April Blog

I had the opportunity to attend a "Differentiated Assessment and Grading" conference this month, and it opened my eyes to the flaws of our current grading system. Too many times grades are based on homework, participation, and formative assessments-when really they should be based on how well the students meet the standards based on authentic summative assessments. If a student can reach the standard without doing the formative assessments or other tasks provided by the teacher, why should he/she have to do those assignments? Or more importantly, why is he/she placed in that class to begin with? We need to be more cognizant of how we are calculating our grades, and what message we are sending our students.

Here are some quotes/information form the conference:
-"Students learn to be their own advocates in a differentiated class, which make sit possible for them to advocate for themselves in a non-differentiated environment."
-"Whoever does the editing does the learning."
-"A 'D' is a coward's 'F'. The student failed, but you didn't have enough guts to tell him."
-If we do not allow students to re-do work, we deny the growth mindset do vital to student maturation, and we are declaring to the student:
*This assignment had no legitimate educational value.
*It's okay if you don't do this work.
*It's okay if you don't learn this content or skill.
-Grades should be based on the 4.0 scale so the "F" doesn't hold so much weight (i.e. F ranges from 0-59 and other grades are only within a 10 point range)
-All students should understand the standards and be able to explain why or why not they have attained proficiency.

With this in mind, I and others who attended this conference, are proposing we move our grading scale from teacher discretion to 90% summative assessment and 10% other. This will be a difficult transition for teachers and students, but it is a step towards standards-based grading, which is what we all need to be practicing in our classrooms.