1. “I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my daily mood that makes the weather…
As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.”
Dr. Haim Ginott

2. “Grades are so imprecise that they are almost meaningless.”
Robert Marzano

3. 15 Fixes for Broken Grades
Ken O’Connor & Rick Stiggins

4. Key fixes for ingredients that distort achievement:
Don’t include student behaviors (effort, participation, adherence to class rules, etc) in grades; include only achievement.
Don’t reduce marks on “work” submitted late; provide support for the learner.
Don’t give points for extra credit or use bonus points; seek only evidence that more work has resulted in higher level of achievement.
Don’t punish academic dishonesty with reduced grades; apply other consequences and reassess to determine actual level of achievement.
Don’t consider attendance in grade determination; report absences separately.
Don’t include group scores in grades; use only individual achievement evidence.

5. Fixes for low quality or poorly organized evidence:
7. Don’t organize information in grading records by assessment methods or simply summarize into a single grade; organize and report evidence by standards/learning goals.
8. Don’t assign grades using inappropriate or unclear performance standards; provide clear descriptions of achievement expectations.
9. Don’t assign grades based on student’s achievement compared to other students; compare each student’s performance to preset standards.
10. Don’t rely on evidence from assessments that fail to meet standards of quality; rely only on quality assessments.

6. Fixes for inappropriate number crunching:
11. Don’t rely only on the mean; consider other measures of central tendency and use professional judgment.
12. Don’t include zeros in grade determination when evidence is missing or as punishment; use alternatives, such as reassessing to determine real achievement or use “I” for Incomplete or Insufficient Evidence.

7. Fixes to support the learning process:
13. Don’t use information from formative assessments and practice to determine grades; use only summative evidence.
14. Don’t summarize evidence accumulated over time when learning is developmental and will grow with time and repeated opportunities; in those instances, emphasize more recent achievement.
15. Don’t leave students out of the grading process. Involve students; they can and should play key roles in assessment and grading that promotes achievement.

8. Key fixes for ingredients that distort achievement
Don’t include student behaviors (effort, participation, adherence to class rules, etc) in grades; include only achievement.
“Grades are broken when they do not accurately communicate achievement.”
Solution:
Report punctuality, attitude, behavior, effort, attendance, and work habits seperately…

9. Key fixes for ingredients that distort achievement
Don’t reduce marks on “work” submitted late; provide support for the learner.
“Teachers turn things in late all the time, as do workers in every profession. The idea that ‘you can’t get away with that in the real world’…isn’t true.”
Rick Wormeli

10. Why this practice needs to be fixed:
Penalties distort the achievement record the grade is intended to communicate.
Leads to students deciding to simply not completing their work…it’s not worth it…
If the work is really important then it is better if submitted late than not at all.
The penalties don’t change the behavior. Evidence shows that those students who turn things in late week one are the same students turning things in late in week 18.
Having absolute deadlines does not prepare students for the ‘real world’.
Many if not most deadlines in the adult world are flexible and negotiable.
Real Estate, Law, contractors, consultants, taxes, etc.

11. Solution for late work:
Separate achievement from behavior and communicate both.
If Jane is a brilliant writer but consistently turns in work late…communicate both to those who have a right to know.
Transition to small grade penalties that do not distort achievement or motivation.
For example students who submit work late receive the grade level they ‘earned’ but it is recorded in the lowest form. For example if the work deserved an A on a 100 point scale it would be recorded as a 90. Similarly, a letter grade of A+ would be recorded as an A-.

12. Key fixes for ingredients that distort achievement
Don’t give points for extra credit or use bonus points; seek only evidence that more work has resulted in higher level of achievement.
Extra credit and bonus points can distort a student’s achievement record.
The practice leads to inflated grades and does not accurately reflect achievement.
This practice encourages the notion that school is about accumulating points, quantity VS quality, with more being better rather than about achieving higher levels of learning.

13. Simple example:
Student has earned 300 out of 400 points for the semester.
If grade is calculated as a mean it would 75% for a ‘C’.
Student participates in several non-academic extra credit opportunities and earns an extra 24 points for a total of 324.
Grade is now calculated as 324 out of 400 (actually 424…) and using a mean calculation student now “earns” an 81% and a letter grade of ‘B’, which is an inflated grade.

14. Solution
Eliminate extra credit and bonus points that are just about accumulating more points and are not related to achievement.
When appropriate, offer students opportunities to provide evidence of higher levels of proficiency in areas where they have not yet demonstrated proficiency.

15. “…adding extra credit points to student grades…does a disservice to students when their test scores rightly show they did not learn certain key concepts and skills and the extra credit work does not help the student to master those skills. Most often the extra credit work is barely, or not at all, related to the key concepts and skills that are supposed to be the basis of the grade.”
Carr

16. Key fixes for ingredients that distort achievement
Don’t punish academic dishonesty with reduced grades; apply other consequences and reassess to determine actual level of achievement.
“No studies support the use of low grades or marks as punishments. Instead of prompting greater effort, low grades more often cause students to withdraw from learning.”
Guskey and Bailey

17. The fix
An effective policy recognizes that academic dishonesty is a serious inappropriate behavior equivalent to theft.
Effective policies also recognize that academic dishonesty deprives everyone of quality evidence of student achievement.
The appropriate assessment consequence is to have the students redo the work with honesty and integrity.

18. “Don’t use grades punitively…without exception, experts in the area of student grading recommend that grades not be used in a punishment for student behaviors, the teacher establishes an adversarial relationship in which grades are no longer meaningful to students as indicators of their accomplishments. The punitive use of grades only increases the likelihood that students will lose respect for the evaluation system…”
Cizek

19. Key fixes for ingredients that distort achievement
Don’t consider attendance in grade determination; report absences separately.
Standards-based learning is not about seat time. It is about what students know, understand and can do.
Grades should be an accurate reflection of that and that alone!

20. Teacher – “Are you telling me that if a student has been ill and another has been skipping, that they both should be able to make up the work they missed?”
Gathercoal – “Yes, both need an educator when they return, perhaps the one who skipped more than the other.”
Gathercoal

21. Key fixes for ingredients that distort achievement
6. Don’t include group scores in grades; use only individual achievement evidence.
“Group scores (grades) are so blatantly unfair that on this basis alone they should never be used.’
Kagan

22. Seven reasons for the elimination of group scores
Are not fair
Debase report cards
Undermine motivation
Convey the wrong message
Violate individual accountability
Are responsible for resistance to cooperative learning
May be challenged in court

23. Solution
Any activities that occur in groups should be considered learning activities and any assessment of them is best considered a formative assessment – to help students improve their knowledge, understanding and skill. Such assessment is practice and should not be considered in the grade calculation.

24. Fixes for low quality or poorly organized evidence:
7. Don’t organize information in grading records by assessment methods or simply summarize into a single grade; organize and report evidence by standards/learning goals.
“Grades are broken when evidence of learning from multiple sources is blended into a single grade and the communication fails to show how successful students have been in mastering individual standards/learning goals.”

25. The fix
Fixing this requires the use of standards-based curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and collecting and reporting student achievement by standards.

26. “The principle limitation of any grading system that requires the teacher to assign one number or letter to represent course learning is that one symbol can convey only one meaning…one symbol cannot do justice to the different degrees of learning a student acquires across all learning outcomes.”
Tombari and Borich

27. Fixes for low quality or poorly organized evidence:
Don’t assign grades using inappropriate or unclear performance standards; provide clear descriptions of achievement expectations.
“Performance standards specify how good is good enough.”
Kendall and Marzano

28. Common solutions Four levels of performance
A level above proficient, to recognize (and encourage) excellence.
Proficient
Below proficient, but acceptable
Significantly below proficiency or insufficient

29. Fixes for low quality or poorly organized evidence:
9. Don’t assign grades based on student’s achievement compared to other students; compare each student’s performance to preset standards.

30. FIX
Base grades on preset achievement standards – criterion referenced NOT norm referenced.
Acknowledge that it is possible for all kids to get an A or all students to get an F.

31. Fixes for low quality or poorly organized evidence:
Don’t rely on evidence from assessments that fail to meet standards of quality; rely only on quality assessments.
Grades are broken when the evidence used is from poor quality classroom assessments and so misrepresents student achievement. This is the classic “garbage in and garbage out” syndrom.

32. “Evaluation experts stress that if you are going to make important decisions about students, such as decisions involved in grading, then you must have good evidence…in the absence of good evidence, even the most detailed grading and reporting system is useless.”
Guskey and Bailey

33. Fixes for inappropriate number crunching:
Don’t rely only on the mean; consider other measures of central tendency and use professional judgment.
“Educators must abandon the average or arithmetic mean, as the predominant measurement of student achievement.”
Reeves

34. Whenever I hear statistics being quoted I am reminded of the statistician who drowned while wading across a river with an average depth of three feet.

35. The “mean” is truly mean.
It overemphasizes the outlier scores, which are most often low outliers.
91,91,91,91,91,91,91,70,91,91
Total = 889, mean = 88.9, final grade = B
This student performed at an A level 9 out of 10 times and the 70 is clearly an anomaly. But the grade as calculated in most schools would be a B

36. Sixth grade math students are taught that there are three methods of calculating central tendency-mean, median and mode. Each measure has both virtues and problems, and that, depending on the distribution of scores and your purpose, you carefully choose the appropriate measure for every situation.

37. Fixes for inappropriate number crunching:
Don’t include zeros in grade determination when evidence is missing or as punishment
use alternatives, such as reassessing to determine real achievement or use “I” for Incomplete or Insufficient Evidence.

38. “The appropriate consequence for failing to turn in an assignment is completing the assignment. That is, students lose privileges, free time…and they are required to complete the assignment.”
Dr. Douglas Reeves

39. Zeros
“The persistence of the zero on a 100-point scale indicates that many people with advanced degrees, including those with more background in mathemetics than the typical teacher, have not applied the ratio standard to their own professional practices.
To insist on the use of a zero on a 100-point scale is to assert that work that is not turned in deserves a penalty that is many times more severe than that assessed for work that is done wretchedly and is worth a D.”
Dr. Douglas Reeves

40. Three primary problems with the use of zeros
Zeros give a numerical value to something that has never been assessed and that therefore has no basis in reality.
They can have counterproductive effects on student motivation.
They involve inappropriate mathematics.

41. Question…
How many points would you award to a student who failed to turn in work on a grading scale of 4, 3, 2, 1, 0??

42. Anyone answer minus 6??
That is precisely the logic that is employed when the zero is awarded on a 100-point scale.

43. Two Issues
The first, and most important, is to determine the appropriate consequence for students who fail to complete an assignment.
The most common answer is to punish these students.
There is an almost fanatical belief that punishment through grades will motivate students (evidence to the contrary notwithstanding).

44. Novel Idea…
A few educators are experimenting with the notion that the appropriate consequence for failing to complete an assignment is to require the student to complete the assignment.
students lose privileges — free time and unstructured class or study-hall time — and are required to complete the assignment.
students are motivated not by threats of failure but by the opportunity to earn greater freedom and discretion by completing work accurately and on time.

45. one example…
Using the 100-point scale consider the following scenarios:
90% A + zero = 45% = F
90% A + 80% B + zero = 57% = F
five B’s (80%) + five C’s (75%) + five zeros = 52% = F

46. What would it take to make up for those five zeros?
How about ten B’s (80%) + five C’s (75%)?
Nope
10 B’s + 5 C’s + 5 zeros still results in an F (59%)

47. Appropriate Punishment
Even if we want to punish the little miscreants who fail to complete our assignments…
What is the fair, appropriate, and mathematically accurate punishment?
FACT: giving a zero on a 100-point scale for missing work is mathematically inaccurate!

48. Fixes to support the learning process:
13. Don’t use information from formative assessments and practice to determine grades; use only summative evidence.
We must make a distinction between “learning” activities and “formative” assessment where students learn and practice VS “performance” assessments (summative) where they demonstrate what they know, understand, and can do.

49. Fixes to support the learning process:
14. Don’t summarize evidence accumulated over time when learning is developmental and will grow with time and repeated opportunities; in those instances, emphasize more recent achievement.
Final grades should recognize the student’s final level of proficiency.
Emphasizing the most recent information acknowledges that learning is a process…

50. Fixes to support the learning process:
15. Don’t leave students out of the grading process. Involve students; they can and should play key roles in assessment and grading that promotes achievement.
The purpose of every assessment must be clear to the student.
“As students become more involved in the assessment process, teachers find themselves working differently…spending less time marking at the end of learning and more time helping students during the learning.”
Davies

51. ABCi
ABCi is a unique approach to grading that can have an immediate impact on the success of your students.
Corbett High School

52. “Those who experience…success gain the confidence...
…students who experience failure lose confidence, stop trying, and…fail even more frequently.
As it turns out, confidence is the key to student success in all learning situations.”
Rick Stiggins

53. Recourses http://www.assessmentinst.com/ bperkins@bendbroadband.com
Free DVD
15 Fixes book
Study Guide