Deb Bannon, Education Consultant
Mike Rush, Executive Director
The Curriculum Institute
June 27, 2011

To understand the critical links between report cards,
grades, assessment, and instruction

To look at each individual links and assess their
purpose and meaning

To analyze the effectiveness of each of these and
understand where students are in the learning
process
How confident are you that the grades students
are receiving in your school/district are:

Consistent

Accurate

Meaningful

Supportive of learning

What should it be? (purpose)

What should it include?

What should it not be?

Align to standards

Based on rubric, not percentages

Broken down by specific skills

Grades averaged

Zeros

Behavior, citizenship, or
anything not directly related
to the Standards
1
2
3
Quality
Incorporates
4
5
Contains
some of
Has very few the basic most of the
qualities
Exemplary
characteristics tenants of
Traditional
expected in Standardsof a
a
Grade
Standardsa
based Report
Card
Standardsbased Report
StandardsCard
based
Card
based
Report
Report Card
Card
Research shows that when curriculum is well articulated and
aligned to standards, and the extent to which it is actually
covered is monitored, the measurable impact—or effect size—of
such strategies is 31 percentile points in student achievement.
(Robert Marzano)
The alignment between operational curriculum taught by
teachers and assessment explains more than 50% of variance in
student scores.
(National Science Foundation)

Identify and explain techniques of direct and indirect
characterization in fiction.

Explain how an author's voice and/or choice of a
narrator affect the characterization and the point of
view, tone, plot, mood and credibility of a text.

Determine characters’ traits by what the characters
say and think about themselves.



Is the grade book aligned to the
Standards?
What can we say about the student’s
ability to hit the target of that
Standard?
What don’t we know from looking at
this?
3
4
5


Do the skills directly
relate to the
standards?
Have we collected
accurate and reliable
data for each learning
target?
6

Identify and explain techniques of direct and indirect
characterization in fiction.

Explain how an author's voice and/or choice of a
narrator affect the characterization and the point of
view, tone, plot, mood and credibility of a text.

Determine characters’ traits by what the characters
say and think about themselves.

Are the questions aligned to the
skills that were taught – and
should they be?

How accurately do the questions
assess student understanding of
characterization?

Does the assessment match the
expectation of the standards?




Analyze each link for
the following:
Alignment to the
standards
Their ability to provide
accurate data
Their connectedness to
each other
1
Quality
1
2
3
Incorporate
s some of
4
5
Contains
most of the
the basic
qualities
Exemplary
Tradition characteristics tenants of
Expected in Standardsa
al Grade
of a
a
based Report
Standards- StandardsCard
StandardsCard
based
based
based
Report Card Report
Report Card
Card
Has very
few
Accuracy
Quality
1
2
3
4
5
Incorporate
s some of
Contains
most of the
the basic
qualities
Exemplary
Tradition characteristics tenants of
Expected in Standardsa
al Grade
of a
a
based Report
Standards- StandardsCard
StandardsCard
based
based
based
Report Card Report
Report Card
Card
Has very
few
Alignment
is
incomplete
Complete
alignment of
Grades,
Assessments,
Standards,
Teaching

What happens when the content and skills are not a
true reflection of the expectation of the standards?

We need to know if all of these pieces are accurate
and linked?

We need to know where those students are in the
learning continuum. (within and across grade levels)
The creation of the image of imaginary persons in
drama, narrative poetry, the novel, and the short story.
Characterization generates plot and is revealed by
actions, speech, thoughts, physical appearance, and the
other characters’ thoughts or words about him.