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Do No Harm: Flexible and Smart Grading Practices

Do No Harm: Flexible and Smart Grading Practices
My Edutopia post When Grading Harms Student Learning generated a lot of buzz. Grading is an emotional subject, with strong-held opinions and ideas. I was really excited to see discussion on all sides of the issue. The best feedback for me was that, while many readers agreed with parts of the premise, I hadn't been specific on support strategies. Thank you for that feedback -- it was specific, actionable, and created the need and excitement for a follow-up post. Address Behavioral Issues Affecting Academic Achievement Points off for late work may not motivate students. Request to Retest This is a great way to put the student in the driver’s seat of what they'll redo and how they'll redo it. Redo Parts of an Assessment Some assessments that we give students have very clear categories. Reflect on Assessments One strategy that I've seen many educators use is ongoing reflection throughout the assessment process, whether we're talking about a small quiz or a major exam. Pick Your Battles Related:  grades or not

Goodbye ABCs: How One State is Moving Beyond Grade Levels and Graded Assessments The term “grades” has become almost taboo among some educators in New Hampshire, where seven elementary schools are slowly ditching the word altogether through a program known as NG2. The program—short for “no grades, no grades”—is hallmarked by the schools shifting to a more competency-based assessment structure and removal of grade levels. Mary Earick, project director for NG2, says the purpose of the program is to create more flexible learning pathways for students through “competency-based multiage schooling,” which allows students to move on to new objectives only after mastering others. “[NG2] tackles long-standing educational barriers to personalized learning . . . that of 'Grades,'” Earick writes in an upcoming report on the project. Those barriers include “(1) student assessments that don't accurately reflect students’ true understandings and skills and (2) methods for grouping students (by age) that often poorly align to their true needs as learners.”

Dialogue Defibrillators: Jump-Start Classroom Discussions! During a 12th-grade English discussion years ago, I asked a question that nobody answered. Wanting students to do more heavy academic lifting, I decided to wait until someone spoke before saying another word. A minute crept by. The class fidgeted while I waited. Ninety tense seconds passed. Students' faces registered confusion and frustration at my brinkmanship. 8 Issues and Remedies We've all experienced whole-class discussions where students don't play along. 1. Sometimes students don't respond to a prompt because it's either too complex, ill-structured, or inaudible. To begin, I describe all the things I don't understand: Why do electrons change behaviors when they are observed? Nobody, I say, is expected to know everything. "Would you please. . . . . . state the question in a different way?" If they comprehend the question, but their answer is tentative, I suggest that they say: "Let me answer the part that I know." 2. 3. 4. Talk about and model trustworthiness in class. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Education Week Today we welcome Thomas R. Guskey Ph.D.* Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Kentucky and known throughout the world for his work on student assessment, grading and reporting, professional learning, and educational change as our guest author. Newspapers, magazines, and journals today are filled with articles about the evils of grades. In many ways, "grades" are at the same place today that "tests" were twenty years ago. Educational measurement experts tried to point out that these criticisms were true for only a narrow range of tests. Unable to counter these narrow interpretations of "tests" and gain an audience in the public media for an alternative view, the educational measurement community took a different approach: they changed the name. Today, the same is happening with "grades." Some experts suggest we should do the same as we did with tests and simply change the name. Second, we must never use grades to sort, select, or rank students. *More about Thomas R.

The 50 Best Smartphone Apps For Teachers Arranged By Category Mobile phones managed to mostly kick their classroom stigma once the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other PDA-cellular hybrids (also known as “smartphones,” but you knew that already) popped onto the scene. Thanks to the veritable Library of Alexandria of apps available on the respective markets, life can run that much smoother for professionals of all types. And that, of course, includes teachers. We’ve discovered a seemingly endless collection of smartphone apps that teachers can put to work in the classroom and beyond, creating a powerhouse of back-to-school mobile tools. For the Classroom Smart Dot It’s an iDevice-based laser pointer that doubles as a remote control for PowerPoint and Keynote presentations — well worth it for slide-loving educators! Organization, Time Saving, and Productivity Professional Development and Training Reference Welcome Distractions This is a cross-post from onlinecolleges.net; image attribution flickr user Mr.

Ep. 94 Why I Don't Grade - TeachThought PD Drew Perkins talks with Jesse Stommel, Executive Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at University of Mary Washington about grading (or not grading), assessment and the relationship to teaching and learning. Links & Resources Mentioned In This Episode: *Also published at TeachThought.com Subscribe Listen on: Also available on Google Music for subscribers! Thank You For Listening! Thanks so much for joining us again. Also, please leave an honest review for The TeachThought Podcast! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated!

Assuming Positive Intent We're mad. We're really, really mad -- and according to an Esquire/NBC News survey, we're madder than we’ve been in a long time. It takes less than ten minutes on social media for it to become clear that we've got a short fuse and we're not afraid to light it. Anger and Trust What's causing all this publicly shared ire? So how do we stop it? Years ago, I was part of a norm-setting conversation with a group from the School Reform Initiative. "Assume positive intent." I was drawn up a bit short by every single word in that statement. Foundational Assumptions I already knew that there was power in assumption, but I learned a lot about what happens when you insist on holding to positive intent, and I learned about how to get there. Is it true? By taking a moment (and a pause and a deep breath) to simply ask myself, "Is it true that this person is out to do what I assume (destroy my school, demean my practice, dismiss my ideas)? That changed everything.

A Letter Grade Isn’t A Letter Grade: Why We Should Stop Averaging Scores - A Letter Grade Isn’t A Letter Grade: Why We Should Stop Averaging Scores by Terry Heick Quick preface: Any argument rests on premises and terms, and so clarifying those premises and terms and related underlying assumptions is necessary if that argument is to be entirely understood. This makes itemized and clearly linear delineations of an argument both useful and easy to follow, and from time to time I’ve found them useful myself to clarify my own thinking—its sources, flaws, and related ideas that suggest further thinking and analysis. 1. A letter grade should be clear in what it communicates. 2. 3. 4. 5. Put another way, standards-based grading and reporting draw a more clear and more direct line between what was learned and how ‘well’ the teacher thought the student learned it. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. But why on earth would this be our goal? Assigning an overall numeric score for the financial strength of a publicly-traded company or athletic performance on a video game makes sense.

Much Ado About Grit? Interview with a Leading Psych Researcher What is grit? Can it be measured accurately, and is it different from other personality traits? If so, how well does an individual’s level of “grit” predict how successful that person will be in the future? And is grit an innate characteristic, or can it be improved with practice? twenty20.com The answers to these questions suddenly matter a great deal for schools. To learn more about grit and the research behind it, I reached out to Marcus Crede, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Iowa State University and the author of a provocative new study called “Much Ado about Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grit Literature.” Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Marcus CredePhoto via Iowa State University Aldeman: Can you start by saying what made you want to pursue this work on grit? Crede: Well, I have over the last 10-12 years now done a fair amount of work looking at predictors of educational success. Can you summarize what you found?

Will Letter Grades Survive? Under pressure from an unprecedented constellation of forces—from state lawmakers to prestigious private schools and college admissions offices—the ubiquitous one-page high school transcript lined with A–F letter grades may soon be a relic of the past. In the last decade, at least 15 state legislatures and boards of education have adopted policies incentivizing their public schools to prioritize measures other than grades when assessing students’ skills and competencies. And more recently, over 150 of the top private high schools in the U.S., including Phillips Exeter and Dalton—storied institutions which have long relied on the status conveyed by student ranking—have pledged to shift to new transcripts that provide more comprehensive, qualitative feedback on students while ruling out any mention of credit hours, GPAs, or A–F grades. Picking Up Steam Scott Looney, head of the Hawken School in Cleveland, was frustrated. The purpose of education is not to sort kids—it’s to grow kids.

Is My School Ready? Strategies For Principals That Lead - Is My School Ready? Strategies For Principals That Lead by Jen Schwanke, Principal for Dublin City Schools For a principal, the a new school year brings anticipation, excitement—and—let’s admit it—an underlying feeling of trepidation. I always look forward to this time of year, but with it comes the telltale butterflies in the stomach each time August rolls around. Whether you’re a veteran leader or just doing this for a first time, that feeling can leave you a bit unsettled. In the weeks leading up to the first day… Make sure your building looks ready. Communicate, communicate, and communicate some more. Have a broad reach. Empower and delegate. In the first few days…. Be available. Be positive. Show appreciation. Rest. And then… Enjoy the ride. Jen Schwanke is the author of You’re the Principal! Is My School Ready?

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