The status quo thrives when there are few challenges to disrupt its normal. Newton taught us that a body at rest will remain at rest unless it is acted upon by a force. The lack of compelling forces for change have kept much of public education in a Newtonian normal for decades if not a century. We should not squander the forces for change that the pandemic presents. Make plans now for stopping practices that do not work and shaping your new normals.
The grading of student work and students emerges every few years as a consistent problem for educators considering best practices. Like a groundhog on its annual day, we examine grading looking for something new to know and do as if we want to change. But, not liking what we see as options, we put our grading practices back into the inertial nest of ongoing poor practices.
Then, comes the pandemic.
How does a teacher apply traditional grading practices for a child whose attendance is disrupted by the pandemic and whose engagement with learning is somewhere around 50-60% of the school year? How do we assign a value a student’s learning of a grade level or course curriculum when we only taught parts of that annual curriculum? How do we compare a student’s academic work in 2020-21 or 2021-22 with any other student’s work prior to the pandemic? How do we grade students who are learning the virtual curriculum of a commercial provider not our school district’s approved curriculum?
We stop the questions because they all point to the same conclusion. Past grading practices cannot be applied in the pandemic. We must stop applying past practices that are not valid or professionally defensible for current times.
It is time to replace A, B, C grading that conceptually is an aggregate of academic improvement and achievement, student effort, participation and attendance, and collegiality and collaboration with peers all topped with a smidgeon of extra credit or whatever the teacher adds to make the grade seem to fit the student. No matter the teacher I have talked with over 50 years of observing grading practices, most teachers follow the Golden Rule of Grading – I grade my students as I was graded when I was a student. There are modifications, but most practices fall within the shadow of past, personal experiences. It is time to do better.
Educational standards are not new to educators. Standards anchor teacher preparation and licensing. The reauthorization of PI 34 by the Wisconsin legislature says “PI 34 restructured teacher education, educator licenses, and professional development for Wisconsin educators. The system is based on Wisconsin Educator Standards with demonstrated knowledge, skills, and dispositions for teaching, pupil services and administration. Initial licensing is based on an educator’s successful performance as measured against these standards.” Teaching licensing is proficiency-based on the learning and demonstration of specified standards.
https://dpi.wi.gov/licensing/programs/rules-statute
Standards are described in state statute and by state departments of instruction of education. State standards anchor contemporary curriculum development. Every subject area taught in Wisconsin is supported by DPI-adopted curricular standards. “Wisconsin Academic Standards specify what students should know and be able to do in the classroom.”
These standards provide the scaffold of student learning that creates the basis for standards-based proficiency grading. It is valid and appropriate to align the evaluation of student learning with these curricular scaffolds. The scaffolds are laddered by grade level and broadened at each grade and course.
The use of standards-base proficiency grading is not a newly made recommendation. Teachers have sidled up to this idea in the past, but the pull of the Golden Rule of Grading has consistently overpowered change. Now that the Golden Rule is broken, standards-based grading makes more and more sense.
To do this, we need to make two types of decisions.
- What evidence demonstrates secure proficiency of a standard?
- What aggregate level of proficiency demonstrates secure completion of a grade level or subject course?
While these may be argumentative questions, they are not difficult to answer. The evidence demonstrating secure proficiency of a standard derives directly from unit and lesson planning. Using older language of lesson planning, “The learner will …” describes the demonstrated outcomes of interest. A properly constructed standards-based instruction provides the standards which will be proficiency assessed. The evidence of completion also is in the unit design; it is in the statement of “extent and degree to which the student will demonstrate the standard”. Standards-based proficiency grading is using the outcome statement of your standards-based curriculum. Record keeping of the outcomes for which a student has demonstrated secure proficiency provides a grade book of achievement and growth.
If your curriculum is not standards-based, you have foundational work to do.
A school’s instructional committee can readily collaborate to determine the extent of the checklist/grade book needed to indicate grade level/course completion. Collaborative agreement of what demonstrates completion of a grade level or course is essential to balance student work across the curriculum. Successful completion of one grade level or course should not be disproportionate to another.
Teachers should thankfully welcome a standards-based proficiency design as it eliminates the problems of measuring effort and adding an extra credit to allow students improve an assigned grade. This is defensible. Without expecting an answer, why did we feel compelled to allow extra credit to erase the facts that student did not complete the basics of a grade level or course? Emotion overcame reality.
The alignment of grading with the demonstration of standards-based proficiency overcomes the dilemma presented by interrupted school attendance and engagement due to covid 19. Demonstration of learning is not clock or learning place-bound. This design overcomes the issues of remote versus in-person. Proficiencies are what proficiencies are – a student can or cannot demonstrate secure content knowledge or skills or dispositions about her learning.
Using standards-based proficiency grading creates a new practice that improves upon the older practices that failed the test of the pandemic. Standards-based proficiency grading creates a best practice for our future. We can and should create this as a new normal.