Effective Grading Practices for Secondary Teachers

Practical Strategies to Prevent Failure, Recover Credits, and Increase Standards-Based/Referenced Grading

Dave Nagel

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781483319896
• eBook ISBN: 9781483386393
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Evaluation & Assessment in Education

Enact innovative grading systems that more accurately describe student progress!

This book challenges traditional grading practices and provides alternatives that can have direct impact on student success. By making subtle shifts toward standards based grading systems, schools can reduce unnecessary course failures, provide students and their families a more accurate picture of current progress, and increase opportunities for success. The author offers a range of grading reform strategies that are built from practical frameworks that are effective and simple to adapt.

Among the many strengths of this book are:

• Practical application of existing research and evidence base for effective secondary grading reforms
• A framework for schools and districts to apply and adapt failure prevention strategies such as early failure detection, Amnesty Days, and meaningful stipulated second chance opportunities for students to reach mastery
• Functional strategies and actions for shifting toward standards-based (referenced) grading without entirely abandoning letter grades
• Countering resistance to change through a-clearly-articulated plan for conducting school-wide and classroom level action research around the effectiveness of new or adjusted grading practices

"Informative and pragmatic, this book is spot on with analysis of this elephant in the room issue. Nagel uses both empathy and humor in getting to the heart of a process to generate real solutions while underscoring the ultimate need for teacher voice in any successful implementation. He provides ready-made strategies for real, impactful change. I?m left hopeful that feedback will rule the day!"
—Bruce Potter, Superintendent
Berkshire UFSD

"Nagel offers an insightful and articulate voice to secondary improvement and alignment through grading practices. His tried and true methods through working with real districts provides a starting place and examples for others to follow. A must-read for anyone serious about ensuring student engagement through meaningful feedback."
—Debra K. Howe, Superintendent
Tri-Creek School Corporation

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Part I Why Changing Grading at the Secondary Level Is a Tough Sell

1 Grading Long Perceived as the One Immovable Element in a Constantly Evolving Field

For which situation would you invest more energy: Earn $100 or avoid losing $100 you already have? If you’re like most people, and if you answer this question very honestly and don’t just say what you think people want to hear or what you want to believe about yourself, you’d work harder to avoid loss. Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics winner Daniel Kahneman talks in his 2011 New York Times best-selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, about his findings related to humans and loss aversion. The pain of loss is often twice as strong as the reward from a gain. That idea resonates with many of us, even though we might not want to admit that because of the fear of being perceived as too conservative and not a go-getter. Yet the evidence is clear that we will fight harder for things we already have.

A 2010 University of Chicago study examined the impact of merit pay, a financial reward for increasing student achievement. Teachers were divided into three groups: Group A teachers received their merit pay, approximately $8,000 up front at the start of the year. If their students met their achievement targets, the teachers would keep the money; if not, they would have to return it. Group B teachers had the same targets for their students for the same merit pay incentive, but they would not receive the financial reward until after students had met the targets. Group C teachers did not have a merit pay incentive. Results? Group A teachers had student improvements that were double those of the other two groups (Fryer, Levitt, List, & Sadoff, 2012). Loss aversion can lead people to engage in greater efforts to maintain what they already possess. For people who have already lost something else, this desire to protect what they have increases and intensifies.

Accountability Decreases Independence

In the past, the teaching profession thrived on an input = effective model. Effectiveness of teacher practices was determined by considering what the teachers did, looking at the execution of their actions and their strategies. Effectiveness of teacher actions was not, until recently, judged on the impact those actions had on students, specifically related to how they perform on academic standards. At the turn of the 21st century, two occurrences took place that changed the landscape of schools and classrooms related to increased accountability in U.S. schools:

1. Virtually every state had implemented academic standards in core subjects (reading and math).
2. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was signed into law.

Schools at all levels began to monitor classroom practices for fidelity and effectiveness to ensure students could meet and demonstrate mastery of instructional standards. Teachers being able to just close their door and teach became a thing of the past. This new accountability in schools replaced the words good with effective and what I like with what works. At the secondary school level, this change in landscape has been especially profound. Middle and high school classrooms have a long history of being closed off to anyone other than the presiding teacher, where the sentiment was “Let me close my door and teach.” Teachers had lost freedom in areas they had never given much thought to owning completely.

Content Freedom

Accountability changed how teachers were able to determine the specific content they taught to their students to address specific standards. Teachers lost a great deal of autonomy in terms of determining topics they focused on in their classrooms. Many had to remove certain units they had taught for years because these were not specifically tied to their school’s instructional standards. This was ground-breaking for some and earth-shattering for others. Some, perhaps many, secondary teachers felt this was an infringement of their professional opinion as to what subject matter their students needed to learn. Many teachers felt a sense of loss (#1) in their ability to determine what they would be teaching to students.

Teaching Method Freedom

Teachers also saw an increase in accountability around instructional strategies and approaches in their classrooms. The emphasis shifted from what was being taught to what was being learned. Teacher effectiveness swung from being historically about what they did to being about what their students are able to do. Building and district leaders began to monitor classrooms with increased presence and visibility. Research evidence about which instructional practices had the most impact on student achievement came to the forefront. The filter for how teachers used classroom practices was no longer experience. Instructional approaches many teachers had been accustomed to using with their students might no longer be considered best practices. Teachers were now being asked, recommended, or mandated to use different instructional strategies in their classrooms. Many had not experienced this level of outside influence on the decisions they made once they closed their classroom doors. Teachers perceived this as another loss (#2), especially at the secondary level.

Results Only = Freedom

Finally, the implementation of No Child Left Behind required schools to show consistent increases in student achievement, which added another layer of accountability. Teachers, many for the first time, were being compared to theirs peers based on results, test scores, and student outcomes. Many educators did not embrace this with open arms.

In his 2007 dissertation at the University of Minnesota, Edward Minnema’s findings called for teachers to go beyond their perceptions of what they felt was effective to look more at the evidence on student outcomes. One teacher commented, “We have always done it this way and we are the best, so why would we change?” This subtle statement in the middle is telling: “we are the best.” It likely originates from one teacher’s belief in comparing his school’s results to others. This type of statement has been a common response when grading practice changes are mentioned, proposed, or enacted in many secondary schools. The standards movement pushed the sentiment of “I taught it. They just didn’t learn it,” if not off the table, at least to the very edge. Teachers, in many schools, lost (#3) their ability to rest on the notion that input = output. Teachers have worked and always will work very hard. This loss was that the effort and painstaking work might not be equated with results and, worse, might not get noticed.

Impact of These Losses

While this may seem effective from the outside looking in, for teachers, especially in middle and high schools, this meant change by subtraction—giving up favorite lessons, favorite videos, favorite activities, and more. For many middle and high school educators, including me, this change was perceived as loss. I can remember distinctly being angry that dissecting bullfrogs and squids was eliminated from the ninth-grade biology curriculum in my former district because these activities did not address state science standards. This infuriated me. I remember not being able to connect the dissections to any standards in our curriculum. I enjoyed them because the students thought they were neat and I could use them as a motivator for a week or two prior. I thought, “Who is this person to tell me what I can or cannot do when I close my classroom door?” Although I eventually accepted the change, I distinctly recall feeling a sense of loss.

Many secondary educators have, or perceive to have, lost a great deal in the past 15 years. As we learned from Kahneman, when we lose something, we can easily feel threatened to protect what we still have with more intensity. American middle and high school teachers still had one area of classroom actions that had not been taken away or analyzed for impact to know what practices work or don’t. For many teachers, the last thing they perceive they can protect is their grading practices, and they’re not going down without a fight!

Grading in Secondary Classrooms—The Bastion of Autonomy

The last mainstay of control that many middle and high school teachers feel they have is grading practices. Giving these practices up is not something they would want to do anyway. Having lost other classroom practice freedoms, they feel even more strongly that they need to protect themselves against the loss of the practices they use to grade students.

While grading policies in many districts attempt to guide teacher practices to ensure fairness and equality for students, rarely have specific practices been defined that would direct teacher actions. Often the best evidence for how to implement grading practices in middle and high schools is not considered. There are several factors middle and high school teachers and leaders can look at as to why there continue to be challenges to teachers making effective adjustments in grading: ineffective collaboration, experience trumps evidence, and lack of teacher voice related to grading changes.

Ineffective Collaboration

The structure and schedule of most high schools and a large number of middle schools has led to professional isolation. Teachers are often the only adults in their classrooms, and they rarely cross paths with other teachers except in the hall or the teachers lounge. Very often in secondary schools, even with the existence of professional learning communities (PLCs), collaboration focuses on topics other than best practices and their impact on student achievement.

Former superintendent and author Richard DuFour has written a great deal on the potential impact of effective PLCs and has called for schools to deprivatize the professional practices of teachers for over a decade. His colleague Robert Eaker (2002) says, “The traditional school often functions as a collection of independent contractors united by a common parking lot” (quoted in Schmoker, 2006, p. 23). Secondary schools that have struggled with the implementation of PLCs have frequently met resistance from teachers who believe in instructional autonomy. Often their defense of grading autonomy is even fiercer.

Blissful Ignorance

Sometimes grading autonomy stems as much from lack of awareness as from lack of following through on agreed-upon practices. Robin Tierney (2011), a professor and researcher from the University of British Columbia, found results similar to Raznov (see below). Tierney surveyed 77 secondary teachers regarding their awareness and implementation of four specific and agreed-upon principles for standards-based grading in their schools. Tierney found that over 30% of the teachers who were not implementing them said they were not even aware of the principles. Ignorance wasn’t completely to blame for the lack of consistency, though. Of the 70% who were aware of the standards-based grading principles, only 43% said they “somewhat followed” these practices in their classroom, and 26% said they simply “did not agree” so they did not follow them at all (Tierney, 2011, p. 18).

Going Rogue

Teachers may agree on grading practices in collaborative settings, but when the door closes, autonomy in grading often reigns. In an in-depth University of Pennsylvania study of 70 high school teachers from Philadelphia, looking at the level of fidelity of implementation of agreed-upon grading practices between peers, Gail Brookstein Raznov (1987) found that most teachers eschewed expected marking guidelines and weight percentages for grading. Collaboratively teachers had agreed to implement specific grading practices for tests, class participation, written work, homework, labs, and oral work. Raznov found that most high school teachers tend to regard themselves as experts in their subject because of having acquired master’s or doctoral degrees. When teachers were faced with the decision of remaining consistent with their peers in terms of using grading practices or implementing their own specific actions, even if they were different from what the team had agreed on, they chose the latter.

Experience Trumps Evidence

The teaching profession has been referred to as both an art and a science. Sometimes teachers rely too much on the art aspect and miss that the art, or manner in which we do things, allows the science to have a great impact. Dr. Robert Marzano’s (2007) book The Art and Science of Teach...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Part I Why Changing Grading at the Secondary Level Is a Tough Sell
• 1 Grading Long Perceived as the One Immovable Element in a Constantly Evolving Field
• 2 Determining Why Grading Changes Are Needed
• Part II Practice Trumps Policy
• 3 Policy A Starting Point, Not the Destination Finder
• 4 Policy Into Practices The Path to Effective Grading
• Part III Grading Practices to Prevent Failure, Recover Credits, and Increase Grading on Standards
• 5 Preventing Unnecessary Failure
• 6 What Do We Do When Failure Does Happen? Effective Credit Recovery
• 7 Standards-Based Grading
• Part IV Elements for Successful Implementation
• 8 Determining What (Could) Change
• 9 Implementation Setting Up and Conducting Action Research
• Appendixes
• References
• Index
• Publisher Note