The past 12 weeks we have been focusing on
Ken O'Connor's 15 Fixes for Broken Grades. I highly suggest reading through the whole book, it will change the way you approach grading in your classroom. It's a very quick read, and well worth the time!
Fixes 1-6: Fixes for practices that distort achievement
Fixes 7-10: Fixes for low-quality or poorly organized evidence
Fixes 11-12: Fixes for Inappropriate Grade Calculation
- Don't include student behaviors in grades; include only achievement.
- Don't reduce marks on "work" submitted late; provide support for the learner.
- Don't give points for extra credit or use bonus points; seek only evidence that more work has resulted in a higher level of achievement.
- Don't punish academic dishonesty with reduced grades; apply other consequences and reassess to determine actual level of achievement.
- Don't consider attendance in grade determination; report absences separately.
- Don't include group scores in grades; use only individual achievement evidence.
- Don't organize information in grading records by assessment methods or simply summarize into a single grade; organize and report evidence by standards/learning goal.
- Don't assign grades using inappropriate or unclear performance standards; provide clear descriptions of achievement expectations.
- Don't assign grades based on student's achievement compared to other students; compare each student's performance to preset standards.
- Don't rely on evidence gathered using assessments that fail to meet standards of quality; rely only on quality assessments.
- Don't rely only on the mean; consider other measures of central tendency and use professional judgment.
- Don't include zeros in grade determination when evidence is missing or as punishment; use alternatives, such as reassessing to determine real achievement, or use "I" for incomplete or insufficient evidence.
The last 3 fixes are fixes to support learning.
Fix 13: Don't use information from formative assessments and practice to determine grades; use only summative evidence.
Formative assessments are assessments for learning. They are used to gather information about what to do next in the classroom. FA's primary purpose is to see if and who needs reteaching. It is not punitive or rewarding for the student, so why would you use them for points? Formative assessments should never be used to determine grades. Once a teacher does an assessment
of learning (summative) those can be counted towards a grade. As mentioned in previous weeks though, in a standards-based reporting system, this is a non-issue. You either exceed, meet, partially meet, or do not meet the standard.
Also a part of this issue is the debate as to what should truly be graded. There are some teachers that grade everything and there are some teachers that grade very little. So what is the magic formula? The answer lies in your philosophy of teaching and learning. The one piece of advice that has swayed my thinking, and I do not recall who it came from,, "learning is a process and we make mistakes through this process".
This makes me think about what am I grading, the learning, or what has been learned? Why are we punishing kids for making mistakes along the way to learning something? Grades do not need to be punitive or rewarding. They should reflect what students know and are able to do.
