Monday, January 7, 2013

2013 and 1940 similarities in grading


I have written previously regarding my support for standards based grading and I have not changed my thoughts regarding it.  It just makes sense to embed it into our work within PLCs.  As we lay out what we want students to know and be able to do, a grading system should mirror this work.  Recently, my family found this report from my wife's great grandmother.  As you can see not much has changed since 1940 in terms of reporting grades.  The only difference may be the report card is written in handwriting and not printed off.  



How do we know if the child truly knows the material from this type of grade reporting?  We can only speculate from the grades reported.  The report card above shows an overall average to good rating.  So based on this report card the individual would have been a "good" student.  I personally found it interesting that they included conduct and effort, these days we often  just add that to the final grade, at least they separated it. 

My vision of what this may look like.  Powerstandards are what we believe the students should know and be able to do.  A formative assessment is the physical instead of the autopsy, we probe to find the breakdown in learning.  The formative assessment could have multiple assessments assigned to each Powerstandard.  Grading for learning allows us to pinpoint the breakdown and provide interventions.


We need to do differently in this area and it just makes sense to begin thinking about the grading process.  

2013 and 1940 - Should our reports cards be this similar? 

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