In getting ready for my 2025 MTA Summer Conference presentation on “Getting More from Your Formative Assessments and Grading,” I found a lot more missing blog posts than just Zerwin’s! For example, I never wrote about Starr Sackstein’s “Hacking Assessment…” years back; there’s good stuff in there, which means I need a record of that stuff here.

Grades to Growth
The first chapters of this book are a good reminder of the “why,” and starts with one of the hardest things to reconcile as a teacher: “a gifted student who completes little work often receives the same grade as a struggling student who improved steadily throughout the course or a student who started strongly but performed poorly in the last quarter” (p. 7). This is one reason I’m a big advocate for learning progressions under Hack #1 (p. 25) since learning never ends, even for the students starting out at a high level. Jung’s learning progressions are particularly helpful. Otherwise, the rest of Sackstein’s first chapters are filled with other helpful concepts to set the stage for a no-grades classroom. Don’t skip it.

Pushback
Every hack includes ways to get interest holders on board in the most tense situations. My golden rule recommendation is to establish clear expectations and guidelines while giving DAPS (Department Leaders, Admin, Parents, Students) what they want with as little change possible. In other words, major changes can be going on within your mind and within the classroom, but few changes need to take place outwardly that might cause undo attention. For example, you could establish elaborate codes and ways to teach DAPS how to interpret your new system…OR…you could make changes within the existing system. For example, instead of being the only teacher in the school to use a 1-6 grading scale, use the more familiar grades of 55, 65, 75, 85, 95, and 100. Trust me; people aren’t going to miss all the numbers in between, but they’ll have more questions about a grade book with a bunch of 3s and 4s. Still, if you’re up against some really tough DAPS, Sackstein has you covered throughout the book.

Student Conferences
Hack #6 (p. 87) is particularly helpful for managing conferences with students, a sine qua non of gradeless/ungraded classrooms. For more on this, definitely seek out its standalone publication, Student-led Assessment.

Gradebook?
For those in position to jettison the gradebook, Hack #7 offers ideas, especially given Starr’s involvement with Mastery Transcript. For a less-nuclear option, check out how Sarah Zerwin uses the score space to put words (e.g., “complete,” “partial,” etc.) and leaves scores in the description/comment.

Self-reflection & Self-grading
Hacks #8 & 9 cover supporting learners in what is likely very new processes. With so much ownership, they actually have a hard time getting started. Read these for ideas on how to help. I will say that from the literature, it’s possible to fall into metacognicide if students do too much practicing too often on too many reflection tasks. My students did fine with a little supporting and sentence starters when writing rationales for their grade. We did this eight times throughout the year (i.e., quarters w/ progress reports), and maybe just once or twice between. My advice is to not spend a great deal of time, but give students what they need to write better reflections.

Portfolios
Portfolios are also sine qua non, so definitely check out Hack #10 for options on where to organize student work, and how they can access it when reflecting.

Appendices
The next 125 pages or so, which is almost a half of the book, includes appendices with teacher examples. That’s noteworthy in itself. Often, ideas exist on the page or screen, and it can be difficult to imagine what they might look like in your classroom. Not a problem with Starr’s book.