I’ve been sitting on this post for a very, very long time, perhaps because I hadn’t been entirely confident in my review of classroom assessment literature enough to make a claim about standards-based grading (SBG) that isn’t exactly positive. In short, the literature suggests that practices most likely to support learning are achieved by keeping graded summative assessments to a minimum.
SBG might not be doing this.
Continue readingI left my 2025 MTA Summer Conference workshop participants with a LOT of resources to read. After getting through all the recommended posts and maybe even books, however, they’ll probably still face the question of “what do I DO?!” The answer to that shouldn’t be a one-size-fits all panacea, but I can definitely offer some guidance since there are relatively few moves to make in the pursuit of grading less…
Continue readingBack-to-back posts because I was playing a board game this weekend and forgot to post that night! I have a really hard time being critical of this book, considering in many ways it helped launch my classroom assessment and grading research. Granted, the more I learn, the more asterisks I attach to ideas in Grading for Equity, which is tough for me to admit. I simultaneously recommend that all educators read this to understand basic concepts, like standards, while I also acknowledge that it’s still a grade-focused, and possibly grade-heavy approach. That is, standards-based grading (SBG) is a lot closer to traditional grading than many might think, and has the potential to result in even more grades, just in new packaging (e.g., “Needs Improvement,” and “Proficient”). Therefore, here are my thoughts after my first rereading of this book since really diving deep into classroom assessment and grading literature.
Continue readingRereading the preface to this book was a little depressing. The first time I read it over three years ago, I had highlighted “but should we, assuming an end to the lockdown, just go back to business as usual? What if the usual is problematic?” (p. xxii). At the time, I was experiencing “business as usual” despite a glimmer of hope between spring 2020 and 2021 when it looked like grading practices were going to shift in a massive way. They did not.
Continue readingI had the opportunity to revisit Wiliams’ 2018 book, Embedded Formative Assessment, while looking for definitions of “formative assessment.” The first two chapters are simply priceless. Beyond those, the other chapters include a general problem to be solved, and then practical techniques on solving them. Here’s an overview of what I consider the best parts…
Continue readingEven though I recommend Mark Barnes’ SE2R feedback model, and have written about that, here, there’s a bit more to his “Assessment 3.0” book than just the model. It warrants further reading…
Continue readingIn 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.
Continue readingIn cobbling together sources for my 2025 MTA Summer Conference presentation on “Getting More from Your Formative Assessments and Grading,” I searched my blog to link posts on books I consider foundational. Somehow, I never published the post I wrote after reading Zerwin’s “Point-less” years back. Her work deserves some attention…
Continue readingIf 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…
Continue reading“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)
I love the studies carried out over 110 years ago by Starch & Elliott (1912, 1913a, 1913b). In short, they tested the reliability of English teachers grading papers (1912), and got disastrous results showing an absurd amount of variation in scores across many teachers. Then, they did a second study with geometry teachers (1913), got even greater variation of scores, and finally did a third study with history teachers, essentially replicating the results from the other two.
I often cite these when talking shop, saying something like “we’ve known for 100 years that grading can be incredibly unreliable,” but recently I revisited these foundational studies, and now have an even greater appreciation for their design and findings. In this blog post, I’ll dig into these groundbreaking studies, starting with the 1912 edition…
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Magister P. 