Remaking the Grade

Source: Barton, A., & Thomas, W. (2017). Remaking the Grade. Independent School, 76(4), 92-100.

Summary:

In this article, middle school dean Annie Barton, and director of curriculum and instruction, Thomas Wendell, share the experiences that their school went through with moving away from the traditional approach to grading. They shared that three years ago, they had attended a conference that left them questioning their traditional grading practices and whether or not they were accomplishing what they wanted. They determined that they didn't and also decided that middle school was a good fit for shifting away from traditional grading practices because middle school students' brains are still very much malleable.

Their next in the process was to look at their school mission and pinpoint what they wanted students and teachers to work towards. They came up with three categories that would be reported to show student achievement, academic mastery, productivity, and contributions. Productivity focuses on individual behaviors like resourcefulness, mindset, and others. Contributions has a more community based focus.

Their next step was to create rubrics that allowed for teachers to show where students were at in their learning of the three different areas. They decided on a 4 point scale, with each section labeled exceeding, meeting, approaching, and unsatisfactory. Meeting+ and approaching+ were two subcategories that could be used as well. They have made over 100 changes to the rubric and still consider it to be a draft as input has caused and will continue to cause changes.

In the 2015-2016 school year, 6th grade teachers began to implement their mission-based system. They knew that they would have administrative support and were ready for their to be bumps in the road. They found themselves questioning new things as they came up, how often to assess, the weight of formative assessment vs. summative assessment, etc. What they found was that there were fewer discipline problems as teachers had conversations with students about productivity and contributions to class which led students to more understanding and self reflection. They also shifted away from trying to get the best percentage and instead were asking for more feedback. This pilot helped them to then transition to policy. They would implement it one year at a time and for the time being, only keep it at the middle school as high school transcripts are something that can be high stakes.

They have been working with their community to explain their purpose for the shift and the benefits that this kind of mission based system can have, but still have three common concerns come up. One concern is that it seems more subjective than A-F systems, the second is that it might be less rigorous, and the third is that it may hinder students' college prospect. To respond to the first concern, they state the numerous studies from many years that show that A-F grading is indeed subjective and also explain how their rubrics have clear key behaviors and that teachers meet regularly to be sure that they are on the same page. For the second concern, they explain that they have yet to see a student earn all exceeding, whereas earning all A's was very commonplace. Having removed extra credit, teachers are also focusing on more depth than breadth to challenge students towards mastery. And for the third concern, it seems to be focused on two specific things. Parents are concerned students won't know how to earn A's at the high school, which doesn't have missions based currently, as well as what might happen for their college hopes if the high school does get rid of traditional grades. The school addresses these concerns by explaining that while students are no longer "gaming the system" to earn A's in middle school, they are learning other very important skills that will indeed help them to earn plenty of A's. For those concerned about their students' college prospects, the school explains that the New England Board of Higher Education and the New England Secondary School Consortium met with admissions officers from highly selective schools in the area. Through the meeting, they determined that students with proficiency based transcripts would not be disadvantaged.

The last part of the article is some self-reflection of where this school is at. Their 8th grade teachers will roll out the last portion of their new policy this fall. While they are confident in the successes they have had so far, in both the students' perceptions towards learning and their teachers' knowledge of where students are in their learning, they understand that it is difficult to fully comment on their results while they are still in the implementation process. There are still certain aspects of implementing it at the high school that they want to look into further before they decide to do the same kind of system there. In the end, they give themselves a score of Approaching+

Reflection:
I enjoyed reading this article, especially because the authors were very honest in what they presented with the difficulties and concerns that arose during the process so far. I think that this kind of model or some other kind of standards based, objectives based, target based system is something that is perhaps in works within my district. I don't know how far in development it is. At a conference I went to, I  heard from Garth Larson, whose district is doing something similar with their grading. What I like about both of these schools/districts and what they did with the grading is that they focus on what is is that students are learning academically as well as behaviorally. Both have included a portion of their grading system that reflects some self-regulatory skills that students need as well as community based skills that students also need to be well rounded citizens both inside of and outside of schools. I feel like the social-emotional side of middle school students is often overlooked in the extreme push for higher standardized test scores. Implementing an approach like this may be one way to help bring back more emphasis on the social emotional side of learning as well. All teachers understand the importance of the social emotional and how those skills are just as important, if not more important, than the academic skills. They should all work together, be taught, and be part of conversations that students have with their students. It is clear that in this middle school, that is definitely the case.