Dealing with the 15% Grading
Requirement for STAAR EOC
Ty Duncan, ESC 17 Senior Specialist
The Law: Whether We Like it or Not
• “A school district shall comply with the State Board of
Education rules regarding administration of the
assessment instruments listed in this subsection and
shall adopt a policy that requires a student’s
performance on an end-of-course assessment
instrument for a course listed in this subsection in
which the student is enrolled to account for 15 percent
of the student’s final grade for the course.” H.R. H.B.
No. 3, 81 (R) Cong., Texas Legislature Online Version:
Enrolled, 46-47 (201).
• http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegS
ess=81R&Bill=HB3 Accessed online, March 8, 2011
What does “Final Grade” Mean
• There seems to be a lot of disagreement over
what this means in all directions.
• Does it mean second semester only?
• Must we count first and second semester
together?
• Will we be holding to the letter of the law if
we choose second semester only?
Policy Decisions
• Focus groups initially made two vital decisions
which districts need to make after study and
discussion. These include:
– a) how a percent score is calculated from the
individual student report on an EOC exam, and
– b) how that score will be applied to meet the 15%
requirement. Additionally, focus groups determined
that there are three over-arching issues that need to
be specified in policy. These include how the EOC will
impact grades/GPA, class rank, and credit.
Issues related to Computing a Score:
• It is not practical to compute a percentage score from the raw score
only, because the passing standard will not necessarily be set at
70% of items correct.
• Focus group participants were relatively unanimous that the
process requires use of the scale score. Therefore, the question
becomes how to turn a scale score into an averageable grade.
• A few districts are considering an arbitrary assignment of a
percentage score to four identifiable scale point ranges. These
include an arbitrary assignment of a score to anyone who fails,
another score to anyone between passing and commended,
another score for anyone commended or above with 100% being
applied for anyone who gets all items correct. There was some
support for differentiating a grade that falls between minimum and
passing and for the scale score that meets the College-Readiness
standard in Algebra II and English III.
Standardize Grading Practice?
• This issue has the potential to bring to light toxic
grading practices in our schools. For the most part
grading is an individual teachers decision from
classroom to classroom.
• Marzano speaks of this issue in his book “Standards
Based Grading and Formative Assessment.” The only
thing we can currently tell about grades in public
schools is by taking a look at each individual teacher.
• The 15% issue is going to standardize grading on some
level for us and monitoring effective practice will be
very important.
15% and UIL
• Additionally, a district should determine a local
policy related to whether retest scores will be
counted toward changing a student’s semester or
course grade. This practice should be considered
in light of UIL policies. UIL produces a side-by-side
document with state law and corresponding UIL
rules.
• It is anticipated that if the 15% requirements
remain in law, UIL will likely amend this
document. Watch for those changes and how
they relate to your local policy decisions.
Retesting for Any Reason
• In my opinion the FIRST ADMINISTRATION ONLY should
count for the grading requirement. It is going to be a mess
to go back and recalculate grades in the summer after retest. It also will decrease the high end student retesting to
get a higher score to improve their class rank.
• This may be something you want to deal with, but please
remember the amount or retesting under STAAR is going to
be huge and with staffing cuts monitoring this and planning
the sessions is going to place an additional burden on test
coordinators.
• Retesting for any reason can be used to obtain course
credit should the assessment cause them to fail the course.
This raises a question with consistency.
Computing a Score
• It is not practical to compute a percentage score from the raw score
only, because the passing standard will not necessarily be set at
70% of items correct. Focus group participants were relatively
unanimous that the process requires use of the scale score.
Therefore, the question becomes how to turn a scale score into an
average able grade.
• A few districts are considering an arbitrary assignment of a
percentage score to four identifiable scale point ranges. These
include an arbitrary assignment of a score to anyone who fails,
another score to anyone between passing and commended,
another score for anyone commended or above with 100% being
applied for anyone who gets all items correct.
• There was some support for differentiating a grade that falls
between minimum and passing and for the scale score that meets
the College-Readiness standard in Algebra II and English III
Example
•
•
•
•
•
Below passing scale score: 65%
Within passing to commended range: 75%
Commended to 100%: 90%
100% = 100%
Others are considering sliding this scale
upward.
** Not entirely equitable or sophisticated.
Dr. Wallace Model
Dr. Wallace Model
• I like this model because it gives hope at the bottom
end of the scale. It will have to be adapted by districts
as the scale scores will change for STAAR, but the
model is a good one and is fair as we enter a system
that we have not seen.
• I certainly would not publish the corresponding raw
score or make it part of policy.
• Calculate the distribution of grades after the
assessment.
• You will need to write policy that states how your are
going to calculate the grade using the scale score in a
psychometric way should you choose to do this.
Dr. Wallace Model
Impact of 15% Is Up to You!!
Little
Impact
Big
Impact
Grading Policy
• Make sure that your decision on how to
implement is consistent with grading policy
that is currently in place.
• Most policies will take slight adjustment.
Considerations
• A “Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum” will
help with this issue.
• Grade inflation may be a fairly substantial
problem in the beginning.
• We will have two grading systems in place
most likely. One for 9th graders and one for
10th-12th graders next year. The two systems
will be phased out with TAKS.
Using the EOC as the Final Exam
• Several districts have moved in this direction.
• The question then is what to do the two weeks
after STAAR?
– My response is that they still have content left to
teach and the six weeks grade will still be impacted by
the learning during this time.
• The most controversial issue has been with those
who have an exemption policy and allow students
to not take finals based on attendance.
Resources
• “Fair Is Not Always Equal”—Rick Wormeli
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM-3PFfIfvI
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC7ZI8zr_Mk
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHeij2Zfil4
• Robert Marzano
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfOnyrWtPu0
• Dr. Lisa Leach and I conducted a few weeks
ago on our website.
– http://www.esc17.net/default.aspx?name=dcl.instruc
tionalleaders