SLSN Summer Session Grading and Reporting

1. SLSN Summer SessionGrading and Reporting June 17 – 19, 2008 Welcome! SLSN is sponsored by KDE and PIMSER

2. Who’s in the room? Please stand for the role that best represents your current position: • Classroom teachers • Resource teachers (i.e., academic performance specialist, science coaches, curriculum coaches, etc.) • Building level administrators • District level administrators • Other (e.g., KDE, university)

3. Facilitators • Kim Zeidler • Director of P-12 Science and Math Outreach Unit of PIMSER at UK • Kzeidle@uky.edu • 859-257-4836 • Diane Johnson • Instructional Supervisor, Lewis County Schools • diane.johnson@lewis.kyschools.us • 606-796-2811

4. Goals of SLSN Articulate the “big ideas” in science, together with teacher and student understandings (content, process, relevance) that underlie them. Deconstruction of STM standards, developed assessment items, identified effective science instruction and rigor, operationalized an instructional model, practiced Writing in Science, identified brain-based strategies

5. Goals of SLSN • Develop a broader understanding of assessment and how to use a variety of assessment strategies in support of student learning. • Developed and critiqued assessment items, examined performance assessments, personal communication, and rubrics, utilized formative assessment probes, distinguished ‘describe’ from ‘explain,’ began to examine grading and reporting

6. Goals of SLSN • Develop and act on a personal vision of leadership for sustainable improvement in their school or district. • Examined ways to develop leadership for role, examined 21st Century Skills, used Outlearning the Wolves to consider plc’s, shared ways participants have used information and materials from SLSN

7. Goals for SLSN Summer Session • Provide a grounding in the issues pertaining to grading and reporting practices and provide some possible considerations and solutions for them • Consider possibilities for communicating what students KUD more accurately • Consider next steps for classroom/school/district

8. Tuesday a.m. Surface issues related to grading and reporting Tuesday p.m. and Wednesday 8 Guidelines from How to Grade for Student Learning Considerations and possible solutions Thursday Examples in practice – Myron Dueck Next steps for classroom/school/district Agenda for 3 Days

9. Logistics • Restrooms • Lunch: 12:00 – 1:00 • Time: 9:00 – 4:00

10. Group Norms Start and end on time Put cell phones on silent Be respectful of all comments Everyone participates Exercise the rule of “two feet” Come prepared for the meeting

12. Underpinning Issues • Fairness • Motivation • Objectivity and professional judgment

13. “The grading system here is all over the place. You would get a better shot at fairness going to the Olympics – in figure skating!” • Teacher at Winslow High School on Boston Public, Winter, 2002

15. “It is too numbing to try to figure out the grade; too exhausting. What did become clear was that, given the Carter (HS) grading plan, it was possible to give Gary Edwards just about any grade. He could have passed. He could have flunked. Just about the only question that wasn’t asked during the hearing was whether Gary had actually learned any Algebra.” • Bissinger, H.G., Friday Night Lights, Da Capo, Cambridge, MA, 1990

16. “Most kids never talk about it, but a lot of the time bad grades make them feel dumb, and almost all of the time it’s not true. And good grades make other kids think they’re better, and that’s not true either. And then all the kids start competing and comparing. The smart kids feel smarter and get all stuck up, and the regular kids feel stupid and like there’s no way to catch up. And the people who are supposed to help kids, the parents and the teachers, they don’t. They just add more pressure and keep making up more and more tests.” • Nora Rowley, 5th grader’s view of grades in Clements, A., The Report Card, Simon and Schuster, NY, 2004, pg. 72-73.

17. “Why….would anyone want to change current grading practices? • The answer is quite simple: grades are so imprecise that they are almost meaningless.” • Marzano, R.J. Transforming Classroom Grading, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 2000, pg. 1

18. “The grading box is alive and well, and in some schools and classrooms, it is impenetrable. Fair does not mean equal; yet, when it comes to grading, we insist that it does.” Patterson, William “Breaking Out of Our Boxes,” Kappan, April 2003, 572

19. “The power of grades to impact a students’ future life creates a responsibility for giving grades in a fair and impartial way.” • Johnson, D.W. and R.T. Johnson, Meaningful Assessment: A Manageable and Cooperative Process, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA, 2002, pg. 249

20. “We have had a virtual revolution in assessment practices in the past decade. • Yet, by all accounts, grading practices are only slowly evolving.” • Trumbull, E., “Why Do We Grade and Should We?” in Trumbull and Farr (Eds.) Grading and Reporting Student Progress in an Age of Standards, Christopher Gordon, 2000, pg. 29

21. Why Standards-Based Grading and Reporting? • Mandate • Supports Learning • Improves Communication • Consistency/Fairness

22. The Essential Questions • What is our purpose for grading? • What factors should we include in the grade? • How do we combine those factors to give the truest picture possible of student achievement?

23. Enduring Understandings There are no right grades only justifiable grades. Nothing really changes till the grade book and the report card both change.

24. Guiding Questions • What is the primary purpose for grading in my classroom/school/district? • What is the secondary purpose for grading in my classroom/school/district?

25. Purposes of Grading Communicate the achievement status of students to their parents and others Provide information for student self-evaluation Select, identify, or group students for certain educational programs Provide incentives for students to learn Document students’ performance to evaluate the effectiveness of instructional programs Provide evidence of students’ lack of effort or inappropriate responsibility Guskey – synthesis from the literature Beyond A, B, C Grading Conference, 2006

26. “the primary purpose for grading…should be to communicate with students and parents about their achievement of learning goals… Secondary purposes for grading include providing teachers with information for instructional planning… and providing teachers, administrators, parents, and students with information for …placement of students. (5) It is very difficult for one measure to serve different purposes equally well. (21) The main difficulty driving grading issues both historically and currently is that grades are pressed to serve a variety of conflicting purposes.” (31) Brookhart, S., Grading. (2004)

27. “the primary purpose of . . . grades . . . (is) to communicate student achievement to students, parents, school administrators, post-secondary institutions and employers.” Bailey, J. and McTighe, J., “Reporting Achievement at the Secondary School Level: What and How?”, in Thomas R. Guskey, (Ed.) Communicating Student Learning: ASCD Yearbook 1996, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 120

28. Policy + Principles + Practicality = Implementation

29. Guiding Question • What are additional issues related to grading and reporting?

30. Perspectives on GradingVehicle for addressing some myths and criticisms about grading Grading is not essential for learning. Grading is complicated. Grading is subjective and emotional. Grading is inescapable. Grading has a limited research base. Grading has not single best practice. Grading that is faulty damages students – and teachers.

31. Perspectives on Grading • Select one of the 7 perspectives that you agree with, disagree with, or are not sure about. • Record why you agree, disagree, or are not sure on the organizer. • Record some issues that might surface related to this perspective. • Read the corresponding information in HTGFSL found on pages 17-24. • Add to the issues and jot down some key points to remember.

32. Perspectives on Grading • Find the chart with the perspective you selected. • Select a recorder – the person with the most experience teaching. • Select a reporter – the person with the least experience teaching. • Share whether you agreed, disagreed, or weren’t sure about the perspective selected. • Share and chart issues and key points.

33. Perspective #1 “Teachers don’t need grades or reporting forms to teach well. Further, students don’t need them to learn.” Thomas R. Guskey,(Ed.) Communicating Student Learning: ASCD Yearbook 1996, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 14

34. Perspective #1 Checking is essential Checking is Diagnostic- Teacher as an Advocate Grading is Evaluative - Teacher as a Judge Guskey, T.R. Using Assessments to Improve Student Learning, Workshop Presentation

35. Perspective #3 “What critics of grading must understand is that the symbol is not the problem; the lack of stable and clear points of reference in using symbols is the problem.” Wiggins, G., “Honesty and Fairness: Toward Better Grading and Reporting”, in Guskey, T. R.. (Ed.), Communicating Student Learning: The ASCD Yearbook 1996, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 142

36. Perspective #3 “All scoring by human judges, including assigning points and taking them off math homework is subjective. The question is not whether it is subjective, but whether it is defensible and credible. The AP and IB programs (are) credible and defensible, yet subjective. I wish we could stop using that word as a pejorative! So-called objective scoring is still subjective test writing.” Grant Wiggins, January 19, 2000 answering a question on chatserver.ascd.org

37. Perspective #4 “Grades or numbers, like all symbols, offer efficient ways of summarizing.” Wiggins, G., “Honesty and Fairness: Toward Better Grading and Reporting”, in Guskey, T. R..(Ed.), Communicating Student Learning: ASCD Yearbook 1996, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 142

38. Perspective #4 “Trying to get rid of familiar letter grades . . . gets the matter backwards while leading to needless political battles. . . . Parents have reason to be suspicious of educators who want to . . . tinker with a 120 year old system that they think they understand - even if we know that traditional grades are often of questionable worth.” Wiggins, G., “Honesty and Fairness: Toward Better Grading and Reporting”, in Guskey, T. R..(Ed.), Communicating Student Learning: ASCD Yearbook 1996, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 142

39. Perspective #7 “. . . some teachers consider grades or reporting forms their “weapon of last resort.” In their view, students who do not comply with their requests suffer the consequences of the greatest punishment a teacher can bestow: a failing grade. Such practices have no educational value and, in the long run, adversely effect students, teachers, and the relationship they share.” Guskey, Thomas R. (Editor), Communicating Student Learning: The 1996 ASCD Yearbook, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 18

40. Perspective #7

41. “Change is never easy. It’s especially difficult in education because so much current practice is based on tradition rather than compelling evidence of effectiveness. We continue to use certain practices not because we’ve thought about them deliberately or evaluated them thoroughly, but, rather, because it is easier to continue doing what we have always done.” • Guskey and Bailey, Developing Grading and Reporting Systems for Student Learning, pg. 9

42. Current Practice • Reflect on your (current) practice by comparing it to one teacher’s narrative of her experience. • Answer these questions: • What, if anything, in this teacher’s description of her grading practices matches your own? • Conversely, what can you identify in your practice that differs from what this teacher did? • What grading issues arise from this narrative and/or your reflection?

43. Chris Brown’s Science Class • Examine the excerpt from Chris Brown’s grade book. • Note the information that is shown below the grade book excerpt regarding miscellaneous items, absences, and the grading scale. • Enter to the right of the chart the letter grade each student would get using the grading scale in use in your school/district. • Share with your tablemates. Were there any differences?

44. Chris Brown’s Science Class • Do the grades awarded fairly reflect the results from which they were derived for each student? • If you answered “yes,” for which students? Why? • If you answered “no,” for which students? Why? • What grading issues arise from this case study?

45. It is the beginning of the semester. You’re going to send report cards home in 9 weeks. How do you get there from here? What are the steps in your personal process? List them and then mark each one to indicate your level of satisfaction with each: + = works fine > = could be better # = needs work or unsure what to do. Compare your process to the one outlined on the handout, “Steps in Report Card Grading.” Where does your practice align? Where does it diverge? Your Own Grading Process

46. Steps in Report Card Grading • Start with the learning targets. Create a plan for what learning you will assess for grading purposes during the quarter. • Make an assessment plan to lay out how you will regularly find out what your students are learning. • Create, choose, and/or modify assessments. • Record information from assessments as you give them. • Summarize the achievement information into one score. • Turn the score into a grade.

47. Your Own Grading Process • What grading issues arise from this comparison?

48. Provocations • What are the purposes of grades? • Would you give grades if you didn’t have to? • Is it acceptable for us to disagree about what makes up our grades? • What does research say about the benefits and harms of grades? What experiments do we need to undertake to test our assumptions?

49. Guiding Questions • What is the primary purpose for grading in my classroom/school/district? • What is the secondary purpose for grading in my classroom/school/district? • What are additional issues related to grading and reporting?

50. Grading Issues • Basis for grades • Performance standards – how well • Ingredients- achievement, ability, effort, attitude/behavior • Sources of information – methods, purposes • How recent – all or some data • Number crunching • Assessment quality • Record keeping • Student understanding/involvement