Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Can giving grades and assessing mastery go together?

Our school for the last two years has talked about grading and how to work an archaic system of grading into a standards-based world of mastery.  We have found that it is very difficult.  Not only is it difficult to put a grade on a summative that may not really show the true picture of a student’s ability, but it is also difficult to communicate with parents that an A on the report card does not necessarily mean their child has mastered the work given.  

I have been reading the book, “Rethinking Grading” by Cathy Vatterott and I feel that she has really been able to put into words what the true problem is with grading.  One point that she makes as she starts out her book, is that our “grading systems often reward on-time task completion and punish disorganization and bad behavior.”  That is so true!  My faculty and I have been discussing grading and our beliefs about it based on our past experiences in school.   We had been taught by our universities, our mentor teachers, how to grade.  We found that many times when we were grading papers, we would give extra points if the paper was turned in on time, or if a child had their name on the paper.  We also found that many times we deducted points for late work, no name, etc.   We noticed that we also were just trying to get through the curriculum….it was more about time and less about learning.  We were told to cover the material and if the student was not able to cover it in the time that they were given then they just did not get it, were given a permanent grade, and we moved on.  Oh my, bless our students’ hearts!  We were like a cattle farm herding them through the gates and never looking back to see if they were really learning or if they were able to apply this knowledge to new learning! 

There were two events that happened to my daughter when she was in high school that really made an impact on my thoughts about grading.  My daughter hated reading and writing, but persevered on an assignment given by her 11th grade English teacher with some assurance from me that I would help.  The assignment was to write a paper on a certain topic, which also required her to read a book.  My daughter read the book, wrote the paper with some help from me of course, but in all honesty it was her thoughts!  She turned the paper in on time, was excited that she had actually done something that was hard for her and when she received her paper back from the teacher it had a zero on it.  Yes, I said it had a zero!  She came home, showed me the paper through her tears and anger, which of course made me angry and I asked why?  “What did the teacher say you did wrong?”  The teacher said that her “margins” on the paper were incorrect and since she did not follow all the directions, she received a zero.  I was furious!  “What do correct margins have to do with the actual assignment or the work that my daughter had completed on the topic?” Why give a zero?  I talked with the teacher with no luck and then called the principal and after much discussion the zero was removed, but the damage was done!  My daughter went to one of the best high schools in our city and if she had teachers who were more interested in following the rules and not so interested in the learning, then how many other children were going through this? To even make it more laughable, the teacher in one of her classes said that if she brought in some Kleenex boxes she could get five extra points on her test!  Really!  Kleenex boxes can raise a grade, but hard work and following through don’t count! I found out that this was normal grading behavior for high school.  Due to this assignment and others throughout her high school years where she was marked down for not doing something that had absolutely nothing to do with the learning objective, I knew that grading was a contributing factor to why our children were graduating high school, but were not able to stay in college.  They were dropping out after the first year of college or had to take remedial courses because they were not prepared.  Our present state of grading, giving an A, B, C, D or F is more about student compliance to a system of rules then about learning. 

The United States system of education has been in trouble for some time.  The government brought in NCLB (No Child Left Behind) and even though there were problems with NCLB, one truth that came from this endeavor is that educators had to look at student learning and whether our students were actually proficient and not how well they obeyed the rules of the system.   What we found was that grades given to students in class and proficiency on a standardized test were not the same.  Yes, we all know that standardized tests are just one data source and it can be flawed, but it does give us some idea of how our students are learning.  At the school level I would have students who were at the 95th percentile in Math, but were receiving a D in the classroom or the opposite, a student who had straight A’s in all subjects, but was below proficient in all areas of the standardized test.  This is the moment that as a principal I knew we had a problem with grading!  This is what started the discussions at the school level to look at our practices and to be sure we were grading only summative work that students had been given opportunities for feedback and opportunities to redo areas of concern in order for them to move to mastery.  This is very hard to do if you still have to assign a grade of A, B, C, D, or F on a report card. 


My hope is that through discussions with teachers, our community, and our district office that we can change the way grading is done in our community.  We will look at our students as individuals who learn at different rates and in different ways and our job as their teacher is to give them many opportunities for feedback that will lead to success.  Can we work within the grading system we have and still stay true to learning?  I think we can especially in the middle and high schools.  I think our elementary schools would best be served by using a standards based report card that is about mastery.  Elementary school is the foundational years that will forever "color" how well our students do in middle and high school.  I think we can and should be transparent and authentic about student progress with our parents.  We want to create students who are prepared for this new workplace and world.  The job skills that are needed today will require workers who can solve problems without someone standing over them telling them what to do, workers who can think critically and make decisions, who will be able to communicate in many different ways with all kinds of people, and to know how to collaborate and be a team player.  It is time to make a change in how we grade success for all of us, but especially for our children!  

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Can we bring JOY back into the classroom?

Last year was a difficult year for our teachers due to lots of issues with online testing and off and on again testing dates in which the testing was finally cancelled because the company putting out the test could not follow through on what was needed.  Needless to say we did a lot of work for nothing!  I started to think about what was happening in education today and feel that testing has gotten so important that we are forgetting the simple pleasure of being a student and the joy that school should be for teachers as well as students.  JOY is a simple word meaning a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.  We all know that it is not possible to have great pleasure and happiness everyday and if we look to the biblical meaning of joy it is really about the assurance that God is in control of all the details in our life and He gives us the confidence to know that everything will be alright and our part is to praise Him in everything we do.  So, to go back to the classroom when I talk about Joy in the classroom I am talking about lessons that are creative and fun, that push kids to be curious and to hopefully help them to want to learn, even when what they are learning is difficult and not fun!  We have spent so much time worrying about testing, preparing for testing, looking at data, and then taking the test, that we have sucked all the joy out of the classroom!  My hope is that as we embark on this new year that we will put JOY back into the classroom and create learners who are curious and excited everyday to come to school to see what a new day brings.  In order to do this I have to honor the needs of my teachers and give them the opportunity to not feel burdened with testing and to have the freedom to try new things and to feel okay with failure and know that failure is the best way to learn, to bring more technology into the classroom, to collaborate with their co-workers and create great lessons to share and use throughout the building and to just be a teacher and enjoy it!  I could go on and on about this subject because I feel we have strayed so far from the path of good teaching that we are creating kids who really don't know how to learn, ask questions, etc. but who know how to bubble in the circle beside a correct answer on a test.  I feel that at our school we have really worked hard to not become those people who "teach to the test", but there is always that nagging thought at the back of our mind that we may not score as high as other schools that "teach to the test".  I have come to the conclusion that if we teach our students to be critical thinkers and evoke curiosity through well planned intentional lessons that our students will do well on any test that is given to them.  I hope that our state government will one day remove testing from a teacher's evaluation scores so that we could take the focus off of testing and shift it to the real focus, our students.

New School Year!

Well it is the start of a new school year!  It is an exciting time and a very tiring time for everyone that is involved with a school.  There are so MANY things to do and it seems like very little time to get it done before our students come to see us on the first day of school.  Every year I think I am not sure I can do this again!  I am not sure I can handle all the stress, all the conversations, all the drama that is a normal part of a school and then I remember the smiles, the hugs, the "kid" jokes that make a child laugh so hard that you can't help but laugh with them and I know I can do it again!  This job is not for everyone, but for those who feel it is their passion and their calling....there is not a better job on earth! So, another year is about to start and I am thankful that I am the principal of a school where children are loved....and love to learn!