Standards Based Grading

Standards Based Grading

Introductions • Fort Osage High School • Dr. Jason Snodgrass, High School Principal • De Soto School District • Dr. Stacie Stryhal, Director of Curriculum • Dan Hoehn, High School Principal • Cooper Tucker, Junior High Principal • Marquette High School • Dr. Jennifer Sebold, Assistant High School Principal

Our Goal • Overview of standards based grading • Implementation within our districts • Answer Questions

Grading History in Fort Osage • District of 5000 students outside Kansas City (Independence, MO) • Eleven schools serve K-12 students • One high school serving 1450 students • Standards-based grading in Fort Osage began in 2001 with the purchase of new grade book program (Excelsior/Pinnacle-Global Scholar). • Implemented over 5 years at all grade levels • Last three years focused on refining the philosophy and practices of the system

Principle One • Success is defined by what students learn rather than what teachers teach. • Effective Practices: • Give students additional opportunities to complete assignments, quizzes, tests and replace grades with updated information. Final grade should reflect final learning. • Make introductory activities in a unit worth fewer points than culminating assignments and assessments that occur after significant instruction has taken place. • Remember that it’s okay not to record everything students do in the gradebook. Students can learn and improve from feedback and additional practice, without assignments being recorded. • Do not award extra credit, particularly for things that are not directly related to the learning goals.

Principle Two Ensuring mastery of the most important standards is a powerful way to improve achievement. Effective Practices: • Work closely with your grade level and department team to discuss and determine which standards are most important, and how to ensure student learning of those standards. • Consider rubric scoring in your classroom to make grading easier and more meaningful. • Provide reteaching opportunities for key standards for students who haven’t mastered them. Consider requiring students to submit additional practice to show increased learning before they are allowed to retake an assessment.

Principle Three • Students will be more successful if they understand what they’re expected to learn and why that learning is valuable. • Effective Practices: • Create learning goals in student-friendly language and devise ways (either electronically or on paper) for students to monitor their own progress toward these learning goals. • When a student has been unsuccessful on your assessment of a standard, ask him/her to come up with an alternate way to show mastery. Once you’ve agreed on and the student completes an alternate task, you can adjust the grade accordingly. • Avoid assigning mass practice homework to students. Research shows that practice makes permanent (not perfect); so having students practice something that they haven’t learned well can actually make it more difficult for them to succeed in the long run when they have to “unlearn” something they’ve done incorrectly.

Principle Four • Effort plays a role in student achievement, but should be separated from performance on academic standards. • Effective Practices: • Effort will be reported on the report card through rubric standards for participation, work completion and behavior. • Emphasize the importance of effort in ongoing feedback and communication with students. Smart is something you get, not something you are. • Avoid assigning zeros for work that students don’t turn in. Mark the assignment incomplete and require students to make it up.

Principle Five • All students can achieve success and need different approaches to realize their potential. • Effective Practices: • Work with your team to design and implement interventions to ensure that ALL STUDENTS achieve the “non-negotiable” power standards for each course. • Design systems to ensure that students turn in acceptable work, especially on important assignments and assessments. The penalty for not turning in an assignment should NOT be that students don’t ever have to do the work. • Differentiate instruction and assessments by providing students with different (but equitable) means of demonstrating their mastery of learning goals.

Creating Standards • Use DESE and/or Common Core Standards as the foundation (big “overall objectives” for each course included on report card) • Create Power Standards • Work done by each department • Modify CLEs to create objectives • Included in gradebook • Teachers link DCA questions to power standards • AVOID identifying a long list of standards so that teachers aren’t overwhelmed by recording data

Technology • Gradebook supports the use of standards and provide useful reports for teachers • Class List Report (view student’s performance on each standard) • SIP Report (% of kids at below basic, basic, proficient, advanced) • Ideally, an assessment management system can “drop” scores by standard directly into the gradebook (teachers scan DCAs into gradebook) • Continue work with teachers to ensure they use data to support continued student growth (view how students are performing on each standard)

Instruction • Quality instruction is key to the success of any improvement initiative • Fort Osage focus on Assessment for Learning strategies • Principles and Practices of Standards-Based Grading guide teachers’ work in classrooms • AVOID imagining that standards-based grading is the answer to all school improvement problems

Report Card Changes for 2010-11 • Include life/work skills scores (on 4 point scale) at all grade levels (grades 5-12) which are subjective and reported each quarter -Rational: Parents and staff agreed in surveys that information about effort was important • Report standard scores on 4 point scale rather than with a percentage score -Rationale: Confusion created when parents try to average standard percentage scores to reach final grade and may be misleading due to imbalance among class work in different standards • Calculate standard scores and letter grades based on total points rather than weighted categories -Rationale: Found weighted categories was confusing to parents and we believe goals can be better met through effective teacher grading practices

Page 1 of high school report card

High School Grading Policy • Goal: To provide effective teaching practices and policies in order to maximize student achievement, understanding and learning. • All students, regardless of their original score, will be afforded the opportunity to reassess on a DCA or other assessment. • In order to be afforded the opportunity for reassessment, students must be able to provide information to the teacher demonstrating growth. • Students will have until the next DCA to reassess. • To ensure students meet the standards, teacher discretion is permitted in order to accommodate students with special circumstances (family emergencies, student absences, teacher absences, etc.) • The highest score received on any specific DCA or other assessment will be recorded in the grade book. • The specific time students are afforded the opportunity to retake a DCA or other assessment is based on teacher discretion. (Before school/after school/STAR time/within class after instruction, etc.)

Teacher Thoughts • Students will NEVER do their work with relaxed due dates and no points • Those turning in late work will just copy the worksheets already passed back • I don’t have time to retest, grade retest and data crunch by objective • No one will study for the 1st assessment if there is another chance • I will have more Fs if the grade is based solely on assessments • How will I keep up with number of students attempting to retest • If students are allowed different paces my advanced students will get done faster and begin to disrupt class

Realities • More assignments completed • Fewer students failing • Greater success (more students passing DCAs) • Very few students try to retest • Grading has been reduced by 50%

Ideas Tried • More class work, less homework • More oral retests after failing • Make students redo and resubmit assignments • Place keys in room for students to check own work • Provide enrichment activities for students completed with work • Give choices • Choose 1 of 2 worksheets once completed with assignments

Questions? • Jason Snodgrass • jsnodgrass@fortosage.net

De Soto • Dr. Stacie Stryhal • Dan Hoehn • Cooper Tucker

Standards Based Grading