Ep. 12: SLAyyy Standards-Based Grading (feat. Bryan's Research!)

Gaslight
Gradebook Categories
What is included in a grade?
Assessments

Gatekeep - Student Perceptions on Standards-Based Grading in the World Language Classroom by our own Bryan Smith!
History of SBG
SBG in Bryan’s Classes
What Kids Like, and What They Don’t

Girlboss
Clarity, Rubrics, Consistency
Helping Get Classwork and Homework Done
Change One Thing at a Time!

References
Webinar for Tumbao Bilingual Books’ newest book - We Celebrate Juneteenth Unidos - hosted by AC Quintero

Email us at SLAyyyForEveryone@gmail.com

Transcript

bill: 0:37

Hello and welcome to another episode of SLA second language acquisition for everyone this week We're going to be talking about standards based grading and we are lucky enough to have our own resident expert brian So, brian, could you quickly? Help us review the definition of Standard based grading so we're all on the same page here.

Bryan: 1:03

So the definition of standards based grading is using a set of external criteria as the basis of students grades. So that may be your state standards that may be, you know, the actual world readiness standards. something that is kind of saying like this is what students should be able to do. It's clearly defined and it lays out your objectives and you're only using the results of assessments based on those standards with clearly communicated goals and criteria with the students for to form the grades and not including behavioral factors in students grades. And there are a lot of reasons behind that, which we'll get into in a bit.

bill: 1:41

So with that in mind Some ways that I have gaslit myself in my grading practices is I know in my heart that I should be basing grades on what students can do in relation to Standards because within the world language education world, we have pretty clear categories, I guess, for our grades, we've got the five C's, which is an easy thing to start with. So maybe you categorize your grade book by the five C's, the compare communication, culture, comparison, connection, and communities. Maybe you go in a little bit more specific and only focus on. The communication standards and divide your gradebook into interpersonal communication, interpretive communication, and presentational communication. Some other people go to the four skills, reading, writing, listening, speaking. And with all of those things in mind something that I've kind of like ended up on is comprehension and production as my two categories for my grades. Cause one, I can't do the math of how to make sure that all of them numbers like are the same and even with like automatic. Grade weighting in like a learning management system, like Canvas, it still can like get uneven. So like if I only have, if I have three categories or two categories and it's 50 50, but I only have one grade in one category, but four grades in the other one, that one assignment. Is Say 50 percent of the students overall grade. I So like public trying to figure out how to not sure that that's balanced throughout has been a struggle for me. And

Bryan: 3:38

citizens themselves. And we want

bill: 3:40

I

Bryan: 3:41

that we do

bill: 3:42

want to make sure that, I mean,

Bryan: 3:44

for

bill: 3:45

the reason that people do.

Bryan: 3:46

And I think

bill: 3:47

is because

Bryan: 3:48

should be looking

bill: 3:49

communication includes listening and speaking. Or writing and responding or signing and responding with science. But so it's hard to like, just break that down into those two categories for me, if I'm just using my production and comprehension categories. But yeah, I think that's one way that we gaslight ourselves is like just Deciding, trying to figure out what's best for the gradebook, what's best for reporting. student progress. And yeah, so that's something I think about a lot. I have done the comprehension and production grade book categories for the past couple years and it seems to be the one that I most align with the things that I do formally assess in class. So I don't know, what about you? Have, how have your like grade book categories or I don't know, have your grade book categories evolved, I guess.

Bryan: 4:49

I think before I get into that, I actually want to ask you a question, Bill. when you said that you're worried about balancing the weights and like you get the example of having like one assessment in one category and like four in another Can you talk a little bit, does that, can you say a little bit about why, like, what the issue in particular with that is with you? Like,

bill: 5:12

Yeah.

Bryan: 5:12

are your concerns, the problems that that might cause for students?

bill: 5:16

Yeah. So I think that if, and I think this happens in like first, like people who do straight points as well. Like the first grade that you put in a total points grade book is determining the grade at that point. And you have to have more grades for that to have less of a, for that less of an effect if I don't have anything in the grade book, but yeah. Only 10 points are available and you get six out of 10 on whatever it is. Then you're stuck with that six out of 10 until the next time we get a grade with the part about balancing just like two categories for me is I have to like I don't think I have a solid answer on how much I think a single assignment should be worth. in a student's overall grade. So at my at a previous school that I worked at we weren't allowed to have anything, any one assignment be worth more than 10 percent of a student's overall grade. And which more or less made sense to me, like a grading period is about 10 weeks. So like an assignment per week, if you've got 10 assignments, each one's worth 10 percent of your overall grade. So that's kind of like works for me. So I guess that's just like how much of their grade should be from like what amount of time, maybe.

Bryan: 6:47

So you basically believe that a grade should represent, like, a whole picture of a semester from beginning to end, including performances at the beginning, middle, and end?

bill: 6:58

I think so. I think I want the score to be as accurate as possible for as long as possible. So I might have a really good read on students reading or listening comprehension because I've assessed that formally more and that's going to be communicated in, or at least that's how I think they can be communicated in a grade book. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. I, you, you're, you're asking questions to make me think about it even more than or more than I have.

Bryan: 7:31

Well yeah, that is what I spend a huge amount of time trying to get people to do. So we're, one of the reasons we're talking about this is because I, this is the topic of my master's thesis. I wrote my thesis on student perspectives on standards based grading in the world language classroom. And I go really into lot of the different trains of thought that have existed in terms of What is a grade? What does it mean? How do we communicate it? What is a grade in world language? And, you know, what are the benefits, consequences of how we talk about grades in world language and through the lens of standard space grading. So it's really interesting to hear from another teacher and like what their perspectives are, because I've been on a really long journey with this and I'm pretty comfortable, I'd say maybe 95 percent comfortable with where I'm at right now. But Yeah, there's always, there's always been and there always will be a diversity of perspectives. But I just think that there are a few, like, key we can ask ourselves when we're wondering, like, what we should do with our own particular gradebooks. What I I guess I can start with, like, where I started. So I think, you know, like many teachers, I replicated what existed when I was in school when I first started teaching. So we had like the test category and the homework category and the project category. And I used that for a few years and you know, nobody ever really questioned it because that's what everyone was so used to. But then I, you know I think there was A new teacher at my school who came in the door with stairs based grading like they had already used it in their previous teaching assignment. And so I got really curious about it because a lot of the things that they were talking about, like I was like, what? Like, I've never thought of it that way. Or like, that's just completely different from anything I've seen before. So I got really intrigued and learn to learn some more about it. But I was just really intimidated at first because because it was such a shift From what I've done before. So it took me a few more years to actually start implementing it. Presentational communication should be we did actually use the, the names of the different modes of communication, but I think that there are just some concepts behind it that I didn't quite grasp yet. So like a, like, different phases of my implementation of it. And so now I'm fully all the way in SPG. My grade book, at my current school, we still use primarily, well, only the communication standard, but within the three different modes. So interpretive, interpersonal, presentational. And then we have like kind of an other category for other things. And so because I believe that a grade should represent what a student knows and is able to do after, at the end of a learning sequence, because, you know, when you out their transcript, you're saying like, this is what the student learned from me, right? For pretty much any class, if you ask teachers, that's what they would probably say. They think their grades should represent, although they might say that there are other things within it, you know, that they value and may be part of it, but For me, because of that their final performance in this semester I do performance based assessments constitutes 90 percent of their grade and 10 percent is reserved for the other that we do and all the teachers in my department, we use the same waiting for each of the levels and the percentages shift a little bit, depending on the level. So, for example, in levels one and two, interpretive communication is about. 40 percent of their grades. Because we believe that it's really important for students to comprehend the input that they're receiving. That's where they will get the what they need to build the system of language in order to develop their proficiency. And then at the end of the program, then the AP level presentational is the largest portion of it, because that's when their production skills are things that they really need to work on. Although all students, We must not forget that all students need comprehensible input and interaction in the language. It never stops being important, but there are other skills that students want to develop more as you go up in those proficiency levels. that's kind of where I'm at. It gets a bit more complex than that, but that's just a broad overview of what I'm doing right now. Ben, what's going on with you?

FishRod: 11:49

Yeah, my great book is a mess and always has been a mess will continue for a while to be a mess as I'm like, still trying to figure this out for myself. When I started teaching, I had been through a program that had taught me about the use of rubrics and talking clarity with like very clear success criteria and, and lesson planning and all that sort of stuff. and then I landed in a district that was actually integrating standards based grading into the secondary level and was in year question mark of that. I don't know. I never received any training about it which I think was part of the problem for me and maybe, you know, previewing the. The gatekeep section is like, yeah, if you don't know what it is, then it is confusing, intimidating, and can lead to stress and anxiety. What I was finding myself doing was, first of all, my district, I think, had too many power standards. I think for standards based grading, you need to really hone in on, like, what are these standards, the most important things. We had actual communication standards, I believe, thrown in there. But then there were also like, common core standards. in as well, which I think cross curricularly is like, yeah, it's good to collaborate with your colleagues in language arts. We do, you know, we're in the same of stuff, you know, and that they want to, there to be more cross curricular connections. In reality, again, no training on that. I was not trained as an ELA teacher. Was kind of like, okay, like I'd came from a, you know from learning in a pretty traditional way and then, you know, getting more proficiency oriented stuff in college. And then was suddenly in Stanford's grading world with no support. So that I think the clarity and training would have helped me a lot. And then I moved to a district that has a traditional grade book. And it was kind of up to me to choose. And I also have been differently by level and using the modes of communication for my grade book categories. So as it stands right now, I actually have interpretive reading and listening separated out and weighted pretty heavily each. And then interpersonal. then presentational, and those are just kind of all together because I didn't, I wasn't doing enough interpersonal writing to make that worth its own category. And then presentational, I was not doing tons of anyways because the approach I was using. And then I kind of added on in recent years Fifth, I guess would be fifth category that is reflection which I kind of use as a catch all to, you know, writing in English or thinking about culture, thinking about, you know their own progress, sort of metacognition stuff that doesn't quite fit into the, the purview of, you know, You know, language use but more like reflection on the, the process I put into kind of a separate category. And I've been pretty content with that kind of layout for now and kind of like you, Brian, my lower levels, I want to say, I think my level one, two interpretive categories together add up to 70 percent and it might be like 10 percent each for presentational. Interpersonal and then reflection, but then it tilts gradually because I was teaching to an AP program. By the end, it was 22. 5 percent for each of those modes, because that roughly reflects the kind of modes on the AP exam is that, you know, 22. 5 percent of the grade is a reading grade. And then there's the listening and reading is 22. 5%. Well, I guess in that test is 25%. But in my grade, you know, all that being said, with a still a 10 percent reflection category on top. But I find like I have been reckoning with myself about how I use grades and what they actually communicate and reflecting on the need for better assessment practices and myself. Like, what is, you know, what am I counting as assessment? What is just like a random piddly little assignment? and I have been using kind of the great book recently. And putting formatives in which I know is like kind of like a like maybe don't do that but putting them in for like one point where like a summative is worth and it's a hundred points. So it has a hopefully minor effect on the actual grade, but also helps me keep track better of what students have done and not done as a way of communicating that with them and their families. You know, to indicate like, Oh, so and so is not doing classwork. The evidence I have of that is all these like missing things that show up in the grade book that we all have access to. And I kind of feel okay with that now, but I think. I think I'm, I'm on a quest for better assessments for myself and better clarity as to like what the preparation for the assessment looks like students all having the same rubrics. I've been getting better. My presentational rubrics are very uniform now I'm kind of like in a swamp mire of question marks for myself presently and then interpretive. I feel pretty comfortable with my rubric. But so for me, all that being said thank you for hearing my life story is I. I'm interested in the, in the tenets of standards based grading, and I have not quite, made it work for myself in a way that I feel like 100 percent confident behind. So I was happy to read your study, Brian to learn more just about standards based grading in general, but then also see kind of the effects that it had.

Bryan: 16:33

It's great. Yeah, I also, my, my like wiggle room category is primarily a reflection for most of my, I do actually count, like, housework, homework assignments for my middle school class, just because I found over the years that they're just not at the metacognitive level to be able to not have that kind of thing graded. So I make an exception for them, but the high schoolers, yeah, I actually don't. The individual assignments are not part of their grade calculation, but as I will discuss later, that does not mean it doesn't affect their grade. Yes.

bill: 17:09

So, So, one thing that I had thought about, like, with that, like, extra category, like, I also have one of those. I just call it classwork and, you know use the vocabulary. Students are familiar with and yeah, everything else gets thrown in there. Nothing, that's all for me typically just like completion stuff because I want you to do it on your own, on your own, but we're going to review it together. So I'm going to collect it and like put in a couple points for you to show that you are doing the things that I'm asking. And hopefully listening, well, doing the things that I'm as that I am saying will be beneficial for your learn overall learning and whatever. Like, this isn't a waste of time so make sure you're doing it, and I know points motivate you. And, but at one point, I had thought about using that extra category as maybe like, The other four C's and using it as like a reflection portfolio. I never looked any more into that, but like, that's definitely like I thought that I had because a lot like one, it's hard to grade like cultural understandings, but unless you've got like concrete facts, but what actual has said in like their intercultural communication, reflection and stuff is like, it's okay to use L1 in that for that stuff. So. Yeah, why don't I just have them, like, reflect on the stuff, the cultural things that we're doing in class, and then, like, maybe I, like, assessing that could be assessing the reflection could be something, like, shows thoughtful comparison, something.

Bryan: 18:54

Yeah. I'm pretty much doing that. Like, that's so my extra categories, reflection, and they also have a language and cultural journal that they keep throughout the semester. I will talk about that more when we get to girl busing. But I just wanted to reflect on one more gaslight that I did. I did do one year where I did not like classic homework, like did not affect their grades at all in any way. I'm It was a disaster. I really tried to do my best. And I learned a lot from it. And like I said, it still doesn't technically directly affect their grade. But there's, I've got some strategies to make it work better. And I feel a lot better about it now. So,

FishRod: 19:35

Where students were just not doing the homework, right?

Bryan: 19:38

they

FishRod: 19:38

like, yeah. Tell

Bryan: 19:41

part of that goes is connected to just being comfortable with the idea of standard space grading and like understanding like what it means and why teachers are doing it and like all those things. And so that does take a while for students and their families and the school community to get used to. So the first year that you implement things, it might be a rough transition period. But I just recommend that people hold on to. something that they value and be comfortable changing at least one thing. You don't have to throw the whole baby out with the bathwater right away, although you can just be prepared for, I don't know, getting splashed when you do that.

FishRod: 20:20

Us about the study, Brian.

Bryan: 20:22

So I'm opening the gates for you. Feel free to download the PDF of my thesis. Please don't print it out. But, you know,

FishRod: 20:29

This is a, this is a direct attack. I printed it out. I read everything on paper. I'm sorry everyone. I'm sorry the environment. I'm sorry the world.

Bryan: 20:35

I should have put that, like, message people sometimes have in their email, like, please consider the environment before printing this message, like, on the first page. But anyway. So, as I said, the title is Student Perspectives on Standard Space Grading in the World Language Classroom. So, in reviewing literature on standard space grading, there is basically nothing published. There was nothing published in the year of 2023 to 2024 on world language specifically. And there was to very few studies were published included student voices. Most of the studies talked about teacher perspectives, administrative perspectives. Sometimes they would get into family perspectives, but there wasn't a lot on student perspectives. So I thought that was something important to add to the literature. And so I conducted a mixed methods case study with my own students as participants. There are pros and cons to doing that, but the pro is it's easy for a teacher to do that because you have direct access to your own students and you can reflect on things that you've tried and everything has greater context versus if you observe at a different school, for example, you might have. Fewer threats to reliability due to pressures that students might feel to say what they think you want to say. But at the same time, it's like you don't really know what's been going on in that classroom with those students, with that teacher. So having her being in it is a really a really valuable lens to take. The actual study itself involved a survey that student, an anonymous survey that students took and also focus groups group interviews. So I, you know, as part of my master's thesis, I implemented this I let students and their parents know about it. They had to get permission slips formed for parents to give their consent and everything. you know, advertised it as like, Hey, come at lunch. Like, We'll talk about this study and, I don't know, give you some French snacks or something. To get them all recruited and buzzed about wanting to participate it was voluntary of course. So standards based grading emerged as an alternative grading practice in about the 90s to early 2000s. Like, people started talking about it in the 1990s and, you know, started implementing it in earnest in the early 2000s because there were a lot of issues that have been identified with traditional grading practices. One of those issues, for example, if you look at the typical 100 point grading scale where, you know, like 100 to 90 something is an A and like 80 something is a B in those grading scales. to get an F that starts at like 60 percent to 59 percent, and if you like drew a circle and like, you know, portioned out percentage of the circle like visually looked at it, you would see that like over half of the entire scale is based on failure. There's a lot greater opportunity for students to fail using that kind of calculation than there are for students to be successful. and people have found issue with that. also the idea of an omnibus grade, which is having one measure, such as a letter grade or a number on the percentage scale, represent a huge variety of different things. So as I mentioned in the beginning, traditional grades will include tests, quizzes, projects, homework, classwork. Participation some people even grade like coming to class on time or not being in class, things like that. And that really starts to muddy the meaning of like, okay, well, what does this A, what does this B, what does this C really mean? Especially if you are someone who has no contact, like you Don't know who this teacher is. Don't know what they did. You're reviewing their transcript or something. You have no idea what has gone into that a what has gone into that beat. So yeah, that's an area of concern where having clear established criteria based on external standards that define, like again, what students should be doing should be able to do what they're being assessed on very clearly. And having that be the basis of the grade. That's why that came about. There's also a huge lens on equity because as we know students who are, who have been historically disadvantaged in schools a lot of Where that comes from are the traditional grading practices. So students who working to support their family have to watch younger siblings because their parents aren't at home, may not have a lot of time to do homework when they go home versus students who do not have to think about that kind of thing. And maybe you have parents who are highly educated and can help them with their homework. They do not. You know, they're going to have more success completing homework assignments and also just the idea of kind of walking in the door with skills already possessed. So if you had the opportunity to, I don't know, attend an immersion school or something like that before starting the class, you are going to have an easier time than someone who didn't have that opportunity. So there's just a lot of different factors that go into why basing a grade on What has been taught and assessed in the classroom? And also, I think personally, that's related to why I wait so heavily the final assessment, because, you know it gives those students who didn't walk in the door with skills already a chance to actually just develop those skills and then finally display them. So I don't want students to be punished for poor early performance when I when I think most teachers are like the traditional system is to average all of the scores throughout the semester throughout the year. And the effect of that is that. Students who start out at a Sprint will maintain that pace in front of everyone else the entire time because they got an A on the first test, then they got a B on the next one versus someone who got a D on the first test, and then a C. And so what I found in the past is that students who were already starting out strong kind of felt like, eh, you know, I know my grade is safe, so I don't really have to put in that much effort towards the end of the semester. And they kind of check out because they know that they don't really have to pass the final exam or whatever. And then I saw students who really, really put in the effort. They came in for extra help. They, you know, you know, did all that they could to improve their grades, and they got a marvelous grade on the final, but because of those earlier poor grades that affected the final grade that they eventually earned on their transcript. So This is an idea to address some of those concerns. So, as I mentioned my system is including the, well, okay, I guess a better way to explain it is that when students take an assessment, I put every, you know, all the scores into the gradebook, and then when they take the next one, I replace them. So it's like, they see how they did on this one my gradebook is set up as the rubric is, so each Like assignment is really a criterion on the rubric so they can them and their parents can look and see what areas are they strong in what areas do they need improvement on? And then, you know, the next time. It's, you know, the grades updated to show where they currently are at because I think it's important for grades to show, to get accurate information on students current progress. And I do still keep the scores from the previous ones, but it's just like, it's in a like zero category. So like all the rubrics and things are in there so they can see how they've done over time. And also through my learning management system, I've got a way, like there is a an intentional standards gradebook so students can actually like track each of their, you know, their performance on each of the standards like in a visual way that I think is helpful for them. So that's kind of the system that I'm using and it is very different to certainly what the teacher I replaced did and what many other teachers at my current school do. But we do have a lot of teachers in the math and science departments that use standardized grading at my school. So it's not like a completely foreign concept to them, which I think helped a lot with our implementation.

bill: 28:53

So we use canvas at my school and there is the. The mastery grade book or learning mastery grade book, which is like, they call them outcomes, but you put in all of the different standards forgot the word you put in all the standards and then in each assignment, you attach it to one of them. So no matter what it is no matter what the assignment is, so I guess you could theoretically attach it to do different outcomes. But I don't understand because this is like my problem all together with the whole thing of grading is like, I don't know how to do the numbers. So like it gives all these different options. Like, do you want to do a decaying average? Do you want to do overall? And like, I don't know what any of those, how any of those math things would work out so that I could figure out whether or not it is an appropriate tool to use. Silence. Silence. Silence.

Bryan: 30:12

called mastery. And so I put in a score out of 4 because I grade things on the 4 point scale for each assessment. And those are the, Quote unquote assignments that I attached the standards to. So that's why when they looked at the mastery tab, they can track their progress on the standards, but then there's other, you know, the actual grade calculation happens in the other. So it's kind of hard to talk about just with words and not seeing what it looks like, but I found a solution for that. That works for me and it might work for others. So, yeah. so this being kind of the background of the study my questionnaire that students filled out was really just based on their experiences. So do you like standards based grading? Does it feel like an appropriate way to measure your learning? In general, in this class, in other classes do you feel that you understand? strengths and weaknesses better using it. Do you think other classes should implement standards based grading, things like that, and the results of that, just quickly looking of graphs I've got here. So I, I, I broke. the results down into groupings by grade level and gender because that's where the differences started to show up. and what I found was that students who were younger and also students who were new to the school had a much more positive opinion of standard space grading because they didn't really know anything else versus the older students who had been used to kind of the way things had been. at the school before I started changing things had the most negative views on it, which makes sense if you think about it, you know walking into something for the first time versus, you know, You know, the double, you know, I guess from the student perspective and then for some reason, male students seem to like it a little bit better than female students. I don't know what the reasons for that could be. And I also, like I said, conducted focus group interviews with groups of students that contained, mix of different grade levels and genders and all that. And they had some really interesting things to say. So, for example, a lot of them compared my system with the standard space grading system in math where I guess the way it works with the math content standards is like, you know how to divide, check, you know how to multiply, multiply, check. And so it's just like really like very content based, like, Topic that topics different topics that would be covered throughout the year, and it seems that when students demonstrate mastery of that or skill or whatever it is when it's taught, they're like good. It goes in their gradebook, and it cannot go if they have mastered it. The grade for that cannot drop. So they feel that. more at ease, I guess, because they have that idea of like, well I've mastered like eight out of the 10 standards. And so there's only two left for the final. And so I'm not that worried about it essentially. And so they also talked about the benefits that they saw with my system. They really like that having everything broken down by skill is It provides more clarity for them in terms of knowing what they need to improve on. And it's a lot better than just having, like, test category B, you know, because that doesn't necessarily help them know what they're good at and what they, you know, need to work on. And then overall, for the most part students said that they felt like not including classwork and homework in their grade increased their procrastination. And that they felt more anxiety over the final because it's such a huge part. I mean, it's 90 percent of their grade. although students did comment on kind of. know, getting used to the system. Like, definitely the first year was a little scary for them because it was so different. But like the second year of implementation, some of them said, like, I kind of figured out, you know, what I need to do to be successful. And so I think it's really important to just keep that in mind. If you are implementing standard space grading that just initial reactions do not necessarily, they don't necessarily that what you're doing is or wrong, it's just that humans tend to react to new and different things, especially something that is so emotionally charged like grades. I don't know, they can have strong reactions to those and it's just the communication about what you're doing and why and just being very open and transparent about everything is Super important for that. So yeah that was just kind of a glimpse into some of the results that I got. and then just going into a bit more of like, what, what does it all mean? You know students kind of some of them, one, one finding that I thought was pretty interesting is that they, they seem to think that standard space grading was particularly good. The ones who had positive opinions, I was particularly good for humanities class, like world language, because they're like, you know, it's not just about numbers. It's not like getting an average on, you know, math tests or whatever. It's about learning cumulative, because your proficiency development is something that develops over time. And They thought that traditional grading has some advantages for them as students that were taken away by standards based grading. And again, just a reminder that this is the student perspective on it. So they believe that averaging their grades recognizes their effort over time. They believed that having a 100 point scale increased precision in grading, although there isn't much evidence to support that that's actually true. If you take two essays and put them in front of English teachers and say, which one is the 87 percent and which one is the 86 percent, they're not, no teacher, no two teachers are going to give the same answer. So, The hundred point scale is an illusion of precision, but they don't necessarily know that. And they also commented on the benefit of, like, kind of bargaining with their teachers, like, hey, I got a 97. 5, why not 98%? And I guess that works for them. I don't know. But, you know, I don't, I mean, Everything is just based on rubrics and performance. And so you can't really even do that in my grading system. and it may just be that students who prefer traditional systems, especially at a quote unquote high performing school, like the one that I teach at, might have some cultural Alignment with the culture that is behind the traditional system, which would be, you know white, upper middle class, highly educated, like having that sort of background where I think a lot of the, I don't know, initial, where a lot of this, I guess, the traditional system came from people who had similar backgrounds. And so. The values that were instilled in them in terms of like what they need to do in the classroom might or how they need to even behave in the classroom because we know that students who have like kind of a cultural mismatch with their teacher certain behaviors might be seen as, you know. being lazy or being argumentative or something like that. But, you know there's just, you just always have to remember that there's a cultural lens to everything. And so some students might have benefits by being in alignment with that.

FishRod: 37:34

I think that also, I mean, it just reveals to that how much of grading sometimes boils down to mind reading, like expecting students to try to like figure out what a teacher likes. I'm thinking of like a horror story. One of my students told me in the past that was like, I was supposed to represent what I learned about chemical properties or something in some sort of quote creative way. And I got marched down on the creativity aspect of it. I was like, you're in a science class. You showed you're learning about the science and the science class. Like, isn't that the standard? And they were like, I similarly don't understand what's going on. But, but that requires a level of, like, understanding of what the teacher thinks, quote, creativity is an apparent lack of clarity about what that is. And then obviously, You can't meet the standard if you don't know what it is, right? Like you can't, there's no way. And so, yeah, that's, I think the removing those aspects of like, what if I just talk to the teacher one more time and annoy them into the thing where it's like, I don't know, if you have a students based system, you could just be like, let's look at your assessment. You did this, the end,

Bryan: 38:35

so I actually do want to share. I had the grade bargaining conversation while having standardized grading, and I want to give these kids credit because they actually did a wonderful job. I still said no, but they did a wonderful job at attempting to convince me because I was like, okay, we can have a meeting. We can talk about your grade. If you can show me based on the rubrics, how your performance matches the higher level. And so they made a PowerPoint presentation in which they included samples of their work and, you know, the different performance levels on the rubric. And they tried to, you know, argue their case. Perhaps one of them will be a future lawyer. I mean, I'm proud that they did that, but it's still just, it didn't quite, it didn't, it didn't make the mark. They

FishRod: 39:25

ultimately, that's what grading. That's what the hard part is, like, communicating this to young people is that, like, Okay. We know these performance descriptors so well because we have studied them and they describe language in a very abstract way that is like, you know, it's our specialty. It's like a technical language, right. That we speak. We have perceptions about it that are informed by a bit more expertise than they have by virtue of time and dedicated study. And so, you know, we, we try to have to try to make those judgments as best we can with that expertise. And, you know, a kid is just might just want to name, or it might just, you know, feel the pressure to do that for all the reasons that you described earlier.

Bryan: 40:02

and I mean, we can't forget that a lot of students, the high school, well, those that are interested in attending college, see it as like the path to college and everything is about that college and those acceptance letters that they get or don't get and, you know, there's just so many pressures that these students are under, but one moment that I would like to highlight from that is that essentially, like, where we agreed was a huge part of the Okay. I guess for like level four for me is I'm using complex sentences and I taught them throughout the year, like what a complex census is. And so we were looking at this work sample that they put on their PowerPoint and I was like, is that a complex sentence? And they're like, no, I was like, what about that? Is that a complaint? And they're like, no. So eventually they're like, Oh, I see. The rubric is actually, you know, there are reasons why you gave me this great. I was like, yeah, yeah

bill: 40:54

I've got a couple of questions

Bryan: 40:56

Yeah, go ahead.

bill: 40:57

Did students in their responses ever say say anything about how they felt about feedback in this process, or was there any difference between like what kind of feedback they get in like a non standard based class versus a standard based class,

Bryan: 41:21

well, I mean, it was interesting because I asked them, you know, like, let's say you got an 87 percent on the test and I don't know, English, math, whatever, social studies class does that help you know what you need to do to get better? And the student was like, yeah, and I was like, can you explain that? And they said like, Oh, well, you know, I just need to answer questions more correctly so that I get an 88%. And I'm like, that doesn't, I mean, that's not like actionable

bill: 41:47

get there though. Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan: 41:49

you know? So yeah, but once again, the most of the positive comments were around the additional clarity and like understanding of strengths and weaknesses that were inherent in the standards based grading system that I use. So based on all of this, what are my recommendations for teachers? I think that you have to understand your teaching context and Like, if you are going to solo be the only standards based grading teacher in your entire school, you need to be prepared for pushback, and you need to make sure that your administration is going to support you in doing that. I do not want any of you to get fired, okay? So, you need to make sure that you will have the necessary backup that you likely will need if that is the case. if you are in maybe the opposite situation where your district has decided are doing standards based grading, well you better ask a lot of questions about how they plan on, you know, pushing out the implementation. Are they going to provide training for teachers? How are they

FishRod: 42:53

Please.

Bryan: 42:54

training? What things do they expect teachers to actually change? Because a lot of studies found that districts that just pushed it out on people they failed because the teachers didn't have the time to really Kind of internalize the potential tenants of standards based grading and figure out how it works for them personally. Those things just take time. Developing the communication skills about it takes time. So, they recommended that, like, you just change one thing at a time. Like, maybe we just talk about homework and how that factors into grades this year. And then next year, we can talk about, you know, Turning things in late and you know, just like one thing at a time.

bill: 43:32

It's almost as if, like, we as adults know what we want in our learning process and, like, don't just push all of this new stuff at me at once. And expect me to actually implement it well but at the same time like we push a lot of like elementary and middle school and high school kids to like get through all the content in a year.

Bryan: 43:59

Yeah

bill: 44:00

just a perspective, like and they are, they're, they're doing that in seven, eight classes. We're doing it with one.

Bryan: 44:08

being a

bill: 44:08

Yeah, go ahead. Yep.

Bryan: 44:09

job.

bill: 44:10

yes, yes, yes, yes. 100 percent that. 100 percent that.

Bryan: 44:15

so some more recommendations that I have just trying to advocate for common practices, whether that's between

FishRod: 44:20

Okay. Let's go ahead and finish up. I love how you guys are so well, it's the best. Yeah. Yeah. I love you too. Yeah. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. I'm going to go ahead and close the meeting.

Bryan: 44:57

that their procrastination had increased. So, one thing that I have done at least for the procrastination, is that students in my classes are not allowed to have more than three missing assignments. If they do, they have to write a letter to their parents. In which they say, Dear Parent, I am missing X, Y, Z assignment. I plan, these are missing because of X, A, B, C reasons. I plan to turn them in on G date. And they have to get it signed and their parent has to email me to prove that they actually read the letter. Now, I will say that a lot of students don't actually follow through with all of those steps. But, just kind of like, I, you know, I hand them the letter. I don't like make a huge deal about it. I'm just like, You know, and they look at it and they're like, Oh, no, like that makes them like something about that makes them think concretely about like what things they've turned in or not. And they know that if they have more than 3 missing by the end of the grading period, if it's a progress report, they get a D minus because I've been told I'm not allowed to give students incompletes, what I used to do. you figure out what works for you. And then at the end of the semester, I will reduce their final grade on the 4 point scale by 0. 5. For each multiple of three. students do not want that to happen. And the result is that I have think out of all of my students only two of them have their grades reduced at the end of last semester. And I'd say there's like over a 90 percent turn in rate on assignments. Versus when I first used standard space grading it was more like 50%. So it's been a huge, huge improvement, just doing that. And in terms of recognizing effort, I mean, I think it's just teaching students that

FishRod: 46:38

And oh, Yeah. Yeah. we've got that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Got it.

Bryan: 46:58

because I found that students you know, I also offer them the opportunity to reassess. I consider, you know, each new assessment replacing their grade A form of reassessment, but like I said, you can retake something if you want, but you have to prove to me that you've done something to prepare for that. You can't just like. Take it and then come back the next day without doing anything different because they'll probably get the same score. And so I talked to them about why that's valuable because it's like, Hey, like, the point of this class is for me to help you to do better. And so if we're not spending a lot of time about, you know, talking about what things you can do to do better, you might not do better. I mean, you may, but like, it's just something, a tool that they can use, right? and stickers. Students love stickers. I don't know. One

FishRod: 47:40

What is standards based grading positions on stickers? I think that, I mean, we're, we're kind of sliding into the, the, the girl boss universe. And that was like, one of my big takeaways from reading your paper was like, okay, retakes is the way to go. We have to find ways to make that sustainable for ourselves, but also useful for them for their learning and that it's focused on learning and not point accumulation. Another takeaway I had from reading is like, the clarity of rubrics and consistency of formatting is super important because that the standard is not changing. Right? So the rubrics should be clear. And the formatting helps students feel less, anxious. I appreciated that your students said that, like the using the AP grading scale made sense because I think that referencing it to something like a language they already speak, like an AP exam helps it kind of find that weight in reality for them, which again, like grades are very abstract and learning is kind of an abstract thing. And so, but I think that, you know it requires that kind of nuance. And that's sort of like, they said, like, you know, languages of subjectivity subjective. And that's what, like, the rubrics on the on the AP exam are holistic, right? Like, they're not, they're not these, like, very specific points. They're pretty, I think subjective is not the right word, but they're very, they're more broad than like an analytic rubric. And so I think, you know, having both like analytic rubrics to help push the performances, but then the you know, holistic grades that reflect that language acquisition is messy and crazy.

Bryan: 49:03

yeah, something that really helped that has been helping and I encourage everyone to do is to look at exemplars. So I. Have students look at actual past AP tests. You know, the college board posts them online. So I'm like, Hey, let's look at this. What score do you think they earned? Let's talk about why. That's the first thing we do. And we continue doing that throughout the year. And then I started doing that in my low levels too. I'm like, Hey, this student got a three. Let's talk about why, or like, what score do you think this student get? And so they, they get a clearer picture in their mind of like what the performance they're aiming for actually looks like.

FishRod: 49:35

Brian Girlboss is so hard that we'll let, we'll let him have the, that final word. Go forth, Gatekeep Girlboss, and slay.

bill: 49:43

Bye.

Bryan: 49:44

Bye.