The Struggle Continues

Can the Assessment Conundrum Be Solved?

Does this seem fair to you?

For as long as I’ve been teaching, grading and assessment practices have been questioned, and changed, and questioned again, and changed again and again.

Where am I at with assessment? A Dead End? A Barren Field? Lost inside a giant maze?

My school is in the process of changing to Standards Based Grading. And even though several teachers already have their grade books labeled Standards Based for the past three years, I’ve just been informed that technically we aren’t doing it “right.” This leaves me feeling more confused than ever. The big “rumor” is that all subjects will have to switch to Standards Based Grading next year. So far, it is just the E/LA department that has made the switch, and it hasn’t been pretty. There’s so much clash about what it is and what it isn’t.

Then there’s a big formative assessment versus summative assessment debate. How much should each be worth in the grade book? What percentage of the total “grade” are formative assessments? What percentage of the total “grade” are summative assessments? Should a formative assessment even get a grade or credit in the grade book? Should we only include summative assessments?

The two other members of my Professional Learning Community (PLC) want to get rid of formative/summative assessments and just focus on whether or not kids have met the standards.

I ask these ladies, “Isn’t this just going back to OBE and Mastery Learning?”

To which they respond, “I don’t even know what you just said.”

“What does OBE mean?”

They don’t know what Outcome Based Education is because they are younger, and they haven’t been teaching as long as I have. They haven’t seen the pendulum shift as many times as I have. I am not purposefully trying to be a cynic. I think that assessing our students is the key to great teaching.

But I also believe that some kids are very motivated by grades, and asking them to do something for “nothing” may cause us great angst. Some kids — especially my students in middle school — will not put in the practice if it isn’t required and tied to “a grade.” So it’s the big Catch 22 in some regards. There would need to be a great deal of training for both students and parents. Our society seems to be enamored with grades.

As teachers we want our students to do the work, the reading and the writing, and we want to give them feedback, so they can improve, but giving a grade can feel defeating to both student and teacher. It can seem subjective, taboo, out of fashion, limiting, final. Why can’t learning just be intrinsic in nature? Why do we need to give grades at all? Can’t we just give feedback? Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to give grades? Hence, I sometimes feel stuck at the end of a dead end road.

We Aim to be Constantly Self Assessing

In my school district, there are four questions our PLCs and leadership groups have been pondering for the past 6 years or more. These questions drive both our curriculum and our assessments.

1. What should students be able to do or know?
2. How will I know when they know it?
3. What do I do if they know it already?
4. What do I do if they don’t learn it?

I want to explore how assessment drives everything!

Here is what I value:

I aim to have students fully engaged and participating in their own learning. I want kids to feel safe to take risks. I want to build a community where all kids know each other and feel comfortable sharing. I want us to share what we’ve read and written. I want kids to know how passionate I am about reading and writing. I’d like kids to be able to write whatever they want and not just what a “fad” curriculum tool dictates. I want to be able to use my own individual ideas to reach my students. I want to know my students likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. I’d like to push my students out of their comfort zones and to their limits. I’d like kids to value my feedback and use it to help them grow as writers.

Is there a connection between what I value and my instructional minutes?Does what I value align with what I do? From pondering I have come to realize:

• I want to achieve much more than there’s time for.
• I sometimes feel the kids don’t “get it “during the mini-lesson.
• I’d like to conference with all my students even more than I currently do.
• I want kids to write more with independence than they currently can/are.
• I need more time to provide adequate and ongoing feedback.

My Writing PLC seems to insist we all teach the same thing on the same day in the same way. I don’t even teach my four writing classes the same way. Anyone who has taught should know, would know, does know that no two classes of kids are the same. They have different personalities and different needs.

Do we really need to be cookie cutter teachers? Surely that’s not the intention of Standards Based Grading. I can totally get behind posting my agenda and learning targets, but I take issue with someone else telling me exactly what I’m supposed to teach, how, and when. I know my students, and they don’t necessarily have the same needs as yours.

“photography of school room” by Feliphe Schiarolli on Unsplash

My school had in-service last Monday, and I pulled a quote from the presenter’s slides that really struck a tone with me. “When you provide concrete, specific, helpful feedback that details next steps that are within reach for learners, this accelerates progress.”(Researchers Sadler, Hattie, Reeves, Corcoran) I feel a real connection to this advice. I hope to adopt it as my new mantra. Notice it didn’t say anything about giving grades or meeting Standards. Yes, the Standards are important, but they need to be broken down for students and parents to understand.

So my struggle with the topic of assessment continues and probably will continue as long as I teach. And I won’t give up the fight for what I know is right for my students.