GRADINGTaking the Guesswork Out of Student Evaluation

Michelle Rammel, Ph.D.

WHY DO WE GRADE?•Communication•Primary purpose•Student achievement•Administrators•Colleges and universities•Potential employers•Students and parents

WHY DO WE GRADE?•Guidance•Select, identify, or group students for certain educational paths or programs

WHY DO WE GRADE?•Motivation• low grade will motivate a student to try harder•high grade will motivate a student to maintain effort

•Research indicates that grades do not motivate students!

WHY DO WE GRADE?•Administrative purposes•Promotion and retention•Determine course placement for student transfers•Class rank•Credits for graduation •Honors standing

WHY DO WE GRADE?

•Instructional planning•Form cooperative groups

WHY DO WE GRADE?

•Program Evaluation•Evaluate the effectiveness of an instructional program

COMPONENTS OF GRADES•Effort•Attendance•Behavior

•Homework•Extra credit•Late work

COMPONENTS OF GRADES

•Effort, participation, and positive attitude •Highly valued attributes•Difficult to define and measure

COMPONENTS OF GRADES

•Grades are distorted when factors not related to achievement are included.

•To have real meaning, grades must be pure measures of each student’s achievement of the course objectives.

INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Assigning a zero•Motivate students?•No research supports this practice

INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Fixes for Assigning a Zero•Require students to complete the assignment•The idea of “working with students until they achieve success” is promoted by HSTW.

•Throw out the lowest mark in a grading period

INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Average vs. median• Averaging assumes learning at the beginning of the term is as

important as the learning at the end of the term• Consider student X: 100% 100% 100% 100% 0%• Average is 80%• Is this appropriate? Does this show the learning that

occurred? • Consider student Y: 85% 80% 75% 80% • Average is 80%• A 0% on the fifth test results in 64% average• Does this fairly represent student Y’s learning for the term?

INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Average vs. median•Averaging grades negatively affects student motivation because one low score during a term has such a detrimental effect on the student’s grade.

(Guskey, 2002)

INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Average vs. median•Remember Student Y?

0% 75% 80% 80% 85%•Median = ?

•Average vs. median??

INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Semester Killer•Single test, lab, paper, or project that makes or breaks a student’s grade

INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Grading Scales•An A can be as low as 80% or only 95%•The lowest failing grade can range from 49% to 74% •An A is not the same from school to school

INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Grading Scales•Majority of grading scales are biased.•10 point scales•This disparity raises concern regarding the meaning of grades.

•No research supports any one grading scale over another.

INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Grading on a Curve• Affects students’ relationships•Learning becomes competitive• Helping classmate may reduce the student’s chance of earning an A

EFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Standards-based Grading•Assesses how well a student has mastered course

objectives•Reduces meaningless paperwork •Helps teachers adjust instruction• Teaches what quality looks like•Requires teachers to work with students until they

are successful…a key practice of HSTW

EFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Feedback•Accurate•Specific•Timely

EFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES•Page (1958)• 3 groups•Group 1 – numerical and letter grades only•Group 2 – also included standard comments,

such as Excellent or Let’s try to raise this grade•Group 3 – Teachers wrote individualized

comments that pertained to the teacher’s own feelings and instructional practices

•Which group do you think improved?

EFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES

•Feedback•Not effective if the comments are judgmental

(Brookhart, 2008)

GRADING IN CTE

•Every day, academic teachers test students’ knowledge of a particular subject, but never truly assess their students’ comprehension.

(Backes and Brown, 2009)

GRADING IN CTE

•Traditional tests•Allow teachers to assign grades•Determine a student’s knowledge level•Verify whether the learning objectives were met

•Only check for lower level understanding… recall•Do not support the purpose of common core standards of preparing students for college and career.

GRADING IN CTE

•Career technical teachers utilize more innovative techniques to assess student learning:•presentations•portfolios•writing samples•field experiences

GRADING IN CTE

Presentations•Allow students to demonstrate and discuss their

understandings of a variety of concepts• Learning and assessment occur in all three domains:

cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. •Offer students experience in problem solving, critical

thinking and independent learning• especially when ends with Q & A

• Instruction is more student-directed

GRADING IN CTE

Presentations• Provide clear guidelines:

• time limit• require an outline before presentations are given• offer substantial feedback• require interaction with the audience

• Have one of the best presenters give presentation at the end of class the day before the other students• Provides other students an exemplary model presentation

• Utilize a rubric in order to assess each presentation • http://rubistar.4teachers.org

• Provide every student a copy of the rubric

GRADING IN CTE

Writing samples• Excellent way to evaluate a student’s content knowledge and understanding of successful writing • Examples:• Reflections• Research reports• express analytical thoughts• to most students, is the act of opening an encyclopedia or a webpage and copying its verbiage without mention of the author• clearly articulating one’s thoughts demonstrates an understanding of the content

GRADING IN CTE

Writing samples•Use writing samples often and vary the style of samples•Provide constructive feedback – comment on grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors•Use a rubric•Permit students the opportunity for individuality and personal reflection

GRADING IN CTE

Writing samples• Do not have to grade every skill for every writing assignment• Must clearly state what skills will be graded• Collins Writing = Focus Correction Areas (FCAs)• three• students focus on a smaller number of skills at one time• students practice and master numerous FCAs during school year• significantly improves their writing abilities

GRADING IN CTE

Field Experiences • More unique to career technical education• Examples:• Observations• Shadowing• Service learning• Actual practice

• Real world connection of learning for students and teachers• CT educators assess students in similar way to how

employers evaluate their employees

GRADING IN CTE

Field Experiences • Suggestions: •match the field experience to the course

objectives•match the placement to each student• use journals, reflections, and logs to record

observations• hold an orientation session before sending

students to the location

INDIVIDUALIZED PRODUCTIVITY AND ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEM FOR STUDENTS

(IPASS)

•An individualized, self-paced, competency based, and project/assignment driven system

•Students are given assignments each with a given point value. •Assignments must be large enough to require a student at least one lab period, or 2.5 hours, to complete, and should be worth a minimum of ten points.

IPASS • The teacher evaluates the work upon completion. • If the work meets or exceeds the teacher’s standard, the student receives the number of points assigned and continues to the next assignment. • If the assignment does not meet the pre-determined requirements, the student revises the work until the assignment meets expectations.

• Students may not continue to the next assignment until they have achieved competency on that given assignment.

IPASS•Once an assignment is mastered, the student marks off the number of points received from the completed assignment on the IPASS Progress Chart. • The student’s grade is based on how many points

they earn during the grading period. • The grade chart is a valuable visual tool for the

student to see how missing school or not working diligently every day affects his or her grade.

IPASS

•There are no vague daily grades for working or not working in lab.•There are no weighted grades•Confuse parents and students

•The responsibility of the student’s grade is placed on the student’s shoulders.

IPASS

•Mistakes made over the course of the semester were not failures.

•The teacher is a facilitator similar to a boss running an office or shop. Everyone has their assigned work and it is the boss’s job to see that the employees have the resources to complete the assigned work.

REFERENCES• Backes, C., & Brown, P. (2009). Going beyond the test! Using alternative assessments in career

education. Techniques: Connecting education & careers, 84(3), 34-37.

• Brookhart, S. M. (2008). How to give effective feedback to your students. Alexandria,VA: ASCD.

• Brookhart, S. M. (2009). Grading. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

• Collins Education Associates. (2010b). Focus Correction Areas. Retrieved from http://www.collinsed.com/focus_correction_areas.htm

• Guskey, T. R. (2002). Computerized gradebooks and the myth of objectivity. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(10), 775-780. Retrieved from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID:123590181).

• Guskey, T. R. (2003). How classroom assessments improve learning. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 6-11.

• Guskey, T. R. (2004, October). 0 alternatives. Principal Leadership, 5(2), 49-53.

• Guskey, T. R. (2006, May). Making high school grades meaningful. Phi Delta Kappan, 87(9), 670-675.

• Kohn, A. (1999, September). Grading is degrading. The Education Digest, 65(1), 59-64.

• Marzano, R. J. (2000). Transforming classroom grading. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

• O’Connor, K. (2011). A repair kit for grading: 15 fixes for broken grades. (1st ed.). Portland, OR: Educational Testing Service.

• Willis, S. (1993). Are letter grades obsolete? Education Update, 35(7). Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/educationupdate/sept93/vol35/num07/Are-Letter-Grades-Obsolete¢.aspx

IPASS