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Question:  After reading this article, does your grading, or the grading of the teachers you work with, align with the practices described in this article?

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Question:  After reading this article, does your grading, or the grading of the teachers you work with, align with the practices described in this article?

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Question:  What are ways we can begin implementing better grading practices that are aligned with more equitable outcomes?  Where do we start?

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Question:  What are ways we can begin implementing better grading practices that are aligned with more equitable outcomes?  Where do we start?

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Write your answer in the space provided under the box.

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Question:  Think about your own questioning habits as a teacher or instructional leader.  How often do you create meaningful questions that require reflection, evidence of understanding, and use different cognitive levels?

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Question:  Think about your own questioning habits as a teacher or instructional leader.  How often do you create meaningful questions that require reflection, evidence of understanding, and use different cognitive levels?

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Question:  How can you create habits, or help others to create habits, around questioning in the classroom using the lens of equity?

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Question:  How can you create habits, or help others to create habits, around questioning in the classroom using the lens of equity?

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Question:  When providing feedback to others in your capacity as an educator, who works harder- you or the receiver of the feedback?  Explain.

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Question:  When providing feedback to others in your capacity as an educator, who works harder- you or the receiver of the feedback?  Explain.

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Question:  How are ways we can model better feedback practices for the stakeholders that we work with in schools?  How can we ensure these practices start to get to the student level?

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Question:  How are ways we can model better feedback practices for the stakeholders that we work with in schools?  How can we ensure these practices start to get to the student level?

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When I was in the classroom I made almost all of these shifts when I started teaching a state-assessed class, which is around the same time our new data person started looking closely at our grading setups and explaining many of these things to us. I'm definitely a believer. In particular, the part about it being difficult to fail and difficult to get an "A" resonates as that was the outcome in my classes and, really, my personal validity test.

I do have lots of conversations about this with individual teachers with mixed success. The biggest issue I see is the "sea of 100's" where teachers grade on participation, inflating student grades and perpetuating the hard working students getting better grades.

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I think the easiest place to start is where the article suggests you start: getting rid of extra credit and not grading including participation as a category in grading. The next easiest way to ensure that grades reflect learning is to stop giving 100% for turning in an assignment, which equates to participation grades.

After that there are lots of nuances on how to ensure students work harder to learn because the grade will reflect their actual learning, but these are the easiest places to start.

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Jill, you can definitely tell we work together! I cannot remember which one of us coined the phrase, "Sea of 100's," but this definitely is an issue with our teachers since it sends the wrong message to parents and students. A student should feel proud when they achieve an overall grade of an A in a class and artificial grade inflation by the constant 100's that are handed out, defeats this purpose, my personal opinion. I like that you used grading as a way to validate how you were assessing students. I wish more teachers would practice the same reflection on their own grading procedures.

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I want to chime in about this " sea of 100s", (love that term ). What I've found in my years here is that we'll have students who are straight a students who fall well below grade level when it comes to taking the state testing. I understand that some students are just not good test takers. However there is something to be said about the validity of the grade. Are students just getting good grades because they turn in all of their assignments; what about the kid who turns in less assignments but show a higher demonstration of mastery?

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The teachers that I work with vary in their alignment with the grading practices described in the article. Teachers in the middle school grades do tend to align with the practices, focusing on assessing whether the student has truly mastered a standard. However, upon reflection, I do think that the majority of elementary school teachers I teach with tend to veer towards the "traditional" grading policies. On multiple occasions, I have come across students who have amazing grades due to completion of homework and "participation" but have not even begun to master any content.

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I think the best place to start is getting rid of graded homework. As stated in the article, students come from a myriad of different situations and may have responsibilities at home that prohibit them from completing homework in a timely manner. Students should not be penalized for this and it is certainly not equitable. Instead, "homework" should be seen as optional, additional practice that students can engage in. This, I think, is an appropriate starting point.

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Abbie---

I'm in a middle school setting and see some of the same traditional grading policies. It's really sad for the student and parents when I have to share your child isn't above grade-level even though their class grades reflect such. Their benchmark and state assessments don't align with the class grades.

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Abbie, Homework is tricky.  I do think that it needs to be practice and somehow rewarded rather than penalized.  A lot of people, though, use the problem to stop giving homework altogether and I think that is the wrong answer as it removes responsibility from students.

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Abbie, Homework is tricky.  I do think that it needs to be practice and somehow rewarded rather than penalized.  A lot of people, though, use the problem to stop giving homework altogether and I think that is the wrong answer as it removes responsibility from students.

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When thinking back to public school, grades were definitely inflated. Participation, homework, and project grades were factored in. Those scores were not a true measure of the student being able to meet the standard. There was a practice of not giving a score below a 50.

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Better practices start with the learning standards. The student either meets, exceeds, or does not meet the standard for each learning goal. Teachers can use a variety of methods to have each student demonstrate their ability to meet the standard, but in the end, learning is learning.

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Melissa, We also have that policy of no report card grade below 50.  While I understand the rationale and don't completely disagree, it also leaves a lot of assuming or unknown information for the parent and student.  I also think that we need a much better way to indicate whether the grades are a result of not turning in work, absences and make-up work, or the student truly not understanding the work.  Grades do not currently help parents understand those things when they apply.

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Melissa, We also have that policy of no report card grade below 50.  While I understand the rationale and don't completely disagree, it also leaves a lot of assuming or unknown information for the parent and student.  I also think that we need a much better way to indicate whether the grades are a result of not turning in work, absences and make-up work, or the student truly not understanding the work.  Grades do not currently help parents understand those things when they apply.

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I Agree with Melissa Murphy - Anita Wade

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I Agree with Melissa Murphy - Anita Wade

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I absolutely agree learning the standards is key. I find many students don't care about what they are supposed to be learning as much as they are just trying to complete a task. Taking time to focus on the standard could actually allow teachers more autonomy to let their creative juice work and provide students with those supposed " multiple ways to demonstrate mastery" that we talk about from time to time.

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After reading the article and thinking about the teachers I supervise, I realized that grading practices, for the most part, are all over the place, much more so than when I went to school. Some teachers believe in providing students with a retake of a test or assignment that they did poorly on, while others are much more strict about allowing redos, believing that students should ALWAYS do their best job the first time. I do believe that a redo DOES help a child to learn and grow from their mistakes and it also enables them to demonstrate proficiency so I am in favor of this practice. I also wish, though it would be very difficult to do, that we could switch our grading system from the 0-100 scale over to a grading system based on mastery of standards. Our Pre-K and K teachers have this as their grading system and it provides the parents, in my opinion, much more information about their child than a random grade does. Again, this would take a tremendous amount of PD for teachers to fully understand how to assess students by standard.

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For me, the starting point with better grading practices would be doing away with the constant 100's that I see teachers handing out to students for merely participating in an assignment. This creates artificial grade inflation and sends the wrong message to the parent and the student. When I meet with teachers, as a supervisor, I remind them that their grades should be a reflection of what the student knows and is able to do. I have seen teachers hand out 100's to students for simply bringing in a signed permission slip and other such extraneous things which pushes an otherwise mediocre grade higher than it should be. This would be the first step for me in changing our grading practices to something that is more accurate and in the end, equitable.

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Traci- I agree wholeheartedly with allowing students to re-do a test for a grade.  The catch is that I always tried to provide a DIFFERENT test than the first one so that it was truly about the learning and not memorizing the answers (can you tell I was a high school teacher?).

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Traci- I agree wholeheartedly with allowing students to re-do a test for a grade.  The catch is that I always tried to provide a DIFFERENT test than the first one so that it was truly about the learning and not memorizing the answers (can you tell I was a high school teacher?).

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Traci- You coined the phrase "sea of 100's" (not me) but I use it a lot!  I'm in agreement that we give grades for things that shed no light whatsoever on how well a student mastered a standard and that is definitely a prime place to start "fixing" the system.

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Traci- You coined the phrase "sea of 100's" (not me) but I use it a lot!  I'm in agreement that we give grades for things that shed no light whatsoever on how well a student mastered a standard and that is definitely a prime place to start "fixing" the system.

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After reading this article, I've found that my school is one of the school that Feldman was speaking about. We have uniformed grading policies that don't necessarily create equity among subjects or students. Students definitely have learned to play the game and are much less focused on actually learning the skills that are being assessed. Teachers struggle with getting students to actively participate and it's even one of the things that teachers are required to grade on. It required teachers to literally come up with activities for participation and does not produce real engagement.

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This is a rather difficult question. I believe these things should vary based on particular levels. Elementary should be graded based on mastery of skills on a foundational level where middle school could begin to apply mastery of skill though application. High school school should be graded on the mastery of skills , application and ability to create a concrete model of products. I also believe that grading should look different based on the type of high school students may attend. Grading practices might look more similar is a fine arts or vocational school than they would in a college prep environment. I too wonder what this would look like specifically in science classes vs something like a social studies class.

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I did believe in complete standards based grading. I see it most effectively in special education student IEP's. However, I do think teachers need to balance grade with a bit of compliance. It depends on the level. As an elementary principal I was able to run reports for end of quarter grades to see how much each assignment was weighted on report grades. For example - my irritations was spelling test grades. Often teachers gave so many spelling tests (product grades) it artificially inflated ELA grades.

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No extra credit and eliminating the 0-50 points is a start. Many districts are going back to giving 0's. I followed Rick Wormeli's talks/articles on grades. I often shared with my staff.

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RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Tweet any suggestions to add to this list at @RickWormeli2, or email Rick at rick@rickwormeli.onmicrosoft.com.

For articles authored by Rick and more multimedia, check the links below.

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Note: * indicates a website that requires a sign-in to gain access to the material (no cost necessary).

Assessments & Grading

A teacher attempts implementing re-takes and asks, "What was I getting into? Would I be inundated with work? Would the kids just slack off on the first try at an assignment? Would it even make a difference?" Here's what happened on the blog, The Art and Science of Teaching.

Ken O'Connor, Lee Ann Jung and Douglas Reeves posit that a better grading system would produce grades that are FAST (fair, accurate, specific, timely).

Network website for Assessment FOR Learning, with blogs, forums, videos and hot topic articles on assessment practices. *

Tom Schimmer, one of the great thinkers for leaders and practitioners when it comes to standards or outcomes based assessment and grading, authors this blog.

Shannon Shult-Standards-Based Grading

Douglas Reeves-Effective Grading Practices

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Web series based around his book, Elements of Grading

Highlighting Mistakes-A Grading Strategy ​

​

By Jamalee Stone

Education Leadership

Larry Ferlazzo responds to a question on balancing district mandates and
student needs.

Differentiation

David Cutler interviews Rick Wormeli on doing what's fair in the differentiated classroom, hosting by Spin Education.

Can You Solve This?

Veritasium asks, "How do you investigate hypotheses? Do you seek to confirm your theory - looking for white swans? Or do you try to find black swans? I was startled at how hard it was for people to investigate number sets that didn't follow their hypotheses, even when their method wasn't getting them anywhere."

Getting Started on Differentiated Instruction ​

Carol Tomlinson provides an explanation on getting started with differentiate instruction.

Assessments, Grading and Mastery Learning: Healthy Practices for All Learners

Lee Ann Jung offers this half-hour differentiated assessment and
grading module.

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RECOMMENDED RESOURCES Tweet any suggestions to add to this list at @RickWormeli2, or email Rick at rick@rickwormeli.onmicrosoft.com. For articles authored by Rick and more multimedia, check the links below. ​ ​ ​ ​ Note: * indicates a website that requires a sign-in to gain access to the material (no cost necessary).

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Kelly--- Love the idea of No extra credit. What's the pupose???

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We should consider lowering the % for homework assignments knowing that some of our students may not have parents at home to support them. We should also consider the types of assignments we are grading... notes, parent-signed forms, etc.

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I agree participation should never be included in grades

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This question made me think about teacher observations and evaluations. In my role I have not given student feedback in years. However, I have given teachers feedback. I usually spent hours writing feedback to observations based on Danielson's framework. In reality the same principle applies to teacher feedback. 1. If, I had given the teacher the observation notes ahead of time we may have had dialogue vs me telling. 2. Construction discourse could have created a positive culture, grounded in collaboration and growth. 3. Teachers have great insight and can contribute to their own feedback. It also focuses on growth vs compliance. 4.observations/evaluations are not intended to be compliance (end of year course grade). Instead, it should be a learning opportunity.

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Kelly, I agree so much with the part about teacher discourse and involvement in the post observation conference. I feel like those conversations became so much richer when I started sending the observation before the conference. When the teacher has read my comments we can immediately jump to anything they want to clarify or discuss first (letting you know how they feel about your feedback) before moving to some more thoughtful conversation. When teachers are getting the feedback AS you are talking for the first time they are processing the overall "grade" instead of focusing on the improvement process. Good point.

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In my role I mostly give feedback to teachers these days. Who works harder depends on the teacher for a variety of reasons. Lessons at both ends of the spectrum (really great, really not great) get LOTS of feedback from me. I try to ensure my feedback is factual, includes supporting evidence, includes suggestions or questions for thought, and action items where appropriate. The response of the teacher varies according to their personal motivation to become a better teacher. I have a good sized group of extremely talented teachers that take every piece of advice I give and almost universally get distinguished ratings eventually. I have smaller but not insubstantial group that rarely changes much despite listening respectfully and shaking their heads that they understand. I believe that those who do not change have different philosophical thoughts on teaching and/or are very afraid of giving up control in favor of student collaboration and movement. I think convincing teachers (and students) that it's not a "gotcha" but a chance to learn and improve is critical to making progress.

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Timely and thoughtful feedback (with questioning) are things my teachers tell me the value the most from me. I often get the comment that my feedback is so much more specific than building level (which makes sense given that I have content expertise whereas building administrators may not). Teachers really value having me share which strategy I think might have been more effective and why. They also appreciate me giving them specific examples of HOW to do something (how to build relevance into a lesson on an obscure historical event).

In order to make these conversations as relevant as I need them to be, though, I do have to focus on no more than 2-3 things for "think abouts" or improvements. Any more than that is not reasonable.

I love the idea of creating a pd on moving these same strategies to our students (thanks for the summer pd idea). My grading conversations have thus far focused on gradebooks (no "sea of 100's, etc...) but I haven't really tapped into anything about WHAT kind of feedback to provide. I'm looking forward to that!

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Question:  Many of the examples shared in the article seemed more appropriate for middle and high school classrooms.  What suggestions would you have for our elementary school colleagues?

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Question:  Many of the examples shared in the article seemed more appropriate for middle and high school classrooms.  What suggestions would you have for our elementary school colleagues?

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Question:  How can we leverage the voice of our most under-represented students to help our teachers change their practice? 

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Question:  How can we leverage the voice of our most under-represented students to help our teachers change their practice? 

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Early in my career my district brought in a group of men from Vermont to do pd on what I would now describe as community building and metacognitive practices (I can't remember their names or the title of the pd). They stressed building a real community in which students and teachers value each other (almost like a class family) and the process of asking students to think metacognitively about processes and strategies used to learn. I found this to be amazing and I used bits and pieces of it for the rest of my time in the classroom (and with teachers today). The point is that I think asking people to share and communicate with each other is powerful. I also believe very strongly in the metacognitive reflection process as it helps students sometimes see that they choose an assignment or method that they thought would be easier but it did not facilitate learning. This is a powerful lesson for some of our lower level achievers.

I think we can build these processes right into our classes (as the one teacher did), asking students to not only reflect on what I'm doing as a teacher but also on what they're doing and how effective it is. Win-win situation.

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I think elementary is still very doable, you just have to teach the vocabulary and norms and then scaffold it. For example, you might ask students to reflect on categories (text, notes strategy, hook, assignment, assessment). For each category you could give them choices (like a survey) that indicate whether they understood it/it worked or it didn't. If you go through the process, vocabulary, and categories several times together you should be able to get some basic but reliable feedback from students.