Presentation at Rudy Lozano Leadership Academy

INTRODUCTION
What's the purpose of grading? What do progress reports tell us? Elements of grades - Product, Process, and Progress. What motivates people? How do I implement standards based grading?

CHOOSE YOUR SKILLS!
State standards, YCCS standards, National standards, Oh my! Power standards: Endurance, Leverage, Readiness, Transformation. Break down a standard - post-it notes!

CREATE YOUR ASSESSMENTS!
Percents don't mean anything! The 4-point scale for grading skills! Simple, advanced, and beyond! Report cards that separate product, process, and progress!

MAKE IT TRANSPARENT!
Rubrics are confusing! Matthew Broderick in Election! Dwight from The Office! Co-constructed rubrics! Checklists are your friends! Grades vs. grades+comments vs. just comments!

Q&A SESSION!
Questions! Answers! Vegas weblog! Spiritual enlightenment!

Grading and Reporting Student Learning Follow Up

Breakout session with Thomas R. Guskey
A question and answer session following his keynote on grading and reporting student learning


This breakout session consisted of Guskey responding to audience questions about his keynote. Some relevant conversations: 

The ACT cannot be used as a measure to evaluate your educational program.
As outlined in his keynote, Guskey states that the grades that high schools report have no meaning. A 4.0 GPA from one high school means something totally different than a 4.0 GPA from another. Colleges cannot rely on a GPA to determine a student's knowledge. Enter the ACT - this test is NOT designed to assess student skills; it is designed solely to create a bell curve, a spread, a normal distribution to help colleges make distinctions between students for college entrance. Even if there is a quality question on the ACT that accurately measures a worthwhile skill, if everyone teaches this skill and students start getting this question right, the next year this question would be removed from the test. The ACT is scored on a curve, which goes against the purpose of grading. A test graded on a curve fails 50% of the students, regardless of what they have learned. This is not the appropriate test to measure student learning.

High percentages are not the same as high standards.
Let's say I decide that students need to score an 80% or above to demonstrate proficiency. This style of percent cutoff is completely unreliable because of the variability in the design of assessments. An example to illustrate how assessments are unreliable: here's a low-level but difficult question:

Who was the 17th president of the United States?

Fewer than 10% of students can answer this correctly. However, consider the following alteration: 

Formative Assessment and Standards-Based Grading

Keynote by Robert Marzano
A breakdown of a more reliable grading scheme for skills based grading



 You can't rely on standardized tests or common assessments.
Marzano presented research which shows that large standardized tests are reliable when looking at general trends for a whole school (87% reliability), but are incredibly unreliable when using the same data to examine class or individual performance (33 to 57% reliability). Multiple choice tests are hugely unreliable. Using a single assessment is unreliable. Solely using common assessments is unreliable - formative assessment has to take into account a complete picture of teacher-student activities.


You can't rely on the 100-point scale.
Marzano went through an interesting exercise with the entire crowd. He asked everyone to grade a hypothetical test consisting of 10 simple questions, 5 complex questions, and 2 higher order questions that go beyond what was taught in class.  Everyone gave a grade to a student who got all the simple questions right, half of the complex questions right, and none of the higher order questions right. The results? The highest grade from the audience: an 83%. The lowest grade from the audience: a 20%. The bottom line: percents don't mean anything with regards to student knowledge! The exact same student with the exact same knowledge demonstration had a 60% error in their final grade. So if we can't use percents to determine knowledge, what can we use?

Too Much to Teach!

Breakout session with Chris Jakicic
How teachers can collaborate to create power standards and essential outcomes for better results for students



Because teachers have so many resources telling them what to teach (state standards, curriculum guides, text books, YCCS), it is difficult for them to know which skills are most important.Many teachers do "random acts of improvement" in their classroom that are totally isolated from what their colleagues are doing. In order to make real progress with students, teachers have to be aligned and on board with each other. This session showed how teachers can collaborate to create and use essential learnings; why it is important to have clear essential outcomes; and processes to identify power standards.

Interesting points that rang true:

• We spend a lot of time filling in what kids were supposed to know when they got to us instead of focusing on where we want them to be at the end of their time with us
• One of the biggest factors in "successful" schools: having a guaranteed and viable (having time to teach what is to be taught) curriculum
• According to Marzano and Kendall's analysis, we would need at least 23 years with each student to teach the k-12 education
• We tend to "cover curriculum" instead of prioritizing

Power Standards:

• Not all standards are equal
• We should determine 7-12 per grade, per subject area
• Criteria for Power Standards: Endurance, Leverage, and Readiness for the next level of learning

What to do with Power Standards within your department:

A Vision of Success: Leading the Design of Quality Classroom-Based Assessment

Breakout session with Tammy Heflebower
Using quality assessment criteria for valid assessment results to guide student achievement goals


 
Sound assessment results are crucial when teachers are making many important decisions about their goals and teaching based upon them. This session showed participants how to review and revise existing assessments for quality based on key criteria.

A balanced assessment system has 3 types of assessments:

• Large Scale (Assessment of) - these are summative, norm-referenced, aptitude, and achievement tests. The ACT and the TABE would be considered large scale. Essential Question: What have students already learned?
• Mid-Scale (Assessment for) - these are formative, criterion-referenced, often teacher- or district- made, and achievement tests. Essential Question: How can we help students learn more?
• Small-Scale (Assessment for) - these include questioning, day by day, minute by minute, and achievement tests. Most of our time and energy should go to these. Essential question: How can we help students learn more?

Why the ACT is used all wrong:

Performance Tasks for Authentic Learning

Breakout session with Kay Burke
Creating standards-based performance tasks with teacher teams




This session was meant to educate teachers on how to create authentic performance tasks in which students apply knowledge and skills to problems relevant to their worlds. There was an emphasis on developing students' skills that would be of use to them in the 21st century. Included in the packet were lesson plan formats for performance tasks and several examples of performance tasks in different content areas (though only two were for high school).

Positives of using performance tasks:

• Students must work both collaboratively and individually
• Target multiple standards at once
• Relate standards to real-life situations
• Motivate students to think critically and work creatively
• Integrate subject areas

Some of the things that teachers should consider when designing performance tasks:

Examining the Role of Students in Assessment

Breakout session with Chris Jakicic

Effective strategies to involve students in self-assessments

The key to student self-assessment is helping them answer three questions: Where am I going? where am I now? How can I close the gap?

• Students put the state standard into kid-friendly language
• Turn those new standards into "I can" statements
• Students track their own formative assessments
• Students decide when they are ready for a summative assessment on any given skill

Example of students tracking their learning

Other tips:

• Show students specific examples of a skill that was executed well
• Show students examples of weak work and have them identify what was wrong
• Have students reflect on their work, compare it to quality work, and write specific goals and action plans for how they will make their work better. (For example, I will rewrite the paper with stronger transitions between paragraphs.)