Standards-Based Grading Revisited

A while back, I posted some of my thoughts on how I might adapt our standards-based, 4-point writing rubric to fit the 100-point grading scale traditionally used in schools. That post turned into a great discussion – so much so that it has reached 30 comments (far more than any other post on this blog) and is now the 3rd result when you Google “standards based grading.” As a result of the apparent interest in the subject, I wanted to revisit the topic from a more philosophical perspective, share some updates on where we’re at and see where others are at in this process.

The original post evolved out of a department discussion on how to adapt our new 4-point rubric so that students were getting a more “fair” grade. Ironically, it’s a year later and now secondary schools in our district want to have the same conversation because our district reading and writing assessments aren’t being graded “fairly.” And that’s the rub. What is “fair” when we’re talking about grading? Here’s the basic summary of what I discussed previously:

1. In secondary schools like ours, grading is typically done on a 100-point scale, in which 90′s are generally given an “A” grade, 80′s a “B” grade, and so on. Typically, anything under 60 is considered an “F” grade. 
2. For many schools and teachers, there has been a shift  from this traditional 100-point scale to a simpler 4-point scale. On this scale, students are usually given a 4 if they “exceed standard,” 3 if they “meet standard,” 2 for “approaching standard,” and a 1 if they are well below standard. Our department now uses a rubric like this one.
3. A problem arises when we try to take a standards-based (SB) score and give it a percentage or letter grade. If we were to directly transfer scores from a 4-point to a 100-point rubric: a 4 would still equate to a 100, a 3 score (“Meets Standard”) would now be a 75%, or a C. Moreover, a 2 score (“Approaching Standard”) would equate to a 50%, or an F. For most teachers, this grade equivalency does not seem fair.

The question, then, is twofold. First, what do we mean when we say, “This grade is not fair.” How do we define “fair”? Second, what other solutions can we implement that would better match our definition of “fair” grading? These are the two questions I want to address in this post.

The Problem: ”Fair” Grading

The primary concern with converting SB grades to traditional letter grades has to do with the percentages involved. If all grades were given based on SB scores alone, there would be no problems at all – a 4 (100%) equates to an A, a 3 (75%) equates to a B, a 2 (50%) equates to a C, a 1 (25%) equates to a D, and a 0 (0%) is an F – that just makes sense.

Problems arise, though, when we use traditional 100-point grading scales. When I was in school, this is the scale we used, and it looks much different than the SB percentages. In our department, for example, a B is between 83 and 87%, while a 75% would be a solid C grade. Similarly, a student getting 50% would not get a C – he would get an F. Needless to say, a 0 on a 100-point scale is devastating to a student’s grade (read The Case Against the Zero for more on this difficult subject).

This is how grades have worked for as long as most of us can remember, so it is easy to see why the SB system is such a struggle for us to understand. Certainly the 100-point scale has its benefits. However, in order to fully convert to SB grading, we would have to complete a massive paradigm shift and reach a point where we essentially abandon the 100-point scale for grading. I don’t think many schools are willing to do that – mine certainly isn’t.

Thus we have a dilemma – we want to grade students based on whether they have met standards in our content area, but we also want to use the familiar 100-point scale and traditional letter grades in doing so. To borrow an analogy, we want to put new wine into old wineskins. The question becomes, can we do it? And if so, how?

Finding a Solution

The first step in finding a solution to this seems simple enough, but draws out a lot of underlying assumptions and beliefs about grades (as I discovered reading through the comments on the previous post). Very simply, a solution requires answering one question about what grades actually mean:

Where is the line between ”below standard” and “meets standard”?

Does a SB score of 2 merit a C or an F? Is a 3 equivalent to a B or a C? Does a 4 equate to 100%? These are all questions that stem off from the critical question of where that line is between meeting and not meeting the standard. Dana Huff of Huffenglish put this problem a different way – we have to decide what an absolute zero would be. For example, if a student got zero on an assignment, what percentage would he/she receive? From there, you adjust the scale to fit the points available.

And here we reach an underlying difficulty – our expectations are different. And if our expectations differ, our beliefs are likely to differ as well. Here’s an example: I think that a student who is barely meeting standard earns somewhere in the neigborhood of a C+/B-. Some of my colleagues argue for a B, while others say that meeting standard falls in the low-C or D range. For some, failing to meet standard means a student should not be passing, which means a score of 2 should equate to an F grade. And all of these equally valid points of view factor into a discussion, eventually (hopefully) leading to some kind of consensus.

Even when we reach a consensus on where to draw the “standard” line, there are still lingering issues that must be addressed. I think one problem that will arise is disagreement from parents, who don’t think the same way about grades as we are trying to. Like us, they grew up with a more traditional 100-point letter grade system and that is what parents understand. We can certainly expect them to hold the same perspectives we are fighting within ourselves.

In addition, there is the matter of what to do when a student does not meet standard on a given assignment. By using SB grading, I am committing myself to getting students to meet specific standards. When I grade an assignment, it should be an assessment of whether students have met one or more of those standards. If they do, they can move on and attack the next standard. However, if they do not meet the standard, what do we do? Logic dictates that, if my goal is to get the student to meet that standard, I should reteach and give the student another opportunity to meet standard. But how often does this happen in most schools? How often do we simply move on and hope the student can catch up?

The final issue you’ll likely need to address on this topic is what we do when a student doesn’t meet standard all year. Again, basic logic seems to tell us that the student needs additional opportunities to meet the standards at that grade level. Unfortunately, that’s not usually what happens for students. In some sort of quest to soften the blow to students’ egos, we pass them on to the next level. Now, while they may be with students their own age, they are now expected to pass more stringent standards. Even though they haven’t been able to meet the lower standards, we will hold them accountable to higher ones. Isn’t this setting students up for a career of failure? The question we have to address is a tough one: do we hold back students that aren’t meeting standard?

In our district, we hold students back at the secondary level. A 9th grader in our building cannot move on to the high school without meeting a certain minimal set of standards. Unfortunately, by the time they get to us, many students have been below standard for several years and have been passed up through the elementary grades. Based on conversations with teachers in other districts, this is a common trend – pass them through elementary school, then start expecting them to meet standards at the secondary level.

Final Thoughts

As I’ve gained experience with standards-based grading, I’ve come to appreciate the simplicity and efficiency of the concept. There were certainly some difficult transitions – grasping the nuances between a 3 and 4 as opposed to an 86 and 87, for example – but it has been a positive process for me. I think the long-term evolution involves a complete overhaul of how we do grades and committing to a 4-point scale across the board (which in turn changes how we calculate GPA), as well as committing ourselves to requiring students to meet standards from day 1. However, I don’t see a complete overhaul of how we assess students from kindergarten through graduate school as very realistic in the near future. In the mean time, we must simply press on toward the goal of helping all of our students reach the bar we have set for them, and pray that we don’t let them down.

Standards-Based Grading with Traditional Grading Scales

I’m slowly becoming a big believer in the concept of standards-based grading, particularly as it applies to writing. Throughout my own education (which wasn’t all that long ago), I often had no idea what went into the grading of my essays. Though I was an honors/AP student, essay grading often seemed subjective and, while I learned a lot from the comments, I didn’t know what separated an “A” paper from a “B” paper.

When I started working in my current job, our department used a standards-based rubric to score essays. At the time, we used a 10-point scale to grade the essays, which was quite simple. As we have progressed in our movement towards more standards-based grading, we have evolved into using a 4-point scale, which is simpler and easier to understand.

The inherent problem with this shift is that a 4-point grading scale does not convert neatly to a 100-point grading system like that used in our school. One of my biggest stressors over the last year has been trying to figure out how to solve this problem – how to convert the 4-point rubric to a 100-point grade. For example, if a student earns a 3 on our rubric  – which we label as meeting standard – she earns a 75%, which in our normal grading scale is a C. A student who does not quite meet the standard and earns a 2 has just failed with a 50%. Even a student who worked hard on the paper but simply lacks the proficiency to do well on an essay will fail miserably by getting a 1, as that is only a 25%. The problem is obvious to anyone who looks at it, and we’re not even dealing with the dreaded zero (for more on that, check out “The Case Against the Zero,” by Doublas B. Reeves - it’s something of an eye-opener).

Lately, I’ve been working on finding an adequate solution for this problem that is both fair to the students and easy for the teachers. Obviously whatever we do will add some work for the teacher, as we have to convert one scale to the other. But the methodology we choose could minimize that work or make it daunting. After doing a little online research, I came up with a couple of ideas, all of which employed Excel.

1. Create a spreadsheet for the entire class that allows me to input the scores from each writing category (content, organization, word choice, etc.) and have it calculate the 100-point grades. This seemed to be an effective, but also somewhat time-consuming choice.
2. Create a table (to print out) that converts a total score on our 4-point, 6-trait scale (basically a 24 point scale) into a number that can be entered as a percentage. While this seems to be the most efficient way, it also lacks the ability to weight categories or eliminate categories – basically we’d have to have a scale for every imaginable situation.
3. Create a grade adjustment calculator that gets used and reused. Have spaces to input the scores for each trait on the rubric, weight those scores, and have the spreadsheet calculate the adjusted point total for an accurate percentage. This seems, to me, the best balance of efficiency and effectiveness. It acts like a calculator, only you have to switch between windows (unless you’re using dual monitors…*drool*).

As I’m continuing to ponder/debate this difficult issue, I’m hoping for input on a couple of things. If you’d like to provide some feedback, please click a response in one of the two polls below, letting the me the world know which of the above options is best, and what grade you think a 3 (meets standard) should earn . I’d also, obviously love to hear comments on what you’re already doing or what you think might work. Looking forward to seeing some ideas bandied about.

Do Teachers Just Want to Teach?

A post today on Seeking Shared Learning got me thinking…a lot. I don’t do it often, but I thought I’d post my own comments on this topic and get some feedback:

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I think you’ll find that most teachers, particularly at the secondary level, would disagree. I find it ironic that this post was inspired by the “Dangerously Irrelevant” blog, because I (and many others I work with) would feel that is exactly what our teaching would become if we lost all control over curriculum. When teachers have no control over what they teach, the content will inevitably become stale, stagnant, and unresponsive to the needs of the diverse individuals we call students. It also eliminates the option to experiment with new ideas, new instructional methods, and even new technologies. And if our goal is to focus on 21st century skills (or Outcomes and Indicators) rather than content, why is it so crucial to teach the exact same content across the board?

When many of the secondary teachers in our district (and, I can confidently say, all of the teachers in my department) read something like this, and when we hear about curriculum binders with scripted lessons, we worry that we will lose all of the things mentioned above. And for good teachers who are committed to providing their students the best possible education they can provide, this is a scary thing. To remove teachers’ ability to be creative and innovative seems to contradict the goals of our district – in fact, teacher innovation seems to be what has made this district so successful. We may also find that when teachers lose the ability to create and innovate in their own classrooms (which most of us share in with our colleagues), they will seek out a place where they will be allowed to do so.

All that said, there is certainly a balance to be sought after. Students in Class A should certainly have the same opportunities to learn as students in Class B – the same skills being developed, the same opportunities to use technology, and so on. There are many positive learning experiences that we can all participate in. There are many other ways to find consistency without having T&L mandate curriculum to teachers – even consistency within a grade level and a department is still consistency, and it is something that can be achieved by allowing professionals, who are extensively trained in their profession, to collaborate with each other and reach a consensus of their own. Does this require more time and effort? Absolutely. But there are a lot of reasons this is not an easy profession, and we knew this when we signed up.

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For those that are currently in the classroom, do you find yourself agreeing with this, or would you prefer more standardized curriculum?