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Last August, for instance, the Center on Reinventing Public Education published a brief field report from their ongoing study of personalized-learning initiatives warning that some schools focus on the “iconography” of personalized learning — the technology or the project-based learning — but sacrifice rigor.

“When I walk into a classroom and see all the kids on a computer, mostly on the same screen, and the teacher is moving around the room like a test proctor, that is where we’ve gone way wrong and need to right the ship,”

The only prerequisites for would-be Basecamp schools are a commitment to Summit’s grading policy, a one-to-one ratio of computers to students and a team of at least four teachers covering the core academic subjects for about 100 students.

“Historically, there are virtually no game-changers in the history of school innovations,” said Justin Reich, executive director of MIT’s Teaching Systems Lab and the author of Education Week’s EdTechResearcher blog.

“I’m not spoon-feeding them anything,” she explained. “That’s a relief, because there’s a lot less of me trying to run around and help everybody with little details, and more of us having conversations about math.”

According to Riley, the personalized learning advocates wrongly assume that all students are able to effectively guide their own learning.

Christina Nguyen, a ninth-grader at Summit Denali. Nguyen was working on quadratic equations with her friend, Chloe Starbird

Summit requires Basecamp schools to follow its practice of basing 30 percent of grades on mastery of content and 70 percent on students’ use of various cognitive skills, such as making inferences and clearly communicating their ideas.

While Summit’s PLP does include tests of content knowledge for each subject, students take them only when they feel ready and, if they fail, can re-take them until they pass. Some Walsh parents, such as Paula Swift, whose sixth-grade son, Trevor, is in the Summit program, are fully supportive of this “mastery-based” grading.

Other parents are puzzled by the approach. “I’ve definitely heard from at least 10 parents who are like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ ” O’Connor said. ” ‘Is this good for my child?’

“I used to fail a lot of math tests. But now, I love school math, because I’m learning better.”

Benjamin Riley, who visited many personalized-learning classrooms from 2010 to 2014 as the policy and advocacy director for the NewSchools Venture Fund. Shortly after leaving that post, Riley planted his skeptic’s flag with an oft-cited blog post titled, “Don’t Personalize Learning.”

At the start of the year, her students were often frustrated, and she had to resist the urge to step in and rescue them. For nearly two months of school, she said, “It was tough. There were tears.”

Logically, this concern about the need for guidance heightens with novice learners.

“When you have little ones, it’s harder to do the full, self-directed learning. There needs to be a lot more scaffolding and support,” said Loughlin, singling out her school’s structured and deliberate literacy instruction. “We need to set a strong foundation. We don’t want to create gaps in our learning for our little ones.”

For all the effort, time, and best intentions teachers invest in those reams of grade reports, we are lying to ourselves and to our students’ parents, cheating our students out of clear and accurate feedback on their academic process, and contributing to the greater illusion that grades are an accurate reflection of skill mastery.

What should the mark really represent? Should the mark be based upon ability or performance, or even upon zeal and enthusiasm? What is the best set of symbols to represent ability or achievement?

This approach is known as standards-based grading. It is a system of evaluation that is formative, meaning it shapes instruction in order to fill in knowledge gaps, and measures mastery based on a set of course objectives, standards or skills.

Many notions I had at the beginning of my career about grading didn't stand up to real scrutiny. The thorny issue of homework is one example of how the status quo needed to change. I once thought it was essential to award points to students simply for completing homework. I didn't believe students would do homework unless it was graded. And yet, in my classroom, students who were clearly learning sometimes earned low grades because of missing work. Conversely, some students actually learned very little but were good at “playing school.” Despite dismal test scores, these students earned decent grades by turning in homework and doing extra credit. They would often go on to struggle in later courses, while their parents watched and worried.

Teaching and learning with an eye toward mastery of a defined list of competencies circumvents many of the pitfalls that points-based grading causes.

While a shift to standards-based grading from the traditional, points-based system sounds daunting, now is the perfect time to make the transition.

But in 1912 a study by two Wisconsin researchers seriously challenged the reliability of percentage grades as accurate indicators of students' achievement.

These demonstrations of wide variation in grading practices led to a gradual move away from percentage scores to scales that had fewer and larger categories. One was a three-point scale that employed the categories of Excellent, Average, and Poor. Another was the familiar five-point scale of Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, and Failing, (or A, B, C, D, and F). This reduction in the number of score categories served to reduce the variation in grades, but it did not solve the problem of teacher subjectivity.

At the same time, significant evidence shows that regularly checking on students' learning progress is an essential aspect of successful teaching–but checking is different from grading. Checking implies finding out how students are doing, what they have learned well, what problems or difficulties they might be experiencing, and what corrective measures may be necessary. The process is primarily a diagnostic and prescriptive interaction between teachers and students. Grading and reporting, however, typically involve judgment of the adequacy of students' performance at a particular point in time. As such, it is primarily evaluative and descriptive.

To ensure a fairer distribution of grades among teachers and to bring into check the subjective nature of scoring, the idea of grading based on the normal probability, bell-shaped curve became increasingly popular. By this method, students were simply rank-ordered according to some measure of their performance or proficiency. A top percentage was then assigned a grade of A, the next percentage a grade of B, and so on. Some advocates of this method even specified the precise percentages of students that should be assigned each grade, such as the 6-22-44-22-6 system.

Grading on the curve was considered appropriate at that time because it was well known that the distribution of students' intelligence test scores approximated a normal probability curve. Since innate intelligence and school achievement were thought to be directly related, such a procedure seemed both fair and equitable. Grading on the curve also relieved teachers of the difficult task of having to identify specific learning criteria. Fortunately, most educators of the early twenty-first century have a better understanding of the flawed premises behind this practice and of its many negative consequences.

How satisfied are you with your/your school’s grading practices? What would ideal grading practices look like to you? What is one thing you could change to move toward that ideal? What makes talking about the shift from grading to assessment worth it? Any tips for the those interested in the transition?

At Sanborn Regional High School, summative assignments must account for at least 90% of a final course grade.

e do not make use of averaging by quarters or trimesters to compute a student’s final course grade. Instead, our students know that their grade will be calculated based on all of their work for the entire course.

At Sanborn, any student who does not obtain an 80% or higher on a summative assessment has the option to reassess, provided they complete a reassessment plan with their teacher which may include a deadline for completion of the reassessment as well as the completion of several formative assessments at a proficient level prior to taking a reassessment.

Rather, a zero skews a student’s final grade in such a way that it no longer accurately represents what a student knows and is able to do. Giving a student a zero is akin to giving them the option to fail. In the Sanborn model, failure is not an option for any student. Teachers will do whatever it takes to get student’s to complete an assignment.

One of our next hurtles to address as a school community is moving this to something higher, possibly as high as an 80%)

Completion of an online course or competency module at a proficient level Completion of a teacher-directed project or recovery plan at a proficient level. The plan may include reassessments of key summative assignments or the completion of an alternative project Completion of an appropriate extended learning opportunity that is connected with the skill or competency that must be recovered

Barnes spent that summer immersed in research on learning and homework, and returned in the 14th year of his teaching career determined to do away with homework and create what he calls a “results-only learning environment.”

Contrary to my first concern, Barnes found that most parents were in favor of his doing away with homework, particularly once he outlined the research for them.

Barnes points out that a no-homework policy does not mean that his students never work outside of class; indeed, they often do, because they enjoy the learning and want it to continue outside of class.

His class was a project-based classroom, so many students did choose to prepare for their projects outside of class. Barnes eliminated all work that required rote memory, and leaned more on context clues and word roots instead. “The result of eliminating traditional, mostly rote memory, homework was one of the most rewarding experiences of my teaching career,” Barnes wrote.

Above all else, my students enjoyed class and become intrinsically motivated independent learners.

I would add for the no-homework skeptics, and they are legion, you have to keep in mind that any research that supports homework is based almost universally on test results.

Academic Success Coach

Next, these outcomes were rewritten in student friendly language and then provided to the students on the first day of class.

here were no "trick questions", just simple questions that would assess "Can the child demonstrate this outcome, on their own, as a basic level of understanding?"

I would write comments only on them, and either a "Outcome demonstrated" or "Need to learn" for each outcome assessed (Not on the overall assessment). 

ext, if the child received a "Need to learn" he/she must do the following: 1) Demonstrate the understanding of the questions given at a later date.  This usually occurs after a lunch session, a quick conversation, or multiple conversations with the child. 2) A conversation explaining how he/she made the mistake earlier and how their understanding has changed now 3) Write another assessment on the outcomes.

After 5-7 outcomes have been taught, then each child is assigned an open ended project. 

I simply take the number of outcomes and projects completed (at the end of the course) and divide by the total number of outcomes and projects.  This is not the best strategy, but it seems to work for me at this moment.  I do weigh projects twice as much. (I have 20 outcomes, and 5 projects, so the total is (20+5x2=30)

Once I realized how little help a grade was for students, I changed things—big time! Now they get the feedback they need to gauge their own progress. Sometimes my feedback is on the content of the curriculum and sometimes on foundational skills.

My formative feedback at each step of the way let students see how to improve their notes or summaries and whether they needed to look for more examples of the laws. From the first drafts I read, I could tell they had no idea how to write these kinds of descriptions. I had to create writing frames so that students could learn specific patterns of writing and how to use simple math calculations from their lab work to support their ideas.