The Standards-Based Gradebook Setup

As I posted last week, I'll be trying a standards-based grading system this year via Active Grade.  Getting started was not as hard as I fear it would be.  It was easy to load in the students and the standards.  Then I hit the first wall:  how will each standard be assessed?  What does mastery look like?  Will I use a different rubric for different standards?  Will I use a 4-point scale?  Will I count zeros or not?   Here's where I landed:  keep it simple...

As hard as those decisions were, things got worse...

How will each standard's scores be turned into a grade?  What is my philosophy about mastery levels--once a student has mastered a skill, does that wipe away previous attempts that did not result in mastery?  Will kids benefit more from a decaying average, a high score replacing all, or some other iteration?  

All of this grade calculation seems to detract from the whole goal of SBG--that students know how they are doing skill by skill.  Forcing their progress into a traditional letter grade feels, well, forced.  For now, I've decided that the best system to go with is that each standard's overall score will be determined by the maximum of a student's "Most Recent" and "Average" methods.  This seems to be the most humane method of awarding a grade to a standard, but I'll have to see how it goes once I enter some grades.

If all of that wasn't hard enough to work through, I had to face the hardest question:  what will it take for my students to earn an A, a B, a C, a D for a marking period?  My patient, intelligent mathematician husband (are you reading this, Marc?) spent nearly an hour with me trying to figure out how to take 40 standards and roll them into one quarterly grade.  After quite a few attempts, we settled on this breakdown:

I have no idea if I'm setting my students up for failure or success.  But at least I'm set up!  And that means I can create my first assessment and put this SYSTEM to the test.

Stay tuned...

My Goal: Standards-Based Grading in an English Class

While I am not new to the SBG mentality, I am new to the SBG gradebook.  I suppose I began this journey about 12 years ago when my team of amazing English teachers at SEED in Washington, D.C decided to switch our gradebook "categories" from the age-old HOMEWORK, CLASSWORK, TESTS/QUIZZES, etc. to the more standards-based WRITING, READING, SPEAKING, LISTENING.  This way, we believed, our students would see their grades by skill category and be able to recognize the areas in which they needed the most improvement.

We were right and wrong.  The overall grade made more sense to students because they could see how they were doing in each major category, but the gradebook still left them without specific knowledge of their specific strengths and areas of need.  Of course it is not the gradebook's job to communicate this; it is our job--the teachers--to TEACH kids, guide them, talk with them about their progress.  But still, I was sure there was a more effective system.

A number of years ago, teachers at Flint Hill began talking about standards-based gradebooks.  Our fifth and sixth grade teams redesigned their report card to reflect students' progress by skill.  Teachers in the math and science departments began using SBG systems to evaluate their students.  I remained, at best, on the periphery of these discussions and experiments, mostly because I was busy with other reforms in our school.

That brings me to right now...Literally.   I'm headed back into the classroom on Thursday after two years away, back into the place I feel most comfortable and the most willing to implement change.  And what would a new year be without a challenge?  So I've decided to join a small band of math and science teachers who use Active Grade, a system that allows me to show students' progress in each standard.  I'm excited, but I'm also sad.

I'm excited because students will be able to see how they are doing in each area of our class even if I haven't had a chance to conference with them.  And the green-yellow-red system is a quick way for them to follow their progress.

I'm sad because at the end of the day, their progress in each standard still has to be wrangled into one overall grade that can be put in the gradebook for transcript purposes.  I have to create a grading system that will distill all of their work across 40 standards and countless attempts into one letter grade.  As Andrew Carle tweeted in response to my request for Humanities people to share their SBG calculations, I will try my best to "create a humane pastoral setting for the majority of the term."
 

But still, Active Grade wants me to do this:

Recommittment to Reflection (Farewell Summer)

It has been 2 months since my last blog.

I think that sounds like some sort of confession.

It was a conscious decision to step away from my blog and from Twitter, even from my Feedly reader for the summer, so I shouldn't feel the need to apologize.  I lived my summer--at the beach, in the mountains, in the gym, in a book--but I didn't reflect on my summer, at least not in writing.  It was just how I wanted it.

And yet...

I've spent the past three days with our new faculty, and I've asked them all to blog each day this week, to reflect publicly about their new Flint Hill lives.  So it's time to sit myself back down at the computer and recommit to my blog and to public reflection.

Check out our new teachers' blog posts, which have reminded me to get back in the game.

What's the Big Deal About Change?

Why is CHANGE a "4-letter word" in education?  Why do we need to cover it up and make it sound like anything other than what it is? 

Aren't we almost always happy with the changes we make, once we commit to them?  The new car, the new haircut, the new lifestyle regime?

Wouldn't we be just as happy with the results of a (not-so) new way of approaching education?

Change is hard. 
Yup.

It means more work.
Uh huh.

It means being uncomfortable.
Right.

But it opens so many doors.  So many wonderful, interesting doors.

photo courtesy of Vicki Souza; Flickr photostream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 OK, then.  Step aside so those of us with our sleeves rolled up and our hearts exposed can not only open the doors but clear the paths they lead to.