Over at Twitter recently, @mctownsley pointed toward an earlier post at Edumacation about the tension between standards-based assessment and traditional grading.
Assessments, like any kind of data-based research, can be used by many people in many different ways.
One teacher might pump her fist in the air after seeing that 95% of her students passed this year’s reading test. Another might perseverate on the 5% who failed, knowing that those students are the toughest to reach and no one’s reached them yet. Another educator might take issue with the test’s validity and discount the results entirely, instead focusing on whether or not her students’ final portfolios demonstrated mastery of reading and writing for a variety of purposes and audiences.
The same can be said of assessment systems. They, too, can be taken and manipulated in many ways by many people.
Look at traditional grading. Take two English teachers working in the same grade at the same school. Despite sharing a common, 100-point scale, two teachers’ students could earn the same scores but learn dramatically different things depending on the curriculum, assessment, and instruction used in the two classes. Even if those teachers shared a common curriculum, a 90% in one class doesn’t have to mean the same thing in the other class. What if both teachers gave book tests, but on different books? What if both teachers gave book tests on the same book, but one teacher’s questions never broke the knowledge/comprehension ceiling? Or what if both teachers gave the same test and it included analysis items, but only one of the teachers ever modeled or gave practice in answering analysis questions during the reading of the book?
Look at standards-based assessment and reporting (SBAR). Take another two English teachers working together in the same grade at another school school. Ask the same questions; you won’t get very different answers.
I ran a SBAR pilot in my classroom for a year and was then fortunate enough to work with a group of peers willing to try it department-wide for another year. We learned a lot about assessment, grade-book design, and report-card design from struggling with the tension between SBAR and traditional grading.
While I believe standards-based assessment and reporting is better for learning than traditional grading, and while I believe that the two should not be mixed, I don’t worry so much about which system to use anymore. I worry more about people issues. How can you make sure that every student has a teacher who provides opportunities for authentic learning? How can you make sure that every student has a teacher working with colleagues to transform rote content into fuel for life-long learning? How can you make sure that every student has a teacher who cares more that students’ learning demonstrates mastery than that students’ behavior satisfies the teacher?
The SBAR process does a better job of pushing teachers to tackle those questions than traditional grading does. However, there are multiple obstacles in the status quo to implementing an SBAR classroom or school-wide grading system, including grade-books and report-cards which are commonly adopted by a whole school or system and not often up for change. Perhaps the biggest obstacle is our conditioned impulse to equate a 4- or 5-point scale with the 100-point scale used for traditional grading. They do not match up. The should never be cross-walked. They are irreconcilably disparate. Don’t do it. When you tell a student that mastery equals 80%, or that approaching mastery equals 60%, you effectively squelch any intrinsic motivation the student has to move forward in learning by equating formative feedback with summative grades. The 100-point scale and its letter grade equivalents exist to sort children by summative, lag indicators. The 4-point scale exists to promote student learning by articulating the characteristics of different levels of mastery. The 100-point scale suffers from inflation, discrepancy, subjectivity, and the confusion of student behavior with learning. The 4-point scale, while adaptable, concentrates on learning and makes public the teacher’s commitment to providing clear benchmarks for students to reach. There’s not a lot of wiggle room in the 4-point scale to fudge with decimals, to reward extra credit schoolwork less demanding then the learning, or to take points off of mastery for too much talking. Ultimately, it’s better to take the assessment and feedback lessons learned from SBAR and to apply them in practice using a 100-point scale than it is to ever try to crosswalk the two.
It’s a reform-crippling irony that the public thinks number- and letter- grades provide more hard data about student learning than rubrics built on 4- and 5- point scales do. If your school or public is unwilling to publish or accept “grades” based on SBAR and its scales, make traditional grading mean more.
All criticisms of the 100-point scale aside, I still think it can be used to promote learning if teachers work together to make sure that the grades stand for real learning benchmarks, and to make sure that students can always improve their grades by demonstrating higher levels of mastery over time. If teachers working together agree to tier assessments, for example, so that no one gets a B without applying knowledge, and no one gets an A without analyzing or evaluating “new” information with “old” skills, then it becomes likely that both of those teachers will provide some instruction and practice on the kinds of thinking that make work personally meaningful for students. I want teachers to design assessments and instruction that promote student meaning-making, regardless of the grading scale the teachers use.
Ultimately, any scale needs to be used to value, promote, and reward authentic learning. The scale is a construct – it’s a communications technology; it’s not the learning itself. Does your quarterly message to parents and students promote learning? Even if your division requires you to use a scale with which you disagree, you can call home or re-purpose school postage or bandwidth with a newsletter or narrative report that more accurately describes students’ learning in your classroom. You can pilot student-led conferences. You don’t have to stop communicating at your grading scale.
In fact, it’s not this scale or that scale that’s the problem. The problem lies in how we use the scales and how much care we take in making sure that the scales encourage learning and academic risk-taking instead of discouraging them. Our problems with grading are people problems. They come from grading in isolation for too long and from believing for too long that the 100-point scale is enough to unite us and our work. We need to network with one another, as well as with experts in the outside world, to provide personally-meaningful, autnehtic learning and feedback for our students. We need to expand our PLCs into PLNs.
What does a 90% or a 4 mean to you? What do you think it means to your students? How does it move forward their learning? What do you think it means to world? How can you be sure? How authentic are the “grades” in your classroom?
Beware getting caught up in arguments with your peers about how to label learning; unite with your colleagues instead to align assessment, instruction, and feedback to ensure that learning is authentic and happening in the first place. Make your standard authenticity and make sure to share out how it goes.
Comments 7
Chad – You’ve made some great points, re: people count the most. Couldn’t agree more on that note. SBAR create a common conversation piece, in my opinion, to reform our assessment and ultimately teaching practices. A part of your post caught my attention though..”There’s not a lot of wiggle room in the 4-point scale to fudge with decimals, to reward extra credit schoolwork less demanding then the learning, or to take points off of mastery for too much talking.” One reason I am in favor of SBAR is because, when used appropriately, does NOT take into consideration things like talking, participation, and in some systems: late work. This is the value of SBAR! It only reports what students “know.” Advocates for SBAR sometimes create a separate “citizenship” grade to report on things like talking or whatever behavior you feel is less desirable. A downside to traditional grading is that an “B” or 85% might mean so many different things…100% content mastery, but didn’t turn in 15% of the HW OR 80% content mastery and 5% extra “effort.” I’ve even seen classrooms where an 85%/B means that a student is failing (in terms of content mastery) but completed all of the assignments and therefore earned a passing grade! The single letter/grade cannot truly communicate clearly both effort/citizenship and content mastery. In my opinion, this is the major downfall of traditional grading schemes. I do agree with your idea of uniting with colleagues on all things related to assessment, instruction and feedback, however I would argue that SBAR gives a practical starting point for measuring learning and not using single numbers/letters/percentages to capture so many factors (citizenship, mastery, etc.) at once.
Posted 09 Aug 2009 at 2:09 pm ¶I meant it as a good thing, hoping the parallel structure of the paragraph would carry throught that sentiment. Let me go on record as saying that an _advantage_ to SBAR is that it reports on students’ learning, and leaves management and engagement up to your students’ intrinsic motivations and your relationships with the students – which are influenced by the types of learning opportunities you design for them. I’m right there with you.
Posted 09 Aug 2009 at 2:17 pm ¶What I find amazing, Chad, is that my district has been pushing Webb’s Depth of Knowledge as a way to ask higher level questions and develop lessons that incorporate higher level thinking skills, but the assessment methods have not changed.
If we want to push our students to think on a higher level, then we as educators need to push ourselves to do the same. This would require ‘higher level’ assessments such as the kind you describe here.
Thanks for an insightful post on an important topic!
Posted 09 Aug 2009 at 4:09 pm ¶Thanks for the mention. This is exactly the discussion we’ve been having both at Edumacation and within my department and building. As you mention, standards-based grading makes so much more sense from a true assessment and feedback standpoint. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mesh well with our existing A-B-C grade system, which is what parents and the general public know and “understand.”
It is with this in mind that our department even began the discussion. At this point, we are all on the same page and are using a 4-point SB scale which we convert to a 10-point scale for use in the gradebook.
Of course, we continue to look for alternate solutions that are more effective, but for now, this has seemed to work in providing both feedback and something we can put in the gradebook.
Posted 09 Aug 2009 at 5:21 pm ¶This post aligns directly with the message I try to share with schools. Grading is often the last bastion of teacher autonomy and discussions of change frequently elicit heated confrontations and staff divisions. I recently saw a standards-based report card that reported (on a four-point scale) grades for 3-5 standards per subject. The overall subject grade then reflected the average performance on the standards. Below each subject was a section titled “Employability Skills.” This section included grades on work completion, level of engagement, behavior, working in groups, and leadership skills — the kinds of things that too often color the academic grade in traditional grading. Just something to think about . . .
Posted 10 Aug 2009 at 3:44 pm ¶My middle school switched to standards based 2 years ago and it has been a difficult yet rewarding journey. I have chosen to move up with my students to high school this year and am struggling with how I am going to keep my beliefs in a system that gives zeroes and percentages! Any suggestions?
I am presenting at a conference in October regarding middle schools assessment, but would love to add feedback about high school practices as well. Wiki will contain all the details http://www.standardsbasedgrading.wikispaces.com WARNING: I just started it so it is pretty thin right now! Thanks in advance!
Posted 13 Aug 2009 at 2:44 pm ¶I would love to join the discussion on the wiki, Head Monkey. SBAR certainly changes participants’ view of traditional grading. I’ve tried to apply both systems well by doing the essential work of backwards design regardless of the scale used at my schools.
I’ve seen SBAR used in HS history courses that assess students primarily through writing. The teachers use letter grades like a 5-point scale, but don’t mess with percentages. A 5 becomes an A, a 4 becomes a B, etc. I’m not sure how the teachers determine final grades. Let me know by DM or email if you’d like me to find out more.
Posted 13 Aug 2009 at 7:48 pm ¶Post a Comment