Are we asking the right questions?

This week, #ILEdChat had a discussion on rethinking our grading practices. (You can see the archive of the chat here). Grading has always been, and I think will always be, a touchy subject. It has to do with the concept of a grade and what a grade means. Ideally, I think a grade should be a reflection of the level of mastery for the content or skill. One of my #ILEdChat partners, Linsy, pushed my thinking further with the reminder that it should be a reflection of mastery based on a predefined learning standard, outcome, skill, or target. This is an essential piece of the learning process for the students. We, as educators, need to make sure that the students know and understand expectations of their growth and development and we should NOT make them try to hit a moving target.

Grades seem terminal. They are final. Once that letter or number is inscribe in red ink on the top of the page, there is nothing that can be done to change it. This is why feedback should be the term that we are using with students. Feedback provides the students ideas on their attainment of mastery, areas where they can improve, and most importantly, a chance to activate those ideas and help their own thinking grow, develop, and change. This concept of feedback can be analogized to the use of a doctor. We go to the doctor to provide us with feedback on our current state of health. Recommendations are provided for improvement. Sometimes, something stronger, like medicine, is provided to help us move back towards the goal is we are off course. A grade seems more like the coroner performing an autopsy and saying "this poor guy should have changed X, Y, and Z a long time ago". There is a much longer blog post about formative and summative assessment in here, but we will get to that later.

Unfortunately, too many times grades end up representing either an attempt on completing an assignment, an arbitrary conversion of a look at that completion to a number out of ten, or the ability to hand in a piece of paper at a given time and date. I will admit, my thoughts have changed an evolved on this topic as my experiences have helped me learn throughout my years. I am not proud to admit it, but I have committed the above acts before. One of the most important things I have learned is that grades should not be a punishment.

In a different chat, educators were continuing the conversation about grading and one of the questions that came up was what policies about what type of grading practices motivate students to work harder and want to improve and learn more? It was the idea of altering a grading policy to improve student motivation instantly provoked to ideas:

1. Tougher punishments will prevent crime -- While I think this may hold true for those afraid of the punishment, it clearly does not work for all. Education needs to be for all...not just those who "play school well".
2. This was the other idea...

Img Src: https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3272/2648500033_81ffd22fcb_b.jpg

 


After I chuckled and winced at my ability to amuse myself, I had the thought: Are we asking the right question? Why are we trying to find more stringent ways of reviewing work to improve student motivation to want to do better? Let's alter our own thinking and try something different...

Let's change our question to what kind of assessments/learning opportunities will provide students a method they choose to demonstrate their level of mastery? What if we provided more authentic learning opportunities than the summative/final multiple choice exam, with little or no opportunity for improvement?

I would think that if students have a voice in their learning and in how they demonstrate that learning, the motivation takes care of itself. The examples abound in standards based learning, genius hour, passion projects, choose-your-own-adventure learning. The variety of potential products from students might seem overwhelming, but this is where we go back to the initial idea of the purpose of a grade: "a measurement of student attainment at a predetermined point of predetermined skills" (quoted from Linsy Stumpenhorst on Twitter, 8/29/16).

The variety can be as wide as the day is long, but the expectations for the work can be clearly define in rubrics that provide support to the students in how to demonstrate their learning. There should be check-ups (doctor analogy again) with the students to monitor their progress, provide support, and, in more severe cases, some medication (intervention, resources, additional structure).

Let's see if we can change our question to achieve the desired outcomes.

Coaching needs to reduce blame

This post is a commentary on the shifts that are needed in schools in order to make the role of a data coach more effective.

The shift that I will comment on is this:

• Placing blame needs to shift to inquiries in examining potential solutions

I feel that a lot of this feeling of blame and accusation when looking at data comes from the issues of when we look at the data. Most times, we look at autopsy data. Autopsy data is the information that comes out and is available after time to affect any change on the issue has passed. Ex. Parent-Teacher conferences after the grading quarter has ended. If we examine data when there is no chance for change the questions the arise are all about "why did this happen" and "what didn't you do".

Another issue is that while we are bombarded with numbers and data, we don't know where to being. This causes us to suffer from the DRIPs (Data Rich, Information Poor). Teachers can look no further than their own grade books to begin finding a lot of valuable information.

When I was in the classroom, I know that I would fall into the grading trap of either doing a mad rush of grading at the progress report and report card times or, when I was on top of it, just entering the grades in the grade book without examining what the data is telling us. Think of a time when you were entering grades into your grade book...how often do you look at the aggregate? Most times, teachers get so caught up in the individual cell at the intersection of the assignment and the student, that they do not look at the entire row (to see if any patterns are developing for that student) or the entire column (to determine if there are patterns developing for the class on that assignment).

(Looking for some alternatives to traditional grades? You can look at this article on Motivating $tudent$ or De-grading your classroom)

Simple measures of central tendency can illustrate volumes about a particular assignment. If you are asking "measures of central tendency" that is the fancy way of saying average. There are multiple ways to measure this though. We can take a look at the mean, median, and mode.

The arithmetic mean is commonly known as just the mean and what we think of when we discuss average. Simply put, add up all of the numbers and divide the sum by the number of terms. This can give you an idea of how most students performed.

The mode is simply the most repeated term in a set. The mode can help explain a low or high mean and also provide another insight into how students performed.

The median is simply the middle number of a set when the terms are arranged from lowest to highest. If you have a data set that is skewed, this can help provide more insight that simply the mean.

Even if you hated sadistics (or statistics), these are simple things that can be calculated and provide insight into student achievement. Importantly, these measures can get you or your curricular team asking questions about the assignments and level of understanding of the students. More importantly, these calculations can be done quickly, help provide immediate feedback to students and the class, and allow for change before the autopsy of the report card.

By examining the data as it is entered, blame is reduced because it is live information and the information from the data can help raise questions about how to improve the practices within the classroom.

Avoid the blame game by doing these calculations in your own class. Get comfortable with your own information and then begin working with colleagues. When we can move to a space that is safe and supportive, we can then seek out the help of a teacher who has better or improving student achievement to determine how to improve one's own practices.