GRADING
Taking the Guesswork Out of Student Evaluation
Michelle Rammel, Ph.D.
•Communication
WHY DO WE GRADE?
• Primary purpose
• Student achievement
• Administrators
• Colleges and universities
• Potential employers
• Students and parents
WHY DO WE GRADE?
•Guidance
•Select, identify, or group students for
certain educational paths or
programs
•Motivation
WHY DO WE GRADE?
• low grade will motivate a student to try
harder
• high grade will motivate a student to
maintain effort
• Research indicates that grades do not
motivate students!
WHY DO WE GRADE?
•Administrative purposes
• Promotion and retention
• Determine course placement for student
transfers
• Class rank
• Credits for graduation
• Honors standing
WHY DO WE GRADE?
•Instructional planning
•Form cooperative groups
WHY DO WE GRADE?
•Program Evaluation
• Evaluate the effectiveness of an
instructional program
COMPONENTS OF GRADES
• Effort
• Attendance
• Behavior
• Homework
• Extra credit
• Late work
COMPONENTS OF GRADES
• Effort, participation, and positive attitude
• Highly valued attributes
• Difficult to define and measure
COMPONENTS OF GRADES
•Grades are distorted when factors not
related to achievement are included.
•To have real meaning, grades must be
pure measures of each student’s
achievement of the course objectives.
INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Assigning a zero
•Motivate students?
•No research supports this practice
INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Fixes for Assigning a Zero
• Require students to complete the assignment
• The idea of “working with students until
they achieve success” is promoted by
HSTW.
• Throw out the lowest mark in a grading
period
INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Average vs. median
• Averaging assumes learning at the beginning of the term is as
important as the learning at the end of the term
• Consider student X:
100% 100% 100% 100% 0%
• Average is 80%
• Is this appropriate? Does this show the learning that
occurred?
• Consider student Y:
85% 80% 75% 80%
• Average is 80%
• A 0% on the fifth test results in 64% average
• Does this fairly represent student Y’s learning for the term?
INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Average vs. median
• Averaging grades negatively affects
student motivation because one low score
during a term has such a detrimental effect
on the student’s grade.
(Guskey, 2002)
INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Average vs. median
• Remember Student Y?
0% 75% 80% 80%
• Median = ?
• Average vs. median??
85%
INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Semester Killer
•Single test, lab, paper, or project that
makes or breaks a student’s grade
INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Grading Scales
• An A can be as low as 80% or only 95%
• The lowest failing grade can range from 49%
to 74%
• An A is not the same from school to school
INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Grading Scales
• Majority of grading scales are biased.
• 10 point scales
• This disparity raises concern regarding
the meaning of grades.
• No research supports any one grading
scale over another.
INEFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Grading on a Curve
• Affects students’ relationships
•Learning becomes competitive
• Helping classmate may reduce the
student’s chance of earning an A
EFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Standards-based Grading
• Assesses how well a student has mastered course
objectives
• Reduces meaningless paperwork
• Helps teachers adjust instruction
• Teaches what quality looks like
• Requires teachers to work with students until they
are successful…a key practice of HSTW
EFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Feedback
•Accurate
•Specific
•Timely
EFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
• Page (1958)
• 3 groups
• Group 1 – numerical and letter grades only
• Group 2 – also included standard comments,
such as Excellent or Let’s try to raise this grade
• Group 3 – Teachers wrote individualized
comments that pertained to the teacher’s own
feelings and instructional practices
• Which group do you think improved?
EFFECTIVE GRADING PRACTICES
•Feedback
• Not effective if the comments are
judgmental
(Brookhart, 2008)
GRADING IN CTE
•Every day, academic teachers test
students’ knowledge of a particular
subject, but never truly assess their
students’ comprehension.
(Backes and Brown, 2009)
GRADING IN CTE
•Traditional tests
• Allow teachers to assign grades
• Determine a student’s knowledge level
• Verify whether the learning objectives were met
• Only check for lower level understanding… recall
• Do not support the purpose of common core
standards of preparing students for college and
career.
GRADING IN CTE
• Career technical teachers utilize more
innovative techniques to assess student
learning:
• presentations
• portfolios
• writing samples
• field experiences
GRADING IN CTE
Presentations
• Allow students to demonstrate and discuss their
understandings of a variety of concepts
• Learning and assessment occur in all three
domains: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective.
• Offer students experience in problem solving,
critical thinking and independent learning
• especially when ends with Q & A
• Instruction is more student-directed
GRADING IN CTE
Presentations
• Provide clear guidelines:
• time limit
• require an outline before presentations are given
• offer substantial feedback
• require interaction with the audience
• Have one of the best presenters give presentation at the end of
class the day before the other students
• Provides other students an exemplary model presentation
• Utilize a rubric in order to assess each presentation
• http://rubistar.4teachers.org
• Provide every student a copy of the rubric
GRADING IN CTE
Writing samples
• Excellent way to evaluate a student’s content
knowledge and understanding of successful writing
• Examples:
• Reflections
• Research reports
• express analytical thoughts
• to most students, is the act of opening an
encyclopedia or a webpage and copying its
verbiage without mention of the author
• clearly articulating one’s thoughts demonstrates
an understanding of the content
GRADING IN CTE
Writing samples
• Use writing samples often and vary the style of
samples
• Provide constructive feedback – comment on
grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors
• Use a rubric
• Permit students the opportunity for individuality
and personal reflection
GRADING IN CTE
Writing samples
• Do not have to grade every skill for every writing
assignment
• Must clearly state what skills will be graded
• Collins Writing = Focus Correction Areas (FCAs)
• three
• students focus on a smaller number of skills at
one time
• students practice and master numerous FCAs
during school year
• significantly improves their writing abilities
GRADING IN CTE
Field Experiences
• More unique to career technical education
• Examples:
• Observations
• Shadowing
• Service learning
• Actual practice
• Real world connection of learning for students and teachers
• CT educators assess students in similar way to how
employers evaluate their employees
GRADING IN CTE
Field Experiences
• Suggestions:
• match the field experience to the course
objectives
• match the placement to each student
• use journals, reflections, and logs to record
observations
• hold an orientation session before sending
students to the location
INDIVIDUALIZED PRODUCTIVITY AND
ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEM FOR STUDENTS (IPASS)
• An individualized, self-paced, competency based,
and project/assignment driven system
• Students are given assignments each with a given
point value.
• Assignments must be large enough to require a
student at least one lab period, or 2.5 hours, to
complete, and should be worth a minimum of ten
points.
IPASS
• The teacher evaluates the work upon completion.
• If the work meets or exceeds the teacher’s standard,
the student receives the number of points assigned
and continues to the next assignment.
• If the assignment does not meet the pre-determined
requirements, the student revises the work until the
assignment meets expectations.
• Students may not continue to the next assignment until
they have achieved competency on that given
assignment.
IPASS
• Once an assignment is mastered, the student marks
off the number of points received from the
completed assignment on the IPASS Progress Chart.
• The student’s grade is based on how many points
they earn during the grading period.
• The grade chart is a valuable visual tool for the
student to see how missing school or not working
diligently every day affects his or her grade.
IPASS
•There are no vague daily grades for
working or not working in lab.
•There are no weighted grades
•Confuse parents and students
•The responsibility of the student’s
grade is placed on the student’s
shoulders.
IPASS
• Mistakes made over the course of the semester
were not failures.
• The teacher is a facilitator similar to a boss
running an office or shop. Everyone has their
assigned work and it is the boss’s job to see
that the employees have the resources to
complete the assigned work.
REFERENCES
• Backes, C., & Brown, P. (2009). Going beyond the test! Using alternative assessments in career
education. Techniques: Connecting education & careers, 84(3), 34-37.
• Brookhart, S. M. (2008). How to give effective feedback to your students. Alexandria,VA: ASCD.
• Brookhart, S. M. (2009). Grading. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
• Collins Education Associates. (2010b). Focus Correction Areas. Retrieved from
http://www.collinsed.com/focus_correction_areas.htm
• Guskey, T. R. (2002). Computerized gradebooks and the myth of objectivity. Phi Delta Kappan,
83(10), 775-780. Retrieved from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID:123590181).
• Guskey, T. R. (2003). How classroom assessments improve learning. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 611.
• Guskey, T. R. (2004, October). 0 alternatives. Principal Leadership, 5(2), 49-53.
• Guskey, T. R. (2006, May). Making high school grades meaningful. Phi Delta Kappan, 87(9), 670-675.
• Kohn, A. (1999, September). Grading is degrading. The Education Digest, 65(1), 59-64.
• Marzano, R. J. (2000). Transforming classroom grading. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
• O’Connor, K. (2011). A repair kit for grading: 15 fixes for broken grades. (1st ed.). Portland, OR:
Educational Testing Service.
• Willis, S. (1993). Are letter grades obsolete? Education Update, 35(7). Retrieved from
http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/educationupdate/sept93/vol35/num07/Are-LetterGrades-Obsolete¢.aspx
IPASS