Spring+2011+Sociology+Reflection+II

=REFLECTION #2: NEW GRADING SYSTEM = toc (If you did not read reflection #1, go here!)

What would a classroom without grades look like?
 * A: I don’t know...I still haven’t seen one firsthand.

Why would someone even try to have a class without grades?
 * I know [|__at least 9 good reasons__] .

I, Kevin Duncan, a HS social studies teacher midway through a 9th year of teaching, faced this dilemma when preparing to teach 2 spring semester sociology courses:
 * the best environment for learning seems to be one without grades
 * the school I am at, Korea International School (a great college prepatory school in suburban Seoul with quality administrators, teachers, students, and facilities), requires grades for all high school courses

After much consideration and after receiving some great advice, I decided to move closer to the ideal of no grades...while still having grades. Grades still had to mean something, because as former colleague and longtime teacher/administrator Harry Grzelewski said, “ Any project whose goal is to get kids not to think about grades is doomed to fail (unless there are no grades).” To address the dilemma above, grades were to be assessed in a way I had never done before.

Instead of me giving students grades, they assigned their own grades. Instead of many small grades, they only had major grades at the end of each unit. Instead of finishing a unit with a test, they finished with a 3+ page unit wrap-up where students reflected on their own understanding of the unit’s content as well as their participation, quality of work, improvement in writing, and more. (Note: The specific topics for reflection, usually about 4-5 a unit, were assigned by the teacher.) On the back of the unit wrap-up, students handwrote their “grade suggestion” in order to (a) let me know what they thought they deserved so I could have something tangible to enter in the grade book and to (b) show that I valued the feedback/evaluation from the unit wrap-up more than the grade itself since the grade was not typed into the evaluation. After reading through their wrap-ups, seeing their grade suggestions, and (after a majority of the units) meet with them individually, I would, more often than not, enter their grade suggestions in as their unit grade.

While I have many thoughts concerning the grade experiment, I will only comment on 3.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">__#1: IMPACT ON GRADES__
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The majority of my students were ones who are used to getting As in their classes. I had known several to be high achievers in my other classes (US History and/or Economics) and had heard great reviews of several more of from their AP US History teacher. Having said that, at the end of the semester, more students had As or A minuses than my classes usually do and several students who I have taught who usually do not achieve at that level finished with similar grades as their typically higher-achieving counterparts. The main exceptions were the rare occasions when students did not turn in a unit wrap-up. In that case, I assigned the grade, factoring in the fact that they had not completed the main summative activity from the unit. This resulted in a low grade for the unit and therefore, a lower grade for the semester. However, as stated previously, these were rare exceptions as the majority of students finished with As or A minuses.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the arguments that education author Alfie Kohn makes in “ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">[|__From Degrading to De-grading__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">” is that grades encourage cheating. Because my classes still included grades, I did sense some academic dishonesty in the fact that on multiple occasions it seemed as if students suggested a grade for themselves that was slightly or considerably higher than I believed they should get, especially after I shared my feedback on their work, presentation, project, etc. The primary example of this possible grade inflation occurred with their research papers. On every paper, I gave copious amounts of feedback, including major issues with the thesis statements, evidence provided, and argument organization as well as a host of minor grammatical, formatting, and citation errors. In my opinion, despite students doing original work and putting forth much effort on their papers, only a few deserved an A. However, most students still suggested an A for their paper. This dilemma has led me to believe that either (a) I should have provided a clear rubric for them to assess themselves instead of just marking on their papers and meeting with them about those marks, (b) students genuinely have an inflated view of their own efforts, (c) the teacher genuinely undervalues the quality of their work, or (d) most of the students had a good grasp of the quality of their own work but still felt the pressure/need to “get the grade” so they inflated their own scores. While one or a combination of all four may be true in different cases, I am not overly concerned (key word: “overly”--concern still exists) if (d) is often the case because of what will be discussed in the next section.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">__#2: IMPACT ON LEARNING__
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Did students learn more, less, or about the same because of the new grading system + class structure? I would argue that, based on my observations, there seemed to be no drop off in effort but that students learned more. One of the big concerns I had going into this semester was wondering “will students try as hard if they know they are assigning their own grades?” The answer seemed to be a resounding “yes.” Even with many 2nd semester seniors, students seemed to put forth efforts consistent to what I would expect from all students in a 1st semester course. Perhaps this can be explained due to (a) students being “socialized” into certain habits (such as studying!) that are hard to break, (b) students being so used to traditional grades that they still were not used to the idea of completely assessing themselves (even late in the semester I would often get the question ‘Are you going to grade this?’), (c) the fact that, despite the new method, grades were still used and therefore the pressure to achieve them still existed, or (d) the fact that I promised to adjust the scores if I believed they were not accurate. While those reasons may be (at least in part) true, I also believe that the consistent effort was due to some other factors including but not limited to (a) the idea that Sociology does not need much help to be an interesting course, (b) the fact that significant portions of the class were built around original research questions the students themselves came up with, (c) the two major projects involved accountability both within the class (student presentations) and outside of the class (one working with students from another school in the US and the other involving a presentation to a “unique audience” from elsewhere), and/or (d) my strong emphasis on how much I valued their learning over the grades, perhaps encouraging some to learn for learning’s sake instead of just for the grade they would receive. Having said those reasons, all of them could have still been true even if I utilized traditional grades...which leads me to the following points:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The narrative reflections/unit wrap-ups at the end of each unit seemed to be consistently great learning tools. They assessed their own learning in a way that I would likely be unable to from my own observations. Their use of specific examples, whether it dealt with how well they know the unit’s “essential questions” or how they improved (or did not) as a writer, gave keen insight to their ability to process what the teacher believed were the most important skills, content, and overall ideas from each unit. For example, though the self-grades for the research papers were higher than I thought they should be, the students’ comments about their own writing seemed to do an outstanding job of correctly diagnosing their problems and reflecting on their strengths as a writer. They demonstrated that they usually learned the most important lessons I hoped for them to learn in each unit.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At the end of each unit, students typically met with the teacher in brief (approximately 3-5 minute) individual meetings. At these meetings, grades were never discussed. Because of this, hopefully the feedback given became more meaningful and the goals they sometimes set at these meetings for the rest of the semester were based more on how they could improve their skills and/or knowledge and/or skills rather than how they could improve their grade. One example that may support this was the unprecedented (compared to my previous classes) improvement between their 1st presentations and the 2nd ones. While there are several other factors that may explain this, the emphasis on personal teacher feedback instead of the standard grade feedback may have been the most important. Also, because of the consistent emphasis on feedback, students were likely able to critique each other’s presentations and writing with more candor when they knew it would not significantly impact their own grade.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">__#3: IMPACT ON THE TEACHER__
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The primary source of feedback for students at my school is through a website called PowerSchool. According to the PowerSchool website, “PowerSchool is the fastest-growing, most widely used web-based student information system, supporting more than 9.5 million students in 50 states and over 50 countries.” (June 6, 2011) The main student information that the students receive: grade updates. As soon as the teacher inputs grades into PowerSchool, students can see their latest grades. While grades can be informative, they are just numbers that do not necessarily provide feedback on more important areas such as communication skills, reading comprehension, content knowledge, group work, improvement, and more. In a highly competitive, grade-driven school culture, the impact of PowerSchool is difficult to overcome. The numbers (grades) emphasis seen in PowerSchool, though likely unintentionally, becomes far more important than the valuable skills mentioned previously.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One impact the new grading system had on me was far less time spent on grading smaller assignments and entering in those grades onto PowerSchool. While I entered two grades for each unit into PowerSchool (either both being the student’s suggestion or one being the student’s suggestion with the other being me adjusting the grade), I only updated PowerSchool 8 times the entire semester compared to 20+ times for US History, a class in which I am still using traditional grading methods.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The only negative impact the new grading system had on me was I ended up not giving feedback that I planned on providing for 2-3 small assignments early in the semester. This was partly due to a busy schedule but also partly due to the lack of urgency I felt in “getting around to it” since I would never have to give it back and enter in a grade on PowerSchool. Having said that, on the major assignments, including the research paper, and on some smaller assignments, including a quotes reflection activity, the lack of needing to put my own grade into PowerSchool did not prevent me from giving timely feedback to the students.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I am not sure if the new grading system inspired this, but perhaps it contributed to me focusing on helping students achieve their individual learning goals more. As discussed in the previous entry, I made a conscious effort to help students get better at individual skills they chose (such as “making more clear, straightforward arguments in writing” and “improving time management skills”). Because I did not have to come up with a way to formulate their progress into a number and then record it, I was able to spend all of my time allotted to skill development actually figuring out ways to help them achieve their goals.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Also, the nature of the self-assessment lent itself to more time for individual meetings. Because the students either were about to write or had just written their unit wrap-ups, the teacher-student meetings seemed to have more value than if the teacher would just dictate a grade and then try to explain why the student received what they did. In these meetings, the teacher would offer his observations while engaging in a dialogue of the lessons learned and goals set for that unit and beyond.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">__FINAL THOUGHTS__
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Having explored many issues related to the experiment on grading, I will end by asking (and answering!) the following questions:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**If I could do it differently, would I?** With a school that requires grades, I prefer this system over the more traditional one. Ideally, though, I’d have a narrative assessment used successfully at schools such as the <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">[|__Carolina Friends School__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**Do you have a problem that more students got As than they likely would have otherwise?** Part of me wants to say yes, because I take pride in what I consider to be a “Duncan A.” (if that makes any sense). Having said that, a colleague of mine once said “there’s no shortage of As,” meaning that I don’t have a certain number stored up that is the maximum. What I am more concerned with is how students learned and, based on my observations, it seems as if they learned more in this semester of sociology rather than the previous 2 semesters I had taught the course.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**If you prefer the new system, then (a) will you use it in your US History class and (b) would you recommend that all teachers use it?** As for (a), I would prefer to run another semester or two of with this first, researching more, tweaking some, and getting more feedback before I start making wholesale changes. Because of that, (b) I am not ready to say that I recommend all teachers use it nor do I feel confident that a similar system would work for all other types of classes. Having said that, I hope the dialogue expands and that the methodology is considered and, even if not incorporated, that others will evaluate more critically...how we evaluate our students.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**In the end, was it worth it?** As many things I normally do were changed and not just the grading system, it is hard to isolate and say without question that the student self-assessment method of grading was beneficial. But, since I have to guess, I would say YES. I believe that the new system of grading placed a much more important role on learning, skill development, and feedback and a much less important role on the grades students received. Because of this, the pros outweigh the cons and I plan on doing it again in the fall.

Thoughts on this reflection? Feel free to share them here! media type="custom" key="9763966"