Dear Mr. Pseudonym,
For the past year the teachers of Foundations of Science have been piloting a model of Standards Based Grading(SBG) and would strongly recommend that next year all 9th grade teachers move to a SBG system. The SBG System is a much more realistic picture of a students knowledge, understanding and learning. We have several reasons that we feel that SBG makes a large impact on students and the school.
#1 - As a teacher there are many things in our classrooms that we can not control but grading and what students do in our presence we can control. It is frustrating that we are at the mercy of so many factors that we can not control, such as students socioeconomic levels, school funding, class sizes and many other issues but grading we can control. With standards based grading we eliminate the useless averages that truly do not show what a student has actually learned.
#2 - Homework presents a major issue in classrooms today. Many of us who piloted the SBG program can tell you that we all started our careers believing that homework was essential and it was absolutely necessary to award points for homework. It was a belief that students had to do homework and that if points were not awarded to the homework they wouldn’t do it. Yet in many classrooms students who were clearly learning sometimes earned low grades because of missing work. Conversely, some students actually learned very little but were good at “playing school” and turning in work and doing extra credit to get a passing grade. Take these student examples. (All names have been changed)
Grade Book
| |||
Name
|
Homework Average
|
Quiz 1
|
Chapter 1 Test
|
Frank
|
95
|
60
|
65
|
Brandie
|
50
|
75
|
80
|
Sherri - did extra credit
|
110
|
50
|
63
|
Students like Frank and Sherri do great on homework, but was this graded for just completion or actual content? Was the work copied from someone else? If they are scoring that high on the content of their homework, why do their quiz and test scores not align? What was the extra credit? Crossword puzzles? Sherri’s homework averaged with her quiz and test scores would make it look like she was proficient when in fact her assessments show she is not.
Many students today are too busy with extracurriculars or jobs to do homework and the homework turns out to be useless. Times are different than 15-20 years ago when kids went home to the dining room table and did their homework and that was priority one. So if homework just leads to grade inflation and is not a true reflection of learning in the gradebook then why assign it or count it? We need to change the mindset of students that homework is done just to get points and instead get them to see it as practice that leads to learning. I always discuss this with my students from the standpoint of homework and class activities as practice for the big game. You have to practice the skills which you don’t get rewarded for but when you do well in the big game that is the reward. Likewise with school work you have to practice the skills in order to be ready for the assessment so you can show what you have learned.
#3 - If grades are inflated through extra credit and meaningless busy work it is not a true picture of what the student has learned or the skills they have acquired. Using SBG grades do have real meaning.
- An A means the student has completed proficient work on all learning targets and also has developed an advanced understanding of the material and skills.
- A B means the student has completed proficient work on all learning targets.
- A C means the student has completed proficient work on most of the learning targets, although not on all learning targets. The student can continue to the next course.
- A Not Yet grade means the student has not completed proficient work on most of the learning targets and needs assistance through class interventions to still learn the necessary content.
- An F means the student has completed proficient work on fewer than one-half of the learning targets and cannot successfully complete the next course in sequence.
The grading scale eliminates the D and essentially says you are either obtaining proficiency in almost all of the course content or you are not. Some of us in the pilot program experimented with A,B,C or Not Yet. While this worked well we ran into troubles with attendance issues. The Not Yet grade was designed for those students who were there and just did not get it. These students need extensive intervention time until they got it but the Not Yet grade doesn’t give students a defeated outlook, as it just tells them they don’t have it yet but there is still time to learn it. The issue was with students who were habitually absent but not dropped according to the attendance policy and required the F in the grade book. So therefore we propose the above grade scale.
#4 - Since the adoption of standards-based grading, there has been a drastic reduction in meaningless paperwork which provides time for more important considerations such as teacher collaboration or work on the common core. Many people may view that the fact our students do less paperwork as they are not learning as much but it is quantity not quality. As a teacher I can focus my feedback only on selected problems and give higher quality feedback. When a teacher is trying to grade a lot of busy work and homework everyday the feedback is not constructive and ends up being a completion grade and busy work for the student. By using fewer assessments, with better feedback, teachers can get a truer sense of where the class is an adjust instruction as needed.
#5 - Through the implementation of SBG other reforms had to be implemented. Implementing SBG required every class to have a clear set of learning targets. This led to collaboration with colleagues about what the learning targets are and what proficiency of each of these learning targets would look like. Since we were getting very concise about what we wanted students to learn we compared all of our learning targets to the common core. So through SBG, curriculum and collaboration were improved.
The key for the implementation across all 9th grade courses will be education of students and parents. Students and parents alike need to understand the rationale for the change so teachers must hold discussions with students and parents. Students also need to understand their responsibilities in the SBG system. Many students will not like SBG since it eliminates grade inflation and they can no longer do a bunch of homework or extra credit to raise their grade or get an A. Some students will really like the ability to retest and intervention time built into class so that they can get extra help and revise or retake until they meet proficiency. No matter what side of the coin they fall on parents and students will need to be educated.
We feel that expanding the Standards BAsed Grading system to all 9th grade courses would be a step in the right direction for By The River School District and would like to see it expanded to all 9th grade courses and then possibly school wide.
The Foundations of Science team would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss a plan to move forward.
Thank you for your consideration.
Melissa Hocking
FOS Team Leader
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