Five years ago my good friend Corey St. John and I were planning for our AEA course on Standards Based Grading and "
Grading Practices That Work" which we facilitated for staff in our previous district. The book we used for the class we taught is titled "
A Repair Kit for Grading". The book goes through
15 Fixes for Broken Grades by Ken O'Connor.
During our Monday 9/13 PD, we will continue our journey into best grading practices by revisiting the Iowa Instructional Framework and how solid grading practices really starts with clarity around the Standards and Objectives as outlined in the framework.
As we start to think about interventions for kids who need support in our classrooms, mind you the best interventions happen in the classroom in real time, grades should represent a very important part of the picture of known data sources that we use to guide those interventions to begin to close learning gaps. Grades should indicate both strengths and weaknesses of a learner, both academically and as citizens, but it's hard to tell the whole story when we lump them all together into one grade as with traditional grading practices. SBG is most definitely best practice.
The fixes for broken grading system according to the book referenced above, broken down into categories that we will discover as continue to refine and adjust our practices as part of a highly effective school, are as follows -
Fixes for Practices that Distort Achievement -
1. Don't include student behaviors (effort, participation, adherence to class rules, etc.) in grades; include only academic achievement
2. Don't reduce marks on "work" submitted late; provide support for the learner (and consequences for missing deadlines) as needed.
3. Don't give points for extra credit or use "bonus points"; seek only evidence that more work has resulted in higher levels of achievement.
4. Don't punish academic dishonesty with reduced grades; apply other consequences and reassess to determine actual level of academic achievement.
5. Don't consider attendance in grade determination; report absences separately.
6. Don't include group scores in grades; use only individual achievement evidence.
Fixes for Low-Quality or Poorly Organized Evidence
7. Don't organize information in grading records by assessment methods or simply summarize into a single grade; organize and report evidence by standards.
8. Don't assign grades using inappropriate or unclear performance standards; provide clear descriptions of achievement expectations.
9. Don't assign grades based on student's compared to other students; compare each student's performance to preset standards and clear descriptors of achievement.
10. Don't rely on evidence gathered using assessments that fail to meet standards of quality; rely only on quality (summative) assessments.
Fixes for Inappropriate Grade Calculation
11. Don't rely on the mean/average; consider other measures of central tendency and use professional judgment.
12. Don't include zeros in grade determination when evidence is missing or as punishment; use alternatives, such as reassessing to determine real achievement, or use "I" for Incomplete or Insufficient Evidence towards the standards.
Fixes to Support Learning
13. Don't use information from formative assessments and practice work to determine grades; use only summative evidence of learning.
14. Don't summarize evidence accumulated over time when learning is developmental and will grow with time and repeated practice opportunities; in those instances, emphasize more recent achievement.
15. Don't leave students out of the grading process. Involve students; they can - and should - play key roles in assessment and grading that promote achievement.
Continue to identify areas in your grading practices as individuals and as PLTs that need to be refined as part of this process to clarify what students know and are able to do.
Thanks for your continued innovation and for doing what is best for our learners as we close learning gaps.
