Grade Inflation

 NYT essay on grade inflation here

Catlin Tucker - Why am I grading this?

 https://catlintucker.com/2019/02/ask-yourself-why-am-i-grading-this/

Dehumanizing effect of reward system

When we repeatedly promise rewards to children for acting responsibly, or to students for making an effort to learn something new, or to employees for doing quality work, we are assuming that they could not or would not choose to act this way on their own.  If the capacity for responsible action, the natural love of learning, and the desire to do good work are already part of who we are, then the tacit assumption to the contrary can fairly be described as dehumanizing.   

Alfie Kohn (1993) Punished by Rewards

Mike Schmoker Radically Simplified ELA Curriculum

 “Radical Reset: The Case for Minimalist Standards” by Mike Schmoker in Educational Leadership, February 2020 (Vol. 77, #5, pp. 44-50), https://bit.ly/2vouIvW; Schmoker can be reached at schmoker@futureone.com

From Marshall Memo (#832).

            “In profound ways, literacy is destiny,” says author/speaker/consultant Mike Schmoker in this Educational Leadership article. “It is the single most important goal of schooling and the key to academic and career success.” The Common Core standards were a well-intentioned effort to pare down ELA standards and support effective literacy instruction, says Schmoker, but he believes the standards went off the rails – an important reason that American students’ achievement over the last decade has flatlined.

            What went wrong? “In the heady development phase, there was plenty to like about the ELA Common Core,” says Schmoker. “They called for vastly more content-rich, grade-level reading, discussion, writing – and writing instruction – across subject areas.” The Common Core ELA’s introduction and appendices are “inspiring and largely on-target.” However, says Schmoker, the detailed standards created by committees are “an impossible profusion of grade-by-grade minutiae.” The result is that many teachers have been spending far too much class time on strategies, skill drills, and worksheets, and students aren’t doing much real reading, discussing, and writing grounded in literature and subject-area knowledge. Hence the lack of progress at a national level.

            How can we return to the fundamentals that Common Core got right and “reset” literacy instruction in classrooms? Schmoker recommends that school leaders issue explicit public statements describing what went wrong so teachers and parents understand what isn’t working and why. Then schools and districts should go about reducing the literacy curriculum to the essentials. For starters, this means intensive, explicit phonics instruction so every student is able to decode text by the end of first grade. But this shouldn’t distract from the core of literacy, which Schmoker believes is “frequent, abundant amounts of reading, discussion, and writing” from the very beginning. He agrees with Richard Allington’s 2006 goal of students doing at least 60 minutes of reading and 40 minutes of writing (across the curriculum) every day.

Following this general injunction, what do simple, high-leverage standards look like? Schmoker suggests that teacher teams spell out “the approximate number, amount, length, and frequency” of reading, writing, and discussion for each grade level – specifically:

-    The number of knowledge-rich, grade-appropriate fiction and non-fiction books, articles, textbook selections, poems, plays, and primary resources students will read in each course (a high-performing network of schools in Texas and Arizona posted its grade-by-grade sequence at https://bit.ly/35FkPak);

-    The number of pages of actual text (minus illustrations) that students will read each year (for example, at least 1,000 pages);

-    The number and approximate length of inquiry-based discussions, seminars, and debates students engage in – that are “purposeful, grounded in reading, and aligned with simple criteria,” says Schmoker, “– for example, speak audibly, clearly, logically, and with civility.”

-    The number and approximate length of short writing assignments completed each day and week, and more extensive, capstone-like projects at the end of a grading period or year, all assessed with detailed scoring guides and supported by exemplars of high-quality work.

Are such short, basic standards (without detailed skill objectives) enough to guide teachers? asks Schmoker. Absolutely, he says, citing the gains of a number of schools and networks that have taken this approach. “So why wait?” he challenges. “Arrange, as soon as possible, for your school or district teams to develop provisional standards and expectations for reading, discussion, and writing. Then stand back and watch your students’ life chances soar.”

Gallagher and Kittle on Grading during remote learning

 Here's the whole post: https://blog.heinemann.com/reflections-on-grading-from-180-days

Here's my favorite part:

Let’s be clear: More grading does not mean better teaching is happening or that learning is occurring. Grades sort winners (As and Bs) from losers (Ds and Fs), but they don’t make our students better readers and writers (and in some cases they impede their progress). Today’s students are tested (and graded) more than ever, yet one in four who make it to college will be enrolled in remedial courses. Nearly half of these students hail from middle- and upper-income families, dispelling the widely held belief that only low-income or community college students are saddled with remedial courses (Education Reform Now 2016). Today’s students—perhaps more than any other students—have been graded and graded and graded, yet their reading and writing skills are not strong enough for college success. Voluminous grading of crappy writing (often essays about fake reading) does not change the fact that the writing is still crappy.

Given the political worlds in which we teach, we must assign grades, but thoughtful planning about how, what, and why we’ll grade is essential if we want our students to become better readers and writers.

We share seven principles of grading that inform our work and make grades as meaningful as possible. These seven principles can still guide grading during the pandemic:

1. Students Need a Volume of Ungraded Practice
2. Students Need Practice in Reading Like Writers
3. Students Need Feedback
4. Not All Work Is Weighted Equally
5. Grades Should Tell the Truth About Progress
6. Rubrics Are Problematic
7. Best Drafts Receive Limited Feedback.

These principles, some perhaps surprising, help us concretely connect the actual progress students make—the work they are doing day in and out—to the letter on their report cards, and these principles are important no matter the instructional setting.

We show exactly how we put these principles into action across the most important work students do in our English classrooms. We also show how we set up our grade books. We close this chapter with the following.

Our mantra in a profession dedicated to the love of reading and writing should be to embrace experimentation and practice—lots of both—and to minimize, shrink, reduce, and if we had our way, eliminate grading. The increase in testing in the last decade has been considerable—anyone who has been in teaching that long has seen it happen—but the 2012 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results show that even with all of that grading, there has been no significant increase in proficiency. These results remind us of a farmer’s wisdom: you don’t fatten a pig by weighing it. Grading is not worth all the energy it steals from us.

Evaluation and testing eat up time that is better spent reading, writing, and talking. We steal time from our daily essential practices with students to measure their progress. We steal time from our own reading and writing in order to mark those tests and submit those grades. Worry about performance inhibits creative thinking and leads writers to choose the easiest path to finish. In contrast, expansive thinking develops over time. Constant evaluation teaches students to be dependent on a teacher’s judgment, instead of their own.

We worked hard to try to find the proper balance between the evaluation required of us by our schools and the authentic practices we believe are essential in building literate students. And whenever we felt that balance getting a bit out of whack, we stopped and asked ourselves, “Is this grading practice getting in the way of our students’ improvement?”

That last sentence poses a question we always struggle while planning for our first meeting with students. During this pandemic, with shortened instructional time, our grading practices must encourage our students, not impede their growth. Because in the midst of working with several dozen tweens or teens at a time, trying to squeeze time in for them all, and managing curricular expectations, it’s easy to lose sight of the big goal: helping kids make progress toward a lifetime of reading and writing

Helping Students Track Their Own Learning

Danielson Domain IV reflection time now.

These teachers might be interested in this article from Edutopia about using Google Forms and Sheets to help students track their own learning.

Grades Versus Comments: Research on Student Feedback

The most recent Marshall Memo has this short piece about grading and learning.  I thought you’d find it interesting.  I thought that the focus on WHY we would give grades and/or comments was refreshing!

Thomas Guskey on Grades and Comments

            “Are comments on student work superior to grades?” asks assessment guru Thomas Guskey (University of Louisville/University of Kentucky) in this article in Phi Delta Kappan. “It depends… The research on this issue is far more complicated and more highly nuanced than most writers acknowledge.” Guskey cites several studies that provide helpful guidance for K-12 educators.

            • A 1958 study by psychologist Ellis Page – Secondary-school teachers gave numerical scores on their students’ assessments and then converted the scores into A, B, C, D, F grades. Three randomly-selected groups of students then got their papers back with:

-    Numerical and letter grades only;

-    Numerical, letter grades, and standard comments for each grade:  A: Excellent! Keep it up.  B: Good work. Keep at it.  C: Perhaps try to do still better?  D: Let’s bring this up. and F: Let’s raise this grade!

-    Numerical score, letter grade, and individual comments based on each teacher’s personal reactions and instructional priorities.

Page compared the impact of these three approaches by looking at how students did on their very next assessment. Here’s what he found: students in the first group did no better; students in the second group did significantly better than those in the first; and students in the third group did better still. The conclusion (which has been confirmed by subsequent studies): grades are helpful only if they’re accompanied by teachers’ comments.

            What’s striking about this study is that the standard, boilerplate comments given to the second group of students had such a positive impact. The comments involved very little work for teachers, but made almost as much difference as the much more time-consuming individualized comments given to the third group of students. Guskey believes a little-recognized insight from Page’s study is the nature of the standard comments. First, each of these seemingly robotic comments communicated the teacher’s high expectations and the importance of students’ continued effort. Second, all the comments made clear that the teacher was on students’ side and willing to partner with them to improve. Instead of saying You must raise this grade, the comment was Let’s raise this grade! – conveying, I’m with you in this, we can do it! In other words, says Guskey, “The message teachers communicate in their comments may be what matters most.”

            • Benjamin Bloom’s mastery learning – In the late 1960s and 1970s, Bloom promoted the idea that on formative assessments, students should receive a grade of Mastery or Not Mastery. Bloom defined Mastery as the clearly described level of performance that teachers believe would deserve an A, which then becomes the standard of mastery for all students. Students scoring below Mastery on formative assessments are in a temporary state, not there yet, and should receive diagnostic and prescriptive instruction from the teacher and additional chances to demonstrate mastery. Bloom believed that with sufficient time and skillful corrective instruction, 95 percent of students can achieve Mastery. In short, Bloom believed in comments to guide under-par performance to mastery grades, guided by clear expectations up front.

            • Ruth Butler’s 1988 study – Fifth and sixth graders took a test and were then divided into three groups, each receiving a different type of feedback:

-    Grades from 40 to 99 based on students’ relative standing in the class (norm-referenced or competitive grades);

-    Individual comments on students’ performance on the objective (criterion-referenced or task-focused);

-    Both competitive grades and task-oriented individual comments.

The study found that students in the second group did best, indicating that competitive grading is not an effective practice, and task-focused comments can boost learning by giving students specific information on their performance and suggestions for improvement. What’s interesting is that the competitive-grades approach benefited high-performing students, maintaining their interest and motivation, while undermining the interest and motivation of low-performing students.

            Guskey adds that the nature of the comments is the key factor. In Butler’s study, they were task-oriented and instructionally helpful. Additional research by John Hattie and Helen Timperley reinforces the idea that it’s the quality, nature, and content of teachers’ comments that make a difference.

            • Guskey’s conclusions – First, he says, grades – whether they are letters, numbers, symbols, words, or phrases – are not inherently good or bad: “They are simply labels attached to different levels of student performance that describe in an abbreviated fashion how well students performed.”

            Second, grades should always be based on learning criteria that the teacher has clearly spelled out. Grades that compare students to their peers do not move learning forward. In fact, says Guskey, “Such competition is detrimental to relationships between students and has profound negative effects on the motivation of low-ranked students, as the results from the Butler (1988) study clearly show.”

            Third, assessments must be well-designed, meaningful, and authentic, and grades should reliably and accurately measure the learning goals and provide useful information to guide teachers and students to improve learning.

            Fourth, grades by themselves are not helpful. “Grades help enhance achievement and foster learning progress,” says Guskey, “only when they are paired with individualized comments that offer guidance and direction for improvement.” And of course those comments must be followed up with time and support for students to improve their work.

            Fifth, students and families must understand that grades don’t reflect who students are, but their temporary location on the learning journey. “Knowing where you are is essential to understanding where you need to go in order to improve,” says Guskey. This metacognitive awareness also makes students better judges of their own work and increasingly self-sufficient as learners.

            Finally, Guskey sums up the collective wisdom of researchers, especially Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues, on effective comments on students’ tests, essays, products, performances, or demonstrations:

-    Always begin with what the student did well, recognizing accomplishments or progress.

-    Identify the areas that need improvement.

-    Offer specific guidance on steps the student needs to take to meet the learning criteria.

-    Communicate confidence in the student’s ability to achieve at the highest level.

“Grades Versus Comments: Research on Student Feedback” by Thomas Guskey in Phi Delta Kappan, November 2019 (Vol. 101, #3, pp. 42-47), available at https://bit.ly/2P3DSnW for PDK members, or for purchase; Guskey can be reached at guskey@uky.edu.