Charting a Course to Standards-Based Grading
Charting a Course to Standards-Based Grading

Author: Tim R. Westerberg

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2016-08-24

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1416622632

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What's the best way to ensure that grading policies are fair, accurate, and consistent across classrooms? How can schools transition to a grading system that better reflects what students are actually learning? Tim R. Westerberg makes this journey easier by offering a continuum of options, with four "destinations" on the road to improved grading and assessment. Destination 1 critically examines such popular grading mechanisms as the zero, extra credit, the "semester killer" project, averaging, mixing academic performance with work ethic, and refusing to accept late work, and explains how they undermine objectivity and instead result in widely divergent grades for comparable work--with major consequences for students. Destination 2 invites educators to put assessment and grading into the larger context of a districtwide guaranteed and viable curriculum and lays out the organizational conditions and necessary steps to accomplish this goal. Destination 3 brings parents and others on board with a multiyear implementation plan and community engagement strategies for introducing report cards that indicate student achievement by standards rather than--or in addition to--letter grades. Destination 4, competency-based education, involves a total rethinking of the nature and structure of school, leading to individualized education for all students. However far they choose to go, administrators and teacher leaders can turn to Charting a Course to Standards-Based Grading for the quick wins and long-term support and guidance they need to make the trip well worth the effort.

Developing Standards-Based Report Cards
Developing Standards-Based Report Cards

Author: Thomas R. Guskey

Publisher: Corwin Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 1412940869

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Providing a clear framework, this volume helps school leaders align assessment and reporting practices with standards-based education and develop more detailed reports of children's learning and progress.

A School Leader's Guide to Standards-Based Grading
A School Leader's Guide to Standards-Based Grading

Author: Tammy Heflebower

Publisher: Solution Tree Press

Published: 2014-05-30

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 0985890290

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Accurately report students’ academic strengths and weaknesses with standards-based grading. Rather than using traditional systems that incorporate nonacademic factors such as attendance and behavior, learn to assess and report student performance based on prioritized standards. You will discover reliable, practical methods for analyzing what students have learned and gain effective strategies for offering students feedback on their progress.

Rethinking Grading
Rethinking Grading

Author: Cathy Vatterott

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2015-07-13

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 1416620524

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Grading systems often reward on-time task completion and penalize disorganization and bad behavior. Despite our best intentions, grades seem to reflect student compliance more than student learning and engagement. In the process, we inadvertently subvert the learning process. After careful research and years of experiences with grading as a teacher and a parent, Cathy Vatterott examines and debunks traditional practices and policies of grading in K–12 schools. She offers a new paradigm for standards-based grading that focuses on student mastery of content and gives concrete examples from elementary, middle, and high schools. Rethinking Grading will show all educators how standards-based grading can authentically reflect student progress and learning—and significantly improve both teaching and learning. Cathy Vatterott is an education professor and researcher at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, a former middle school teacher and principal, and a parent of a college graduate. She has learned from her workshops that "grading continues to be the most contentious part . . . conjuring up the most intense emotions and heated disagreements." Vatterott is also the author of the book Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs.

Failure of Corporate School Reform
Failure of Corporate School Reform

Author: Kenneth J. Saltman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-11-17

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1317259742

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Corporate school reforms, especially privatization, union busting, and high-stakes testing have been hailed as the last best hope for public education. Yet, as Kenneth Saltman powerfully argues in this new book, corporate school reforms have decisively failed to deliver on what their proponents have promised for two decades: higher test scores and lower costs. As Saltman illustrates, the failures of corporate school reform are far greater and more destructive than they seem. Left unchecked, corporate school reform fails to challenge and in fact worsens the most pressing problems facing public schooling, including radical funding inequalities, racial segregation, and anti-intellectualism. But it is not too late for change. Against both corporate school reformers and its liberal critics, this book argues for the expansion of democratic pedagogies and a new common school movement that will lead to broader social renewal.

Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading
Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading

Author: Robert J. Marzano

Publisher: Solution Tree Press

Published: 2011-10-27

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1935542435

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Learn everything you need to know to implement an integrated system of assessment and grading. The author details the specific benefits of formative assessment and explains how to design and interpret three different types of formative assessments, how to track student progress, and how to assign meaningful grades. Detailed examples bring each concept to life, and chapter exercises reinforce the content.

Partnering With Parents in Elementary School Math
Partnering With Parents in Elementary School Math

Author: Hilary Kreisberg

Publisher: Corwin

Published: 2021-02-03

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1071810901

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How to build productive relationships in math education I wasn’t taught this way. I can’t help my child! These are common refrains from today’s parents and guardians, who are often overwhelmed, confused, worried, and frustrated about how to best support their children with what they see as the "new math." The problem has been compounded by the shift to more distance learning in response to a global pandemic. Partnering With Parents in Elementary School Math provides educators with long overdue guidance on how to productively partner and communicate with families about their children’s mathematics learning. It includes reproducible surveys, letters, and planning documents that can be used to improve the home-school relationship, which in turn helps students, parents, teachers, and education leaders alike. Readers will find guidance on how to: · Understand and empathize with what fuels parents’ anxieties and concerns · Align as a school and set parents’ expectations about what math instruction their children will experience and how it will help them · Communicate clearly and productively with parents about their students’ progress, strengths, and needs in math · Run informative and fun family events · support homework · Coach parents to portray a productive disposition about math in front of their children Educators, families, and students are best served when proactive, productive, and healthy relationships have been developed with each other and with the realities of today′s math education. This guide shows how these relationships can be built.

Grading With Integrity
Grading With Integrity

Author: Thomas R. Guskey

Publisher: Corwin Press

Published: 2024-06-20

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1071964372

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Let evidence and integrity guide your grading practice If you want to ask a polarizing question in education, ask someone their thoughts on grading. Few topics have elicited more interest or opinions, even though grading practices have remained relatively unchanged for years. But opinions are not evidence. The time has come to get it right with a fresh approach grounded in research and the principles of integrity. Grading With Integrity introduces a measured approach to grading reform based on honesty, transparency, accuracy, and equity with recommendations backed by clear and trustworthy evidence. Addressing the many "whys’’ involved, this thoughtfully organized book addresses central questions related to grading and reporting student learning, covering: An historical overview of grading and reporting practices A discussion of standards-based and competency-based grading Recommendations for reporting non academic learning goals separately from academic achievement, to accurately reflect students′ performance Suggestions for reporting growth and improvement, using specific assessments and other reporting tools An infallible argument for grading with integrity This book is a must-read for K-12 classroom teachers and administrators who are looking to implement better and more defensible grading and reporting policies and practices. Let evidence and integrity be your guide to enhancing students’ best interests and learning success.

How to Use Grading to Improve Learning
How to Use Grading to Improve Learning

Author: Susan M. Brookhart

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2017-07-21

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1416624074

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Grades are imperfect, shorthand answers to “What did students learn, and how well?” In How to Use Grading to Improve Learning, best-selling author Susan M. Brookhart guides educators at all levels in figuring out how to produce grades—for single assignments and report cards—that accurately communicate students’ achievement of learning goals. Brookhart explores topics that are fundamental to effective grading and learning practices: • Acknowledging that all students can learn • Supporting and motivating student effort and learning • Designing and grading appropriate assessments • Creating policies for report card grading • Implementing learning-focused grading policies • Communicating with students and parents • Assessing school or district readiness for grading reform The book is grounded in research and resonates with the real lessons learned in the classroom. Although grading is a necessary part of schooling, Brookhart reminds us that children are sent to school to learn, not to get grades. This highly practical book will help you put grading and learning into proper perspective, offering strategies you can use right away to ensure that your grading practices actually support student learning.