Standards-based grading: Frequently asked questions about reassessment

The email questions continue to roll in this school year.  A math teacher from California gave me permission to share some of our recent communication:

If there is unlimited number of reassessment, how do you manage students who want to re-assess till they attain “got it” and eventually the school year is ending?

Our teachers usually have a “final reassessment deadline.”  For example, if the semester ends on December 20 and grades are due on December 23, a teacher might communicate a final reassessment deadline of December 18.  In the ideal world, students would be allowed to re-assess forever (think: 31 year old re-assessing his high school government coursework!), however the realities of our current educational paradigm (180 days, bells, student schedules, etc.) force us to create arbitrary deadlines, even in a standards-based grading system. It would be very challenging for a teacher to allow reassessments to be turned in up until the last minute grades are due to the school, therefore some type of buffer should be established to allow for the teacher to score and enter the final batch of reassessments.  In general, as long as the final reassessment deadline is communicated early and often, students and parents understand the need for the teacher to grade the reassessments and get them entered into the grade book before the school-imposed grade deadline.
If the student can choose to reassess just one standard, doesn’t it tell the student what concept or skill is required to solve the problem given and makes learning segmented? For the reassessment problem, should it be similar to the previous assessment/practice or should a novel problem be given? 
You’ve identified one of the biggest critiques I have read/heard of standards-based grading — narrowing down learning into finite concepts rather than seeing math as a larger body of ideas in which life rarely tells us which formula to use.  With this in mind, any assessment in a standards-based grading or traditional grading classroom is only as good as its author.  In other words, any test could be written with a very low cognitive complexity or a very high level or rigor.  I have seen standards-based grading tests that break down the concepts into fine-grained concepts and I have seen others that expect students to climb Bloom’s taxonomy.  I believe a starting point is thinking about re-assessments at a similar level of cognitive complexity as the original assessment.  Sometimes the expected level of rigor is described in the standards themselves.  For example:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.GMD.B.4
Identify the shapes of two-dimensional cross-sections of three-dimensional objects, and identify three-dimensional objects generated by rotations of two-dimensional objects.

“Identify” may give the assessment author a glimpse into the expected level of Bloom’s intended by the writer of the standards, in this case the Common Core State Standards. 
Does any of this make sense?

Standards-based grading: Integrating homework completion with reassessment

A teacher from a nearby school district recently emailed me with a few questions about standards-based grading in preparation for the upcoming school.  He gave me permission to share some of our dialogue in this public space.  This is the second of two question and answer posts about homework as practice, rather than merely point accumulator, in standards-based grading. (The first one is here)

Q: I have heard of some teachers that will not allow retakes on assessments unless the homework has been completed. What are your thoughts?

A: Great question! I have seen this work in two different ways, each with pros and cons.

The first perspective goes something like “Students may not complete a reassessment unless they completed the homework prior to the initial assessment.”

Pros: May motivate students to do the homework prior to the first assessment; may help students do better on the initial assessment (because they did their homework).  Cons: May motivate students to copy homework and play this part of the “game of school.”  Only allowing students an opportunity to reassess if they completed homework seems to go against the idea students learn at different rates/paces.  What if the reason the student didn’t complete the homework initially is because he/she had no idea about the concepts?  Why require the student to do a slew of problems incorrectly?

The second perspective is the one I tend to favor, “Students may complete a reassessment only if they completed the homework sometime (doesn’t matter if it it was before or after initial assessment) and complete additional re-learning steps.”

Pros: Better honors that students learn at different rates/paces; may also be a better chance students are likely to ask better questions when completing the homework “Okay, I obviously didn’t get this idea as you saw on the test, Mr. H….could you help me understand it on the homework?”  Re-assessment should be meaningful for students while not overburdening the instructor.  Cons: It’s not a silver bullet!  Students may still game the system by copying from a friend…but there’s less incentive to do so, because if they copy and do not learn, they will not likely do any better on the reassessment.

How do you integrate homework completion and the reassessment process within standards-based grading?  Feel free to leave your experiences in the comments below.

Standards-based grading: Motivating students to complete homework/practice without points

A teacher from a nearby school district recently emailed me with a few questions about standards-based grading in preparation for the upcoming school year.  He gave me permission to share some of our dialogue in this public space.  This is the first of two question and answer posts about homework as practice, rather than merely point accumulator, in standards-based grading.

Q: When homework is no longer completed for points or a grade in a standards-based grading environment, I could see some students reluctant to submit homework assignments. Do you have any advice on convincing students that homework is still a required, essential part even if they aren’t getting a score for it? What about those kids who just don’t turn in their work?

A: Let’s be honest for a moment – there’s no silver bullet for motivating kids to do homework! When we think about the traditional grading paradigm, students do not often value practice/homework, even when it is worth points. Evidence of this theory includes students across the country in high schools with traditional grading who do not turn in their homework assignments and students who turn in copied homework assignments.

Here is my biggest piece of advice, which comes from personal experience: In traditional grading, when a student does not turn in an assignment, we give them a zero, but do not talk with them about it. We assume they’re going to “learn” from the zero. Instead, I tried something different in my later years as a high school teacher.  It went something like this…

Class, the purpose of homework in this class is practice.  Although homework is not worth any points, it is still very important.  The purpose of homework is practice!  Just like you practice for a small group speech contest, vocal music solo or volleyball game, practicing is important in math class.  Turn to your neighbor and share with them two reasons you believe practicing in math class is important and one reason why you might be tempted to not complete homework in this class….Okay, who can share with me a summary of their partner discussion?  How many of you talked about the importance of practice in doing well on tests?….

Then, when a student (inevitably) decides to not turn in an assignment a few days later, have a good ole fashioned one-on-one, sit down conversation with him/her.

Why did you decide not to do this assignment?

and

How well do you think you’ll do on the next assessment?

I’ve found this to be a relationship building exercise and gives me a better idea how I can help the student. Sometimes students are going through tough times at home. Other times, they’re lost conceptually and don’t want to admit it.

This is not a cure-all type of solution, but one that I and other educators using standards-based grading practices have found to be helpful.  In what ways have you motivated students to complete homework when it is worth zero points?  Leave your ideas in the comments below.