I started a discussion on Teachers Throwing Out Grades this week about standards-based “stuff” because I was concerned when I saw a book that offered teachers a how-to of standards-based grading. (I don’t use “stuff” to minimize the importance of a serious discussion of standards, but, for me, the conversation around standards-based efforts has gotten muddled.) Granted I have not read this book because I am trying to, well, throw out grades, but the word “grades” is now an alarm to me, and the word standards brings to mind rows of students dressed alike being, well, standardized. This Facebook chat moved me to investigate what I am doing in my classroom and how it fits into standards-based instruction, learning, grading or maybe something different. So, I spent some time reviewing this standards-based “stuff,” and I hope you all chime in to help me unravel it all for the good of our students.
According to The Glossary of Education Reform: Standards-based refers to systems of instruction, assessment, grading, and reporting that are based on students demonstrating understanding or mastery of the knowledge and skills they are expected to learn. teaching is using the standards to guide instruction. I have practiced use standards-based instruction, for the most part, to validate the other things I was teaching. For example, as an English teacher, I want students to recognize how authors represent ability difference with choices in the narrator (point of view of the character with the ability difference or a “neurotypical” narrator), the role of supporting characters (to enable or encourage), the accuracy, the plausibility, and the ending (cliché or nuanced). This language is not exactly in the Common Core State Standards and was not in Illinois State Standards when I began teaching in 2004. However, I use the following standards as I am illuminating my more literary instructional goals :
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.1
Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. - CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.2
Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text. - CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.3
Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.
Now standards-based learning is a bit more complicated because bound up in learning is assessment or how we know the learning is happening or has happened. And bound up in that is grading and reporting, which is how we communicate the results of the assessment to students, parents,and our administrators.
The assessments must match the standards taught so that the students can demonstrate learning. The assessments need not be in written form unless writing is a standard taught and thus assessed; the assessment need not be in speaking form unless speaking was a standard taught and thus assessed. The assessment is where/how the student demonstrates learning toward that standard.
If the assessment tool (speech, video, essay, portfolio, recording, project) assessed multiple standards, then each standard should be assessed separately. To average the results would be to muddle what was learned and what was not. By dis-aggregating the standards, teachers can offer additional support and resources to help the students learn the standard.
In a standards-based course, grading takes a variety of forms but are connected to descriptive standards, not based on test and assignment scores that are averaged together. The criteria used to determine what “meeting a standard” means is defined or described in advance. Behaviors and work habits are not part of that description: no getting to class on time, following rules, respect (unless it is being “collegial” in a group discussion as described in the standards under Speaking and Listening), turning in work on time, participation (unless questioning and responding as in the Speaking and Listening standards), effort, or creativity. Such behaviors would be reported separately as Rick Wormeli explains. The standard is not about how students got there but the evidence, and I suggest that all the evidence that teachers and students observe and document is evidence for assessing learning. It does not have to be so formal — as in a project or test at the end of the unit. The learning of a standard cannot always be so neatly contained in such terms. You may have to watch students negotiate meaning or collaborate with others to problem-solve or go through a long, extended process of research to presentation to show evidence of learning. All this is learning, and all this is assessment.
Standards-based grading, then, has the potential to constrain standards-based learning. Putting a number on learning is really not much better than putting a letter on it. That said, I think this video offers a fairly good overview of standards-based grading as compared to assessment-based grading, which is how most grading is done in schools.
In this explanation of standards-based grading, students get a separate score for each category, for each standard. The standards-based online grade book, descriptions of standards and explanation of what students need to revise or review should be clear. The report card should not have a grade for the course but a grade for each standard in that course. There should be no averaging; the standards should be separate. Many teachers and schools are using standards-based grading but then assign a single grade to the report card, which muddles learning.
I support a shift from assessment-based grading to standards-based grading, but I think we have to think carefully about what we do with the numbers we use in the grade book. In the video above, I wonder about the process of getting everyone to the 5 and if there is some evidence that surpasses that. How do teachers make time for and teach revisions or create new learning experiences to keep the learning process going? I think we have to emphasize something else in all this standards-based talk and that is standards-based “assessment.” We have to see assessment as ongoing. For example, while a student may “meet” on the standard of writing an effective narrative lead, one paper cannot be the end of it and so one “meets” or “5” or “A” cannot be the end of that learning — such marks effectively end the conversation on learning.
As long as these numbers are merely place -holders or a way of communicating to students (in addition to narrative feedback) what standards need work, I will use them. However, I’d rather not replace letter scores with number scores in this standards-based grading movement. Students tend to see the 5 (or whatever score is highest) as they did the “A,” and they will until we talk about learning in much more nuanced and complex ways — the ways that defy measurement and conflation of learning into a number or letter.
Sarah, even in my class where students are grading themselves, they are choosing their three best pieces (I leave narrative feedback that correlates with “needs improvement,” “developing,” “proficient” and “mastery”) and averaging them for a portion of their grade. We have three sections of our grade this year – reading, writing, grammar, and speaking/listening. They choose their three best for each, average those, then average the four sections. I’m so tired of averaging for a report card. I’m soon going to implement the letter home you wrote about. Then I’m going to make copies and give them to the teachers the students in this class have next year.