said 6 million wasn't enough in reference to 6 million Jews being killed in the Holocaust wasn't enough.

Then when the pandemic arrived and we of course could have come together as people we immediately once again And couldn't agree on science. and I'm not saying that we should blindly follow science but the fact that science is something of value and that science is a process was disturbing to see. and it was disturbing to see people not wear masks and not come together and yell at each other. and I suppose the part 

that is making me feel

The worst aspects of humanity have been on display in Gaza over the last few months. As part of that attack human beings killed babies raped women shot women in their vaginas with guns and kidnap people refusing to release them. I think also it's part of getting older I turn 50 last year and knowing that they're only so many more years and thinking that I've taught about climate change for nearly 25 years and I don't know how much change is happening one begins to wonder did they have any effect and so they're certainly points where I get low thinking about humanity and are we going to make it as a species.

Those are the kind of things I've been thinking about over the last several years and to be honest my professional career has been a little odd over those years I moved away from being assistant principal of a high school and into a teaching job that I moved to be in a central office job for 2 years and now I'm in a quasi teaching / central office job.

But the big difference this year—and why I wanted to write about my experience this year—is for the first time since 2012 I'm a classroom teacher in the traditional sense I'm not a pandemic classroom teacher I'm a regular classroom teacher with 24 students that show up every other day and I need to show up for that so I thought that I would write a little reflection every day about how the year is going. and at this point I have about 41 days of reflection so I want to start putting them out.

 What did I accomplish this summer?

Speech to text – not yet edited

This week I performed a humbling task of asking if I could get paid a little bit more for my summer work. I was supposed to work 15 summer days and I've already work close to 30. 

 but that isn't the point of this little article. the point is that when I look back at what I've done this summer there are many days where I know that I worked all day but I can't specifically describe exactly what I accomplished. and it was at that moment that I thought of the idea of a reporter a reporter on some sort of assignment where they have to collect a lot of information before they can eventually write a story.

 in the movie spotlight Michael Keaton's character explains to the new editor that they spend a lot of time looking around for stories and often will take months or years to develop a story That's how I feel about my summer there are lots of days where I was just searching around to figure out what I knew and what I didn't know and how it can make things work and at the end of all my work there will be a one-page report card that we're calling a progress report. there will be a way to enter Behavior information. and there will be a way to analyze data.

 but in the case especially over the report card it is very similar to working for a long time on an article eventually it will go out to about 1500 students each of whom will receive all progress report and that progress report will be one to two pages long and it will be useful to them and to their family but the idea that I have spent most of the summer working to make that happen is well I don't know what it is.