A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades, Ken O’Connor
Chapter 1: Setting the Stage
The traditional purposes for grading were communications, fostering student self-assessment, sorting and selecting, motivation and punishment, teaching/program evaluation.
Bailey and McTighe define the purpose of grades is to communicate about achievement. Achievement as defined by O’Connor being defined as performance as measured against accepted standards and outcomes.
Four Criteria:
- Consistent: It shouldn’t matter whose class they’re in the grades should be consistent. An example is that we should be able to trade papers and grade one another’s class papers. Teachers can be considered “hard” or “easy” graders. Sometimes hard graders have more hoops or requirements.
- Accurate: This should reflect achievement. Teachers often blend achievement with behaviors. Grades should reflect the academic standards. Assessments could be of poor quality. Another example of inaccurate grading practices use of the mean to determine grades. It also can reflect practice instead of where they are as a learner at the end of the teaching period.
- Meaningful: Grade books should reflect goals and standards. The books give examples for math. Categories may include develops and uses number strategies as grade book entries.
- Support Learning: It shouldn’t be about accumulating points; it should be about the quality of the work. Formative assessments are for learning. Summative assessments should be based on the standards and should be about learning. We want students to understand that school is about learning. Grades are an artifact of learning. They should only reflect student achievement.
- Underpinning Issues:
- Fairness: “Fair does not mean equal”. We provide adaptations for students with learning disabilities. Fairness is about equity of opportunity.
- Motivation: Grades can be discouraging. Failing grades don’t necessarily motivate students to do better. We know that sometimes it does matter. Grades can translate to college acceptance, etc. How do we balance what effects grades might have with the reality of how grades are used? Students who get good grades take risks; kids who don’t get high grades may not take challenges.
- Objectivity and Professional Judgment: Grades vary across classrooms, schools, etc. An A in one school isn’t an A in another.
When students are involved in their assessment, they have positive attitudes and have improved achievement.
Chapter 2: Fixes for Practices That Distort Achievement
Fix 1: Don’t include student behaviors (effort, participation, adherence to class rules, etc.) in grades, include only achievement.
When grades take behaviors into account, the correlation between grades and how they do on achievement tests.
Grades should communicate achievement (what students know and are able to do). They should communicate achievement with clarity. Behaviors can be clearly articulated as well through comments and effort/citizenship grades.
Fix 2: Don’t reduce marks on “work” submitted late; provide support for the learner.
Don’t use penalties but set up support systems. Penalties distort grades representation of achievement, punishment is negative and tends to opposite behavior, and penalties don’t always lead to changed behavior.
In real life there are not absolute deadlines. Teaching kids to advocate for time would help. Teachers being flexible would give students opportunity to get extra help if necessary. We want to foster an environment where students can talk with teachers. “This is an important assignment, but because you didn’t get it in on time then we’re not going to accept it.” Will this really change behavior? Student involvement is key. Teach kids to communicate and foster an atmosphere where they are a part of the solution. There are kids who know they can’t pass after a quarter. We’re not saying you can turn work in late, but we need to provide supports. Assignments should truly be important.
Fix 3: Don’t give points for extra credit or use bonus points; seek only evidence that more work has resulted in a higher level of achievement.
Anything that distorts communication of student achievement shouldn’t be included. This includes “extra credit” for more points. Extra credit can be given for students to demonstrate higher levels of learning. Making parallel opportunities to show you can meet standard or a higher standard. Look at this as additional opportunities to demonstrate standards.
Fix 4: Don’t punish academic dishonesty with reduced grades; apply other consequences and reassess to determine actual level of achievement.
What do we do to address academic dishonesty? Prevention is the best thing to do.
Clarify what plagiarism and cheating are for kids. Be very clear what cheating is from the beginning. Clear up any gray areas. There’s a list of activities to talk with students on plagiarism on pg.38. The favorite one is to give students an example and have a discussion with kids. The other examples are proctoring tests, alternate tests for students sitting next to each other.
Policies could include:
- Arrange another time for students to take the test.
- Keep punishment separate from assessing student learning.
- Another suggestion was taking away extra-curricular involvement. We’re not sure that is the best policy. Is this really a natural consequence?
- What is at the root of the issue? Is it laziness? Or is it because they’re really struggling.
- Kids are starting to not stress (and therefore cheat) because they’re getting used to doing common formative assessments.
- Have an appeals process.
- Have an honor code that student’s pledge to uphold.
Fix 5: Don’t consider attendance in grade determination; report absences separately.
If students are absent don’t penalize them with lower grades. This doesn’t show them what they know. Get to the root of why they’re absent. How do we understand what kids really know when they’re absent all of the time. This is really difficult.
Fix 6: Don’t include group scores in grades; use only individual achievement evidence.
This doesn’t accurately reflect what the individual students know. What are we assessing? What they know or how well they work in groups. In general, the Courts will rule against assessments based on group work. Cooperative learning is very power powerful and shouldn’t be mixed with group assessment.
Fix 7: Don’t organize information in grading records by assessment methods or simply summarize into a single grade; organize and report evidence by standards/learning goals.
In World Languages has seven standards. They are communication, interpretation, presentation, and oral speaking. There’s also interpersonal (spontaneous) and culture.
Assessments that are standards based can be done at home. A report on culture doesn’t necessarily have to be done in class. However it does not fall under the homework category.
We do have to be careful that the work we are getting from home is their own. We can also look at parallel assessments to ensure that this is kid work.
How to translate standards based grading into our current grading system and technology for grading.
What’s the percent for proficient? If students are meeting standard for the current year do we start looking at the standards for the next year?
Perhaps we should assign meeting standard, 4 or whatever, and then add a comment for students working above grade level.
When we start assigning numbers we may be assigning grades that violate another one of the fixes. Like looking at strands and assessing them becomes muddied when we start putting them together. What’s the fix? Narrative report cards?
Fix 8: Don’t assign grades using inappropriate or unclear performance standards; provide clear descriptions of achievement expectations.
Performance standards specify “how good is good enough.” They relate to issues of assessment that gauge the degree to which content standards have been attained….They are indices of quality that specify how adept or competent a student demonstration should be. Kendall and Marzano, 1997
A= 90-100, B= 80-89, etc. is an example of a poorly defined set of performance standards.
What does it mean to be Proficient, Above Proficient, and Below Proficient?
Grades are broken when:
–levels are not clearly described, inappropriate, or inaccurate
–levels are not shared at the beginning of the learning
–level of proficiency required is unclear to learners and graders
–cutoffs vary profoundly across classrooms covering same material
Challenges:
–overall and specific performance standards with a limited number of levels, clearly described in the language of the appropriate achievement continuum
–development of a shared understanding and application of performance standards through professional dialogue
–clear, easily understandable student and parent friendly versions made available from the beginning of instruction
Fix 9: Don’t assign grades based on a student’s achievement compared to other students; compare each student’s performance to preset standards.
Fix 10: Don’t rely on evidence gathered using assessments that fail to meet standards of quality; rely only on quality assessments.
Fix 11: Don’t rely only on the mean; consider other measures of central tendency and use professional judgement.
