Michelle Tinant - About



The Transformation to a Standards-Based SystemMichelle TinantConcordia UniversityEDUC 534Empowering Teachers as LeadersDr. Shavonna HolmanSpring 2013AbstractGrading practices have been around for over a hundred years, but the subjective error of the traditional 100-point system has proven to be vastly ineffective on showing students knowledge of a subject. I am helping lead our school to change our current grading system to one that is more accurate, fair, specific, and timely. My school is in the tremendous endeavor of changing to a standards-based grading system. In following the advice and knowledge from the leading experts in this research proven change, we are optimistic that not only will this change “how” our grading is done but will provide the necessary communication to students, parents, and teachers on mastery levels of all subject areas.The Transformation to a Standards-Based System The leadership project that I am assisting in is a group of professionals that are examining our grading practices in our elementary school. This continues to be an exciting work in progress. We have been examining several different texts by Douglas Reeves, Robert J. Marzano, Thomas R. Guskey and Ken O’Connor. Currently our group has about seven professionals from our building that are participating in evaluating our current grading practices. We all share the common interest in knowing that there has to be a better way for students to show what they have learned from one grading period to the next. From the majority of the research that we all have done and shared in our group we have set a goal to move toward standards-based grading in our classrooms, and ultimately a standards-based report card for our building. The process has been very timely and often overwhelming on how to start this process. There are many steps that have to be acknowledged and procedures have to be established to put this a more effective grading system into place. The knowledge and confidence that I have gained throughout this class has helped me be an important component of this process. It is one that is both exciting and frightening to me at the same time. RationaleThe initial need for our grading system came from several teachers that approached the principal about our current grading procedures. We already use what we believed to be best practices for our grading. In our final grades we do not count attendance, effort, neatness, late assignments, or behaviors, into their subject area grades. These areas are addressed in a separate portion of the report card. Ken O’Connor states, “ Effort, participation, attitude, and other behaviors shall not be included in grades.” (2009, p. 50) In the eleven years that I have worked in this district this has been the accepted norm. We currently use the 100-point based system where grades from assignments, quizzes, projects, and tests are all averaged together at the end of the quarter for the student’s final grade average. There are so many problems with this. When you really think about the 100-point scale there are 31 points in which you can pass and 69 points in which you can fail. That is preposterous to me! Guskey states, “Grades are not inherently bad. It is their misuse and misinterpretation that is bad.” (1993). “Grading is only form of feedback, but it is the form that gets the most attention.” (Guskey, Bailey, 2011). What about that grade or percentage really tells us about what the student has learned? Grades give so little evidence of what the students really know and don’t know. I had a student several years ago that was a delightful young lady. She was always pleasant in class, attentive, put forth her best effort daily, worked cooperatively with others, was punctual with handing in assignments, but had a very difficult time with math and the understanding behind it. She was very good at “playing” school so she received usually a B or and A on each quarters final grades. In all actuality she probably was really a D student but was able to get help from a paraprofessional, her parents, or myself on her daily assignments so she did very well on that aspect. When her parents conferenced with me at school they thought their daughter was doing really good in math, but I had to explain that she truly lacked proficiencies in some areas of math and needed to continue to practice on those skills. Was this reflected in the single grade shown for that student? Just as Marzano stated, “Grades are so imprecise that they are almost meaningless.” (2000). Contrary to that I had another student in her same grade. She had very much the same characteristics but this student did all her work independently. She often had grades in the high B’s which concerned her parents very much. They had always thought of their child as an A student. Through conversations at Parent Teacher Conference I reassured them that she did understand all the mathematical concepts and by correcting her mistakes she learned from them and was usually very successful on the summative chapter tests. So simply seeing that grade of B, these parents assumed that their child was not understanding, when that is quite contrary to what was happening. If I had not had conversations (feedback) with these parents both of their assumptions would have been entirely incorrect. These are just a few scenarios of many that have prompted my strong desire to have a change in my classroom and our schools’ grading practices. As my students continue on to the next grade (our school does not hold students back even if they haven’t mastered the concepts of that grade) I found myself needing to have detailed discussions with these students’ next year teachers about all their strengths and weaknesses. By looking at their quarter or semester grades you wouldn’t ever know what those areas of concern might be for the student. “Communicating student achievement is the primary purpose of grades.” (O’Connor, 2002) Just as Guskey and Bailey stated, “A lot of current practice in grading and reporting is shamefully inadequate.” (2001)When discussing grading with my fellow teachers we all were grading differently and all with frustration. “Even in schools where established policies offer guidelines for grading, significant variation remains in individual teachers’ grading practices.” (Guskey, Swan, Jung, 2011). This is where the suggestion of changing our current grading system to that of a standards-based grading system.My research has been based around the principles and ideas from Douglas Reeves, Robert J. Marzano, Thomas R. Guskey and Ken O’Connor. All the data and information that I have been gathering have inspired me to already make small changes in my own classroom with the long term goal of eventually changing how we communicate students grades to them and their parents. “Schools can implement more effective ways of communicating student learning with little additional work by teachers; parents and community members can be strong supporters of such reforms.” (Guskey, 2006, 2009). This quote was so powerful in the fact of the little additional work. I have wanted to make changes for years but felt like it was such an overwhelming and time consuming task that it was almost impossible to change how I grade. “Many grading reforms are stopped in their tracks, because teachers assume that any policy that encourages students to do more work and better work, will as a consequence, require more time and work from the teacher.” (Reeves 2011) The research proves that the standards-based grading system is actually less time consuming which gives me more time to teach and re-teach, which in turn increases student learning. I am optimistic that changing to this system will make my students more responsible and accountable for their learning. The goal with this grading system is to make them better thinkers instead of just “doers.” “Standards-based approaches to grading require teachers to base grades one explicit criteria derived from the articulated learning standards. To assign grades, teachers must analyze the meaning of each standard and decide what evidence best reflects achievement of that specific standard. Second, to compel teachers to distinguish product, process, and progress criteria in assigning grades” (Guskey, 2006, 2009, p53).ImplementationOne very important part of this model is going through the process of how your own school or district wants to change their grading practices. Simply adopting or copying what another district’s report card looks like really defeats the purpose of “how” to change your grading practices. If you simply adopt what another school has done you are just cosmetically changing what your report card looks like, but not the principles behind it if you don’t go through the whole process of changing to a standards-based system. The first thing a school needs to decide is what is their purpose for grading? This took several discussions, referring to expert’s research, and more discussion to determine what we felt our purpose was. We recently just made the vocabulary change between grading and scoring. We defined scoring as correcting and /or providing feedback on an assignment. Grading was given the definition of the combining of information for summative purposes. So in other words students will receive scores on their assignments, formative assessments, and projects. A combination of these with their summative assessments will determine their grade for that subject area. The purpose established is that grades will communicate to students, parents, and future teachers what a students’ mastery level is at each of the provided subject strands.This is still a work in progress so the following parts are the details that still have yet to be completed this summer. The consensus was that writing would be the first subject to appear on our standards-based report card beginning in the 2013/2014 academic years. The remaining subjects will still show percentages at that time. Math will be implemented next after the specific standard strands are decided. Following that will be science, social studies, and language arts. There are many more questions and areas that still need to be addressed for the implementation process. One very useful resource that I found that I hope to guide my fellow teachers is a webinar by Thomas R. Guskey. It is entitled, Do It Right! A Step-by-step plan for implementing an effective standards-based grading system in your school or district. Guskey’s model provides 15 questions for a school or district to go through and answer when beginning the process of implementing a standards-base grading system. The following questions are the steps that we are currently working on to change to a standards-based system that are based off of Guskey’s webinar. (2013)1. Will a specific report card be developed for each grade level, or will a more general report card be used across several grade levels?2. How many standards will be include for each subject area or course?3. What specific standards will be reported at each grade level or in each course?4. Will standards be set for the grade level or each marking period?5. What product, process, and progress standards should be reported?6. How many levels of performance will be reported for each standard?7. How will the levels be labeled?8. Will teachers’ comments be included?9. How will the information be arranged on the report card?10. What are parents expected to do with this information? How do we want parent to respond?11. What are students expected to do with this information?12. What policies need to accompany the new reporting procedures?13. When should input of parents and/or students be sought?It is evident that our weekly meetings have been valuable, but we have a momentous task of items to discuss and work on this summer.The implementation of a standards-based reporting system is going to present some challenges I am sure to not only the students and parents, but other teachers in our school who have not been part of this process. The students will adjust easily, but other teachers and parents will be the ones that will take more time to convince and to adjust to a different way of thinking. “Challenging these traditions will not be easy. They’ve been a part of our education experience for so long that they usually go unquestioned, despite the fact that they are ineffective and potentially harmful to students.” (Guskey, Swan & Jung, 2011) “Education leaders who challenge these traditions must be armed with thoughtful, research-based alternatives. You can’t go forward with only passionately argued opinions. To succeed in tearing down old traditions, you must have new traditions to take their place.” (Guskey, Swan & Jung, 2011) Reeves states, “You do not persuade merely with research, evidence, and logic. The evidence for improved grading systems has been around for almost a century. Rather then mere logic and facts, we need a thoughtful process for implementing policy changes. (2011, p103) AssessmentThe design of the standards-based report card will be evaluated by both a parent and teacher survey. This is one of our main communication devices to parents, so we want it to be as user friendly to them as possible. The report card should be an adequate tool for parents to receive feedback on their child’s learning, not a confusing document that leaves them with unanswered questions. After gaining some knowledge from the parent/teacher survey (formative assessment) we know that revisions to our standards-based report card will have to be done. I expect that revisions will have to be made several times before we have a final adequate reporting device. This process will probably take about two to three years before we have a completed final document. The ultimate measure of success of this process is when the standards-based grading and reporting system is in place, providing effective feedback to students, parents, and future teachers.“Effective educational change is often the result of visionary leadership that, against all odds and significant resistance, elevates essential values over popularity.” (Reeves, p107)ReferencesGuskey, Thomas R., Swan, Gerry M., & Jung, Lee Ann (2011). Grades That Mean Something: Kentucky Develops Standards-Based Report Cards. Phi Delta Kappan, 93(2), 52-57.Guskey, Thomas R. (2013). Do IT Right! A Step-by-step plan for implementing an effective standards-based grading system in your school or district. [webinar]. Educational Research Newsletter & Webinars. Retrieved from Marzano, Robert J. (2010). Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.O’Connor, Ken, & Stiggins, Rick (2002). How To Grade For Learning, Linking Grades to Standards (2nd ed.). Glenview, IL: LessonLab.Reeves, Douglas (2011). Elements of Grading; A Guide to Effective Practice. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.Scriffiny, Patricia L. (2008). Seven Reasons for Standards-Based Grading. Educational Leadership, 66(2), 70 ................
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