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Why a high-performing district is changing everything with competency-based learning

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Why a high-performing district is changing everything with competency-based learning

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MELROSE, Mass. - This cozy suburb just outside of Boston is home to an idyllic New England downtown and schools that are good enough to draw young families in droves. Students perform well above the U.S. average and they do even better than their peers in similarly wealthy school districts, according to the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.

At no point in recent memory has Melrose Public Schools been failing. But the outgoing superintendent, Cyndy Taymore, is four years into an effort to fundamentally rethink traditional schooling here.

The reform model is known by several different names, including proficiency-based education. That's what they called it in Maine, where, in 2012, state officials mandated that every district adopt it, and then, in 2018, abandoned the requirement. The state's boomerang confirmed for many critics that proficiency-based education was a failure. But for Taymore, it proved only that Maine went about it all wrong.

In Melrose, they're calling it competency-based education, and it's moving full steam ahead.
Related: Inside Maine's disastrous rollout of proficiency-based learning
Competency-based education demands a shift away from traditional teaching, testing and grading. Students get more control over what and how they learn and take more responsibility for their progress. Teachers define specific competencies students should master and support them toward proficiency, even if it takes a while. Teachers also change their grading policies. Students don't get extra points for doing homework or participating in class. Competency-based education demands that teachers separate "habits of learning" from academic achievement.

"I can no longer say to a kid, 'If you follow this path, four years after you graduate, you will be in this field.' Because I can't tell if that field will exist, or if it does, what it will look like."

Last year, Melrose served about 3,900 students. Among them, just under 12 percent were considered economically disadvantaged, slightly more had some type of learning disability and 4 percent were English learners. These groups historically lag behind their peers in test performance- in Melrose, the gap between students with and without disabilities can top 40 percentage points on state tests. Taymore believes competency-based education can better support struggling students, but her commitment to the model is also about getting all kids ready for the modern workplace and an unknown future.

"I can no longer say to a kid, 'If you follow this path, four years after you graduate, you will be in this field,'" Taymore said. "Because I can't tell if that field will exist, or if it does, what it will look like."

Competency-based education is Taymore's way of injecting more self-directed learning, communication and problem-solving into Melrose classrooms. And it also forces teachers to respond to individual kids' needs.

T

aymore grew up in the tony coastal town of Marblehead, but spent most of her career in urban districts serving students who entered school behind and had to fight to catch up. Those contrasting experiences made her believe that one-size-fits-all educational systems don't work.

When she arrived in Melrose in 2012, she started granting flexibility: If a student wanted to take a third language but didn't have time because of other required classes, she let him take it online. If a student was particularly interested in a topic not offered in an existing course, she suggested an independent study.

By 2015, Taymore decided she needed a system with an organizing principle. She did some research and discovered that competency-based education was becoming popular among innovative educators. She saw its promise and started to convince people in Melrose that transforming their already high-performing schools was worth the effort. She plans to retire in June, but four years into her signature initiative as superintendent, Taymore sees a district on its way to a new normal.
Related: District says 24 credits and a D-minus average aren't good enough
Margaret Adams, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, is leading much of the district's professional development relating to this shift. So far, she said, some teachers have completely bought into competency-based education and many more are experimenting with elements of it. A few, though, are waiting to see if it's a passing fad. "That group is smaller than it was last year," Adams said, optimistically.

Adams is one of the people making sure Taymore doesn't push too hard. When Taymore wants to charge ahead, Adams tells her to remember Maine. There, teachers and entire schools resisted top-down mandates.

"It's really getting back to why we became teachers: the students."

"In order for this to succeed, I've had to be patient," Taymore admitted. That's not exactly her style. Taymore is brusque, and obviously irritated by the fact that children's potential can be stifled by adult resistance. While petite, she lends credence to the maxim that dynamite comes in small packages. But she acknowledges - drily, and with the accent native Bostonians are known for - that she is fortunate to have two assistant superintendents who temper her.

Adams is focusing on slow, systemic changes. Coaches for all grade levels help teachers try various elements of competency-based education as they're ready. Voluntary book groups expose the district's educators to new ideas. Teachers get time to observe their Melrose peers; some travel to classrooms in other states.

In a profession plagued by a revolving door of ideas to improve schools, competency-based education seems to be striking a chord in Melrose. "I think teachers are very receptive to the student-centered piece," said Meghan Lewis, a fourth-grade teacher. "It's really getting back to why we became teachers: the students."

For their part, students broadly appreciate the changes. Some like getting to talk more in class as teachers prioritize collaboration; others like getting to choose which elements of an assignment to tackle first.

Olivia Mone, a senior, likes that teachers offer support while giving students greater responsibility. Olivia transferred to Melrose High School after spending her freshman and sophomore years at a private school.
Related: How to unlock students' internal drive for learning
"A lot of the classes here are more self-led," Olivia said. "With your teachers, they're not talking at you. It's more of an open conversation. You can get a better sense of what you're doing and why you're doing it."

There are many educators, though, who started out skeptical. Melanie Acevedo was a teacher during the 2014-15 school year when Taymore tapped her for an exploratory committee to research the model and its results. Acevedo wasn't sure it would work with her fourth graders, who didn't seem very independent. "How was I going to give up so much control and ownership of education to them when I couldn't get them to follow the directions that I was trying to get them to do?" she wondered.

Acevedo read more about competency-based education and saw it in action in other schools in New Hampshire and Maine. Eventually she became one of the first Melrose teachers to experiment with it. She created menus so kids could choose their own learning activities and ceded control to students. But her first attempts fell flat. Students didn't know how to make good choices, and the choices Acevedo gave them weren't based on specific goals or learning targets. They were more about giving kids fun options.

"With your teachers, they're not talking at you. It's more of an open conversation. You can get a better sense of what you're doing and why you're doing it."

"It helped reinforce some of the naysayers because they said, 'No, see? They can't do it,' " Acevedo said.

She learned from her early mistakes and now works as an instructional specialist to help other elementary school teachers clear those hurdles. Acevedo sees teacher buy-in as evidence that competency-based learning is working in Melrose. "I don't think anyone would continue if they weren't seeing as good or better results," she said.

Adams is keeping an eye on standardized test scores. Prior to beginning its transition to competency-based learning, Melrose was outperforming the state on every single standardized test, in some cases by double digits, and, in most subjects, scores were going up. But eighth-grade science scores were frustratingly stagnant - until the reforms gained steam. After years with only a stubborn half of students meeting or exceeding expectations, 54 percent met that benchmark in 2018, and 60 percent did so in 2019. Adams ties these gains to competency-based education.

As markers of the shift, Taymore is also monitoring how many more students take upper level courses, how many pursue independent studies and how many take advantage of nontraditional learning opportunities.

After four years, she has made a solid case for why Melrose should adopt competency-based learning, and she has a burgeoning evidence base for its positive impact on students. Adams has made sure all teachers can get the professional supports they need to implement it. And even with Taymore on her way out, Ed O'Connell, chair of the district's school board, believes Melrose's course-correction will last.

"We are far enough down the road on this now and there are enough people putting their shoulder to the wheel in support of this, it seems to me that this is going to carry on," he said, "regardless of who is in charge."

C

ompetency-based education is on full display in Meghan Lewis's fourth-grade classroom at Winthrop Elementary School. She started a recent English class with goal-setting. She wanted students to approach narrative writing strategically, focused on specific skills they needed to sharpen. They already had goals for the year and for that week, but she wanted them to add one for this new unit in particular.

Students brainstormed about how to decide on a goal - they could look for ideas in feedback from other assignments, in learning targets Lewis had identified for the class and in their bigger-picture learning goals.

"I'm going to improve my writing," Lewis offered. "Is that a good or a bad goal?"

Hands flew up. It was a bad goal, the students agreed. "It needs to be more specific," said Lillian Keegan.

Lewis asked her students to draft a goal and then workshop it with a peer before revising. The students got to work, many leaving their desks for more comfortable seating sprinkled around the room. There were exercise balls, egg chairs, rugs, cushioned benches and a desk chair on wheels.

Lillian wrote that she wanted to use more detail, add more characteristics and use correct capitalization. Gemma Morse aimed to use dialogue and more transition words, and also to improve her spelling.

"For families, these are some of the most substantive conversations they've ever had about their kids' learning."

Lewis' classroom is a model for student empowerment. Kids keep close tabs on their performance, constantly self-assessing their progress. When Lewis splits them up into groups to rotate through stations, she sets broad guidelines for what they need to accomplish but offers them freedom to tackle assignments, sprinkling choices throughout those assignments when it comes to the way they practice new skills or how they prove they've learned them. Students choose where to work and with whom.

After the goal-setting exercise, one student asked Lewis whether he should put his goal in his writing folder. "Whatever you decide is a safe place to keep it," Lewis responded, offering him yet another opportunity to make his own choices.
This story about competency-based education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
Lewis has pioneered student-led conferences, scrapping traditional parent-teacher conferences for an alternative that puts kids in charge. Michael Tracy, the principal at her school, said parents have been shocked by their children's ability to discuss their progress and their challenges. "For families, these are some of the most substantive conversations they've ever had about their kids' learning," he said.

So far, competency-based education has taken root most broadly in the district's elementary schools, where teachers have more control over the day's schedule and more time with a single group of students. The practices on display in these classrooms are what Taymore finds most exciting about the district's shift - kids taking ownership over their own learning, identifying where they need to focus and setting their own goals.

"When you think of the long-term implications of that," Taymore said, "that's what we want eventually for future workers."

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox MELROSE, Mass. - This cozy suburb just outside of Boston is home to an idyllic New England downtown and schools that are good enough to draw young families in droves. Students perform well above the U.S.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Within these methods you'll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they're still learning.

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A New Model

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This electronic Mastery Transcript will allow college admission officers to dive deep within a transcript to see the specific standards of the sending high school and actual evidence of student work and mastery, thus giving depth and transparency to the student's work record.

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Emily Clifton is a teacher in Talladega County, Alabama and has been teaching fourth grade for 10 years. She is a highly qualified educator, that has hosted several student teachers, been asked to speak at CORE Academy and STEAM by Design. You can follow her on Twitter @clifton_class.
In the beginning, I became a teacher to empower students to be leaders of their own learning. Sure, I wanted to make a difference, but honestly, I wanted my students to make a difference in themselves foremost. When I was in elementary school, I was taught one way to solve a problem, one way to complete an assignment, one way to learn; it was how my teachers were taught and how they taught me.

It was time for a paradigm shift! In my first year of teaching (2007 - 2008) I fell into the "first year" teacher trap. I started teaching my students the way I was taught. It was the "one way" method. Throughout my first year, I consistently noticed that no matter how eloquent my lesson plans were, no matter how well I executed those plans, my students weren't owning their learning. Don't get me wrong, several of them made straight A's, but a month later, they couldn't tell me what they had learned. Obviously, what I was doing was ineffective! I realized that I had a classroom full of 25 students with different learning styles, different diagnoses, and different backgrounds. Of course my "one way" teaching style was ineffective.

Luckily, I worked for a county that had a consistent support team to save me from my perpetual failures. In the year 2008 I was introduced to Problem Based Learning (PBL) at a Talladega County Training Seminar. This training from Buck Institute literally saved myself and my students. Basically, PBL allowed me to marry all of my subject areas and enabled me to break out of my comfort zone and become a more flexible facilitator of student learning.

In the PBL format students become empowered to decide how they want to pursue learning on a topic.

It all starts with a question! One essential question that students can answer in a variety of ways.

Then you move into what is it that you want your students to learn. Basically, what knowledge do you want your students to possess at the end of the project.

Finally, you think about all of the different mediums that students can use to gain that knowledge.

That's it really all there is to it... three easy steps. Sounds simple, right? Of course, student voice and choice are at the heart of PBL, so that makes assessment a precarious process. Project Based Learning is all about authentic learning. Students are usually creating, researching, writing, and analyzing data about a topic all at the same time with PBL. Therefore, my assessments often are conversations with students about their work, or quick check-ins on their progress. For the final result, although, I usually use a rubric to assess all aspects of the project.

Throughout my teaching career, I have devised solution after solution, rubric after rubric, assessment after assessment to evaluate my students' learning. Every time I think "I've got it!" I have a precious student that asks "Mrs. Clifton can I do________ for my final project?" Of course, I want them to take ownership of their learning, so I say "yes!" Then it's back to the "drawing board" for assessment. However, through all of my trial and error, there are a few constants.

1. Plan a general rubric to assess the parameters of the project. This will assess the basics...like spelling, punctuation, correct grammar, following the directions, etc.

2. Then, go back to that essential question. How do you know that students fully understand the problem? Include this in the rubric.

3. Next, have a part of the rubric labeled for process. Did the students embrace a growth mindset throughout the project? Did they persevere in problem solving?

4. Finally, have a part of the rubric labeled for presentation. Can the students articulate their thinking and their final product?

Of course, this final rubric is only one way that I assess my students. Another method that I use quite often is formative assessment. I love to just drop in and listen to my students as they discuss their thinking. One constant in my classroom is that my students know that I am not interested in the "correct answer". I am interested in hearing their thinking process. I am interested in listening to my students. Imagine that? What I wouldn't give for someone to just listen to me. This is what empowerment is all about. My students know that I really genuinely want to know their thinking. This formative assessment I keep in a reflection journal. It is just a composition notebook of anecdotal records that I keep on my students.

One final way I assess my students is through traditional classroom assessments. I mean, we all have to turn in grades, right? However, my classroom assessments are not "Scantron" assessments with all multiple choice questions. There might be a few Depth of Knowledge Level 1 Questions that are multiple choice or recall, although, the majority of the questions I utilize are open ended questions where students can share their thinking. They might even be asked to draw a diagram or label a math problem with their thought process. Again, it is all about that paradigm shift. If I want my students to own their learning, I need to allow them to demonstrate that learning to me. These assessments are summative and are often are at the end of a unit or project.

In conclusion, I leave you with one final thought. What do you want to accomplish in your classroom? Do you want students who can spout facts and vocabulary for an assessment? Or do you want students who have a deep ownership of their learning - students who can walk away with a learning experience? For me, it was simply a choice of breaking out of the mold and becoming a more flexible, understanding, and maybe even "risk taking" educator.

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Emily's post is part of CTQ's November/December blogging roundtable on authentic assessment. To join the conversation, comment on this blog and read the other blogs in this series. You can find an updated list of all posts on this page. Follow CTQ on Facebook and Twitter to see when each new blog is posted, and use #CTQCollab to join the conversation on social media.

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Emily Clifton is a teacher in Talladega County, Alabama and has been teaching fourth grade for 10 years. She is a highly qualified educator, that has hosted several student teachers, been asked to speak at CORE Academy and STEAM by Design. You can follow her on Twitter @clifton_class.

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How to Build Self-Assessment Into Jampacked High School Classes

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How to Build Self-Assessment Into Jampacked High School Classes

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"I want parents to see the class through the kids eyes," Leighton said. He urges students to use data in their emails home and to think of it as an opportunity to make an argument and support it with evidence. When kids set goals, he guides them by asking that the goals be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based. "I was very surprised at how detailed the kids were," Leighton said.

These monthly emails not only serve to keep parents apprised of what's going on in the classroom, but also give parents a chance to write back, acknowledging their child's hard work and thoughtfulness. Or, if a student isn't doing well, these emails can open the door to difficult conversations. "It has filtered out a lot of those surprise emails by parents," Leighton said.

If a student's parents don't have email, Leighton just asks that the student write a note and get it signed by the parent to indicate they've read it. If parents don't read English, the student often speaks both their home language as well as English, so he has them translate. He grades these "student-led conferences" by whether or not the student completed it; He doesn't focus on the writing or grammar. "This is meant to encourage communication, not ding kids if they're not good writers," Leighton said.

He likes this quick self-assessment practice because it keeps students accountable for their work and forces them to reflect on their progress and goals every month.
WRITING FEEDBACK
History is a writing-intensive class, especially for Leighton's AP U.S. History students, so students practice historical writing both in and out of class. Document-based questions (DBQs) are a big portion of the AP test, so Leighton often starts off by giving students the real AP rubric for DBQs and leading a discussion about what makes a good response. Then he gives them an anonymous essay to grade using the rubric, a tactic designed to dig into the writing in a safe way. "We were able to talk about the writing without anyone being offended," Leighton said.

Pretty soon students pair-share practice DBQs they did for homework, and they soon realize there are big holes in their writing skills. "My kids really started looking at their writing differently," Leighton said. As a class they make lists of the common errors; they peer-edit in teams; and they discuss writing all the time.

Leighton does most of this in Google Docs, which he likes because he can see the student's entire process by looking at "Revision History." He asks students to include their outline, rough draft and final draft in the same document so he can see how they are incorporating revisions into their writing. And he grades that process as a skill when he assesses their work. "As a teacher it's a great look behind the curtain," Leighton said.

The other tool Leighton has found invaluable for pushing self-assessment in writing is Kaizena. This product integrates with Google Classroom and allows for text feedback and recorded audio feedback. "It's the same stuff I used to write in red ink that they never read," Leighton said. "But they were listening to it at home." He's even had parents come in for parent-teacher conferences who recognized him by his voice because they'd heard their kids listening to his feedback.

Kaizena also allows teachers to make a "lesson" for a piece of feedback that they are giving all the time. It's a shortcut that can make a difference to teacher grading 140 essays. The tool comes with premade rubrics, but Leighton doesn't use them as much because his school has common rubrics.

One of Leighton's favorite ways to use Kaizena is after students turn in an essay in Google Classroom. He let's them go back into what they submitted through Kaizena and make comments on what they would have done differently. Those comments show self-awareness, as kids look at the rubric and evaluate the work they just submitted. "I found this to be a pretty powerful tool for kids to self-advocate," Leighton said.
COLLABORATIVE READING
Many of the primary source texts Leighton uses are complex and he doesn't always know how well students are understanding what they've read. That's why he uses Perusall, a product developed by Harvard professor Eric Mazur, to encourage his students to read collaboratively. Rather than assigning textbook reading, Leighton will upload a PDF to Perusall and assign the students to small groups. He directs them to interact with the text at least five times in the form of questions, answering questions posed by peers, or by expanding on thinking.

"It lets me see their level of understanding long before class starts," Leighton said. He loves when students help each other make sense of the text through comments and finds that he gets valuable insight into how they are reading. Forcing kids to reflect on one another's questions and comments adds a deeper layer of analysis to what might otherwise be a dry reading.

"My lower-end kids said they didn't feel so dumb anymore because 'I wasn't the only one who didn't understand it,' " Leighton said. Perusall has a built-in function that evaluates all the questions, comments and interactions from students and gives them a grade on their comprehension. Leighton never uses that as his real grade, but students sometimes find the function motivating, since it adds a gamified aspect to reading.

As Leighton has slowly incorporated these strategies into his otherwise fairly traditional courses, he's come to see the process of revision and reflection as central to learning. He has also come a long way on allowing students to retake tests to improve their scores. He makes it clear that students have to take the initiative if they want to retake an exam, and he requires them to go over the first test with him and discuss study strategies before they set up a retake date. And he reserves the right not to allow retakes if he feels students are abusing the system, but says out of his 140 students very few take advantage of the offer. The benefit is that kids know that if they put in the work, he'll support them.

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How to Build Self-Assessment Into Jampacked High School Classes

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"I want parents to see the class through the kids eyes," Leighton said. He urges students to use data in their emails home and to think of it as an opportunity to make an argument and support it with evidence. When kids set goals, he guides them by asking that the goals be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based.

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Let's Teach for Mastery, Not Test Scores

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Let's Teach for Mastery, Not Test Scores

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Sal Khan

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Let’s teach for mastery -- not test scores

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Would you choose to build a house on top of an unfinished foundation? Of course not. Why, then, do we rush students through education when they haven’t always grasped the basics? Yes, it’s complicated, but educator Sal Khan shares his plan to turn struggling students into scholars by helping them master concepts at their own pace.

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Standards, Grades And Tests Are Wildly Outdated, Argues 'End Of Average'

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Standards, Grades And Tests Are Wildly Outdated, Argues 'End Of Average'

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Todd Rose dropped out of high school with D- grades. At 21, he was trying to support a wife and two sons on welfare and minimum wage jobs.

Today he teaches educational neuroscience at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He's also the co-founder of The Center for Individual Opportunity, a new organization devoted to "the science of the individual and its implications for education, the workforce, and society."

In other words, Todd Rose is not your average guy. But neither are you.

In fact, he argues, absolutely no one is precisely average. And that's a big problem, he tells NPR Ed: "We've come to embrace a way of thinking about ourselves as people that was intentionally designed to ignore all individuality and force everything in reference to an average person."

Admissions offices, HR departments, banks and doctors make life-changing decisions based on averages. Rose says that "works really well to understand the system or the group, but it fails miserably when you need to understand the individual, which is what we need to do."

Rose talked with us about his new book: The End Of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness.
The opening example you use in the book is that in the 1940s, when the Air Force designed cockpits based on the average measurements of the pilots, there were an unacceptable number of crashes. But when they went back and measured thousands of pilots, across 10 body dimensions, they found that zero of them even came close to the "average" on all 10. So they concluded that they had to redesign the seats and so forth to be adjustable to each person.
Body size is a very concrete example of what I call jaggedness. There is no average pilot. No medium-sized people. When you think of someone's size you think of large, medium, small. Our mass-produced approach to clothing reinforces that. But if that were true you wouldn't need dressing rooms.
So dimensions like height and weight and arm length and waist circumference ...
Yes, they're not nearly as correlated as you would think. Height is one-dimensional, but size isn't. People are jagged in size, in intelligence, everything we measure shows the same thing.
I'm going to quote a line from the book, said to psychologist Peter Molenaar, who is arguing for a greater focus on individual difference: "What you are proposing is anarchy!" How do you make decisions about people if you can't use statistics and cutoff scores and compare them to averages?
People feel like if you focus on individuality, everyone's a snowflake, and you can't build a science on snowflakes. But the opposite has been true.

It's not that you can't use statistics, it's just that you don't use group statistics. If I want to know something about my daily spending habits, one straightforward way would be to collect records of what I spend every day. To take an average for myself would be perfectly fine.
So you can generalize across time, but not across people?
We've got to let go of putting a group into a study and taking an average and thinking that's going to be close enough to universal insight.

Now we have something better. We have a natural science of individuality that gives us a surer foundation. We've gotten breakthrough insights in a whole range of research, from cancer to child development.
How does what you term "Averagerianism" impact our school system both historically and today?
It's so ubiquitous that it's hard to see.

We design textbooks to be age-appropriate, but that means, what does the average kid of this age know and can do? Textbooks that are designed for the average will be a pretty bad fit for most kids.

Then you think of things like the lockstep, grade-based organization of kids, and you end up sitting in a class for a fixed amount of time and get a one-dimensional rating in the form of a grade, and a one-dimensional standardized assessment. It's everything about the way we test and move kids forward.

With standardized tests, I often hear teachers talking about students being two months behind or ahead, as if there's a very fixed timeline for progress that all human beings should fit.

It feels comforting. But if you take the basic idea of jaggedness, if all kids are multidimensional in their talent, their aptitude, you can't reduce them to a single score. It gives us a false sense of precision and gives up on pretending to know anything about these kids.
So alongside jaggedness, two other principles of individual variation you look at are "context-dependence" and "pathways." Talk about those.
It's meaningless to talk about behavior and performance without context. Let's take assessment. Carnegie Mellon [University] had this work showing that changing the way a question is asked can fundamentally alter how a kid performs. So if the [math] problem is about football players instead of ballerinas, you can't standardize on the item. That systematically affects the kids' ability to demonstrate what they know.

But at a macro level, I think [context] introduces an attention to things like the impact of stress and trauma.
And what about pathways? This sounds a lot like the talk around personalizing learning using technology and allowing each student to learn at his or her own pace.
I think people who care about personalized learning talk about it as: If we just collect more data, we're going to have this personalization. And that's not clear to me at all.

I think when you look at the idea of pace, we are so convinced that slow means dumb and fast means smart. We feel justified in pegging the time to how fast the average person takes to finish.

But this is where, with a better understanding of this and realizing, "Oh, pace really has nothing to do with ability, people are fast at some things and slow with others," you would build a very different system than the one we have.
Do you think the school system acknowledges the need to treat students as individuals?
Two years ago I would have said no. But my colleague Paul Reville, who used to be secretary of education in Massachusetts, he's rethinking the architecture of school systems. In most states, people have put on the books goals about meeting every kid where they're at. Even the "Every Student Succeeds" [ESSA, the new federal law] approach is based on the assumption that we're meeting each kid where they're at, to give them what they need to be successful.

But we haven't thought through the system design that needs to be in place to do that.

We're trying to have a system to do what it was never designed to do.
What about in higher education?
In higher ed we have a brutally standardized system. It doesn't matter what your interests are, what job you want, everyone takes the same courses in roughly the same time and at the end of the course you get ranked.

This is personal for me. I have two kids in college. The idea that someone is going to click a stopwatch, compare you to other kids in your class, and the kids with the best grades can get the best jobs, that's not a good deal. I want my two boys to figure out what they love and what they're good at and be exposed to things and be able to turn that into a job.
You talk about innovations that are starting to catch on, like competency-based education and credentialing - basically, accommodating different pathways and different balances of strengths and weakness.
There's plenty of ways we're making smaller units of learning to combine in ways that are useful to you. To me, competency based education is nonnegotiable. I don't think you can have fixed-time, grade-based learning anymore. I don't see how you justify diplomas.

It doesn't mean students can take forever, but allowing some flexibility in pace and only caring whether they master the material or not is a sound foundation for a higher ed system.

There are so many examples of a lot of really interesting universities trying these things.
Yes, reading this book it struck me that in some quarters, it seems like we've already moved forward to a focus on individuality, innovation, creativity. You talk about how companies like Google are finding that GPA or school prestige or even ranking employees against each other is not useful, and instead they need to create, essentially, performance-based assessments for doing tasks in context.
There are bright spots where you can see the principles of individuality at work.

So for me it comes back to, well, wait a minute. So why is that not the mainstream?

What I think my contribution is, is to say: Our institutions are based on assumptions about human beings. Our education system is based on a 19th century idea of an average person and using 20th century statistics.

As long as people think you can understand people based on averages, or how they deviate from averages, it seems reasonable. It looks like accountability and fairness rather than absurdity.
And you're trying to show that there's an alternative?
If we don't get rid of this way of thinking about ourselves and the people around us, it's hard to get the public demand to create sustainable change. That's the role that I and my organization want to play. We're making a really big bet.

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Standards, Grades And Tests Are Wildly Outdated, Argues 'End Of Average'

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Todd Rose dropped out of high school with D- grades. At 21, he was trying to support a wife and two sons on welfare and minimum wage jobs. Today he teaches educational neuroscience at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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Four-Dimensional Education:The Competencies Learners Need to Succeed

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Four-Dimensional Education:The Competencies Learners Need to Succeed

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Praise for "Four-Dimensional Education"

From International Organizations:

"Four-Dimensional Education provides a rare and profound strategic conversation about education. By questioning the often-unstated and dated consensus about what young people learn at school, the authors make explicit the systemic boundaries that shape what is learned. Drawing the analytical lines around what is learned can be seen as an invitation to stay within the existing borders or as a challenge to step outside by imagining systemically different goals and organization of learning. Four-Dimensional Education encourages both kinds of innovative thinking."

Riel Miller, Head of Futures,
UNESCO

"The content of any nation's curriculum defines its values and reflects its hopes for future generations. In focussing on the 'what' of curriculum design, Four-dimensional education provides a rich and practical provocation which can inspire policymakers and practitioners."

Joe Hallgarten, Director of Education, and leader of Grand Curriculum Designs,
The Royal Society for the Arts (RSA)

"Four Dimensional Educat ion brings a deeply cogent, synthetic, open-minded conversation to explore one of the key challenges to our society - how to transform our education systems to respond effectively to global 21st century needs and aspirations. USCIB has been privileged to be part of this conversation through a series of sponsored roundtables with the CCR bringing educators together with economists and business to bring new insights and perspectives to help students build the world we want."

Peter M. Robinson, CEO and President,
United States Council for International Business (USCIB)

"What should students learn in an age of search, robotics and artificial intelligence? The acceleration of technology and explosion of information creates the urgent need to rethink an educational system that is traditionally centered on content. Starting with a deep understanding of how modern society and workforce needs are changing, this book challenges us to take a big leap in education curricula to reflect deep competencies, including relevant modern knowledge."

Steve Vinter, Director, Cambridge site,
Google

" A must read for anyone interested in the future of education in a rapidly changing world. The best way to predict the future is to inspire the next generation of students to build it better."

Jim Spohrer, Director of University Programs,
IBM

"This book should be required reading for everyone involved in education and education reform. Fadel and colleagues have developed a unique language and framework map for enabling diverse stakeholders to find commonalities in their differences as well as a collection of tools to aid in developing and comparing innovative systems."

John Abele,
Founding Chairman of Boston Scientific,
Chairman of the Argosy Foundation

"As scientists, humanitarians, engineers, and artists... as lifelong teachers and learners... as parents, and as humans... we owe it to our children to continuously prune our education curriculum, and to feed it with the nutrients of advancement- in ways which our children will encounter them in their careers, and in their lives. We must contextualize our curricula with explicit interdisciplinary constructs that will teach them how to think, how to learn, how to synthesize information and apply critical discernment. In this "living book," the authors lay an analytical and pragmatic foundation for a novel look at K-12 education goals- one that embraces the whole brain, the whole person, and all of society's needs. Four-Dimensional Education poses a healthy challenge to the traditional, less-relevant structures of today's curricula. Let this book be a call to action to all of us to join in CCR's mission, and to become actively involved in shaping the future of Earth."

Kristen Wright, Director, Cisco Research & Open Innovation
Cisco Systems

" Education needs fundamental reform from top to bottom. This book puts square and centre the need for that change at every level of thinking from curricula to pedagogy to assessment-laying out a much needed structure into which the fundamental maths and STEM reforms we are pioneering at computerbasedmath.org can fit."

Conrad Wolfram, founder,
Wolfram Research Europe

From Academic Institutions:

" Four-dimensional education describes a comprehensive framework for what personalized education for the 21st century must be about: comprehensive and adaptive while allowing for choice and local needs, along all dimensions of an education not merely traditional knowledge. Educators and policymakers worldwide owe it to students and societies to rapidly operationalize these dimensions of knowledge, skills, character, and meta-learning."

Todd Rose, Director of the Mind, Brain & Education program at the Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University

" Four-Dimensional Education charts a lucid course between two research frontiers, one assessing how astounding new technologies are reshaping our future job opportunities and skill demands, and the second striving to equip our future workforce (our kids) with the skills to compete and to thrive in that future. Traversing those two frontiers, this book offers a wise and practical set of insights for empowering students and citizens to analyze, communicate, interact, and adapt."

David Autor, Professor of Economics and Associate Department Head
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"A very thoughtful treatment of the competencies our students need to thrive in today's (and tomorrow's) world. This book will help educators understand and navigate the critical choices we are facing."

Arguably the biggest challenge facing the human race in the 21st century is education, yet few organizations have given this as much thought and analysis as the Center for Curriculum Redesign. What does every child need to know in this age? Our system of education hasn't changed significantly in centuries, yet the knowledge, skills, and character needed now are fundamentally changing. I highly recommend this book to anyone who cares about the future. It is insightful, comprehensive, global, and coherent. It will set the compass direction for the next generation.

Rick Miller, President
Olin College of Engineeering

"Exponential technologies are providing us with extraordinary opportunities for solving the biggest challenges we face, but are also disrupting the old ways of doing things. Four-Dimensional Education establishes a framework for continuous learning that is necessary for youth and adults alike to stay relevant and to thrive in these exponential times."

Rob Nail, Associate Founder & CEO
Singularity University

From Foundations and non-profit Organizations:

"As communities around the world work to ensure that all children have access to the kind of education that enables them to fulfill their true potential, the first question must be, "what are our ultimate aims?" The answers to this question will vary based on community context and culture, and yet these answers must be informed by a sense of global responsibility and an understanding of what the world will require of today's children. This book - a treasure trove from some of the world's foremost educational leaders - provides the latest understanding about the knowledge, skills, character, and meta-learning that will be required for global success. It is an incredible resource for local educators around the world who want to put their students on a path toward shaping the future."

Wendy Kopp, CEO and Co-founder,
Teach For All

Four-Dimensional Education offers a compelling vision for transforming education and how we look at education. In a global economy, driven by nimbleness and innovation, it is increasingly clear that success depends on the transformation of education system. This book challenges us to redefine what we mean by success at all levels of the education system from the foundations of K-12, to the entrance requirements for higher education, to what the workforce can and needs to be.

Matt Williams Vice President, Policy and Advocacy,
KnowledgeWorks Foundation

"Four-Dimensional Education provides a compelling, updated view of why education must change across the globe and what it should look like in the future, building on Fadel's and Trilling's first book, 21st century skills. In clear, easy to understand language, they articulate what 21st century learners need to be successful-a must read for us all."

Dr. Helen Soule, Executive Director of P21,
The Partnership for 21st Century Learning

"We applaud CCR's distillation of vast research on the future of education in this accessible and compelling new book. Four-Dimensional Education is a MUST READ for every globally minded leader and teacher interested in advancing their institutions through innovation. Similarly, parents interested in relevant 21 st century education should read this book as well!"

Heather Hoerle, Executive Director,
Secondary School Admission Test Board

"Reading Four-Dimensional Education and its focus on making education more relevant in a world which is changing exponentially, reminded me of Harold Benjamin's timeless satire, "The Saber Tooth Curriculum", written in 1939. It tells of a fictional prehistoric society where "Saber Tooth Tiger Scaring with fire" is still part of the curriculum" though said tiger is extinct. Fast forward to the 21st century and the accelerating pace of change driven in large measure by the learners of the 20th century who somehow learned to be adaptable, savvy, versatile, collaborative and empathetic - sometimes within formal learning frameworks, often outside. In short they made the curriculum extinct. Instead of being saber-toothed they were laser-focused. By drafting a dynamic framework for learning that adapts to and reflects success, Four-Dimensional Education will serve as a catalyst for lifelong learning and reinvention. The quality of our generational futures hinges on success."

David F. Clune Ph. D, President and CEO
Educational Records Bureau (ERB)

"Our current circumstances cry out for a new model of education. This book provides one and will be a powerful tool in the hands of those committed to preparing their students for the challenges of 21st century life and work."

Ken Kay and Valerie Greenhill, co-founders of EdLeader21
and co-authors of "The Leaders Guide to 21st Century Education: 7 Steps for Schools and Districts"

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Four-Dimensional Education: The Competencies Learners Need to Succeed

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Read an excerpt... Four-Dimensional Education: The Competencies Learners Need to Succeed October 2015 192 pages Copyright © 2015 by Center for Curriculum Redesign All rights reserved. ISBN-13: 978-1518642562 ISBN-10: 151864256X "A very thoughtful treatment of the competencies our students need to

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Inspired by John Hattie, a middle school math teacher encourages students to articulate and measure their own learning.

©Shutterstock/Diego Cervo

Four years ago, I was introduced to the work of John Hattie, which changed my vision of my role as an educator. Hattie convinced me to think of myself as a change agent who could apply the tools of Visible Learning to guide my students to succeed in math beyond their own expectations.

To do this, I had to create a classroom where my students knew exactly what they were learning, how well they were doing, and where that learning would take them.

Learning Targets

Some teachers don't appreciate objectives or learning targets, but I would urge them to consider the following question: How can we expect our struggling students to succeed if we don't tell them what it is that we want them to learn?

I now begin my lessons with an "I can" statement that pinpoints the skill and/or knowledge that I aim for my students to gain-e.g., "I can describe the movement of three basic rigid motions on a coordinate plane" or "I can calculate the missing side lengths of similar shapes." The precision of my learning targets sharpens and streamlines my lesson plans, and allows me to create formative assessments that shape my planning going forward.

However, the primary benefit of using learning targets is that they allow students to articulate and measure their own learning. For me as a math teacher, there's nothing more rewarding than witnessing my students engaged in a mathematical discussion, and learning targets offer the language to begin these discussions.

After sharing a learning target, I display for two or three minutes all of the learning targets in the unit we're studying. I use this broad overview to conduct a brief class discussion on what we've learned thus far and where this learning is taking us.

This is an opportunity for me to ask a few review questions and build vocabulary, allow students to articulate their own understanding of the concepts covered, and give meaning to these ideas by describing where our work is taking us.

Checkpoints and Self-Assessment

When it comes time to monitor my students' understanding, I ask checkpoint questions aligned with our learning targets. Such checkpoints are ungraded quizzes, formative assessments that allow me to gauge where my students need help. They also give students the opportunity to track their own understanding of the learning targets as we progress through the unit.

I correct the assessment using a highlighter, and the lack of a grade along with the strategic use of the highlighter allows students to focus on what is most important about the assessment-the learning targets where they need to improve.

The ultimate goal of learning targets is to build self-regulating, articulate students who can boost their own progress through self-assessment. So after a checkpoint, I provide students the opportunity to assess their own progress using a rubric where they can rate their proficiency on our learning targets.

Within a unit, I give students three or four checkpoints (including one that covers the full unit), providing them with several pieces of data to assess their own learning, learn from their mistakes, and improve in preparation for the final, graded unit assessment.

Retakes

Of course, some students still struggle to succeed. Therefore, I offer them what they need most-more time. When a student scores below proficient on the unit assessment, I ask them to come after school, and I use that time to review the concepts they're still struggling to grasp.

The most important part of this retake process is getting students to articulate their mistake and their new understanding of how to solve the problem correctly. If there's time, I'll give them a new assessment to further show their progress. However, most often the retake is an in-depth discussion that I have with a student or a small group of students that allows them to fortify their understanding of the learning targets they missed, assures me that they have the skills they need to move forward in the curriculum, and earns them a passing grade for the assessment.

The Portfolio

In my final piece of assessment, I ask students to do my job and assign themselves a grade, using evidence to support their claim.

This evidence comes in the form of a portfolio with three elements. The first element asks students to submit one or more checkpoints to demonstrate growth in understanding of a math concept we've covered. These submissions are accompanied by a written paragraph articulating the student's journey to deeper understanding. The second element of the portfolio is a piece of either homework or classwork that helped the student contribute to a class or small group discussion, with a paragraph detailing the ideas discussed. In the final element, students write about a concept we've covered, explaining how they could use it in the real world, how it connects to their understanding of other mathematical concepts, or what they find cool about the mathematical ideas behind the concept.

My learning targets are posted online for students to review, and they have their checkpoints and unit assessments to display their progress. I give them a few minutes each week to think about their portfolios, make notes, and put work aside for possible use. I then use students' statistical grades alongside their own self-assessments to generate their grade.

Providing my students with clarity through the use of learning targets has been a priority for me over the past four years. This practice has helped my students better articulate their ideas in math and strengthened their ability to self-assess, which in turn has increased their success in math.

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Inspired by John Hattie, a middle school math teacher encourages students to articulate and measure their own learning. ©Shutterstock/Diego Cervo Four years ago, I was introduced to the work of John Hattie, which changed my vision of my role as an educator.

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Under pressure from an unprecedented constellation of forces-from state lawmakers to prestigious private schools and college admissions offices-the ubiquitous one-page high school transcript lined with A-F letter grades may soon be a relic of the past.

In the last decade, at least 15 state legislatures and boards of education have adopted policies incentivizing their public schools to prioritize measures other than grades when assessing students' skills and competencies. And more recently, over 150 of the top private high schools in the U.S., including Phillips Exeter, Choate, and Dalton-storied institutions which have long relied on the status conveyed by student ranking-have pledged to shift to new transcripts that provide more comprehensive, qualitative feedback on students while ruling out any mention of credit hours, GPAs, or A-F grades.

Somewhat independently, schools and lawmakers have come to the same conclusion: The old models of student assessment are out of step with the needs of the 21st-century workplace and society, with their emphasis on hard-to-measure skills such as creativity, problem solving, persistence, and collaboration.

"Competency-based education is a growing movement driven by educators and communities focused on ensuring that students have the knowledge they need to flourish in a global economy," said Susan Patrick, chief executive officer of iNACOL, a nonprofit that runs the website CompetencyWorks. "The future of jobs and the workforce will demand a new set of skills, and students' capacity to solve complex problems for an unknown future will be essential."

For their part, colleges-the final arbiters of high school performance-are signaling a surprising willingness to depart from traditional assessments that have been in place since the early 19th century. From Harvard and Dartmouth to small community colleges, more than 70 U.S. institutions of higher learning have weighed in, signing formal statements asserting that competency-based transcripts will not hurt students in the admissions process.

The emerging alignment of K-12 schools with colleges and legislators builds on a growing consensus among educators who believe that longstanding benchmarks like grades, SATs, AP test scores, and even homework are poor measures of students' skills and can deepen inequities between them. If the momentum holds, a century-old pillar of the school system could crumble entirely, leading to dramatic transitions and potential pitfalls for students and schools alike.

Picking Up Steam

Scott Looney, head of the Hawken School in Cleveland, was frustrated. His school had recently begun offering real-world, full-day courses in subjects like engineering and entrepreneurship, but he was finding it difficult to measure and credit the new types of skills students were learning using A-F grades. Looney started reaching out to private high schools and colleges looking for alternatives.

Though he found that many educators shared his desires for a new assessment system, he came up empty-handed.

"The grading system right now is demoralizing and is designed to produce winners and losers," said Looney. "The purpose of education is not to sort kids-it's to grow kids. Teachers need to coach and mentor, but with grades, teachers turn into judges. I think we can show the unique abilities of kids without stratifying them."

Looney began brainstorming a new type of transcript for the Hawken School, but quickly realized he would need a critical mass of schools to influence college admissions offices to accept it. With the initial support of 28 other independent schools, Looney formed the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC) in April 2017. The group has since expanded to 157 schools, including both historic institutions like Phillips Exeter and newer alternative schools like the Khan Lab School.

In joining the MTC, each school commits to phase out its existing GPA- and grade-based transcripts for a digital, interactive format that showcases students' academic and enrichment skills, areas for growth, and samples of work or talents, such as a video of a public speaking competition or a portfolio of artwork.

The purpose of education is not to sort kids-it's to grow kids. Teachers need to coach and mentor, but with grades, teachers turn into judges.

While the transcript is still in its infancy, organizers say it will resemble a website that each school will be able customize by choosing from a menu of skills like critical thinking, creativity, and self-directed learning, along with core content areas such as algebraic reasoning. Instead of earning credit hours and receiving grades, students will take courses to prove they've developed key skills and competencies. Looney insists that the transcripts will be readable by admissions officers in two minutes or less.

The MTC's work is not entirely original, though, and takes its lead from a number of public schools-most notably in New England-that have been rethinking traditional methods of assessing students for more than a decade.

Some are supported by the nonprofit group Great Schools Partnership, which helped influence Maine, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire to adopt state board of education policies or legislation in the last decade on proficiency-based assessment systems. Other districts, in Florida, California, and Georgia, have made similar changes more recently, and pilot programs have emerged in Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Illinois, Ohio, and Oregon.

There's also backing from colleges. The Great Schools Partnership was able to garner the support of more than 70 colleges and universities, suggesting that higher ed admissions offices are ready for the change.

"We are accustomed to academic reports from around the world, including those from students who have been privately instructed and even self-taught," said Marlyn McGrath, Harvard University's director of admissions, replying via email about the transcripts. "In cases where we need additional information, we typically ask for it. So we are not concerned that students presenting alternative transcripts will be disadvantaged because of format."

Mastery Versus Seat Time

But the new transcripts are just the tip of the iceberg, according to supporters, part of a larger movement to do away with a system where kids can progress through grades or courses without really understanding material and be promoted for seat time and good behavior. When students move on to harder topics, they continue to accumulate gaps in their knowledge-a setup for failure in the later grades or collegiate years.

Under a competency model, kids can no longer just "get by," said Derek Pierce, principal of Casco Bay High School in Portland, Maine, which has used a proficiency-based transcript since 2005.

The new transcripts "get kids focused on doing their personal best on meeting or exceeding standards rather than getting a better grade than the kid next to them," said Pierce. "There is no longer a 'gentleman's C'."

However, without widespread agreement on the necessary skills and knowledge required for core classes, proving mastery may be just as elusive and arbitrary as the current system. Even MTC member schools won't rely on a shared understanding of what mastery means. Instead, each school will be able to quantify it independently, leaving college admissions officers-according to critics-without a clear basis of comparison.

Our learning structures have to be much more nimble to allow today's learners to navigate through opportunities where they can see themselves as the authors of their own education.

While competency-based education proponents argue that the new transcripts will identify students with skills that academia has traditionally overlooked, others worry about equity for marginalized students, who already struggle in the current system. Some critics have suggested that the new transcripts may be a way for wealthier schools, especially private schools like those in the MTC, to give their students an even greater advantage when competing for limited positions at the best universities.

There are other unanswered questions and challenges to be worked out, too. Will college admissions counselors have enough time, especially at large public colleges, to look meaningfully at dense digital portfolios of student work? Will the new transcripts create too much work and new training for K-12 teachers, as they struggle to measure hard-to-define categories of learning? Perhaps most importantly, will parents buy in?

"There's still plenty of work ahead and some pretty radical changes taking place," explained Mike Martin, director of curriculum and technology at Montpelier Public Schools in Vermont, whose district starting transitioning to a competency-based model in 2013.

Many public and private schools, like Martin's, are still years away from full implementation, and others are grappling with the nuts and bolts of how to implement dramatically new systems for student learning and assessment. Those on the forefront of these changes, though, remain hopeful that the new system will push all students to develop the skills they need to succeed in college and careers.

"Our learning structures have to be much more nimble to allow today's learners to navigate through opportunities where they can see themselves as the authors of their education," said Martin. "Proficiency-based education is about getting every single student up to a certain skill level and ensuring every student can succeed."

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Under pressure from an unprecedented constellation of forces-from state lawmakers to prestigious private schools and college admissions offices-the ubiquitous one-page high school transcript lined with A-F letter grades may soon be a relic of the past.

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How are students doing in relation to the standards? A straightforward reporting system gives students the information to take ownership of learning. Read more.

ASCD Express seeks practical content on monthly themed topics related to teaching and learning. Submissions typically range from 600 to 1,000 words.

Laura Varlas, Kate Stoltzfus, Managing Editor
Associate Writer

Have a product or service you think is revolutionary for teaching and learning? Get your message out to hundreds of thousands of educators. Learn more about advertising with ASCD Express.

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How are students doing in relation to the standards? A straightforward reporting system gives students the information to take ownership of learning. Read more. ASCD Express seeks practical content on monthly themed topics related to teaching and learning. Submissions typically range from 600 to 1,000 words.

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Why Grades Are Not Paramount to Achievement

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Why Grades Are Not Paramount to Achievement

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The intrinsic love of learning supplants the drive for high marks in the long run.

Brian Snyder / Reuters

At the beginning of this school year, my colleagues and I decided to avoid giving the sophomores in our English classes any grades for six weeks. Research shows that providing students with a number or letter in addition to quality comments prevents them from authentically reflecting. Quantitative grades also diminish student interest in learning, reduce academic risk taking, and decrease the quality of thinking. But beyond academics, as teachers, we saw the negative impact grades made on our students' mental and emotional health. In fact, though a bit outdated, a 2002 study conducted by a psychologist at the University of Michigan showed 80 percent of students based their self worth on their academic success, leading to low self-esteem and other mental-health issues. In a highly academic setting, here was an opportunity to catalyze our students' broader motivations for learning-a quality with macro-benefits in an environment obsessed with single Scantron marks.

Ours is the type of school that when I input grades into our electronic gradebook system, it is usually a matter of minutes before students knock on my classroom door and parents send me emails questioning single points and marks. It is frustrating for me to have the work I do distilled down to a data point, so I was excited to try something new without the pressures of the gradebook. Our principal approved the plan and we sent a letter to families explaining the research and our reasoning for withholding grades. I also set up a closed Facebook group where I shared daily images, and I instituted weekly emails to keep parents abreast of the learning process.

All was mostly well during those six weeks, and I found my students to be incredibly engaged. At one point, we spent three days on a single thesis statement alone-students writing their claims, discussing them without fear of negative retribution in the form of a grade, and then redoing them happily. Before, such a lengthy lesson would have been met with endless questions about how many points it was worth, and if the teenage math didn't add up for them-if the cost outweighed the benefits-I would have been forced to increase the points to improve motivation or move on more quickly than they needed. In this situation, however, everything was low risk for the students, so they approached assignments more positively. And because grades were irrelevant, the challenge of the assignment took precedence.

If a student wasn't meeting expectations or turning in assignments, I discussed my concerns with them and their parents within a day. Many parents seemed to appreciate this quick, frequent contact, and several contacted me regularly for updates. I wasn't overwhelmed with this level of contact, although I might have been in the past, because I didn't have to worry about converting standards to point values and inputting them into the grade book. Typically, my assessment process takes anywhere from a week to a couple of months, and the pressure along the way from students, parents, and administrators often shifts my focus away from learning and toward frequent inputting of grades. But when grades were put on the back burner, I was freed up to focus on authentic communication of actual learning and growth. My sole focus became the learning of each student and sharing my observations of that learning in the moment. It felt like a revelation.

But then the time came to actually start grading. Parents who had been thrilled with consistent contact and specific feedback only weeks before suddenly seemed perplexed as to why their child's grades were not 100 percent all the time. I was soon spending significant time on the phone, responding to emails, and sitting down to conference with parents who complained about a lack of communication. Ironically, my contact with parents was the most intensive it had ever been in 12 years of teaching.

Now, obviously, I am not perfect. With any of these interactions, I very possibly could have been more communicative. But it was so baffling to me to see that in the eyes of a parent, a numerical evaluation was more informative and meaningful than frequent written and spoken descriptions. As the dust settled and we moved further into the school year, it occurred to me that perhaps this was because the product of learning is often more comfortable and affirming than the process of it. Consider that having a degree is often validating regardless of actual skills, and a test score could never illustrate the hours spent studying to achieve it. A willingness to learn for its own sake represents intrinsic motivation, while grades and other accolades represent extrinsic. Research has shown time and again that intrinsic motivation leads to more profound learning. The truth is that the willingness to learn leads to achievement, but so often achievement is the only part that matters to others.

It is difficult to ignore the realities of grades and their extrinsic power. As frustrated as I was with the parents who wanted conferences or who argued over a point or two, I understand their frustration. They wanted what was best for their child which includes a quality college education and well-paying career. Test scores and grades certainly matter in the current academic system for achieving these goals. But while some employers do still look for higher GPAs for recent college graduates, most are more concerned with relevant internship, job, and volunteer experience. And extrinsic motivation is often effective when it is immediate, so graduating from high school and college with higher grades actually represents intrinsic motivation and persistence. So while the grades and scores matter as a quick reference for admissions officers and employers, they actually represent something more profound in the type of learner and worker in which they plan to invest.

Many professionals, including teachers, seek achievements to prove their value just as students do. Receiving National Board certification is often considered the gold standard in achievement for teachers. I have rarely encountered a National Board-certified teacher who was not a quality educator, and principals are consistently impressed when they learn I have the accolade. The value of the certification, though, comes from the process of earning it, not the framed certificate on the wall. Becoming National Board-certified is intensive and challenging. The extrinsic motivation of higher pay, more opportunities, and elevated status might have initially led me to seek National Board certification, but my dedication to improving as a professional guided me through the sometimes grueling process. I remember watching a video of myself teaching, stopping it minute-by-minute, and recording what was going on in the classroom in that instance. In the day-to-day whirlwind of managing student behavior, lesson plans, and grades, I don't have the luxury of such reflection and analysis.

When my students spent three days on a single thesis statement, they practiced similar intensive reflection to when I was working toward becoming National Board-certified. And for both my students and for me, such opportunities are rare. So while parents might see a 96 percent in the gradebook and feel comforted by such a number, many don't actually know the work that led to it. The problem lies when the product itself is elevated above the process, and questions of improving revolve around getting an A and not mastering skills.

Even for students who are highly motivated by grades and test scores, I have seen the ugly side of this behavior. But during the six-week period when my students were freed from the pressures of grades and instead focused on being learners, engagement, enthusiasm, motivation, and determination drastically increased. If only I could have measured those skills and shown them to my students' parents in a way that resonated with them.

But one parent in particular did respond positively-my principal. His daughter was in my class. Near the end of the six-week period, he sent me an email and wrote in it,

"I love the fact that you were willing to try something that to the outside world looked odd and probably drew dozens of 'That's not the way it was done when I was in school' types of comments at dinner tables over the last month or so...Thank you, Ashley, for taking risks and putting your students' learning above everything else."

I appreciated that he realized what I was trying to do, but more than that, I appreciated that he understood why. He knew this because he is a parent and an educator. As both myself, what I want for my children is a love of learning, a driving passion for being better at something that matters to them, and educators who know the power of such desire as well.

When I was in high school, I took AP Chemistry II, a class I had no business taking because I was deeply unqualified and too immature to do so. I didn't care about learning high-level chemistry, and I was not the kind of student who was ever motivated by grades. So pretty early into the school year, I knew I was going to fail. The teacher was challenging, but caring and compassionate. I showed up to his class every day, tried to distract my friends-who did care about chemistry and grades-and when that didn't work, proceeded to put my head down and sleep. I failed the class, but I learned a valuable lesson. I stopped pushing myself to do things that I didn't believe in, and I focused my energy instead on things I did. To this day, it is the only class I have ever failed, but I wear the grade as a badge of honor. That sense of authentic self-identity guided me through college, graduate school, student teaching, writing resumes, landing jobs I loved, and, yes, eventually achievements of which I am proud.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Ashley Lamb-Sinclair is a high-school instructional coach. She is the 2016 Kentucky Teacher of the Year and the founder and CEO of Curio Learning.

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What Happens When Teachers Stop Giving Grades?

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The intrinsic love of learning supplants the drive for high marks in the long run. At the beginning of this school year, my colleagues and I decided to avoid giving the sophomores in our English classes any grades for six weeks.

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A New Take on Traditional Grading System

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A New Take on Traditional Grading System

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These are compelling words from a group of experienced and high-performing teachers. What motivated such profound and positive changes? It wasn't an expensive professional development program or a conference, a motivational speaker, a transformational change in schedule, or a big investment in technology. Rather, it is the grading reform we have been exploring and implementing over the past two-and-a-half years at Rowland Hall (UT) that is helping teachers feel confident providing necessary and appropriate instruction for their students.

Educational theorists and researchers have debated the limitations associated with traditional grading schemes for decades. Influential writers and thinkers like Ken O'Connor, Thomas Guskey, Douglas Reeves, Rick Wormeli, Robert Marzano, and Cathy Vatterott have pointed out the many flaws of percentage-based, A-F grades.

They are inconsistent and subjective, like all grading, but present a façade of quantitative precision and objectivity.

Including zeros in calculations is misleading (60 percent of the grading scale is failing).

The scheme was designed as a ranking system, not as a means to report on or support learning.

Omnibus grades mask learning and academic achievement by including various other factors in calculations (attendance, on-time completion, participation, etc.).

Too often, grading has been used to promote behavioral compliance in students and not to stimulate creativity, critical thinking, and learning.

A-F grades nudge students toward task-completion and ego goal orientations, and discourage them from adopting a learning orientation (see "Goal Orientations" below).

Three years ago, we started a conversation with principal Tyler Fonarow and the middle school faculty about their dissatisfaction with our traditional grading system. We asked: Does our grading and grade-reporting support student learning? Is our grading system communicating what we want it to? How can we identify and report learning needs when the majority of our students are earning A's? The group quickly concluded that our grading system offered little help addressing any of these questions. After attending a conference about assessing students' development of "mission skills," or character traits described in a school's mission statement, we were left wondering, how do we know we are living up to our mission?

As our motivation grew to consider a change, another question emerged: Is our middle school the right environment for implementing a nontraditional grading system?

Adolescence is a period of major cognitive opportunity. Neuroscience tells us that the adolescent brain, particularly the frontal lobe, is extraordinarily malleable, which allows for the strengthening and solidification of positive behaviors and mindsets. This neuroplasticity is accompanied by rapid rates of identity development and tremendous social, emotional, and intellectual growth. The adolescent brain has significant capacity for learning and critical thinking, but it also leaves middle-school students susceptible to pitfalls commonly associated with developing executive functioning skills. Creating a new grading system that focuses on students' productivity and contributions gives teachers an opportunity to leverage middle-school students' maturing brains and help them develop skills and mindsets that promote learning, self-reliance, and empathy.

Guided by our understanding of the opportunities of adolescence, the group's decisiveness about the ineffectiveness of our traditional grading system, and our interest in more intentionally implementing our mission, our faculty and leadership team began thinking about what a mission-based grading system might look like.

Making the Move to Mission-Based

We started by reflecting on Rowland Hall's mission to "inspire students to lead ethical and productive lives through a college preparatory program that promotes the pursuit of academic and personal excellence."

After substantial consideration, and a touch of inspiration, we identified three key themes from our mission statement that could serve as the basis for a more student-centered and learning-focused grading system: We strive to inspire students to lead "ethical lives," "productive lives," and pursue "academic excellence." These three perspectives evolved into the three grading categories that teachers now use to report on student learning and achievement in every class: academic mastery, productivity, and contributions.

Academic mastery: The pursuit of academic excellence was perhaps the most obvious strand to include in our new grading scheme. This has been, ostensibly, exactly what report card grades were supposed to measure. For us, academic mastery reports on a student's mastery of course content and skills, undiluted by participation, behavior, timeliness, or other concerns.

Productivity: What teachers have long observed and suspected to be true is now supported by a growing research base: Students' willingness to work, resourcefulness, mindsets, and tenacity are all critical to their learning and long-term success. These inward-focused skills and behaviors are the heart of this grading category.

Contributions: In contrast to the self-focus of the productivity category, we believe that ethical students are empathetic-they look out for and care for those in their community. Our students learn that it is their responsibility to help faculty and staff enrich the learning environment and make the school a safer, more inclusive place for peers and others who spend time with us.

After establishing our three mission-based grading categories, we were immediately faced with some critical questions: How many different levels of academic mastery, productivity, and contributions should we try to describe? What behaviors would we observe in a student who is meeting, approaching, or exceeding expectations in these areas? How do we ensure a common vision in order to provide students as much consistency as possible?

Rather than receive percentage-based letter grades for each of these categories, we drafted and submitted to teachers a four-point rubric for each of the three grading categories. Corresponding to the rubric's proficiency levels, students would earn grades of Exceeding, Meeting, Approaching, and Unsatisfactory. Students may also earn a Meeting+ and an Approaching+ to indicate growth within a proficiency level.

The rubric sparked conversation and thinking, and teachers immediately went to work crafting that document into the grading rubric we currently use throughout our middle school. Since its debut, our rubric has been through at least 100 changes, all of them informed by discussions among groups of interested educators and administrators. And we still affectionately call the rubric a draft because it will continue to evolve with us and our students.

The rubric has proven to be a critical element of mission-based grading. Though it was initially drafted as a document to support teachers' conception and implementation of this new grading system, it continues to ground us and spark discussion. Teachers and students have become fluent in the rubric's skills-focused language, and increasingly, the document is becoming an effective tool to enhance conversations and inform students' reflections about their learning.

Pilot Year: 2015-2016

After a year of experimentation in 2014-2015, our team of sixth-grade teachers felt they were ready to give mission-based grading a test drive. With students' learning sharply in focus, the rubric in hand, and the expectation that we would be learning from our mistakes, these courageous teachers dove into our official pilot program. Some of the less optimistic among us predicted difficulty, but the teachers were encouraged to know that school administration would have their backs throughout the process.

During this first year, the sixth-grade team asked, considered, and sometimes answered many key questions: How often do I assess in each category? Should I break out sub-themes within grading categories to give more precise feedback to students (something akin to standards-based grading)? How do we weigh formative and summative assessments in academic mastery? How do we make the rubric kid-friendly enough to guide students' thinking and pursuit of improvement? Should homework "count" towards mastery grades?

Every question led to new insights, new iterations, and new questions. All the while, teachers were becoming convinced that mission-based grading was impacting teaching and learning in meaningful and substantial ways.

The separation of the grading categories has sharpened the focus on academic mastery. With that grade no longer diluted by extra credit and points for participation and homework, teachers recognized that they needed to be even clearer with students' learning goals and provide authentic illustrative examples (strong and weak) along with descriptive, student-friendly rubrics.

We also noticed a shift in student behavior. The tendency to focus on points and percentages was replaced by requests for feedback and meaningful conversations about their learning. In addition, teachers report fewer discipline issues, believing their regular conversations with students about personal (productivity) and community (contributions) responsibilities have made students more aware of, and reflective about, the consequences of their actions.

All of these observations gave us confidence to transition from pilot to policy, so we decided to roll out mission-based grading to the entire middle school, one year at a time. And while we suspect this system would also benefit older adolescents, we recognize the high-stakes nature of high school transcripts, which reinforced our decision to pilot this reform solely in our middle school.

The Challenges of Change

Replacing a conventional structure in a complex, tradition-steeped organization such as a school requires stakeholders to overcome both institutional inertia and human nature's inherent resistance to change. Well before the official launch of these reforms, it became clear that success would be contingent upon consistent community-wide reeducation. Convincing our community that mission-based grading holds the potential to support and improve student learning is essential, and accomplishing this requires that we challenge our deeply held and long-standing beliefs about traditional grading.

Many in our community quickly recognized two core improvements with mission-based grading: a focus on learning rather than grades, and more meaningful reporting on children's strengths and areas for improvement beyond academics. It's safe to say, however, that we may have underestimated how deeply the traditional grading paradigm pervades people's understanding of school and student learning. As we continue to engage with our community, we tend to encounter three main concerns: Mission-based grading seems more subjective than traditional A-F grades, may be less rigorous than traditional grading, and may hinder students' college prospects.

We feel well-equipped to respond to the first two concerns. Numerous studies dating back to the early 20th century reveal the lack of objectivity in traditional percentage-based grading. Our system is not free of subjectivity, but in contrast to the 100 undefined levels in a percentage-based system, mission-based grading consists of only four well-defined levels. Our rubric contains rich language describing key student learning behaviors at each level, and teachers collaborate regularly to align their interpretation of that language.

In response to concerns about the lack of rigor of mission-based grading, we can say we have yet to see a student earn "all E's," when earning "straight A's" used to be commonplace. In addition, teachers are moving beyond extra credit and focusing more on depth than on breadth, resulting in more intentional efforts to provide students with opportunities to challenge themselves and demonstrate true mastery of learning goals.

Can a middle school grading system hinder students' college prospects? A few parents, especially those whose hopes for their children include admission to a highly selective university, seem worried that their children won't know how to get A's in high school. It's true that mission-based grading discourages students from "gaming the system" just to get a higher grade. Instead, we heed the recommendations of a growing body of research and strive to develop in our students the skills needed to be effective learners. Such skills, we confidently predict, will result in our students earning plenty of A's in high school and beyond.

Some parents have also expressed concern that our high school will choose to adopt mission-based grading. This consternation is likely rooted in a belief that admission officers at elite colleges and universities will not give full consideration to graduates possessing non-traditional, proficiency-based high school transcripts. Evidence suggests otherwise.

For decades now, colleges and universities have welcomed students from high schools that use a broad range of grading schemes. In fact, earlier this year the New England Board of Higher Education and the New England Secondary School Consortium convened a meeting of admissions officers from a group of highly selective colleges and universities in the region. During a robust discussion on the topic, these admissions leaders indicated overwhelmingly that students with proficiency-based transcripts would not be disadvantaged, even in a highly selective admission process.

Moving Forward

At this stage of our implementation process, we realize that a more complete understanding of the impact mission-based grading might have on students' performance and mindsets is still a few years away. Our eighth-grade teachers will roll out mission-based grading in the fall of 2017, uniting our entire middle school in this learning-focused grading reform. In addition to looking forward to feedback from our eighth-grade teachers, we also realize major initiatives like this are subject to implementation dips, and thus, accurately gauging success often requires reserving judgment until the transition period has ended. We plan to continue evaluating the effectiveness of this new grading system through ongoing reflection and dialogue with teachers and students over the next several years. Perhaps then, we will feel more confident recommending similar reforms to our colleagues in other schools, including our own upper school.

For now, our community is not convinced that an alternative high school transcript will provide students the best chance of earning acceptance into elite universities and colleges. In addition to gathering evidence about the impact of mission-based grading on learning, we would also like to confirm with college admission officers that an alternative transcript would keep our students competitive in the admission process.

Upper school teachers who have taken a close look at the changes we're making have expressed confidence that our initiative will help their future students to be more adept, resilient, and effective learners. As we continue to refine this grading system, we look to the verdict of our middle school teachers who are implementing it for evidence and inspiration: mission-based grading encourages metacognition and enhances teaching and learning. Through reflection and dialogue with teachers, students are critically evaluating how they learn, paying more attention to their learning and less attention to grades, and developing strategies to make the most of every educational opportunity. Teachers also report being more thoughtful and reflective themselves-more fully aware of where their students are and how they may best support their continued learning.

We are inspired and motivated by the accomplishments of our teaching colleagues, whose dedication and professionalism have made possible all the successes thus far. Nonetheless, we are confident our middle school teachers would agree that we have much work to do. The goal of "Exceeding" expectations in this process is visible, but still distant; instead, we take pride in self-assessing at an "Approaching +" and are eager to continue the work of improving mission-based grading for our students.
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A New Take on Traditional Grading System

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These are compelling words from a group of experienced and high-performing teachers. What motivated such profound and positive changes? It wasn't an expensive professional development program or a conference, a motivational speaker, a transformational change in schedule, or a big investment in technology.

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Treating Reflection as a Habit, Not an Event

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Treating Reflection as a Habit, Not an Event

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We know that reflection increases student learning. It supports growth mindset and encourages students to improve and learn from their mistakes. We may engage our students in reflection in our classrooms, but it's not often habitual-I know I've been guilty of treating reflection as an event rather than as something we do all the time.

With all the challenges of teaching content and assessing learning outcomes, we can fall into the trap of skipping the reflection. And benchmarks in the year such as student-led conferences or mid-semester reflection points may perpetuate the narrative that reflection is an event. But while these benchmarks are important, we need to move away from larger events and make time for frequent reflection as part of the classroom culture and routine.

What can we do to make this a reality in our crowded schedules?

Setting More Frequent Short-Term Goals

Instead of-or in addition to-setting goals a few times a year, have students reflect more regularly about what they're working on. Daily learning targets are a great tool to have students regularly reflect on their goals.

After presenting the daily learning target, ask students to set a goal related to the content or a behavioral focus. At the end of the lesson, have them quickly reflect on that short-term goal-they can experience a quick success and sense of accomplishment, or if they didn't quite meet the goal, they can think about how to change what they did to help ensure a better outcome next time.

Similarly, have students set goals for a unit -they'll reflect more regularly than with a semester- or year-long goal. While this goal setting might seem like an isolated event at first, if you incorporate it into all units, it will become a normal routine. These goals can be monitored throughout the unit as often as needed, and can help foster a sense of growth over time as reflection is a normal way of interacting with the goal.

Checking In Quickly

Quick check-ins can make reflection routine, and they're critical to following up on short-term goals. Questions are key here. Straightforward questions framed around "What?" "So what?" and "Now what?" help students to process their learning, make connections, and set next steps in a safe, low-stakes way.

Ask your students things like:

What did you accomplish today?

What was something you already knew that was reinforced?

What was the most important thing you learned today?

What did you appreciate the most today?

What do you need to learn more about?

What emotions do you need to be aware of next time?

What are you most interested in learning about next?

You can also use formats like " I used to think..., but now I think..." or a Think, Pair, Share. Even just some quiet think time is a powerful way to engage in reflection. With quick, low-stakes strategies, reflection can become routine.

Adopting A Process Portfolio

Portfolios tie in nicely with both short-term goals and quick reflections. While teachers often have students keep portfolios to show their best work, portfolios that show growth and honor the process of learning can support regular reflection.

A process or working portfolio supports a culture of reflection. A process portfolio shouldn't contain only a student's best work. Instead it should have works in progress-students should include images or samples of that work and the corresponding reflections.

I've seen process portfolios go wrong when teachers wait until student conferences, for example, and then rush to have students add work and reflection evidence. This, again, conveys that reflection is a major event. If students instead add to the portfolio regularly and include artifacts that demonstrate learning in progress, when the big moments come along they won't need to do much if anything to prepare.

Making Sure It's Routine

I know I've experienced this scenario as a teacher: I announce, "We're going to do a short reflection today," and the students mutter a collective, "Ugh."

The teacher may perceive this as reflection burnout, but it could be that students perceive the teacher's phrase as raising the stakes and imposing busy work on them, even though our hope is that they will see reflection as something that helps them learn and grow. Instead of making a big announcement about reflection, try telling students simply, "I'd like you to respond to this prompt in your portfolio." Keep it low-key and routine.

Reflection is a powerful practice and mindset to foster in the classroom. Teachers can serve as mentors to students in helping reflection become part of their way of being. Through a variety of quick strategies, use of portfolios, and frequent goal setting, we can make reflection a meaningful and routine norm.

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Treating Reflection as a Habit, Not an Event

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We know that reflection increases student learning. It supports growth mindset and encourages students to improve and learn from their mistakes. We may engage our students in reflection in our classrooms, but it's not often habitual-I know I've been guilty of treating reflection as an event rather than as something we do all the time.

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If you always succeed in school, you're not setting yourself up for success in life.

Credit... Linda Huang

Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

Dr. Grant is an organizational psychologist and a contributing opinion writer.

A decade ago, at the end of my first semester teaching at Wharton, a student stopped by for office hours. He sat down and burst into tears. My mind started cycling through a list of events that could make a college junior cry: His girlfriend had dumped him; he had been accused of plagiarism. "I just got my first A-minus," he said, his voice shaking.

Year after year, I watch in dismay as students obsess over getting straight A's. Some sacrifice their health; a few have even tried to sue their school after falling short. All have joined the cult of perfectionism out of a conviction that top marks are a ticket to elite graduate schools and lucrative job offers.

I was one of them. I started college with the goal of graduating with a 4.0. It would be a reflection of my brainpower and willpower, revealing that I had the right stuff to succeed. But I was wrong.

The evidence is clear: Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the correlation between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and trivial within a handful of years. For example, at Google, once employees are two or three years out of college, their grades have no bearing on their performance. (Of course, it must be said that if you got D's, you probably didn't end up at Google.)

[Never be uninteresting. Read the most thought-provoking, funny, delightful and raw stories from The New York Times Opinion section.]
Academic grades rarely assess qualities like creativity, leadership and teamwork skills, or social, emotional and political intelligence. Yes, straight-A students master cramming information and regurgitating it on exams. But career success is rarely about finding the right solution to a problem - it's more about finding the right problem to solve.

In a classic 1962 study, a team of psychologists tracked down America's most creative architects and compared them with their technically skilled but less original peers. One of the factors that distinguished the creative architects was a record of spiky grades. "In college our creative architects earned about a B average," Donald MacKinnon wrote. "In work and courses which caught their interest they could turn in an A performance, but in courses that failed to strike their imagination, they were quite willing to do no work at all." They paid attention to their curiosity and prioritized activities that they found intrinsically motivating - which ultimately served them well in their careers.

Getting straight A's requires conformity. Having an influential career demands originality. In a study of students who graduated at the top of their class, the education researcher Karen Arnold found that although they usually had successful careers, they rarely reached the upper echelons. "Valedictorians aren't likely to be the future's visionaries," Dr. Arnold explained. "They typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up."

This might explain why Steve Jobs finished high school with a 2.65 G.P.A., J.K. Rowling graduated from the University of Exeter with roughly a C average, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got only one A in his four years at Morehouse.

If your goal is to graduate without a blemish on your transcript, you end up taking easier classes and staying within your comfort zone. If you're willing to tolerate the occasional B, you can learn to program in Python while struggling to decipher "Finnegans Wake." You gain experience coping with failures and setbacks, which builds resilience.

Straight-A students also miss out socially. More time studying in the library means less time to start lifelong friendships, join new clubs or volunteer. I know from experience. I didn't meet my 4.0 goal; I graduated with a 3.78. (This is the first time I've shared my G.P.A. since applying to graduate school 16 years ago. Really, no one cares.) Looking back, I don't wish my grades had been higher. If I could do it over again, I'd study less. The hours I wasted memorizing the inner workings of the eye would have been better spent trying out improv comedy and having more midnight conversations about the meaning of life.

So universities: Make it easier for students to take some intellectual risks. Graduate schools can be clear that they don't care about the difference between a 3.7 and a 3.9. Colleges could just report letter grades without pluses and minuses, so that any G.P.A. above a 3.7 appears on transcripts as an A. It might also help to stop the madness of grade inflation, which creates an academic arms race that encourages too many students to strive for meaningless perfection. And why not let students wait until the end of the semester to declare a class pass-fail, instead of forcing them to decide in the first month?

Employers: Make it clear you value skills over straight A's. Some recruiters are already on board: In a 2003 study of over 500 job postings, nearly 15 percent of recruiters actively selected against students with high G.P.A.s (perhaps questioning their priorities and life skills), while more than 40 percent put no weight on grades in initial screening.

Straight-A students: Recognize that underachieving in school can prepare you to overachieve in life. So maybe it's time to apply your grit to a new goal - getting at least one B before you graduate.

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton and contributing opinion writer, is the author of " Originals" and " Give and Take" and is the host of the podcast " WorkLife."
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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Opinion | What Straight-A Students Get Wrong (Published 2018)

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If you always succeed in school, you're not setting yourself up for success in life. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Dr. Grant is an organizational psychologist and a contributing opinion writer.

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Redefining the End Goal; Seven ways educators can help students look beyond grades

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Redefining the End Goal; Seven ways educators can help students look beyond grades

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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"There's no way I'm taking honors biology next year," Katie told me. "It's going to wreck my GPA." She was in eighth grade and contemplating the high school course options.

I knew Katie collected insects for fun and had memorized every bone in the human body. "The honors class will move faster and cover more ground,"

"Not if I end up with a B+," she replied.

That stopped me. The threat of a B+ was enough to deter her? I tried one more time. "If you get a B plus, then it really is the right placement. Plus, you'll have access to higher-level classes down the road."

At the time, I thought I made a compelling case, but I now know I took the wrong approach. Kids like Katie can't shift their focus beyond extrinsic motivators until their fears are addressed. If you lead with logical reasoning, they won't hear a word you say.

There can be real consequences if they tune you out. Students may write off a subject because they think they're bad at it, not realizing that mastery comes from exposure. Here are seven ways educators can help students think more flexibly, take more risks, and look beyond grades.

Validate their feelings.

No matter how ridiculous a student's fears may seem to you, they make complete sense to them. You don't have to agree with them to validate their emotions. Try to figure out their underlying concern. You can then say, "I get it. If I thought a B+ would wreck my GPA and my future, I'd want to play it safe too." Or, "If I thought my parents would be mad at me if I got a B, I'd be hesitant to take the honors class too." When kids feel understood, they let down their guard and are able to consider other perspectives. It's futile to reason with an anxious student.

Talk about their interests.

Follow up on the details they divulge in papers or class discussions. If they share memories about collecting shells with their grandmother or crying after a Little League loss, bring it up in conversation. Point them to websites that classify sea shells, or recommend biographies about baseball players. Make personal connections, show delight in their curiosity, and encourage them to delve deeper. You'll help them value their many dimensions.

You'll also combat the misconception that academics matter above all else. Any kind of hard work creates new neural pathways, whether students choose to develop photographs, sketch portraits, play the violin, or build robots. And in a recent study, researchers at Stanford and Yale-NUS college in Singapore found that students who believe that effort and ability are intertwined are more curious, motivated, and likely to uncover new interests. They believe their potential is limitless, maintain a growth mindset, and are less likely to make comments such as, "I'm terrible at math" (" 'Find your passion' is bad advice, say Yale and Stanford psychologists," by Ephrat Livni, June 26, 2018, Quartz).

Keep the stakes low.

Students take their emotional cues from their teachers. Brandon, a seventh grader, told me he loved one teacher because "he was strict but never made tests feel scary." The teacher was loose with labeling. Everything was an 'in-class exercise.' "A final exam was an in-class exercise. A quiz was an in-class exercise. A worksheet was an in-class exercise. Things had points, but the teacher didn't make a big deal about that," Brandon explained, adding that he was able to adopt the same attitude.

It can be hard to keep the stakes low, particularly when middle school students enroll in courses for high school credit. One school system recently stopped calculating those grades into students' high school GPA. The practice was deterring too many kids from taking classes such as world languages. As a director in that system told me, "We felt strongly that middle school should be a time for academic exploration."

Some teachers don't grade every assignment. They may give feedback informally or use narratives instead of letter grades. They may focus more on process than results by evaluating a project at multiple stages. Or they may factor in social-emotional competencies such as collaboration and leadership. Celebrate failure by asking students to share their "biggest blooper" of the week. After they disclose the setback, praise them for taking a risk.

Lighten the mood.

Look for creative ways to incorporate humor. One history teacher bought his students United Nations weapons inspector hats, then promised extra points if they wore them to the final exam. The kids felt silly, but everyone did it. As one student noted, "it's hard to take anything too seriously when you're wearing a duck hat."

Humor can be used in other ways. When teachers poke fun at themselves, students are more likely to accept their own imperfections. Don't hesitate to make self-deprecating comments or to share funny news stories or video clips.

Offer a menu of coping strategies.

Dana, a sixth-grade student, told me that she felt less stressed and more engaged in science than any other course. She attributed this to her teacher, who began each class with a mindfulness practice. Dana used that time to shake off daily stress, settle her thoughts, and ease into learning. More importantly, she felt the teacher cared about her and prioritized her well-being. She was able to stay focused on the present and the task at hand.

Different students benefit from different strategies, so offer a menu of choices. You can try incorporating movement breaks, setting the mood with music, discussing inspirational quotes, or encouraging kids to log their thoughts in a journal. As an added bonus, they may bring these ideas home.

Underscore that life is more zigzag than straight line.

Encourage students to read biographies and autobiographies or watch documentaries about people who are leaders in a range of industries. They'll see that everyone experiences peaks and valleys-and that both are critical to success. They'll start to understand that mistakes are opportunities for learning, not reasons to give up. When students expect some adversity and absurdity, they're more likely to tackle challenges.

Discourage discussing grades with peers.

All kids talk about grades to an extent, but some take it to the extreme. I hold at least one morning meeting on the topic with my seventh graders. Students lead the discussion and ask their classmates to think about the pros and cons. The kids always conclude that there are far more cons than pros. They'll note that talking about grades is "conceited and obnoxious," or "raises everyone's anxiety," or "takes the focus away from doing your personal best."

My students generally agree to stop talking about it, but there are inevitable lapses. When that happens, remind them they don't have to engage. They may want help with the language or need permission to assert, "that's personal." The less time kids spend talking and thinking about grades, the more time they can devote to actually learning.

Phyllis L. Fagell, LCPC is the counselor at Sheridan School in Washington, DC, a therapist at Chrysalis Group in Bethesda, MD, and the author ofMiddle School Matters, (Da Capo Press, forthcoming 2019). She regularly contributes articles on education, parenting, and counseling to The Washington Post.
@pfagell
phyllisfagell.com Published inAMLE Magazine, October 2018.

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"There's no way I'm taking honors biology next year," Katie told me. "It's going to wreck my GPA." She was in eighth grade and contemplating the high school course options. I knew Katie collected insects for fun and had memorized every bone in the human body.

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Are Grades Diverting Focus From Real Learning?

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Are Grades Diverting Focus From Real Learning?

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Grades sometimes feel like a necessary evil. They are a shorthand measure of how a student is performing in school, but too often the pressure to earn good grades becomes the sole focus for students and parents. Grades are supposed to be a recognition of the learning process a student went through, not the product a student strives for exclusively. But disentangling those things is a challenge, made more difficult by the real consequences of good grades for kids' futures.

Educator Ashley Lamb-Sinclair experimented with not giving grades for the first six weeks of the school year at the high-achieving high school where she works. She was amazed at the intrinsic motivation students had to persist on a task until they improved when the pressure of a grade wasn't present. She writes that she had incredible communications with parents about their children's learning during those six weeks and that the gradeless period went smoothly. That is, until she had to start grading again. As soon as a 100-point scale was present parents and students forgot all the value they had seen in the learning process and focused only on points.

Lamb-Sinclair's article in The Atlantic is a meditation on how educators, parents and students together can shift the classroom dynamic away from focusing on the product -- the grade -- and towards a realization of all that went into achieving it. Lamb-Sinclair can relate to the quest for achievements, but also reflects on the true value of something like National Board Certification.

Many professionals, including teachers, seek achievements to prove their value just as students do. Receiving National Board certification is often considered the gold standard in achievement for teachers. I have rarely encountered a National Board-certified teacher who was not a quality educator, and principals are consistently impressed when they learn I have the accolade. The value of the certification, though, comes from the process of earning it, not the framed certificate on the wall. Becoming National Board-certified is intensive and challenging. The extrinsic motivation of higher pay, more opportunities, and elevated status might have initially led me to seek National Board certification, but my dedication to improving as a professional guided me through the sometimes grueling process. I remember watching a video of myself teaching, stopping it minute-by-minute, and recording what was going on in the classroom in that instance. In the day-to-day whirlwind of managing student behavior, lesson plans, and grades, I don't have the luxury of such reflection and analysis.

When my students spent three days on a single thesis statement, they practiced similar intensive reflection to when I was working toward becoming National Board-certified. And for both my students and for me, such opportunities are rare. So while parents might see a 96 percent in the gradebook and feel comforted by such a number, many don't actually know the work that led to it. The problem lies when the product itself is elevated above the process, and questions of improving revolve around getting an A and not mastering skills.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/06/why-grades-are-not-the-key-to-achievement/530124/

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Are Grades Diverting Focus From Real Learning?

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Grades sometimes feel like a necessary evil. They are a shorthand measure of how a student is performing in school, but too often the pressure to earn good grades becomes the sole focus for students and parents. Grades are supposed to be a recognition of the learning process a student went through, not the product a student strives for exclusively.

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How to Design a Competency-Based Assessment

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How to Design a Competency-Based Assessment

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From the Global Online Academy

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How might a focus on skills instead of content change the way we design assessments?

The promise of competency-based learning is a learning environment that better reflects the world our students are preparing to enter. Designing competency-based assessments is about creating opportunities for demonstration of important skills in authentic contexts. The purpose of these assessments is to focus less on collecting data for the teacher and more on empowering students to demonstrate what they've learned, reflect on how they're doing, and plan what they'll learn next.

Before I outline a four-step process for designing these assessments, I'll emphasize a core principle of competency-based learning: student ownership. It's important to recognize that at every stage of the process below, you can involve students as co-designers.

No matter which GOA course our students take - Arabic, Philosophy, Multivariable Calculus, Neuropsychology - their work is geared towards developing these skills. This is how to think about the relationship between competencies and content: competencies provide the framework for how we want students to learn and what we want to assess them on, and excellent content provides depth and deeper meaning to those assessments.
How to engage students in this work: Ask them what success in learning looks like. Ask them to share their goals and visions for their futures. Collaborate with them to translate their answers into competencies they can develop in school.

How to engage students in this work: Have them build personalized rubrics using competencies and outcomes you (or you and they) have articulated. Let them choose the learning outcomes that matter the most to the work they want to do.

Step 4: Create the Learning Experience(s)
Only after the intentional process of articulating competencies and outcomes should we think about how students will demonstrate these skills via learning experiences. There are many ways to demonstrate these skills, so the products of the assessment - the students' work - should be varied and interesting.

I've found it helpful to think about the apprenticeship model, where students, with the support of a mentor, learn the field through authentic practice (a blacksmith's apprentice makes a horseshoe, or a carpenter's apprentice makes a birdhouse). When it comes to more academic work, think about what Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine call "cognitive apprenticeships," where the essential question is not "What is the content I need to cover?" and is instead "What does it mean to think in the domain?" This shift allows teachers to organize learning around purpose and meaning, culminating in student exhibitions of learning that might contribute to the domain.

What does this look like?

The best way to recognize a competency-based learning experience is to look at the work students produce and the learning environment in which they produce it.
How to engage students in this work: Empower them to be learning designers and project managers. Let them use the rubric to design an experience where they can demonstrate the learning outcomes in an authentic way. Give them the responsibility of planning, executing, and presenting their work for assessment.
What's your approach to designing authentic, skills-based assessments? Let us know on Twitter or email us at hello@globalonlineacademy.org. To learn more about what competency-based learning looks like at GOA, check out this series of articles.

Step Two: Develop Evidence of Competencies
Evidence of skill development - what we call "learning outcomes" at GOA - are the criteria teachers and students use to assess student work. As Ron Berger argues in Leaders of Their Own Learning, these outcomes must focus on learning targets, not tasks. A competency-based assessment doesn't aim to measure how quickly/completely a student can finish tasks or comply with instructions; rather, it aims to articulate clearly what the student should be able to do as a result of completing the assessment. For this reason, learning outcomes are often framed as "I can..." statements to reinforce the idea that the target is met only when the knowledge is successfully applied in a demonstrable way. For detailed examples, see Asia Society's Global Competence Performance Outcomes.
How to engage students in this work: Have them select a competency or competencies and ask them, "What does success look like in this area? How will I know you've mastered this skill?"

Step 3: Build Student-Friendly Rubrics
In competency-based learning, a rubric is used for far more than scoring. Rubrics built on clearly articulated competencies and learning outcomes can be used to establish clarity with students about what they're learning and why they're learning it. They are also essential tools for teachers to calibrate understanding of quality performance: collaborative teacher review of student work using rubrics is a regular element of competency-based learning. Finally, they are tools for assessment: students and teachers can use the rubric to measure performance, reflect on learning, and plan next steps.

Because competency-based learning is not a time-based system, students frequently have the opportunity to revisit learning activities and be reassessed, supported by formative feedback and routine metacognitive reflection. Formats like the single-point rubric below allow a rubric to anchor an ongoing conversation about learning between student and teacher rather than merely deliver points.

Step One: Articulate Competencies
What do we want students to know and be able to do? This question, which drives Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design Framework, also underlies the first step in competency-based assessment design.

The essential skills students need to succeed in the world beyond school - what I'll call "competencies" here - should drive the philosophy and purpose of assessments. They should be transferable, observable, transdisciplinary, and accessible to students. As Chris Sturgis of CompetencyWorks writes, a well-articulated competency "will be valuable ten years from now even if the content knowledge has changed."

As an example, below are the six core competencies that drive learning in GOA student courses.

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How to Design a Competency-Based Assessment

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How might a focus on skills instead of content change the way we design assessments? The promise of competency-based learning is a learning environment that better reflects the world our students are preparing to enter. Designing competency-based assessments is about creating opportunities for demonstration of important skills in authentic contexts.

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Shifting the Grading Mindset Starts With Our Words

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Shifting the Grading Mindset Starts With Our Words

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Language matters. It's that simple. What we say and how we say it has a big impact on how students and other stakeholders respond to our choices.

Students are always waiting from a variety of cues from their teachers and peers to determine what and how much they are learning. So rather than perpetuate the issues around grading by using the same language we've always used, it's time to be deliberate in the shift as we change our assessment practices.

Getting rid of grades is a big and challenging step to make, but it can be done and even if you aren't ready to go all in, there are ways to adjust small things in the classroom that will lead to important growth for students.

Start with the words you use when communicating learning.

Look at the below chart from Hacking Assessment:

The traditional grading language is passive and judgmental and subconsciously by using this language, we are putting the focus on the wrong things.

When we say to each other or to kids that we are "grading", it reduces the work that we are trying to do. What we are actually doing is "assessing" growth and understanding.

Rather than "scoring", again use "assessing" because we are spending time trying to see what students know and can do. When we start to adjust what we call what we are doing, students will do the same.

" What grade did I get?" or some variation like "What did I get?" is a question that most teachers don't enjoying having to answer. But imagine if we could get student to think instead, "What did I learn?" This has the opportunity to be a rich conversation. So parents reading this, fight the urge to ask your child, "What did you get on the test?" and instead ask, "What did you learn in school today?"

When students see a red x on their papers or we tell them they are wrong, we are shutting them down and ending a potential learning experience. Why not say that "you aren't there yet" or "try another way" to encourage students to keep going.

As we start to shift our words, the behaviors will follow. And once all of these things are in sync with each other, then changing the way we assess in class becomes the next logical step.

Learning should be equipped with an endless feedback look rather than a terminal grade. Start the loop of communication by changing the words you use in conversation about learning and then it will become about the mastery instead of getting great grades on a report card.

Think about the words you use in class. Which ones can have potentially negative connotations and how can they be adjusted for a growth mindset? Remember, words matter.
How can you shift the way you talk about learning in your space to impact growth in your students? Please share

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Shifting the Grading Mindset Starts With Our Words

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Language matters. It's that simple. What we say and how we say it has a big impact on how students and other stakeholders respond to our choices. Students are always waiting from a variety of cues from their teachers and peers to determine what and how much they are learning.

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Meeting Standards Through Integrated Curriculum

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Meeting Standards Through Integrated Curriculum

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When you give a test or quiz, do you basically just grade it, give it back to students, go over the answers, then move on? If you don't do anything else with the information, if you don't look carefully at how students answer your test questions, you're missing a BIG opportunity.

Assessments should give us loads of information about what our students understand, what they don't understand, and how well we've taught them. It took me years of teaching before I realized I was using my tests and quizzes to sort out, reward and punish my students, rather than measure and inform my teaching. I needed to make my assessments work harder for me.

So one year, I added an extra step while grading tests: I kept track of all the wrong answers on one page, tallying exactly which items were being chosen instead. Once I started doing this, I found myself far better equipped to respond to wrong answers: I could reteach specific concepts only to students who needed reteaching, rather than wasting everyone's time with unnecessary review. I could identify specific misconceptions students had about the material and get better at addressing those the next time around. I also became a much better test maker.

The best part about this system is you only need a pencil, an answer key, and a few extra minutes.

Here it is:

If you're already doing something like this, I would love to hear about it in the comments. If you have some kind of electronic reporting system that can crunch all these numbers for you and give you the information you need to move forward, awesome. If not, adding this extra step to your assessment routine will make a difference. ♦

Keep in touch.
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When you give a test or quiz, do you basically just grade it, give it back to students, go over the answers, then move on? If you don't do anything else with the information, if you don't look carefully at how students answer your test questions, you're missing a BIG opportunity.