In chapter 4, the team enters the evaluation phase. During this phase, the team examines how well the change is working and critiques its implementation of an evidence-based grading model. Team members evaluate the way students communicate about learning and the clarity and coherence an evidence-based grading model brings to curricular, instructional, and assessment practices. Likewise, they evaluate how well students and parents understand the value of the change—which is equally crucial to its successes. By the end of this journey, the team takes responsibility for further revision and continuous improvement. Through each phase, you will notice team members reflecting on teaching and learning, realizing they need to develop growth-minded students who make learning visible.
Finally, in chapter 5, team members arrive at the elaboration phase with a clear connection between their work and a newfound purpose and a commitment to student learning. With fully developed experiences implementing evidence-based grading, the team works to implement more reflective learning strategies—pushing all students to greater levels of achievement. The team members also emphasize effective feedback and instruction that create a perpetually dynamic learning process. The team embraces change through more accurate reflection practices, revisions to instruction, and instruction-aligned assessment. Ultimately, the team’s patterns of teaching merge to unify its shared curriculum, instruction, and assessment into a singular process with a mindset for continuous improvement.
Taking the time to work through these phases of professional development sustains a culture of innovation and continuous improvement—an engaging collaborative discussion where curriculum, instruction, and assessment work together as one. After you implement evidence-based grading practices, we are confident that you will create smarter conversations about teaching and learning that will have lasting effects on students.
Chapter 1
Preparation
A shift to evidence-based grading is the logical next step for teams that are committed to the work of proficiency-based assessment. Evidence-based grading and proficiency-based assessment work hand in hand. An evidence-based grading model supports the type of discussion and dialogue that proficiency-based assessments enable. In fact, we feel that the shift to evidence-based grading is the natural outgrowth of proficiency-based assessment. However, as we know from experience, a shift to evidence-based grading is a very different challenge for a school to manage, as it upends decades of how we’ve traditionally communicated about student abilities. Likewise, a shift to evidence-based grading demands that all stakeholders in students’ education are clear on this grading model’s value and understand its purpose. This demand requires clarity and preparation.
As we consider working with schools and teams that plan to move toward an evidence-based grading model, we recognize that this change confronts past grading practices and undoes many routine approaches to teaching and learning. Likewise, preparing to change to an evidence-based grading model requires preparing all who are connected to the change—teachers, students, and guardians and parents. All these stakeholders must understand the value of this change and how it can foster better discussions around teaching and learning.
This chapter walks our team through the preparation phase.
• How teachers begin to think differently about their own instructional practices
• How students begin to talk differently about their own learning
• How parents or guardians can better understand education in a way that nurtures lifelong learning, understanding grading as a process of learning growth rather than a strict statement of measured ability
At our school, we ask ourselves, “How do we build from the good work we are already doing and make it better? What should we consider next?” In a culture of continuous improvement, teachers and students are always looking to improve on their current practices and find new and improved ways to support learning. Evidence-based grading and the conversations that are required for successful implementation fit well within a culture of continuous improvement. It encourages learning as an ongoing discussion of growth and development. Surprisingly, this is an unfamiliar mindset to students and families, who are used to grades that denote success or failure. These generations of students have been comfortable with a system of grading based on accumulating points and averages that somehow reflect intelligence. Shifting away from this long-standing mindset challenges us because it changes the way we communicate about learning.
Although school leaders may work diligently to prepare for professional development, we often hear from those for whom professional learning has become a stand-alone event with little follow-through. We designed this chapter to examine and suggest ways to first prepare faculty for a change in grading practices and how to then implement the change effectively. For this book’s purpose, we focus our attention on actually implementing an evidence-based grading model as the team grapples with its own questions and challenges.
Following are three key points to remember during the preparation phase.
1. To develop shared commitments, the collaborative team must be willing to question and challenge its current grading practices and then agree on more effective strategies that implement an evidence-based approach.
2. For equity, the team must be able to develop consensus and inter-rater reliability around grading practices. Inter-rater reliability simply means the team is calibrated around how it actually assesses the evidence of student proficiency—what represents proficiency to one teacher should represent proficiency to all teachers on the team.
3. For clarity and communication, team members must fully understand why they are being asked to consider changing their traditional grading practices and be able to explain this change clearly to both students and their parents.
Preparing individuals for change in grading practices goes beyond strong communication strategies. In many schools, every teacher might have his or her own grading policy and procedures; there might be multiple grading scales; and students might be graded differently depending on their teachers, not the subjects. These inconsistencies lead to inequitable grading practices. Hurdling traditional practices that sustain inequities and inconsistencies is one challenge evidence-based grading works to overcome. This shift means that a team must build a shared understanding and a shared commitment to change where consistent evaluation is valued.
As you read about our team’s journey of moving to an evidence-based grading model, consider the ways the team prepares for change—learning, investigating, questioning, and fleshing out each member’s knowledge and understanding. Also, think about how the team considers implementing the change and makes the decisions to bring about this shift toward greater consistency and equity.
We created this team scenario with some of our best teachers in mind—some willing to change, some questioning change, and some holding back. Each teacher is a change agent. What does each change agent need? How do leaders support teachers’ efforts early in the change process? How does an organization create and sustain meaningful change? As you read our team’s story, ask yourself how the team answers the following challenges.
• Is every team member fully committed to the value of evidence-based grading, and is he or she clear on how to talk about its purpose and intention so students and parents clearly understand the change in grading practices?
• Is the team paying close attention to inter-rater reliability in its grading practices? Is each member implementing a shared and communicated agreement about what it means to meet or exceed the team’s stated learning targets?
• Is the team identifying ways in which a shift to evidence-based grading fosters better communication about teaching and learning practices?
Our Team’s Story
Toward the end of May, Mario and his team are considering their next action steps. The team has worked hard for the past year to implement