Student Reactions to Standards-Based Grading

While I plan to reflect on my current rubrics in an upcoming blog, I wanted to spend some time further debriefing (continuing from my previous post) on using standards-based learning and grading. In my last post, I articulated the following three goals for next year regarding standards-based learning and grading:

·         Post my core standards (which are amalgamations and simplifications of the Pennsylvania Core Standards for English Language Arts) prominently in the classroom so they are visible (which will help me reference them more often).

·         Include explicit reference to at least one standard in each our e-mail reflections home.

·         As I conference with each student during our readers-writers workshop, I want to begin linking each conversation explicitly to at least one standard and look-for on that assignment’s rubric.

The first section below reviews how my co-teachers and I assess, and then I will share some reactions from students this year.

HOW WE ASSESS

Each of our assignments are linked to at least one course standard and are assigned a letter grade. I still average all scores, but I will place letter grades in our gradebook (we use Infinite Campus). Each score for a Standard is normally 5 points. For larger summative assessments, one standard may be worth 10 or 15 points. I am painfully aware this is still arbitrary but based on the amount of work on an assessment, I can adjust the weight. This means that I do still average all scores together.

However, I set the gradebook so that an A will assign a 100%, a B will give the highest percentage our district assigns to Bs, and the same for Cs. I skip Ds (except when I am truly torn between an F and a C), and I set an F at 55% (our District policy for the lowest summative score; a passing grade is 70%). Again, this is still arbitrary and still averaging, but it leaves me with four levels (closer to the 1-4 proficiency scale of standards-based grading).

Although my District asks for our categories to be Formative and Summative in our gradebook, I do not place formative work in the gradebook. So, all of our scores are summative. This allows me to create a category for each standard. As students receive grades, they can track how they are performing in each category.

This is not an ideal standards-based grading system, but I much prefer it to traditional grading, and I will be continuing to transition (thus the purpose of this blog). As of late, I am pushing toward a move to gradelessness where students will utilize feedback to present a grade to me every so often based on portfolio work. For now, we are at least focused on standards and wider “grade bands” (A, B, C, and F) rather than percentages (of which I tell students that I cannot articulate what someone who knows 94% of the material can do differently than someone who knows 91%).

STUDENT RESPONSE

At the end of the year, I asked both of my Academic (inclusive college prep) classes and my Honors class to complete a survey. One of the questions was a short-answer prompt:

“We scored based on Standards, focusing on letter grades rather than percentages. Tell us about your thoughts on how we graded. Compare and contrast this class's use of grades to other classes you have had.”

Below are some reactions pushing against our approach to assessing. The first is from our Academic class. The others are from our Honors section (which had more pushback in the survey):

·        I did not like how we got graded with letter grades in the grade book, I personally would have rather seen the actual score than getting a letter grade, but besides that I thought the grading was good.

·         I've never had a teacher grade based on letters rather than percentages. I think I actually like percentages better because I like to know how I did overall, for example how many points I got wrong. I know you can tell based on the letter grade how many you missed but I think it would be better to combine everything.

·         At first I loved the grading process, but as time went one I didn't. Sometimes it was effective, but the majority of the time I feel that it was ineffective. For students, seeing what percentage they got shows them what they can improve, using a letter doesn't show how they can improve.

·         I thought that that just grading on letter grades was an OK idea. I would rather have a percentage so that I know how well I did on assignments and tests. I like how in the other classes there is a percentage or a number of points I earned.

·         I like percentages much better. I feel like a letter grade isn't accurate enough for me.

I just finished reading Laura Silverman’s (@LJSilverman1) You Asked for Perfect, where I found the crushing work of grading on students to be disheartening. Interestingly, it was also the students in my Honors class who preferred percentages and their “accuracy.”

However, with the exceptions above, each other student preferred our current approach. Here is a sampling from all of my courses:

·         I liked the way the work in here was graded. Every other class goes by specific percentages and numbers to decide what you get. I like that this class went by an easier "Letter Band" kind of system so that even with a mistake or two you still get a chance at an A.

·         I think your grading system was better than pretty much all my classes so....

·         it was kind of confusing at first but it was better because instead of saying we failed it showed that we just needed more improvement.

·         I feel like the grading in this class was easier to understand than in other classes because in other classes you don't know exactly what you need help in but in here, it did help because you know what topics you're strong with and which ones you aren't.

·         I think the grading system in this class worked really well and was better than the number based point system in other classes.

·         I like the way we where graded better than the other classes because we can see what we specifically need more help on than others rather than being graded on everything else entirely in other classes.

·         Your way of grading was very straight to the point, and I like that. You also tell us what we need to work on in our writings, which other classes don't do much. Where as most classes the student has to ask what they need to be better, you tell them immediately. As well as helping them, and guiding them towards a correct path. You break from the norm, and I can get down with that.

·         I love they way you grade in this class, it makes it way easier for me to understand what I did well on and what I struggled with.

·         I like the use of letters instead of percentages because its easier to understand and gets to the point

·         I appreciated the way the class was scored. Sometimes, getting one percent off of an A can be crushing, even with an A-worthy assignment response. This way, I feel like if something really deserves an A, the technicalities can be ignored. When I think of grades, I think of things as "A-worthy" and not "95% worthy."

·         I agree with this kind of grading because personal bias from teachers may influence how many points they take off for a mistake. I feel that a lot of mistakes made by us are ungrade-able, in the sense of how much each mistake is worth. The grading scale this year kept a sense of equality among us students. In past Language Arts courses I have wondered, "Is this really how much my mistake is worth?" In here, by getting a letter grade, I can visibly understand how much each mistake I've made is worth.

Grades are not feedback, but categorizing scores by standards begins to give some information to students on where they are strong and where they need additional work. Much of my feedback comes during workshop time where I can work individually with students and troubleshoot or reteach. Lastly, I noticed student reflections that discussed the stress level of school (returning to the characters’ conflicts in You Asked for Perfect):

·         I believe this is better than the percentage system because it give people more breathing room and makes people stop worrying over numbers and percents.

·         i liked how you graded, you were always willing to give us more time and not as strict as other teachers

·         I think your grading methods are very fair and efficient. My previous classes were very strict on due dates, sometimes I would be very busy and not have time for my homework. This year it was different, I felt like I wasn't stressing out over my assignments like I used to.

·         I loved this. For this reason, this has been one of my favorite classes. It takes away the pressure of perfection and allows us to not be stressed out and just work on improving and growing individually.

·         Grading with letters rather than percentages was a lot less stressful, because I didn't have to worry about exact scores (I could afford to make some mistakes).

Monte Syrie (@MonteSyrie) has written more extensively on providing flexibility to students, but the reflections above showcase how standards-based grading and allowing for some flexibility in deadlines can ease student tension and support learning (rather than compliance).

The reactions from my students definitely help reinforce my desire to continue forward with standards-based grading and a workshop approach. While I need to make the standards more explicit by posting them and directly referencing them during conferences, these assessment and instruction practices are working!