I am done with my first semester using Standards Based Grading in my Geometry classes, and...
I like grading problems holistically, and I think that my rubric allows me to grade consistently. The rubric communicates clearly where students stand with certain skills. Some students have bought in to this system and are using reassessment to their advantage. These students seem to be trying learn the material. Some students have commented that they find the learning topics helpful and like how informative their grades are.
However, my current system is not working: my grades are inflated. There are a number of students who should be getting D's of F's, but they are not. They are the ones who should be reassessing, but they are not. The problem lies with my implementation. I jumped in without thinking about how averages would work with this system. I need to post grades online, so I assigned percentages to each numeric score as follows:
4: 95%
3.5: 90%
3: 85%
2: 70%
1: 60%
0: 50%
Under this system, when I give a 4 topic quiz and a student scores a 4, 4, 1 and 1, they have a grade of C+. That may seem reasonable, but on tests, students can do well on just a few concepts, completely bomb the other topics and pass.
I am not ready to give up on SBG, but I need help making changes. My department chair will likely recommend returning to traditional grading. I know that I will be having a conversation with someone from Admin because as a school, we are trying to combat grade inflation. It is normal for at least 5% of the students in geometry to have D's or F's and there are none in my class heading into the semester exam.
Over Christmas break, I plan to read Marzano's Formative Assessment and Standards Based Grading . I'd appreciate comments and welcome other suggestions to make this work.
Hi! I also struggled with this - and my kids weren't initially totally happy with it. But I grade similarly: 4, 3.5, 3, 2, 1, 0.
ReplyDeleteBut I grade on a point system -- I don't convert each number to a percentage.
So if a student gets a 4, 4, 1, and 1, they will have (4+4+1+1)/16=62.5%.
Which actually makes sense to me -- because they haven't really gotten much more than 1/2 the material.
My kids freaked out when they realized a 3 was a 75% and a 2 was a 50%. But the way I see it, and that I talked with them about it, is that they have to look at things holistically and practically.
If on a traditional test, a student worked a single problem on completing the square, and they lost 2 out of 4 points on it, they wouldn't say "AAAAAAAAH! I got a 50% on this!" They would look at the WHOLE test score to get a sense of how they did. Then they would see particular places they messed up to see what went wrong. This SBG thing is just a better way for them to see what's going on -- targeting the specific things they need to work on.
They can use the individual scores to help them understand what they need to work on, and the whole set of scores for the quarter to get a sense of how they're doing overall.
So I tell my kids to look at the skill sheets they're filling out, and look at them like the breakdown of a big test. If they're seeing lots of 3.5s and 4s, that's good -- even if there is a single 2 or 1 present. That's going to be an A or high B grade. That 2 or 1 means they don't get that one skill, but in the large scheme, they get the majority of what's going on.
I also feel like it's okay to grade this way (straight up points) because I give kids the opportunity to fix anything they don't like. So they can't complain that a 2/4 means 50%. They can just fix it, if they want to.
The bar is set high, but my kids (thus far) have reached it. Most of them have to reassess a few times. But that's the point - they should learn what they failed to learn.
Sam.
That's one of the reasons I don't average my standard scores. I use the conjunctive system. I think Marzano talks about it in that book, if not, it's definitely in the Classroom Assessment and Grading that Works book. Basically, you establish cut scores for an A, B, C, D, F. I feel like I've focused the curriculum enough that pretty much everything is necessary.
ReplyDeleteBoth of those make sense. I do similarly to you, but also reserve a NC grade where NC=0% for missing work or no progress shown. That helps a lot. Then 0 means something!
ReplyDelete