If I were ever asked to coordinate a schoolwide grading system change again, I would take a cue from the authors of Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning (2013). In Chapter 6, this gem of a statement reads…

“It is easy to achieve consensus on solutions that do not require teachers to make changes in their day-to-day practice, even when data show that such practices are consistently ineffective.” (pp. 140-141)

Back in 2021, my school was just coming off the heels of the COVID-induced shock of remote learning. After attending Joe Feldman’s 3-day Grading for Equity Virtual Institute, I was delegated a new role along with the title “Equitable Grading Coordinator.” When I reported what I learned to admin early that summer, I was given the charge to lead the school’s shift towards standards-based grading (SBG)…immediately that fall. I should have known, even then, that this was way too ambitious, but I pressed on. The grading system, however, did not. There was a predictable mutiny after the 2-hour crash-course session scheduled on the final day of PD week before students arrived. After that, SBG efforts were rolled back to a volunteer-only expectation, and I continued doing work for my role—for almost two years—that never saw the light of day beyond the administrator’s office.

So, how would I go about changing something affecting day-to-day practice without “requiring teachers to make changes in their day-to-day practice” as the Data Wise authors stated?! The answer lies in the first part of the quote…

Achieving Consensus
Were I charged with leading a school’s shift towards SBG (or any grading system, really), I would push hard against any attempts to change teacher practice. Instead, I envision a yearlong training period, with meetings and activities at least monthly and ideally weekly. To start, using an traditional external assessment as a model, I would lead teachers through determining the objective of the assessment, ask them to generate a simple criterion for that objective (single point-rubric), and then evaluate the student work against the criterion. That’s it. And that’s enough to be the intro to SBG and the start of changing a grading system.

Training would develop from there, such as expanding the single-point rubric to 3-point, 4-point, etc., selecting example assessments that tested lower order thinking recall vs. higher order open-ended prompts for comparison, and then getting teachers to bring in their own assessments as everyone becomes more familiar. This process should get teachers seeing how points and percentages, while easy to calculate, don’t give the learner any actionable feedback, which would be the next focus of training: providing specific, actionable feedback. There would be more concepts to address, of course, like how to grade as little as possible due to the negative impact of grading on learning, but this training would continue. throughout the year.

Finally, I would get into the specifics of reporting grades. Like Brookhart (2011) mentioned, this is considered a side issue that detracts from successfully enacting true assessment and grading change, yet is often what schools begin with, sadly. Mine did, and the result was a major botched rollout! Now, the details of reporting grades aren’t important right now. They would bog down even this post! It’s the training structure and focus on achieving consensus that’s paramount. The key is achieving consensus before requiring any change from teachers. From my experience, though, there would likely be some who begin to incorporate these changes on their own if given the training and freedom to do so. And that’s the place you want to be in for true change to happen.

What Can YOU Do?
You might be a teacher reading this who has limited control over what initiatives your school rolls out. If so, talk to whomever is leading the charge, and ask if you could follow this process of whatever you’re trying to do, getting lots and lots of examples before being asked to produce something on your own. Hmmm, sounds familiar re: lots of input before output in second language learning! There’s a good chance this process might be the difference between actually getting the initiative off the ground and it getting buried underneath a lack of consensus and teachers being asked to change their practice before they’re ready to do so.

References
Boudett, K. P., City, E. A., & Murnane, R. J. (2013). Data wise: A step-by-step guide to using assessment results to improve teaching and learning. Harvard Education Press.

Brookhart, S. M. (2011). Starting the Conversation About Grading. ASCD. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/starting-the-conversation-about-grading