Kindly help me complete the attached assignment on grading tips.
C12 – Grading Tips
The standard-based system for the past 20 years has been the educator’s mapping manual of how we align our learning expectations for children in every grade and every content area in our school system. It has been a massive undertaking by Federal and State departments, districts, schools, leaders, teachers, and expert advisors to put forth a pathway of clear student outcomes of learning. The de-construction of a standard and defining what it means to score in three to five sections using terms such as exemplary/outstanding, proficient/ met expectations, partially proficient/approaching, or below/improvement required in understanding the standards’ level of attainment across many of America’s school systems.
The classroom preparation of our students is like a coach’s preparation for a typical in-season college football week. Watching our favorite gridiron team perform on Saturday is the climax of the coaches and players’ intense week of work and preparation getting the team ready for the big game on Saturday. In our classrooms, we have our game plan (lesson plan) ready to implement at the start of each week. Just like the players, our team of students practices for the game’s performance of the unit material at the direction of the teacher through desired strategies needed to be successful on game (assessment) day.
One big difference in the football game is that everyone knows that a field goal is worth 3 pts and a touchdown is 6 points. A touchdown represents exemplary success and a field goal is a partial success. A punt or turnover does not meet the team’s expectations of expected performance just like a D or F does not meet the expectations in the classroom. When the game is over you add the points and there is no confusion about the outcome. The points speak clearly to the outcome results.
Unfortunately, that is not the case in the use of our classroom points and grades as outcome predictors of success if we use the traditional scale. Numbers are not always as reliable. We have convoluted the monitoring process to be frustrating, unreliable, and not sure what it actually does measure in too many classrooms.
Currently, the two most common grading schemes are the traditional 100-point scale and the 5-point scale.
1. A 100-point scale (0-100) with 10-point ranges to define the following:
A-90-100 Excellent
B-80-89 Above-average
C-70-79 Average
D-60-69 Below-average
F-0-59 Failure (note: You can see we have 59 failure points and 41 passing points. Any guess why this is the case?)
2. A 0-4 Point scale (5-point scale) most commonly found in standard-based assessments
4-Outstanding
3-Above Average
2-Average
1-Below Average
0-No evidence of any understanding
As you enter the classroom, it will be important that you visit with your mentor teacher or department head and have a thorough understanding of grades / grading / and reporting expectations. Many districts will provide you with an expectation of the
number and types of grades that are expected during a reporting period. Keeping up with your grading to be prepared for regular progress reporting is essential; and with parents having access to parent grading portals, they expect you to stay current with grading and reporting.
The most basic error in teacher grade books and report cards is found in the use of percent and points interchangeably for assessment grades. A teachers’ report card may have the following data for two assignments this week or multiple scores that are identical rating performances with one zero for each, but different scales being used.
|
|
Points used for |
Percent used for Grade |
|
Daily assignment 1 |
5/10 |
50 |
|
Daily assignment 1 |
20/20 |
100 |
|
Average |
25/30=83% |
75% |
|
Grade |
B |
C |
Another common error is to use both the 0-100 point scale and the 0-4 point scale interchangeably in a classroom.
Which grade does the child receive (B or a C) in each of these scenarios? Why? How do you know which one is better or more accurate than the other?
The most fundamental level questions we can ask, “are the practices we are using currently in many classrooms accurate or misrepresenting learning, and why?”
Recognizing we have to take assessment reliability seriously to avoid the mentioned example should be part of a normal preparation practice in education.
Errors from students are presented in such ways as lack of motivation, too tired to think, guessing, lack of concentration, attitude, and simple memory lapses are just a few examples.
A test can also have errors simply by such examples as confusing directions; the test was too long to complete in the allotted time, or too many questions in one area or not enough questions in other skills that reflect the sample of skills expected to be monitored in the standard(s).
The teacher can create errors in such ways as scoring and rating practices that are unreliable as pointed out above and statistically unable to support the score given to the student; item difficulty; item discrimination; and practice such as weighting methods of assessment unfairly and giving extra credit for non-academic purposes.
In the sample below you can see aligning weighted value to expectations of concepts versus weight to a method of assessment. If your assessments are made up of percent of value as aligned to the expectations of Texas Standards then the weight should be toward the skill (i.e. place value) not the method of assessment (tests and quizzes…). A big mistake in using the current weighted system of assessments is you may have a test worth 50 percent and quizzes worth 20 percent of a child’s grade The error is when the test is 100 points and the quiz is 20 points. A weight is pre-defined by the points you gave it and in this case, the test is five times more important than the quiz (100 compared to 20 points). When you add the weight of 50% (test) to 20% (quiz) it becomes another 2.5 times more important on top of the 5 times you already started with per the points you gave it. See how this skews your data and accuracy of assessing learning?
1. On the report card, does the grade truly reflect the student’s ability as measured against a standard in that particular subject and not a “responsibility” grade?
2. Finally, think seriously about grades such as 69, 79, & 89, in the assessments, you have designed. Are they perfect enough to measure that precisely? I doubt it. I have never seen a 100 point descriptor to date in my career of every point on the 100-point scale. The student probably knows enough about the topic to earn the extra point, but you might not have asked. I like to ask the teacher that gives the B for the 89 to tell me the learning difference in the 89 vs 90. I usually get something like, “we have to have a cut-off somewhere.” That is true, but you have to be able to show the learning cut-off, not the number cut-off, as it is inaccurate in the scale.
Write down your thoughts on this information and defend why you have chosen the grades you did in the text box below.
