Assessment In the Pocket?

Perhaps the most difficult piece of teaching for me has been grading.   Every teacher I know has his or her own method.  These are often influenced by school-wide grading policies, tempered by each teacher’s priorities and garnished with tricks that ensure a reasonable pass (and fail) rate.  For example, in the middle school where I taught for my first three years, teachers were encouraged to use this simple grading schema: 20% homework, 20% class notes, 20% class participation, 20% projects, and 20% tests and quizzes.  (So here's a trick: when a student did NO homework, you had the option to give a 0% or a 55% for that category, depending in part on whether you thought the student should still have a chance at passing.)

I adopted my school’s policy.  It seemed reasonable to me, and--straight out of Bank Street College--I had no feasible alternative ideas about grading.  I had been trained to look closely at student work and tailor instruction to student needs; I had also learned to write rubrics based on goals for individual assignments.  But when it came to assigning grades at the end of a quarter, I was at a loss.  Teachers at Bank Street’s own School For Children wrote lengthy narrative evaluations twice a year, but gave no letter or number grades.  And then there was Alfie Kohn’s book, Punished By Reward, which posits that grades and other external motivators, used mostly to reward good work and punish bad work, serve to alienate students from the real satisfaction and benefits of learning, thereby diminishing their intrinsic motivation to engage in the learning process. 

Today, testing has been thrust into the position of Single Most Important Measure of Student Learning in the life of a school, and I’m wondering, what kind of assessment would I put in its place?  Would I prefer to rely instead on my own classroom grading system?  If not, what is its purpose?  And what am I really grading?

Recipe formulas for calculating grades tend to turn out numbers that represent a mishmash of student effort (as perceived by teacher), task completion (which may not require effort for all students), knowledge acquired, and skill development (both evidenced in student work). 

Lately I’m struggling with the creeping notion that the net result of this mishmash is a totally inadequate measure of student learning.  In effort to grade almost every aspect of a student’s involvement in my class, in the end I’ve graded nothing in particular!  I am fairly confident that if a student gets an A in my class, he or she has demonstrated mastery and growth in all areas of our studies that quarter.  And if a student fails, he or she most likely didn’t do any substantive work, and therefore didn’t grow substantially in any of the areas we studied.  Anything in between A and F, however, is anyone’s guess.   

At the same time, ask me to talk to you about any of my students’ skills, knowledge, and growth this year in any area of English Language Arts class (including being a member of a learning community), and I can tell you a lot. I can also use evidence to support what I say.  I need to find a way to organize my grading practices around the key elements of student learning that occur in my class, in different ways and at different rates for each student. 

In my quest toward this goal, I was inspired by a suggestion made by Barnett Berry in "Five Big Stories About the Future of Teaching," a podcast featured on the TLN homepage.  He talks about students using handheld portable computer devices to store important evidence of their learning.  These would be carried from class to class by each student and accessible to all members of a teaching team.  The evidence could be organized into categories based on the content and standards of each class.  Students could photograph pieces of work that demonstrate development toward mastering a particular standard.  Berry maintains that this would help students take charge of their own learning.  It would also provide a much fuller, less paper-heavy picture of a student's academic process for teachers, parents, and other interested parties. 

By itself, this does not answer the larger questions about grading practices; but sometimes a powerful organizational tool can help to clear a lot of the brush away, revealing a more manageable problem and a visible path toward solving it. 

[images found at http://www.omaksd.wednet.edu/rmccormi/teacher%20website/Grading%20Scale.gif
and http://foodthought.org/uploaded_images/ben's-recipe-766269.jpg]

Comments

[Bob Heiny]

A thoughtful post, Ariel, about an important process. You've shared insights in a way many of us recognize, since we too have thought in similar ways. I'm curious, what question does your grading address, overall classroom performance, academic subject behavior changes, or test results? What part do you see that question having on grading practices?

[Emmet Rosenfeld]

I wish I had the courage to go gradeless. The best I've been able to do is "de-emphasize" by marking things with plus/check/minus, which roughly translates to high/middle/low or sometimes 10/8/6 or at other times A/B/C... mishmash is the right word. I'm convinced now that my ability to sort my students has gotten sharp but like you, I often wonder what "the grade" means after it's all said and done, particularly as a conglomeration of so many different tasks.

[Ariel Sacks]

Bob, Thanks for your comment. I think that my grading right now addresses some version of "overall classroom performance." I'm concerned that it doesn't correlate in a clear or meaningful way to learning--it's muddied by too many other factors. What I want to move towards is a grade that is some well-thought out combination of looking at a students' GROWTH over time in attaining mastery of standards, as well as an actual measure of where they are against the fixed standard. Both would relate to standardized test scores--schools are rewarded in NY for moving students forward in a year and for the number of students who perform at proficiency level. Maybe one number or final grade will never be sufficient.

[Ariel Sacks]

Emmet, your comment makes me wonder what would happen if I went "gradeless". I have often wished I could--sometimes for the selfish reason that I often don't enjoy grading, other times because my purpose and method is unclear... But I don't know if I've ever really considered what it would be like. Sometimes grades feel like they are a helpful tool in "keeping kids on track," but have often thought that the process in my classroom is strong enough that kids would be invested even without grades.. and.maybe, if Kohn is right, they'd be MORE invested. If that turned out to be true, would there still be any reason left to grade?

[Marsha Ratzel]

One of the things I've tried this year is to base grades on summative assessments...a wide range of ways of measuring what they know. I've started viewing homework as simply practice and while I "grade" it for accuracy and to guage how well they are understanding things...I don't record the grade in my records. I probably wouldn't even "grade" it except for parent expectations that the grade is vitally important.

I've felt much liberated with far, far fewer papers to officially grade. I've been able to re-direct some of that effort into finding assessment measures that match the curriculum standard, so that now we measure growth with many things beyond a paper/pencil test.

I've so much to learn and appreciate your post on this topic. Thanks Ariel for thinking outloud and helping others to think about what we do. To consider what impact these decisions have on students is most critical.

[Renee Moore]

Ariel,
If Kohn is right, the only reason left to grade (and the only reason some of us still do it) would be: because the policy says so. Actually, there would be at least one other compelling reason--those who have tried to go to narratives or some other forms of reporting student progress have found parents have had a terrible time making the transition. Not surprising considering how bad parent/school communication is in some areas. Also, at the high school level, some schools found their students were put at an extreme disadvantage when trying to enter colleges that could not (or would not) interpret anything other than grades or gpa's (although that may be changing, too.) Overall, I think it's worth the fight to broaden our view of how to measure and report on student progress.

[Bob Heiny]

Yes, I agree, Ariel, that one number only indexes more specific results. I found that students know (from sibs and gossip) what grade they will likely receive when they turn in assignments. So, I told them when giving each assignment what the standards were for best grade (A), next best (B), etc. Fifth graders caught on promptly and made the system work in ways consistent with conventional classroom teacher assessments and more standardized measures. Students also posted daily grades for each subject in their own log. Parents said they liked the system, because they could see daily progress for their children. Results: poorest students (ones with language, academic and behavior problems assigned to my classes) performed about as the best students, above the mean on standardized assessments. I'm interested to know if you have tried similar practices and how they worked for your students.

[Ariel Sacks]

Renee, I also think it's worth the fight, especially when high stakes testing is being given so much play right now--now it's not only grades students need to worry about, but test scores too. We are so far from a system that feeds students' intrinsic motivation to learn.

[Ariel Sacks]

Bob, that sounds like a great system, I'll be thinking about trying it out in some form next year! At times I have had students--as a whole class--create a rubric for something we've been working on and then grade themselves against it. I've liked this practice a lot, because it asks the students to decide what makes a quality piece.

[Ginny P]

I would prefer the U.S. follow Canada's lead and use percentages instead of letters. AND place higher expectations on everyone, resulting in a wide range of "A" equivalent grades (80-100) but someone who achieves in the 90s truly is applying and using what has been learned in new ways, what an "A" always stood for, in my book.