The G word. Something that for many teachers, especially those practicing or considering the practice of differentiated instruction, is becoming increasingly exasperating. Grading. There, I said it.
Now, there are a lot of reasons why bringing up grading with teachers might be synonymous with cursing. It can feel like a never-ending process. It can take up lots of time. True, and true. But today I want to focus on what, for me -- especially in light of my recent obsession with differentiated instruction [DI] -- is most frustrating about the traditional practice of grading.
As I read book after book and article after article on DI, I grow more and more in love with the philosophy behind it. But this little voice in the back of my head will insist on asking questions, like "I get how teachers can teach in a DI classroom, but how can they grade in one?" I am not alone in this concern. I've had several conversations with several teachers during which they express the same concern.
Luckily for me, I just finished reading Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design by Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe. And when I reached chapter 8, "Grading and Reporting Achievement," I became a very excited reader. What follows is what I gleaned from the chapter, my reactions to this, and some questions I think all educators need to consider if DI is truly going to function fully as a means of providing the best education to all students.
Here's the overall problem: traditional grading and reporting practices as we have known them for decades do not mesh well with the philosophy and practice of DI. Why not? Because traditional grading practices require teachers to keep a rank book (paper or digital) in which the perception is that teachers will record a significant number of grades for the given term. I know many teachers who fret over not having enough grades in their rank book, so, trust me, the quantitative aspect of it is something teachers focus on. Sometimes the more grades one has recorded for a term in one's rank book, the more armed they feel should they ever have to defend a particular student's grade. Now, I get all that. I've lived all that as a teacher. But in embracing DI, I've had to face the ugly reality that this doesn't make sense. Why not? The biggest factor rests in the practice of beginning to assign grades to students at the very beginning of a marking quarter and continuing throughout the quarter to add more and more grades. The issue here is that, at the end of the quarter, the teacher then averages all these grades together, culminating in one final term grade. Here's the rub: Should a student's assessments from early in a term really impact his or her final grade for that term? What if they didn't understand the material during the third week of the term (thus doing poorly on assessments) but made great strides, and had come close to mastering the material by the term's end? Perhaps this student's understanding of the material during the last week of the term looks like a B+, but, when averaged in with those early assessments, the grade for the term becomes a D+. Isn't there something wrong with this? Shouldn't a student's grade be indicative of performance on summative assessments only, summative assessments which are designed to assess what the student has finally learned by a unit's end (versus the formative assessments given prior that really should only be used to inform further instruction and goal-setting)? As Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) suggest, ". . . the student should not be penalized for failure to demonstrate mastery in the second or fourth weeks. . . . In other words, what a student learns should be more important than when he or she learns it" (p. 132).
I did begin this post with a disclaimer, stating that I personally have no solid solutions to these problems as of yet. I recognize that changing how quarter grades are determined and how they are reported (which is currently on a report card for most districts) would be a huge undertaking for any school or district. But, Tomlinson and McTighe, as well as grading expert Ken O'Connor, have made suggestions that I think are well worth considering.
O'Connor (as cited in Tomlinson & McTighe, 2006, p. 132) "suggests that grades should be 'determined' from various sources of evidence, rather than 'calculated' in a purely quantitative manner." He goes on to suggest that, should averaging be required by the district, teachers should use "the median or mode -- not the mean -- as the basis for arriving at a grade."
Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) present a total alternative to the report card as most of us know it. They recommend that schools and districts switch to using "reporting systems that support standards and differentiation" (p. 135). Rather than using a single grade to try and report "all that we need to say about a student's learning," they propose "that at least two, and preferably three, separate factors be reported: (1) grades for achievement of goals, (2) progress towards goals, and (3) work habits." When I read this, I almost fell out of my seat. This notion is so thrilling to me. I can't think of a better way to communicate a student's individual achievement and progress, not to mention placing value on work ethic. So, what do you think? I'll leave you with the questions Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) share at the beginning of this inspiring (to me, at any rate!) chapter:
How will we know that we are providing high-quality feedback to parents and students?
How might we ensure that the information we transmit in the grading and reporting process is useful in supporting the learning process?
How should we grade and report in ways that encourage learner success?
Important questions! I'd love to hear what you think, readers.
How to assign grades that provide useful feedback, support the learning process, and encourage learner success? That's quite a challenge! Just asking the question—actually you divided it into three questions—is surely a step in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, I'm developing a rubric to use in evaluating the blogging that students will be doing for the term and all year long. Perhaps that would be a small place to start. As the research you have shared suggests, grading each individual entry equally would not be as useful or encouraging to them as grading the success they achieve from start to finish. I could include in the rubric an evaluation of their work ethic—completion of all blog assignments—as well as an evaluation of how well they achieve specific goals. If their blog entries become progressively better, then, of course, it would make sense to grade them on the final blog entry rather than all of them from the beginning.
Perhaps we could work together to develop a rubric that, in some small way, begins to answer the questions you have posed.
I'd love to work together on a rubric like that with you. We could also build in a way for students to self-reflect and self-evaluate....
ReplyDelete