What should a grade book reflect? Far too often the answer
to that question is "how well a student is doing." How well
they are doing at what though? Learning or compliance? Traditional grading can leave students
unclear of what they are supposed to be learning as things such as behavior, effort,
extra credit, and other trivial points accrued cloud their grade, while teacher
expectations vary vastly from classroom to classroom.
The best answer here is that grade books
should accurately reflect and communicate what a student knows and
demonstrates. The math and science classrooms at Valley Southwoods quickly
jumped on board with standards based grading for that very reason. Josef Sigrist explained that standards based
grades give grades meaning and allows students and parents to focus on specific
skills that need to be addressed, while allowing teachers to easily adjust
instruction to meet the needs of each student.
This means less clutter in the grade book,
as students should only be receiving one score per learning goal that shows
where the student is at with that standard at that point in time. So how
does homework fit in? Rys Pate said that
homework is essential in terms of making connections between the standard,
learning objectives, and the assessment. Homework is also crucial for
providing descriptive feedback and should influence instruction. However,
it shouldn't be heavily graded and ideally it should not be entered into the
grade book at all, but rather seen as practice.
This philosophy has not led to further late and incomplete assignments
by students, but rather toward a focus and desire for learning and doing well
on assessments.
Standards based grading also means you
have to be open to redos, which Abby Cunningham said leads to some common misconceptions
of a lack of accountability, responsibility, and work ethic. Each
standard and learning target isn't a high stakes assessment where a student
gets it or they don't, but rather a process towards true mastery. Zeros
and other low scores just convey the message that the learning target was not important. Abby and the rest of the department have a
strict set of procedures for students to utilize and improve their performance. Erin O’Connell is convinced this process teaches
the students a growth mindset and instills continuous improvement as a way of
life.
John Upah and Adam Kent in the science
department believe standards based grading makes parent/teacher conferences and
other communication very easy. The standards
based gradebook is very transparent in communicating what a student does well and
what specific skills they need to improve.
John and Adam are confident that the grades on student transcripts are much
more accurate and put the sole responsibility of that grade on the student.
