Assessing Student Work

a consortium to design, test, and ultimately scale a new high school student transcript that can replace the traditional grade-based resume.

hey have started to design what the ultimate resume will look like.  And most critically, they have already gone out to college presidents and admissions officers to get user feedback.

The authors attribute today’s inflation to the consumerization of higher education.

And indeed, some universities have explicitly lifted their grading curves (sometimes retroactively) to make graduates more competitive in the job market, leading to a sort of grade inflation arms race.

“If you had the choice for your next grade, would you choose an 88 that you really worked hard for and learned something to earn or 95 where you won’t remember anything after the grade and didn’t learn throughout the process?”

Two students asked pointed questions about how a no grades classroom would work with eligibility for sports and extracurriculars.

“Why don’t teachers do this?”

"The goal is to give students more feedback," and to give parents a more complete picture of what their child knows, said Kelly Sirginnis, administrative dean at Tates Creek Middle.

The new report cards address how students are faring against the standards they have to meet and provides description about what a student knows and can do.

Traditional report cards aren't that helpful to parents because they provide a single grade for achievement, homework, punctuality and other factors, without explaining what the student knows, Guskey said. In a traditional grading system, students might not be able show mastery of the standards in the course but might get a good grade because a teacher might factor in a student turning in homework, school officials say.

The focus of Carter’s meeting and many other students like him are a result of a fundamental redesign that the school underwent over these last three years when it adopted a competency-based grading and reporting system

Today, each teacher assesses students on a set of course-based and school-wide competencies using a common set of grading guidelines that promote the use of formative and summative assessments, the use of reassessments, and the understanding that students cannot opt to “take a zero” for choosing not to complete an assignment. At Sanborn Regional High School, progress toward meeting these competencies and course grades are all reported on competency-based report cards and transcripts. All of these new philosophies have helped to change IEP meetings like the one I attended for Carter.

Our grading philosophy stipulates a clear distinction between “academic grades” and “behavior grades.” In IEP meetings, this shift in philosophy has allowed our professionals to better address the most fundamental principles of school:  Identifying what we want kids to learn, how we will assess them on this learning, and what we will do when they didn’t learn or already know it