The start of the school year can feel like a rollercoaster for curriculum leaders. The ups and downs often include planning and facilitating teacher professional learning before students return, ensuring that teachers have both new and existing curriculum materials for the first weeks of school, and onboarding new staff to the district’s curriculum, assessment, and […]
Grading-minded practitioners and researchers, I hope you will consider contributing a research article, essay/commentary or best practices paper for this JSARD special issue. Abstracts are due December 8, 2024. Additional details in the image below and the journal’s announcement here.
In this paper published in the Journal of Teaching in Physical Education with Dr. Scott McNamara, we examined how preservice physical educators conceptualize and intend to use standards-based grading (SBG) after receiving a 1-hr workshop on implementing SBG into a physical education setting. The SBG workshop positively influenced participants’ views of the importance of PE,
Following the tradition of previous years here on the blog, it is time to sift through the list of published literature from the 2023 and highlight the top articles of the year. The following is a list of what I believe are the top three articles from 2023 (in alphabetical order by lead author’s last
I teamed up with Jesse Wilcox (former science teacher and current science education professor) to write an article for NSTA’s Science Scope. Standards-based grading (SBG) is an alternative approach to grading that uses standards, such as the NGSS, to communicate what students have learned. While SBG has increased in popularity in the last decade, questions still
Some of the initiatives we experience in schools are imposed upon us by department of education requirements while others district and school leadership choose to embark upon. Regardless of the entity fueling initiatives in schools, many schools experience what Douglas Reeves calls initiative fatigue. “The Law of Initiative Fatigue states that when the number of initiatives increases
In 2022, I published three new articles related to grading. The references and abstracts/summaries are below, and when possible, a link to the full article is also provided. Inequitable grading practices produce inequitable results. Griffin, R., & Townsley, M. (2022). Including homework and employability skills in class grades: An investigation of equitable outcomes in an
As 2022 comes to a close, it time to sift through the list of published literature from the past twelve months. This year’s list is surprisingly short, but I will leave it up to readers to speculate why! Note to returning readers: Once again this year I chose not to include any articles that I authored or co-authored, and
In Jay Mathews’ November 27, 2022 column entitled “Why don’t teachers complain to bosses about infuriating policies?“, he starts off by noting his observation: Many teachers have complained to me about what they consider the harm done by new policies called standards-based grading. These are designed to reduce stress for struggling students. The reforms include
In this paper, we address concerns and provide some strategies for implementing alternative grading practices in secondary science classrooms. Myth 1: “The real world isn’t like this.”Myth 2: “Grading this way will decrease the rigor of my science classroom.”Myth 3: “Grades should be a motivator in my classroom.”Myth 4: “I can use my old ways