Assessing Student Work

Grant Wiggins says this about the feedback we give based on formative assessment: "Feedback is value-neutral help on worthy tasks. It describes what the learner did and did not do in relation to her goals. It is actionable information, and it empowers the student to make intelligent adjustments when she applies it to her next attempt to perform."

It’s information for me, but just as importantly, it’s information my students can use to achieve more and perform at higher levels.

Grades don’t tell them much about what they need to learn or what they need to do better. When students earn a "C," they may feel like failures, but they have little idea what to do to improve their skills.

« Twitter, Simply Complicated. The Homework Option Plan May 22, 2011 by tomwhitby I was recently asked, along with several other educators, to comment on a post dealing with grading homework. The premise on which we were asked to comment involved a teacher grading homework and giving a zero as a grade to those students who did not do the assignment. This is not an uncommon practice amongst educators. I employed this strategy myself for many years. It was and probably still is an accepted strategy, but after decades of teaching, I have grown to a point where i am not a big believer in giving homework. I stated my homework philosophy in this post, Hmwk: Less Value or Valueless? If homework is to be given by a teacher, students need to believe that the teacher will value their efforts in completing it. Homework requires a sacrifice of personal time on the part of the student. If students observe that the teacher is not at least checking homework, they will not spend time, which is important to them, doing the assignments that are not valued. A mistake often made however, is that rather than assess the work, the teacher records a zero, or a failing homework grade for the student. This would also apply to a project prepared outside of the class that was to be presented at a specific time, a deadline. I see assessment having two functions. The formative assessment is to tell me how much the s

he zero seems more like retribution for not finding value in what the teacher values, or has been told to value. It’s more of a control thing, and not an assessment thing. If a student consistently performs well in class, how is it that when assessed on the same skills performed outside the class in the form of homework, the work gets a zero? It is a power issue.

If the grade is an assessment of the work, and the student’s understanding, but it was not done, how can it be assessed?

To put this point positively, cheating is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on “rigor.”  The same is true in “democratic classes where [students’] opinions are respected and welcomed.”[7]  

Cheating is particularly likely to flourish if schools use honor rolls and other incentives to heighten the salience of grades, or if parents offer financial inducements for good report cards[10] -- in other words, if students are not merely rewarded for academic success, but are also rewarded for being rewarded.

- More times than not homework adds little value when it comes to student learning… - There is pressure from society to continue giving homework because that is the way it has always been done… - Homework that is assigned rarely has any true relevancy or purpose for students, thus completion rates are negatively effected…

- When a student receives a zero for not completing homework, he/she is NOT learning about responsibility and “the real world.”

- Grading homework on completion typically inflates grades and ultimately distorts overall content mastery…

How effectively do children’s after-school assignments advance learning?

one-third of parents polled rated the quality of their children’s homework assignments as fair or poor, and 4 in 10 said they believed that some or a great deal of homework was busywork.

Here’s how it works: instead of concentrating the study of information in single blocks, as many homework assignments currently do — reading about, say, the Civil War one evening and Reconstruction the next — learners encounter the same material in briefer sessions spread over a longer period of time. With this approach, students are re-exposed to information about the Civil War and Reconstruction throughout the semester.

What do you think the purpose of grading is? Is it to communicate students' academic achievement to students and parents? Is it to motivate students to put forth their best effort? Some combination of both? How might that belief affect your grading practices?

If educators' goal is for students to learn, does it matter if it takes some students a little longer than others?

What's your current policy on offering redos and retakes? How did you arrive at this policy? Reflecting on the ideas Wormeli and Dueck present, how might you change your policy? If you don't offer retakes, what steps might you take to introduce them in your classes? If you do, what new ideas do you have for making the practice more effective?

more proactive by attacking the causes rather than the effects of cheating.

However, a classroom leader should be

From my perspective (others can add their thoughts) what this book has completely reaffirmed in my mind is that, as teachers, we need to stop grading failure. Learning is about trial and error, taking chances and making mistakes until we get it right.

We don’t let students who might be stuck in the “fixed mindset” take a zero on an assignment for fear of being labeled “stupid”. We want to teach students that they are accountable for their work.  We want them to fully understand that true learning is about doing, making mistakes and redoing.

Are we meant to assume that students who are smart enough to get into Harvard don’t know that? Will the school later offer a course in why it is a bad idea to pour gasoline on a flaming toaster oven?

that looking successful is more important than being honest. They cheat because they have been taught, however unwittingly, that it is worth it.