THE STANDARDS BASED GRADING TRAIN IS LEAVING THE STATION.... and YOU need to get ON BOARD7/27/2016 PART 1: Percentage-based grading no longer makes senseAhhhh, the coveted "A"... the definitive mark on a report card that says... to paraphrase Stuart Smalley from Saturday Night Live... "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people (mainly my teachers) like me." It has been the benchmark for every student in America's schools for like, 80 years. When you get an "A", it means you know your stuff. Many grading scales say A= Excellent. An "A" is what my parents always wanted to see... neigh... EXPECTED to see, but I wanted to see them too, because in Oshkosh, WI in the 1990s, each "A" you had on your report card was good for 5 tokens at Shakey's Pizza and Arcade. After all, you need at least a whopping 93% to earn one! Well, unless you round up from the 92.5-92.99 range..... or if you slap a minus on the back of it for something in the 90-92.44% range.... sorry, rounding applies there too, so 89.5% and up and you are a golden child! BUT WHAT THE HECK DOES IT REALLY MEAN!?!?!?!? To me as a nine year old kid, an 89.5% meant I got an "A-" written on my report card, 5 tokens at Shakey's, and a pat on the back when my parents saw it. An 89.4% meant a "B+" written on my report card, 4 tokens at Shakey's and a line of questioning from my parents regarding anything I may have misunderstood, any extra assignments I could have done and whether my overall effort level had been sufficient. So what was the difference between an 89.5 and 89.4 to a teacher? Probably one point on one assignment on one random day during that grading term that pushed the average above or below a completely arbitrary line drawn on a scale of 100%. Did I understand that when I was nine? Well, I got an "A" in math that year, so I guess I probably understood that all my points earned were weighed against all the points possible to calculate my final grade. The real question is how traditional, percentage-based grading was making me behave as a student. Was an 89.4% pushing me to dig deeper into topics I didn't have a perfect grasp of? Was I finding out what my weakest areas were and how to improve them? Was I really concerned with MASTERING ANYTHING??? Nope... I just learned how to manipulate the grading system to work best for me. I did my homework because a zero would really hurt my average. I studied for tests because the more questions I got right, the more points I would earn and the better my average would be. I vividly remember sitting on my bed with a social studies textbook in 5th grade asking myself why the heck I needed to know the year that British colonists established Jamestown, Virginia. Well, obviously if I filled in the bubble that said 1706, I get the question wrong and my score drops. If I filled in the bubble next to 1607, I get a point and my average goes up. That one question could be the catapult that launched me into A territory or the trap door that dropped me to a B. Now as a social studies teacher myself, I can honestly tell you I do not care if a student memorizes that Jamestown was established in 1607... ...I'm pausing so you have time to gasp and contemplate whether I can be considered a "real history teacher"... That date tells me nothing about the student's mastery of the content, and everything about their memory. I have the following Calvin and Hobbes strip posted proudly in my room to make sure I don't forget it too. From day one of my career it has been clear to me that asking questions like this don't give me an accurate picture of what content and skills each student has mastered. In my efforts to avoid those types of questions, I filled tests with short answer questions and essays that made students explain the significance of events, look at cause and effect, and declare an opinion and back it up with reasoning. I didn't care as much about them knowing the year 1607, but I would care if they knew it was the first permanent English settlement after other failed experiments, and how the colonists relationships with the Native Americans evolved over time. I might even care that they can take their newly learned knowledge of Jamestown and juxtapose it to what Disney "taught" them in Pocahontas. I patted myself on the back and told myself how much better I was than the teachers that gave me Scan-tron sheets full of multiple choice questions based on memory. ....Then something brought me back to reality... the kids turned the tests in and I graded them... still converting raw points into averages and averages into letter grades. Something still wasn't right. If I gave students a short answer question and Student X gave me an opinion with some reasoning and a simple example but without going into what I would consider "sufficient detail", I might score that question a 4/6. If Student Y gave me a strong answer acknowledging all parts of the question with multiple supporting pieces of evidence and reasoning, I would probably give them a 6/6. (Insert vinyl record scratching noise here) HOLD UP A SECOND! Student X is now missing 2 points on a 40 point test... aka 5%... aka half a letter grade. Student Y has those 2 points in their back pocket giving them more cushion for mistakes throughout the rest of the test. Does student X DESERVE to lose half a letter grade from that answer? They didn't answer the question as directly and fully as I would like, but did they only understand 2/3 of the concept??? Doubtful... but I only gave them 2/3 of the points, and that hurts when your test is scored using a raw average in a traditional grading system. Now consider the same answers on a different scale... one proposed by Myron Dueck. Imagine the 6 point value of the question broke down as follows: 6 and 5: Expert level, 4 and 3: Apprentice level, 2 and 1: Novice level I think the reason I like this system so much is because I was basically doing it already, except I was doing it in a way that punished students for imperfection. My 4 was a "D", barely passing. Dueck's 4 means they are an "apprentice" just barely short of proving they are an expert. What does Student X deserve... a "D"? Or do they deserve a "4" that puts them as a "high level apprentice" knowing that they are almost an expert and just need a little more seasoning or a little more push to become an expert in that area. I know which one I would find more meaningful and motivating to receive as a student. Look, the whole purpose of assessing a student in the first place is to give them meaningful feedback on their progress so they can figure out where to go from there. a 73% or a 91% or a 58% don't do that job well enough. It's arbitrary at best and pointless at worst. OK... I know what the biggest argument is at this point... "But Mr. Honish, aren't you being arbitrary by giving them a 4 on a short answer question regardless of whether it equates to a "D" or "apprentice" As Phineas would say... STANDARDS and LEARNING TARGETS will play a critical role in making sure the grades as relevant as possible. STANDARDS and LEARNING TARGETS are how I will be making sure a 4 out of 6 is not arbitrary at all and the student knows exactly where they stand on that topic.
That is EXACTLY what I will be talking about at length in my next post, so check back for updates when it's finished. It's still summer though, so don't rush me!
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Car Shopping and the Classroom: How my adult experience opened my eyes to an outdated system7/7/2016 For over 2 years, we have been a one-car family. We moved a block away from my school so I was walking to work, and my wife was working from home. We simply did not need 2 vehicles... in fact, we weren't even putting 1,000 miles a month on the vehicles we had, a brand new 2013 Honda CR-V with space for us and our daughter. Fast forward 27 months and add another child, a golden retriever and 2 jobs my wife needs a car for, and it is time to buy a second vehicle. Luckily, it has become my hobby to go used car shopping online. My theory was always no matter how reliable and new our CR-V was, as a one-car family we were only one accident away from realistically needing a second vehicle. My wife thought it was a bit much, but I was having fun with my mobile app equivalent of window shopping. Now, the time has come to actually FIND a second vehicle we will actually purchase, and I am READY. Do you know WHY I am ready (and WHY this connects to the classroom and teaching in any way shape or form)? I have done EXTENSIVE RESEARCH! Research is a critical component of any classroom and obviously it is an important skill as an adult as well, like in car shopping. I found that my research PROCESS mirrored what students are taught to do in school almost exactly. First I needed to find reliable sources. I downloaded apps for cars.com, Autolist and Autotrader to search for vehicles for sale in my area. I downloaded the Edmunds app to research specs and read reviews of different makes and models. I also downloaded the Kelley Blue Book app to compare prices with perceived values. Now I was armed with a wealth of information at my fingertips. All I needed to do was start sifting. I started sifting through all that information in the same way I expect many students start researching... with only a vague idea of what I was looking for and more information than I could possibly digest staring me in the face as I looked at my screen. That brought me to the second phase of my research. Narrowing the field. I had a little more time and freedom to narrow my results than most students are afforded over the course of a research project in school, and I had very few restrictions on my search. The only thing I truly cared about was keeping the price under 5 digits and making sure the car had never been in an accident. Everything else was fair game. Because of this, I went back and forth many times on what style of vehicle I was even searching for. I started with standard 4 door sedans and after a month or so, I had compared every available Accord, Camry, Fusion and Altima in a 150 mile radius (while eliminating Malibus, Impalas, Taurus', Passats, Sebrings and 200s through research of reliability as well)... but 4 door sedans seemed boring. So I asked myself, "Is it possible to actually own a luxury sedan?" They could be had in my price range as long as I could accept slightly higher mileage. BMW is my dream car brand, and I became obsessed with the 3 series and 5 series, but also discovered some Volvo S80s and Lexus LS400s I could see myself in as well. Ironically, that brought me back to a standard 4 door sedan search once again, as I realized the luxury brands might be a little too impractical with high maintenance costs After going in circles several times, thinking about what our CR-V couldn't offer (namely towing ability and 4 wheel drive for the snowy Wisconsin winters) and what would be most adaptable to the possibility of our needs changing again in a few years, the decision came down to the Toyota 4Runner or Honda Pilot...... or maybe Mitsubishi Montero..... or the Nissan Xterra. Crap Dang It! It was happening again! But wait... are we sure those are the most important things for our needs? What do we need to tow? A bike rack every once in a while, a small trailer with awkward sized items from home improvement stores, certainly nothing over our CR-V's 1500 lb towing capacity... and we've never had a problem navigating the snow with its traction control, stability control and ABS. Back to the 4 door sedans?This time it was real though... no more messing around. We are buying a vehicle, like NOW! Decision time! I started to do something that all my education professors told me would be crucial in my career... something they make you do in your Professional Development Plan for renewing your license... something I swore to myself I would never ACTUALLY do because I thought it was lame... I began to "reflect". Uggggghhh... reflection. It always sounded so cutesy and unecessary, yet here I was reflecting on the process I was using in my hobby and how it related to education. After some introspective reflection on the process I was using in my research, I was surprised to find that my reflection actually led me to a major observation. As it turns out, I had proven to myself that the way research is conducted in school projects needs to change. Too many times, students are given a topic, the internet and some books, and told to go learn facts and present their findings. That often ends up being a PowerPoint full of facts they found on the internet and read to an audience. They then get an acceptable passing grade because they found information for all the categories deemed necessary on the directions sheet, stood in front of the class and reported them out while the teacher sat in back and checked boxes on a rubric. That's not meaningful in the least. If I had done my car research as a standard middle school level research project in school, I probably would have been given a handful of vehicles to research by my teacher and told to have at it! I could make a PowerPoint of the vehicles assigned to me and put their horsepower, cargo capacity, towing capacity, available features, safety ratings, and any number of other pieces of information. I could stand in front of a room and read those stats off. If that is what my teacher was looking for, then that's what I could give them... and it would be easy and meaningless. Edmunds gives me all those numbers and more. Cars.com takes up to 4 vehicles at a time and puts columns of those numbers side by side to directly compare. I can find them whenever I want with a couple taps on my smartphone. Clearly there were more meaningful ways of conducting research projects... now it was time for some MORE reflection. I had to ask myself a tough question: "Is this what I am asking MY students to do?" I would like to think that most research I give my students includes some element of student choice within the given topic and is not simply restatement of facts that can be easily found. Students need to be able to find information, but not necessarily memorize it to tell others. They need to use it to solve problems, to evaluate scenarios, to compare and contrast things... and anyone that knows anything about Bloom's Taxonomy or best practice in secondary education SHOULD already know this! The problem is so many IGNORE IT! We've all seen it so often... students spending weeks in the library filling out index cards and note sheets full of facts, then typing those facts onto slides, then standing in front of their peers and telling them the facts they found. We can do better. We NEED to do better because after they finish school, that will not be good enough for the purposes of their research in the "real world". In my own search of how to get away from "Google-able facts" and help my students dig deeper, I have come across a few resources that have helped... The most helpful starting point has been focusing on what kinds of questions students are asking in the early stages of research. A general guideline is to avoid "who", "what", "where" and "when" and focus instead on "why" and "how". I was unable to narrow the field of potential vehicles until I asked myself why we needed a 2nd vehicle and how we were going to pay for it and travel to pick it up. I am promising myself right now that I will NOT force my students to do things that a google search can do for them already. I don't know how many horsepower a 2003 Honda Pilot has off the top of my head. I don't know the backseat legroom of a Mazda6 and I don't have a comprehensive list of every vehicle that features Electronic Stability Control. I have a rough idea because of all the research I did, and I know where to find the exact numbers if I ever did need it. The more important thing for me to know is how to APPLY this info (like knowing the Toyota 4Runner can tow more than triple the weight of our CR-V with more interior cargo space, but would cost on average twice as much as a 4 door sedan and lose 30-40% on gas mileage, whereas a later model 4 door sedan with safety features like side airbags and EBS could be had for much cheaper while sacrificing any extra towing and space). Applying research to a given question or scenario leads to the best ultimate result. If it's a research project in school, you find explanations and reasons for the questions you set out to answer in the beginning of the process. If it's a decision on a major purchase, you come to the most informed decision possible for spending your hard-earned money! Even after over 2 years of constant research though, you know what I have no clue about??? Minivans... Do you know why I have no clue about minivans??? I don't like them, I don't care about them, and I sure as heck wasn't going to buy one... Which brings me to possibly the biggest consideration when assigning a research project to students (especially if I want to truly be like Mr. Dude and make middle school as fun as possible!)... GIVE STUDENTS SOME CHOICE! Choice is probably the biggest motivator in a research project. If a student is not excited or interested in the topic (read: me with minivans), then how hard are they really going to work at uncovering the intricacies of that topic? Obviously it's not always possible to let them pick whatever they want as a research topic, or I would have had plenty of papers about the NBA or OneDirection throughout my career. What you can realistically do is give them smaller choices WITHIN the larger framework. The theme of the research is set in stone, but they can take it in a direction they are more comfortable with. Some examples of what I have done include our Cultural Fair project where students have choices regarding which country their group wants to represent and which subtopics they would like to dig in to individually. Another example is the Made Up North American Football League, which requires all students to meet certain requirements when researching city demographics and using physical geography for long-term planning, but allows individualism in selection of their city as well as nickname, logo, stadium, food and uniform creation. Choice plays a big role in adult-life research as well. I chose to dig into the car research process fully because cars interest me. My wife fully admits she would be more inclined to visit a couple dealerships at most on a random Saturday, find a few vehicles to test drive, and just pick the one that felt best. On the other hand, she became a REALTOR in part because she loved digging through online house listings for all the details in order to find the perfect match for her clients' needs. Houses are not something I would choose to spend inordinate amounts of time researching. Sometimes, especially in smaller research assignments, choice is not that easy to give and the content might be more simplistic. If my assignment requires them to find simpler facts, I try to ask them to ELABORATE on them and make connections with other topics or apply those pieces of information to draw conclusions about some sort of issue. However, there is always room to improve. So in the end, what started as a fun side project for my personal life has become a thought provoking examination of best practice in my secondary Social Studies Classroom. And isn't that what best practice should truly strive to accomplish? If students are researching in ways that mirror the skills they will need in real life applications, they will obviously be better prepared for adult life. If you're a teacher, hopefully you will take a hard look at your own research assignments and "get away from the google-able". If you are a student, hopefully you take a hard look at your research process and adjust to make it better. If you're an administrator... I can't believe I'm about to suggest this... but check up on the current projects being run in your building and make sure they align with best practice. If they don't, enforce some change! |
AuthorJohn Honish: Archives
June 2021
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