The Data Speaks!

I was super excited/nervous for final exams to come around this year. I mean, this is what all the grading reform has been leading up to--right? All my hard work hinged on one test score. Well, the moment came and went and I am pleased to say I have great news. I graphed my final class averages (all the standards tests) and the final exam scores. The correlation was certainly positive, but I needed a number! After using the conveniences of Excel (**drumroll**) 0.89 correlation coefficient!!!!! This is super exciting. I almost could have given my students JUST the final exam.

A few things I noticed:

• The Special education students were the subgroup that had the lowest correlation coefficient. However, it was still 0.74. 
• The high performers had the highest coefficient at 0.91. 

I am anxious to see what May will bring with the state testing. So far all the tests (to include the final exam) has been made by either me or my department. The state test in May will be the true measuring stick for what I've been teaching this year.

On another note, I haven't been updating as much as I had hoped for this year. I will, of course, do my best to post relevant information in a timely manner. That may or may not happen more often next semester.

Purposeful Assignments

Ever since I have been using Standards-Based Grading in my classroom, I have noticed that I have been making my assignments much more purposeful. In the past my schedule would look something like this:

Monday:5.1 vocab/notes, guided practice
Tuesday: 5.1 guided practice, independent practice
Wednesday: 5.2 vocab/notes, guided practice
Thursday: 5.2 guided practice, independent practice
Friday: 5.3 vocab/notes, guided practice

Etc..., etc..., etc...., the boring cycle continued. Every now and then I would throw in a cool activity or two, but I would stick with the routine for the most part. I would assign problems just because it was independent practice day and not necessarily because it was what the students needed at that time. I would "worksheet" the kids through the chapter and then we would test at the end...simply because we had "covered" the material.

Now that I am working with SBG I feel like every assignment I give has an actual purpose. I am trying to learn more about what my students know or how I'm going to teach them something in particular. I don't lecture. I don't really give too many notes. I don't give homework. I give very carefully selected assignments.

The reason I am able to select the assignments so carefully is because I know what each of my students know and are able to do. Instead of giving endless worksheets, I give "mini-quizzes" several times a week. When the students are performing well on the mini-quizzes I give them their standard test.

It really seems like this system might stick around my classroom permanently.

...thoughts

As the semester is getting further along, I am enjoying SBG more and more.  I truly do not remember what it was like to be on the other side of the grading fence. I know my first two years of teaching I spent my days “grading” endless stacks of paper. Usually I ended up putting “+”, “+-“, or “-“ on the papers which had nothing to do with the actual content mastery. If they finished the entire assignment they got a “+”. If they finished more than half but not all of it they got a “+-“. And if they finished less than half (but at least turned something in) they got a “-“. I had so many papers to grade that I never really gave any one paper a good review. I was basically grading participation—behavior.  I was the teacher at the parent conference that scrambled to defend my grades when a parent asked, “Why is my student failing if they keep getting 100s on all the homework and classwork? Doesn’t that mean they should know it for the test?” And then I would say something like, “well, um…yea…anyone else wanna talk?” Embarrassing. I knew it wasn’t a good practice, but I didn’t know how to really fix it. I am so thankful that I finally decided to jump into SBG this year. This system makes sense. I am still embarrassed at parent-teacher conferences, but the difference is that I am embarrassed for my colleagues that haven’t figured it out yet. I watch them scramble to justify silly grading practices just like I used to. I really want to help them, but this is a philosophy that you kind of have to adopt on your own before you are willing to listen to others ideas on the "how to do it" side of things. 

One of the principals at my school said, "If you just change the grading system but nothing else, it won't be any better than it ever has been. In fact, it might be worse." I agree with that statement. SBG is more than just a way to grade papers. It is an entire philosophy. It has changed the way I teach and assess. I truly believe it is making me a better teacher.  

Wow...it's been a while!

As the title says it has been a while since I've posted, but I have reasons!!! (Don't we all?) Anyway, things are calming down at work a little bit and so I should be able to post slightly more often (but no promises).

At this point I have given my first four standards quizzes. I have a surprisingly low failure rate right now but I feel like it truly represents what my students know and are able to do. I love that I can look at my gradebook and know *exactly* what skill each kid needs to reinforce or refine.

Other things I like:

• The kids are starting to really buy into the system. I still get the "are you grading this?" type of question, but I no longer have to answer it. It never fails. When a student dares to ask that question, another student (un-prompted) says "Yes, she will grade it and give us feedback on it. This is evidence." Score in my column!
• The students really know what they know and what they don't know. If you ask almost any kid in my classes why their grade is what it is...they could tell you which standard (in their own words) that they need to improve. Score again!

 Things I need to get better at:

• Keeping a better paper trail of the formative formal/informal assessments than I do. At this point I grade them and give them back to the students. Occasionally (if I have used clickers or some other technology) I have kept records of the scores. Most of the time I just return the quizzes marked up with feedback to the students and move on. My plan is to devise some type of paper gradebook system that I can keep up with easily, but so far all my attempts have failed.
• Giving more timely feedback. Ideally I would like to give students their "evidence" back within day. Currently it is taking me a couple days. The more immediate the feedback is, the more meaningful it will be for the students.

Standards Quiz #2

Today I finished grading my second round of standards quizzes. We just finished standard #9: The student will be able to describe and/or order a given set of real numbers (rationals & irrationals). This quiz was much easier to grade than the first one. It only had 9 questions (3 easy, 3 medium, 3 hard) and it was all multiple choice. I made the students show work anyway. However, this saved me a lot of time. I was able to quickly skim the multiple choice responses for right/wrong and then any questions I wanted further clarification on I could just look at their work. I finished grading all four classes worth of quizzes before the day was over. I had just as much information as I did from the previous quiz and I was able to spend more time providing written feedback.

I will probably do the majority of my quizzes this way from now on. The state test is multiple choice anyway, so they might as well get used to it.

As a side note, I used a web-based program called Discovery Ed to make the quiz. It is a service my district has subscribed to. You are able to select the course and then drill down to the individual standard. It provides a whole back on easy/medium/hard questions. The questions are remarkably similar to the state test my kids will take at the end of the year. This has saved me a TON of time this year. I can pick through my choices and have a beautiful standards quiz in a short amount of time. So thankful for Discovery Ed.

First Assessment - Grading

My students took their first big standards quiz on Wednesday. I had no idea what to expect about grading. I didn't know how long it would take or how difficult it might be to score it correctly. So far I have finished two out of four classes and it is taking about twice as long to grade as it would have last year under the old system. However, last year I only used multiple choice tests. I could easily go through and mark off a, b, c, d, etc... This first standards quiz was strictly free response and essay. Therefore, I am not basing my "time it takes to grade" on this one assessment.

Overall, I like this system a lot better so far. The usual points or percentage systems never really made me too happy. Even though I have only graded two classes, I am pleased with the results. The kids who are currently failing are the kids who don't know what they are doing and that is a small percentage. I have one in each class right now that is failing. The rest are spread out As through Ds. The quiz scores match up perfectly, I feel, to what the students actually know.

Tomorrow I will be handing the quizzes back. The students are going to chart their own progress. They all have a "standards" tab in their binder (go me!). I will work on giving some valuable feedback to each student. I want them to know exactly what they should work on in order to improve their score.

I'm excited to give the quizzes back. I'm interested to know how long it will take for the students to really catch on to the grading system. I am sure once they fully understand it, they will appreciate it.

I'll keep you updated! As always, feedback is welcome.

First Opinions from Admin

I had a meeting with my administrator sometime mid-spring semester and asked her if she would support me through implementing standards-based grading in my classroom. She gave the approval for me to go forward with planning based on what she knew of it. The plan that I posted here was the first write up of what I informally presented to her. I added a few details but the bulk of what I wrote stayed the same. She did not require that I keep her updated, but I have found over my years that it makes life much easier if you keep your administrator in the loop.

Anyway, so I unveiled the plan and I got three questions in return:
1. How do you plan to communicate the plan and its benefits to parents and students?
2. What do you expect will happen to the distribution of grades? More As, Fs? Stay the same?
3. How can you make re-assessment more mandatory and less invitational?

I had a response for the first two, but the third one threw me for a loop. I don't have anything in place to make sure the students reassess. At this point, it is up to the student to reassess if they want to. They don't have to. Aside from staying after school (which isn't an option because I am coaching fall and springs sports) or coming in early (which very few students are willing to do)...I don't know what to do.

So that is where I am at with the process right now. I am thinking about how to make the process less-invitational. I hope to come up with a plan (or "acquire" a plan hehe) that doesn't require me to spend countless more hours at the school building. Maybe an in-class arrangement? I dunno...

1/3 Grading Scale

So we needed a way to translate the rubric scores to percentages because our district's grading scale is more percentage based (0 - 100). The district scale is:

93-100 A

85-92 B

75-84 C

70-74 D

0-69 F

We wanted something more specific than just 4, 3, 2, or 1 because it is possible for a student to master some of the level 3 content and all of the level 2 content. It wouldn't make sense to give that kid a 2 or a 3. We needed some middle ground. We considered using .5, but we also felt like that wasn't specific enough. After much discussion we settled on a .33 grading scale. Here it is: 

4.0 – 100% A

3.67 – 97% A

3.33 – 92% B

3.0 – 90% B

2.67 – 83% C

2.33 – 77% C

2.0 – 70% D

1.67 – 67% F

1.33 – 63% F

1.0 – 60% F

<1.0 – 50% F

So if a student mastered the level 3 content and got a minimal amount of level 4 content correct, he or she would receive a 3.33. That indicates proficient with a low-partial proficiency at advanced content.

Also, the top tier from 3 to 4 is not split into even sections. We decided to make a 3.33 a 92% B instead of a 93% A. It didn't make sense to have three opportunities for an A and only one for a B.

Meet Ashley

I'm Ashley Walther and I'll be one of the two contributors for this blog. The other is my colleague, David. He will introduce himself shortly.

I am a fourth year math teacher at an inner-city school in Knoxville, TN. I have my BA in Mathematics and my MA in Curriculum & Instruction. I've experienced both middle and high school, but the majority of my time has been spent at the high school level. I've taught every grade from 6 to 12. This upcoming year I'll teach solely freshmen.

My school does what is called "looping". The teachers follow the students for two years. The ninth graders I have this year I will have again as sophomores next year. In addition to this set up, we also have core-academic teams. David is the science teacher on my team and I am the math teacher. Ever since we became teammates, David and I have struggled to find ways to make grades more meaningful to students, teachers, and parents. We independently started talking about things that were hovering around the standards-based grading category.  Once we realized we were both talking about doing the same types of things, we knew what we had to do. We got permission from our administrators and this year we are jumping head-first into standards-based grading.

This blog will follow our journey through the ups and downs of SBG. Hopefully we will detail our trials and tribulations so that others may benefit from our experience. I also hope that this will be a good record for us next year when it is time to make changes.

This blog will be strictly about SBG, but you can also follow my math blog here. Most of the posts on this site will be duplicated on my math site, but the math site will have more than just SBG.