Communicating Student Learning

Pilot Project 2017

School District No.48 (Sea to Sky)

It is an honour to be on the traditional territory

WelcomeBig ideasPresentation by our teachersTime for questions at the end

Agenda

Ongoing assessment aligns much better with the new Ministry curriculum and with our Pathways Strategic Plan.

In order to adapt our practice, it is necessary for districts like ours to work together with students and parents to explore better ways of supporting and communicating student learning.

There is now 70 years of research that tells us letter grades do more harm than good when it comes to student learning.

Why the Pilot?

The Ministry Interim Reporting Order has opened the opportunity for all districts to work with their community on assessment change.

The movement reaches well beyond the corridor and our School District. Several districts around the province are doing similar pilots or already have a no letter grade option.

Some districts haven’t issued letter grades in grades 4-9 for some time now.

We are not alone …

There will be a pre pilot survey and a post pilot survey to give parents a chance to inform the process. Teachers, principals, and senior staff will collect information from parents and students in an ongoing manner.

The learning that we do during this pilot will impact our future assessment and reporting policies and practices.

Indications are that as practices evolve, interest in letter grades will diminish.

Informing our practice

The pilot is for grades 4-9 only and will occur from now until the end of this school year.

Parents in participating classes would have been notified by email.

Currently 28 teachers have “opted in” to do ongoing reporting.

Parents of students in a pilot class may “opt out” - Letter grades will be available by request during scheduled reporting times. Indicate your preference to your child’s teacher in the normal way you communicate with them.

Some quick points

There will be a final summative reporting document at year end (without letter grades – except by parent request).

Permanent Student Records will still be updated with letter grades at year end as per Ministry process.

Pilot teachers will still try to give ongoing assessments to all students and parents as best they can, even if parents indicate that they will want letter grades.

Parents

Local Media

Apologies to our partners

We are modernizing our assessment and communication practices in keeping with what we know about what impacts student learning and achievement most, based upon decades of research.

Better supports our curriculum focus on student competency development and pathways to learning.

And yet…it’s a huge cultural shift so we need to take slow steps forward and we need to take them together. Hence the pilot project that we are embarking on.

Pilot Rationale

We are shifting from “reporting/report cards” (summative) to “communicating student learning” (formative) which includes describing and documenting learning in new ways.

We will be supporting meaningful communication between teachers,

parents and learners including clear descriptions, collections of authentic evidence and/or demonstrations of student learning on an ongoing basis rather than letter grades reported three times per year.

Communications will use clear, criterion based, performance standards-based or continuum language to accompany assessments and work samples.

Overview

What the Research Shows:Alfie Kohn,MA Paul Black, PhD and Dylan Wilian,PhD Carol Dweck, PhD John Hattie, PhDBoston Kings College, London Jo Boaler, PhD University of Melbourne

Stanford University

Br J Educ Psychology,  1988;58:1–14 (original publication date). 

on student achievement

The impact of grades and commentson student achievement

Growth Mindset –Carol Dweck

When the classroom culture focuses on rewards, gold stars, grades, or class ranking, then (students) look for ways to obtain the best marks rather than to improve their learning.

One reported consequence is that, when they have any choice, (students) avoid difficult tasks. They also spend time and energy looking for clues to the “right answer”.

As few as two “poor” scores or letter grades can significantly damage students’ perceptions of their abilities as a learner. Decreased efficacy results in students lessening effort or avoid/ abort their involvement in the task. (Marzano & Pickering,2011, p.15-16)

John HattieEffect Size

meta -analysis 50,000 studies and 200+ million studentsVisible effect size 0.4

“We must constantly remind ourselves that the ultimate purpose of evaluation is to have students become self-evaluating. If students graduate from our school still dependent upon others to tell them when they are adequate, good, or excellent, then we’ve missed the whole point of what education is about.”

(p. 280) Costa, A. & Kallick, B. 1992. Defining Indicators of Achievement. ThousandOaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Goal to develop self aware, intrinsically motivated learners

BGUTI That leaves proponents of grades for younger children to

fall back on some version of an argument I call “BGUTI”:  Better Get Used To It (Kohn, 2005).  The claim here is that we should do unpleasant and unnecessary things to children now in order to prepare them for the fact that just such things will be done to them later.  This justification is exactly as absurd as it sounds, yet it continues to drive education policy.

Common Concerns

Students will not do the work if not graded But teachers who can give a child a better reason for

studying don’t need grades.  Research substantiates this:  when the curriculum is engaging – for example, when it involves hands-on, interactive learning activities — students who aren’t graded at all perform just as well as those who are graded (Moeller and Reschke, 1993).

Common Concerns

Move learning along a continuum Promote growth mindset and life-long learning Encourage meta-cognitive reflection Develop self-efficacy Increase ownership of, “buy-in”, and empowerment over learning

Purposes of Formative Assessment

Options may include:

Descriptive Feedback Digital portfolios Student Exhibitions/Three Way Conferencing

What can parents expect?

Sharing of evidence gained through assessment practices

Tools Practices

Reading Assessments may include: DRA, PM Benchmarks, Jerry Johns, DART

Grade Wide Writes assessed with Performance Standards and Continuums

FSA Classroom generated criteria Core competency rubrics and

profile statements

Triangulation of data Teacher, peer, self

assessments

Timely, ongoing, descriptive

Performance standards used to assess and set goals

Descriptive vocab, variety of sentences, goal to work on editing for run on sentences

Solid structure, goal to work on more descriptive vocabulary

Performance Standards provide specific, meaningful feedback

Performance Standards provide specific, meaningful feedback

Writing Continuums for assessment

Student Comment- I am working on using metaphors and similes to make my writing more descriptive.

“Letter grades don’t tell me what I need to work on.” Oscar, 10

“I felt great about my first letter grades because I got good ones. The letter grade doesn’t give me an example of what I needed to work on to get better in math. In ski school there is more explanation of exactly how to get better.” Tay, 9

“I kinda actually like it but don’t like talking about it with the class. If they didn’t get the best grades they don’t feel real good and if they did really good, they show off. Say you got a C+. “Oh I have to work on this at home but it doesn’t tell you what you have to work on exactly.” Ryan, 10

What the kids say:

   Blackwell, L., Trzesniewski, K., & Dweck, C. (2007).  Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across an Adolescent

Transition:  A Longitudinal Study and an Intervention. Child Development, Vol. 78, No. 1, pp. 246-263.Dweck, C. (2006).  Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.  Random House: New York.

  Boaler, J. (2016). Mathematical Mindsets. Retrieved January 10, 2017, from https://www.youcubed.org/mathematical-mindsets/  Boaler, J. (2016). Aligning Assessment to Brain Science. Retrieved January 10, 2017, from

https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/aligning-assessment-brain-science/  Butler R. (1988) Enhancing and undermining intrinsic motivation: the effects of task-involving and ego-involving evaluation on interest

and performance. Br J Educ Psychol. 1988;58:1–14.

http://www.mauricevanwerkhooven.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Cijfers-belemmeren-diepgang-in-leren.-Ruth-Butler-Engelstalig.pdf

Dweck, Carol. (2015). Mindset Works. Retrieved January 10, 2017, from https://www.mindsetworks.com/page/increase-students-motivation-grades-and-achievement-test-scores

  Hattie, J. (2017). Hattie Ranking: 195 Influences And Effect Sizes Related To Student Achievement. Retrieved January 10, 2017, from

http://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/

Hattie, J. The Mindsets That Make the Differences in Education. John Hattie Visible Learning Laboratories University of Auckland Retrieved February 12, 2017, from http://www.vs-kombre.kk.edus.si/komercialist/visiblearning.pdf

References

Kohn, A. (2011, November). The Case Against Grades. Retrieved January 10, 2017, from http://web.uvic.ca/~gtreloar/Articles/Assessment_Grading/The%20Case%20Against%20Grades.pdf

Lipnevich, Anastasiya A., (2008) Response to Assessment Feedback: The Effects of Grades, Praise, and Source of Information (2008) Educational Testing Service https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=9vWF698AAAAJ&citation_for_view=9vWF698AAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C

  Sackstein, S. (2015) Hacking Assessment, Ten Ways to go Gradeless in a Traditional Grade School.  Times 10

Publication, Cleveland.  Schinske J, Tanner K. (2014) Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently). CBE Life Sci Educ. 2014 Summer;13(2):159-

66. doi: 10.1187/cbe.CBE-14-03-0054.

CBE Life Sci Educ. 2014 Summer;13(2):159-66. doi: 10.1187/cbe.CBE-14-03-0054. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4041495/ 

Wilian, Dylan (1999) Formative Assessment in Mathematics Part 2: Feedback Equals: Mathematics and Special Educational Needs 5(3) 8-11; Autumn 1999

 

References Con’t