Tag Archives: standards-based

Covid Provoked Reforms – Proficiency in Standards-based Learning

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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.” 

https://dpi.wi.gov/standards

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.

Standards and Rigor Within Remote Education

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I observe three examples of how remote educators are addressing academic standards and rigor.

  1. A high school science teacher is adhering exactly to his traditional, standards-based curriculum guide.  All students are receiving a streamed, synchronous and recorded, daily instruction that matches the level of teaching they would receive if sitting in class.  There is no deviation in presentational pace.  All students are Zooming as classes or as chat groups or as individuals with the teacher.  Students are able to call, text, or e-mail the teacher at any time and he responds to all.  He prioritizes “talking” with students about their daily work to ensure they stay engaged.  Recorded lessons do not replace live lessons; they allow students to check what they are learning with the original instruction. Class work assignments are supported with on-line or school-bus delivered materials.  Quizzes and tests remain on a schedule that will assure that all students will receive a full annual curriculum, including AP level courses. 
  • A middle school teacher is streaming three synchronous Zoom sessions each day – ELA, Math and Science/Social Studies.  Each session is a presentation of new instruction.  All class work is posted on the class on-line platform.  Most posts are practice exercises related to the new instruction.  The assignments are a combination of school-approved curriculum and vendor/on-line materials.  Students receive enough daily material to keep them busy for six to seven hours each school day.  Submitted assignments are checked and graded and grades are posted on the student’s personal school account.  Student calls, texts and e-mails are answered in the following days. 
  • An elementary teacher posts three lesson each day – ELA, Math and Science or Social Studies.  New instruction, alternating with instructional review, is presented about every other day.  Instruction is derived from an on-line, commercial curriculum.  Daily class work is posted on the class on-line platform and provides practice exercises for the teacher’s instruction.  Most students complete their daily work in 30 to 45 minutes.  There is little opportunity for children to communicate via phone call, text or e-mail with their teacher.  Assignments are reviewed by the teacher and percentage/grades are posted on the student’s personal school account.

Academic rigor and standards-based instruction are not at the top of a school’s priority list these days.  They lie well below the daily demands of deciding whether children will be in-school or at-home or managing the amount of time a child is in either place.  They lie below the challenge of maintaining daily teaching when faculty and classroom support staff who quarantined due to positive tests of contact tracing.  They lie below the demands of daily mitigation protocols necessary for schoolhouse doors being open to any person.  Like a debt that is ignored over time because the need for daily living expenses are more demanding, the issue of academic rigor will one day need to be paid.

Most states have waived traditional, statewide K-12 testing regimens due to the pandemic.  End-of-year tests were not administered in the spring of 2020 and typical baseline tests were not administered in the fall of 2020.  Waivers or work-arounds abound regarding attendance, rules for daily physical activity, and minutes of required instruction in subject areas.  Nothing has been removed from the statutes, department of instruction regulations, or even school board policies.  Waivers are the rule of the day.

We are left with the “in the mean time” problem of preparing children for the day when the waivers are lifted – for the day the assessments return.  And, they will return.  It is probable that our state will not enforce statewide testing in the 2020-21 school year, but my money is on a reinstatement in 2021-22.  How will the education provided during the pandemic serve our children after the pandemic?

There is a sweep of articles being written about the “lost generation”, children in school during the Time of COVID whose education has been disrupted or up-ended.  This is not a lost generation.  The term is a misapplication of a label applied post-World War One to those whose innocence of the world had been shattered by the war’s death and destruction.  It is interesting that the generation of young Americans who fought and survived World War Two were labeled the “Greatest Generation”.  What new label will be attached to our children today – certainly not “lost”.

That said, the reality that academic rigor and fidelity to educational standards will be reinstated should cause us to re-think the education we are providing today.  Will a child a year from now, pencil or keyboard in hand, facing an academic assessment whisper to her test question, “We did not learn this in our pandemic classes”. 

If your school district has demanded that all remote education for its children will be standards-based and that the school’s quality requirements will be upheld throughout remote education, stop reading now.  You are on the right track at the right time.  If not, please keep reading.

When children are at-home learners, faces on a screen that seem totally unschool-like, it is easier to dismiss daily rigor and standards.  Just getting connected is a success.  Just getting a lesson presented is a success.  Getting responses from a child is a success.  Engaging remotely with children is a real success.  Rigor and standards?  Not so much a success.

But, that is the problem we will face tomorrow and every day after that tomorrow if we don’t address rigor and standards today. 

As a thought, ratchet up rigor and standards in your remote education a little each week.  Begin with the standards.  Assure that a growing number of assignments point at the appropriate academic standards for your children.  Look again at assignments children already have completed to verify standards that have been addressed.  On your annual checklist of grade level or course-specific academic standards, do a check-off of what has been and has not been addressed in September.  Get back on a standards-based track.  Before long, all assignments will be standards-based. 

Gradually increase your demands for rigor.  Move from pass/fail back toward your traditional quality requirements.  No longer count connected engagement as an end-success but as a beginning for success.  Correct responses and corrected responses improve correctness.  Push children to move from good to better to best. 

I congratulate our local school district where the Board confirmed that all teachers will provide instruction using the district’s standards-based curriculum only.  In the past week, elementary teachers began administering the school’s academic screening tests for reading and math to ascertain individual and class status on annual performance expectations.  Secondary classes will begin their annual series of ACT-battery assessments by the end of the month.  None of these are high stakes assessments, but will be used to adjust instructional targets for children. Standards-based instruction and assessment measured rigor are the the order of the day for the duration of remote education.

The real end goal when we transition from remote or hybrid education back to in-person learning is that all children will be ready for success in resuming a standards-based and rigorous education.   Make these two goals, standards-based instruction and rigorous learning expectations, your constant normal to assure children become “academically “lost” as a result of the pandemic.