Grading for Mastery in a Progressive Classroom

As I've written before, grading has always been a weak point for me. Partly because it's tedious, but more likely because my own methods have never fully made sense to me.  And if they don't make sense to me, they can't make much sense to my students. 

This summer I did some reading on the topic, including Rick Wormeli's Fair Isn't Always Equal: Assessment and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom. I'm now pretty convinced that grading needs to be based on mastery of academic standards and classroom objectives (even if some of these are not reflected in actual state standards), and not much else.  

However, as I get closer to designing a clear, standards-based assessment and grading structure for my classroom, some philosophical questions arise for me.

The major benefit of standards-based grading that includes multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate proficiency and growth is that students get a clear picture of what their strengths are and what they need to work on.  This can help them gain agency in their own development of these skills and understandings, which is a goal of any progressive educator.  

In progressive classrooms, teachers design experiences for students.  The idea is that through experience, students construct knowledge and build skills.  One question that sometimes concerns me is, are students always aware of what they are learning?  At what point is it necessary for them to become aware? 

Sometimes teachers design such compelling learning experiences that students are able to forget they are doing a "school" activity.  They derive genuine pleasure from the curiosity and intellectual engagement of the experience.  This is what we want and, in my experience both as a teacher and student, leads to the highest levels of understanding.  But it's not ALL we want.  It's a necessary step in the learning process called exploration.  

What happens after exploration?  In a well-run classroom, reflection and analysis and term introduction--and often multiple rounds of the whole process--lead students to develop conceptual understanding of the topic.  They have also built relevant skills along the way.  

At what point in the constructivist process does it make sense to assess students on what they've learned?  When is it fair and useful to grade the students on said learning?  

Since individual students may differ in what they take from a given activity, at some point it seems only fair to let students in on what the learning objectives are and what they'll be graded on.  That way students and teachers can be full partners on the road to proficiency and understanding, right? 

The place where I get philosophically tied up is around who is calling the shots on what needs to be learned and when.  Do students get a say in this?  Is the trajectory basically the same for all students with slight variation, or are there fundamental differences in what each child should learn and when?

In my last post, I describe a student who has been home-schooled and has had almost total agency over his own learning for years. Guess what? At age 14--the same age that some 50% of our country's youth begin to think of dropping out of high school--he chose to enroll in junior college, where he selected his courses.  He selected some classes based on interest (architecture) and other classes based on his own perception of what his weaknesses are (writing).  Seems like he came around to those objectives without anybody else setting the bar for him at any point.  And my guess is that he'll go as far as he needs to with his education.

In the end, as a public school teacher with 65 students for one year only, I will have to compromise in the name of efficiency.  I will not cut out the exploration stage of the the learning process, because without it, I don't believe real learning takes place.  But after students reflect upon and analyze the introductory experience, it is far more efficient for students to go into a second experience knowing what they should pay closer attention to and learn.  In many cases, individual students or the whole class together can identify what point or skill they will focus on in a subsequent activity.   

Thinking hard, as I create standards-based rubrics and tracking grids that anticipate all of the learning my students will do this year... I would love to hear your thoughts.

[image found at dvice.com]

  

Comments

[Sam]

"At what point in the constructivist process does it make sense to assess students on what they've learned? When is it fair and useful to grade the students on said learning?"

This isn't a complete answer, but one approach is to distinguish between formative and summative assessments. It's like, if you're learning to drive, I'm not going to grade you the same way after your first lesson as I would after your driver's test. I found some of this info very helpful:

http://www.nmsa.org/Publications/WebExclusive/Assessment/tabid/1120/Default.aspx

Sam

[Matt Townsley]

"At what point in the constructivist process does it make sense to assess students on what they've learned? When is it fair and useful to grade the students on said learning?" That's a great question! In a "traditional" grading system, these decisions are usually made by the teacher: "The Chapter 3 Test will be on Wednesday. Please study your notes this week in preparation for the exam." Students who are at the desired level of understanding on Wednesday earn a good "grade" while others do not. Based on reading some of your writing, Ariel, I'm speculating that you may share a concern with me that students who come to an acceptable level of understanding the following days or weeks after the test should earn the same "grade," too. Here lies the problem, right?! I've been writing my thoughts on SBAR for a while now. Perhaps a few posts will be of interest to you: http://bit.ly/Ry5XO & http://bit.ly/dmL4x The answer to your question may be found in ongoing formative and summative assessments. Does this make sense?

[Ariel Sacks]

Sam, I think you're right that the distinction between formative and summative assessments is really important, and the clearer I can be about it, the better. Matt, thank you for sharing your blog with me. The posts were great, and I found your policies about students who come to understanding later than the scheduled summative assessment to be right on. They have to put in the extra time and effort, but if they do, then they can retake the assessment and get a new grade.

I am still struggling with the idea that when the teacher always controls the objectives--the vision of the end product--we take part of the learning out of students' hands. There sort of a bait and switch that happens. First, I engage students in an experience. I am very interested in any of their observations and reflections, questions. There is a lot of room for curiosity there. Then, I narrow the focus toward the objective I have for their learning. It's not bad, but where's the spontaneity when all objectives and assessments have been predetermined?

[Taylor Ross]

Although we're in different grade levels (and therefore different worlds in a sense), I struggle with the same questions - especially this year, as I'm much more commited to a constructivist math approach. In fact, I haven't even been able to record a grade in my gradebook yet because in my over-excitable brain, ALL of my kids are showing such valuable growth and understanding. Granted they are in first grade, but I often wonder what's wrong with giving them ALL good grades if it truly reflects their thinking and learning? Thanks for your thoughts -- I always learn a lot.

[JasonP / InnerEd]

It is a nasty little dilemma isn't it?

I've aided myself partly from setting up my gradebook like Bloom's Taxonomy ( a 80% weight to the first three levels, another set 12% to the next two, and a final 8% to the top). This lets me grade by mental processes, not assignments or fixed standards. But while the weights are different, My assignments are 50/40/10 from bottom of Bloom's to the top. Some assignments with multiple processes get multiple grades. It gives the kids some ease about trying challenging material (which is weighted much less then the state standards-levels 1-3 stuff).

Your thought processes, though, remind me of a teacher-friend that I have. His gradebook is standards-based and every assignment fits under a standard. His major point: nearly all his assignments are formative (and weighted zero %) until his quarter-end assessments, which are worth most of the course. This lets all practice be experimental and exploratory; he just makes sure that he gets the content for his assessments in his curriculum.

I do like your thought processes about allowing students to determine objectives. It is so antithetical to the current trends "objectives are state-fed." What's wrong with letting students work on their strengths and weaknesses? I'm betting that if you let them come up with an objective; they would pick something close to a standard, anyway (if your standards in New York are as broad and sweeping as the ones here in Tennessee are). Would this not be differentiating instruction?

I'll say that it is fair and useful to grade students on their learning when we need to see what they have learned. It should be a check-up. It's a weakness of mine, too (I have 120 students--whose essays I should be reading right now).

If you're interested in one standards-based grading compromise my last school did, I blogged about it here: http://innered.edublogs.org/2009/07/20/what-makes-a-grade/

Love the blog (I'm subscribing!)!

[Ariel Sacks]

Thank you for the comments! I see I am not alone in my quest for a better (perfect?) grading system. Taylor, I don't think there's anything wrong with all students getting high grades if they showed the understanding of the things you were teaching, and provided that your classroom objectives are reasonably in sync with your state's standards. In fact, it's a great sign! The more I think about it, I have a hard time with the idea of kids failing in the 1st grade anyway, although I'm not a first grade teacher, so maybe that feeling is pie in the sky...

Jason, I am intrigued by your Bloom's taxonomy grading rubric. I'd love to see how it looks. Let me know if you post it on your blog. Your example of your friend who weights everything zero until the end...I like it because then students are basically working off intrinsic motivation for most of the time--the motivation to learn the stuff, and to be able to demonstrate what they've learned later. I am still a little torn between my students' apparent need to have each little piece be graded and counted in order to fee that it is important. On the other hand, I think the feedback is more important to them than the actual grade. It sounds like your friend does give feedback throughout, he just weights the formative assessments zero. Are kids aware of how this works?

[bill01370]

My school stopped using letter grades this year, going to a standards-based mastery approach. I let my students just sort of relax into learning for the first couple of weeks of class, focusing entirely on routines, how independent work is set up, etc. My students have a fair amount of voice, I think (I hope!). They each set their own vocabulary lists, they self-evaluate their Readers' Response Journal blogs (for their independent reading) based on a checklist they devised, and they will be setting weekly goals for independent writing and self-evaluating on how they met those goals. For units, they design six of the nine that we do (this was the balance suggested by previous classes), and may each choose an individual focus within that unit as well as a format for their final presentation of knowledge (e.g. compare-contrast essay, research paper, persuasive speech). This means each student is charting a pretty individualized path even as we do come together daily for read-alouds, reading discussions, daily grammar work, and other activities.