Moving to Standards-based Reporting

1. Moving to Standards-based Reporting

2. Becoming Assessment Literate • Creating Essential Agreements • ISE’s Essential Agreements for Assessment: • The school will educate parents, teachers, students, and administrators to become assessment literate. • Teachers will actively involve students in the assessment process through self-reflection, goal setting, and peer collaboration. • Teachers will use a variety of assessment techniques and will include a balance between pre-assessment, formative and summative assessment. • Assessment should be aligned with the standards and outcomes as well as ESLRs. • Students should receive assessment criteria and rubrics for learning activities as well as exemplars where appropriate to ensure they understand the assessment expectations. • Major assessment tools should be determined before a unit of study and should follow the Understanding by Design process including the development of common assessments. • Assessment should be collected and analyzed to inform instruction. • Assessments should enhance student learning, be ongoing and feedback should be provided in a timely manner.

3. Becoming Assessment Literate • Create or revise your assessment policy • Educate all faculty • Thomas Guskey • Alfie Kohn • Joe Bower – www.joebower.org • Rick Wormeli • Talk to other schools • Look at sample report cards

4. Creating Buy-in • Administration • Faculty • Parents • Students

5. Administration • Have a clear vision • Articulate what you want the faculty to be able to do • Be on the same page

6. Faculty • In-service days or time • Provide articles and reading on standards-based reporting and grading • Have discussions with faculty about the befits of moving to standards-based • Allow the staff to voice their concerns and give research-based evidence of why the shift

7. Faculty • Decide what the report cards will look like • How many standards will you have for each subject? • Where will you place the work habits and behaviors? • How will you phase out grades? • Major decisions need to be made before talking to parents and students

8. Parents • Most important to get parents on-board • Create a parent focus group • Let them feel empowered – ask them their thoughts about the reports and listen • Hear their concerns • Share the research with them • Share examples from other schools • Offer all school parent workshops • Provide key information in mother tongue

9. Parent Concerns • When transferring to another school, the school will not accept my child without a grade. • The kids won’t be motivated if they don’t get a grade. • Other countries don’t use standards.

10. Students • Survey students • Ask them what a B in one class and a B in another class means • Get their thoughts on receiving just grades, how do they feel when it is report card time • Have students educate parents at home

11. Burning Questions • What does the honor roll look like in a standards-based world? Is there a place for honor roll? • How does your grade book look? • How do you convert scale to a letter grade and ensure consistency? • What questions should we ask parents?

12. What it will Look like • December and June, semester report card goes home • Standards plus no grades in grade 6, standards and grades in 7 and 8, grades to be phased out each year • Progress report at conferences in October and March, progress report will contain ESLRs and comments • Tackle high school in 2012-13

14. Next Steps • Emphasize new reporting system at Open House • Have new report cards available to all at the beginning of the year • Translate as much as possible into home languages • Be transparent about the grading and what it will look like

15. Sharing • Dropbox • Share sample standards-based report cards • Articles • Videos • Presentations • EARCOS Admin job-a-like on standards-base reporting