A Michigan Middle School Makes the Leap to Standards-Based Grading

            In this Kappan article, Michigan middle-school teachers Heather Deddeh, Erin Main, and Sharon Ratzlaff Fulkerson describe their school's journey from traditional to standards-based grading. They start with a softball analogy: a pitcher practices her riseball for days, and a lot of the time the ball flies over the catcher's head or ends up in the dirt. But all that matters is whether the pitch is effective in a real game. "What seems so logical and implicit in the athletic and performance arena is often foreign in schools," say the authors. "Teachers often weigh practice and performance equally." For example, if a student gets a C in homework and an A on the test, many teachers would average the two to give a final grade of B. This is crazy, they argue. What counts is mastery when it counts.

            Deddeh, Main, and Fulkerson and their colleagues started reading Ken O'Connor's book, How to Grade for Learning (Corwin, 2009) to help them rethink their grading practices. "As we moved through this book," they say, "we felt as if we were crossing a bridge that was exploding behind us, leaving us with no way to return and no clear path ahead." They decided that what would count was content mastery - students' ultimate understanding of what was taught. "Traditional grading practices often lead to 'grade fog,'" they say, "in which the level of content mastery is distorted by such nonstandards-based criteria as practice, neatness, organization, attendance, and behavior." O'Connor's book helped them articulate three core beliefs:

-   A grade should communicate a student's mastery of learning standards.

-   Homework is essential for learning but should not be included in the grade.

-   Learning may take more than one attempt.

Their school made the journey, and they have the following advice for others who want to follow a similar path:

            · Educate yourself. Ken O'Connor's book is excellent, as is Rick Wormeli's Fair Isn't Always Equal (Stenhouse, 2006).

            · Don't journey into unfamiliar territory alone. The authors worked with like-minded colleagues and administrators as they figured out how to change their school's policies.

            · Chart a course. It was very helpful that their district had organized state standards into curriculum units culminating in standardized tests. All that remained was for them to organize units into logical, assessable groups of content standards, getting away from the traditional textbook chapter-by-chapter approach.

            · Organize instruction. The authors suggest that a standard unit-plan format be used schoolwide.

            · Practice comes first. "Every student should have the opportunity to practice without penalty," say Deddeh, Main, and Fulkerson. "... Practice is the time to learn a new skill, make mistakes, fine-tune or perfect new techniques, take risks, and receive feedback, with the goal to continually improve." Interim assessments chart progress but don't count, and summative assessments are the biggest factor in students' final grades. The authors' school has found that parents and students quickly catch on to the logic of homework and interim assessments not counting toward grades, and students do these practice assignments because they understand that they are the way to improve proficiency and earn a good grade on summative assessments.

            · Evaluate the performance. The authors' district decided to take out of summative assessments any credit for participation, neatness, or extra credit. "If it's not a standard, it doesn't belong on a summative assessment," they say.

            · Give second chances. The maxim they applied was "Learning may take more than one attempt" and they made sure students had multiple opportunities to hone their skills - without penalty. Struggling students got one-on-one conferences with teachers, and students who failed tests got extra help and second chances.

            · Keep records. They invented a new unit grade sheet with three columns for each assignment, allowing space for practice, alternatives, tests, and retests so teachers could track students' multiple attempts. They had to find creative ways to fit all this into their computerized grading program.

            The bottom line at this school: "We have never considered returning to our outdated grading practices," say the authors. They compared letter grades with students' standardized test scores before and after their changes, and found that now there is now a much closer correspondence between the two. "This supports our belief that our grades now clearly communicate to parents and students exactly what the student has learned," they say. A seventh grader has the final word: "I find that I am more prepared for tests because I don't have to worry about getting a good grade; I have to worry about learning and understanding the material, and good grades will follow."

"Eight Steps to Meaningful Grading" by Heather Deddeh, Erin Main, and Sharon Ratzlaff Fulkerson in Phi Delta Kappan, April 2010 (Vol. 91, #7, p. 53-58), http://www.pdkintl.org

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