Shanicka and Standards Based Grading

Jenny and I had been talking about grading during our one on one conversations. More accurately, we’d been discussing whether or not we ​were adequately preparing our kids for high school and life. We were reflecting on our school’s handling of grading and instruction.

We were wrestling with the fact that our traditional way of grading was doing our children a disservice. We had spoken with enough alumni who ​told us just how different the expectations were in high school.

Jenny and I wondered if we could do things differently so as to better prepare students for an ever changing future.

Secretly, I wanted to see if we could do better by kids like Shanicka.

Shanicka was a wonderful student and an even better person. She was that kid that we all want to work with. She showed up every day, she ​worked hard, she helped her peers, and she always wanted to please. She was delightful.

She was also behind academically.

Shanicka’s academic performance could have been due to a number of factors that she faced. Her elementary school was underperforming and ​could often feel chaotic. Her home life was set up in a manner where she was often expected to be an adult.

But Shanicka worked hard. She paid attention in class. She did her homework. She followed the rules. With enough support from teachers, she ​was earning A’s and B’s on her report card. In our district, this meant that Shanicka would be eligible for one of the criteria high schools that ​based student entry on grades and state test scores.

Shanicka attended one of those high schools. However, she left within her freshman year. She shared that it was simply too much for her.

Now, just like anything else, this situation could have been due to a number of factors. We couldn’t control anything outside of our school ​setting. However, when I reflected on our work with Shanicka, I believed that we had failed her.

Shanicka was excellent at playing the game of school. However, her grades were not an accurate reflection of her independent mastery of ​standards. For students attending this criteria based high school, they had to be able to dive into some very heavy lifting their Freshman year. As ​these schools were much larger than our middle school, it was always unlikely that Shanicka was going to get the same level of support that she ​had received from us.

Even though we wanted all of our children to have access to the most prestigious schools, it wouldn’t mean much if they could feel or be ​successful there.

So, Jenny and I were discussing standards based grading, student independence, and future success.

If we wanted to do a better job for Shanicka and all of our students, then we had to adjust the way we assessed – which in turn, would change ​the way we instructed.

I set out to begin our work around transitioning our school to Standards Based Grading. I read about it, talked to staff about it, and discussed it ​with alumni. Then, we put together a team of teachers to learn more about it.

They read about it and visited other schools already using it. One of the teachers began to pilot it in their classroom.

This took a lot of communication with families and children about what we would be doing. We had to explain the what, the why, and the how.

Over time, we shifted the entire school to standards based grading. There was a pilot, a version one, and a version two. We adjusted the name ​from Standards Based Grading to Standards Based Instruction to better address what this meant.

Our team tested things out, had honest debates, observed each other’s spaces, and argued about what grading should look like. We made ​additional changes for special education. We talked about all the different ways assessments could look. We hashed out how many times a ​student could reassess. We dove into the language between formative and summative assessments. We sat down with families and got their ​feedback.

We made instructional videos for students in multiple languages. We shared our reminders in the weekly message to the community. We ​conferenced about all of it.

After all of it, we saw a reality that we had always known but rarely spoken about out loud.

When we stripped away all of the other pieces of traditional grading and solely focused on standard mastery– student achievement dropped, ​precipitously.

I would love to say that we immediately met this challenge head on. That we took it as an opportunity to be great. But that’s simply not true.

For many of us, despair was our initial response. What were we doing here? What had we been doing?

I thought that standards based grading would increase equity. There is always that kid who can handle the material but doesn’t do their ​homework. Now, they wouldn’t be penalized. Their grades should have increased.

Instead, we saw confusion, low turn in rates, and a reluctance to reassess on material that they hadn’t mastered.

So, after coping with our grief, we talked about what we could do. Teachers made more adjustments. We increased formative assessments ​(which can be anything from exit slips, to discussions, to in the moment check-ins) and clarified the weight of summative assessments (which ​was 100%). We added “reassessment windows” so students knew that there were only certain periods of time when they could retake things. ​We delineated between assignments that could be retaken and ones that couldn’t.

After a while, things began to change. We heard the students using the language that we were using. Families were reaching out with questions ​about reassessments and other items pertaining to the system. Teachers began to settle into a rhythm. We codified our work. We discussed ​points where we were still struggling.

We redesigned rubrics, held meetings where teachers shared out what was working and what wasn’t, we leveraged videos of students walking ​through their assignments to share out with current and prospective families.

Eventually, Standards Based Instruction just became part of who we were. Families and kids entered the community knowing that we would ​love and support their children, that we would work hard to build relationships, and that their grades would be a reflection of the skill they had ​mastered – not how competent they were at following the rules. At our school, you would know which standards your child has mastered and ​which ones that they were still working to develop.

We were never looking to penalize the kids who had figured out how to play the game of school, we were simply trying to create a fairer and ​more accurate system of assessment. One that recognized that Charlan had mastered the material even if he didn’t want to participate in class ​discussions or do his homework. One that acknowledged schools’ stated goal: academic achievement. One that encouraged students to have a ​sense of ownership of their learning – to know that they weren’t expected to master material right away but that they would have multiple ​opportunities to grow and demonstrate their learning.

I don’t believe that Shanicka would have earned the same level of grades that she had previously. At least not right away. I like to think that ​Shanicka would have risen to meet the challenge and that we, her teachers, would have been more attuned to the skill gaps, more readily and ​made appropriate adjustments to support her so that when she was able to access the highly competitive high schools, she would have had the ​necessary tools to succeed.

Even if we had transitioned to standards based instruction sooner, our system would still be imperfect. All grading systems are.

In fact, here’s a secret – I don’t believe in any grading system. Quarterly grading is arbitrary and antithetical to the idea of a growth mindset. It ​also doesn’t emphasize learning – which should be the goal. Narrative is a lot more valuable than snapshots.

Jenny and I knew that we could not completely upend the paradigm of grading in education. We knew that we, just like the kids, would have to ​learn to play the game of school.

But what we could do was try and find the most authentic way of playing that game – for each one of our children both in the present and the ​future.

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