Grading for Equity: Reflection Questions (Ch 14 + Epilogue)

As part of a summer professional reading group, some colleagues and I elected to read Grading for Equity, by Joe Feldman. It's a big topic, so I wanted an excuse to do some reflective writing on it, so I can try to understand it more deeply. Fortunately, Feldman wrote some "Questions to Consider" at the end of each chapter, and so I hope to use those to guide regular reflections.

Chapter 14: Putting it All Together and...

Epilogue

Initial Reactions:

• If you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together. I'm very glad that my school is already on board with a ton of this stuff. The tradeoff is that there is limited capacity for teachers to diverge from this shared set of practices. I am very glad that some colleagues and I read this book together, and will meet to discuss it over the course of the year.
• Be patient. There are some smaller adjustments I'll be able to make this year. There are a bunch of bigger, more complicated adjustments that I'll have to spend the next year planning for, to be enacted next year. That's just how it goes. I need to make sure I remain patient with myself and my work.

Questions to Consider

Note: I'm going to paraphrase questions, because as we get further and further into the book, Feldman seems to make the questions longer, more loaded, and kind of embed the "suggested answers" into the follow up questions. So for each of these there's more to the question in the book, but this is the big idea. Also, the rest of the questions are poised "For Teachers," as opposed to the non-teachers who were also invited to read the book.

1) Which equitable practice will you try first? How will you know whether it was successful?

• Practice Tasks, for Algebra I
• I will try to pilot a new grade weighting, with 100% Performance Tasks and 0% Practice tasks
• If that doesn't work, I'll see if I can swing not having any graded practice tasks at all
• If that doesn't work, I'll try to have "bigger projects" as practice tasks, and have them be approximately as frequent as quizzes (which I talked about here)
• I will grade important "Practice Tasks" will be graded 50-100, and they will be graded on completion/accuracy. I will give either 50 (incomplete), 75 (mostly complete), or 100 (fully complete), based on accuracy/completion. The vision I am grading "towards" is that I want practice grades to be highly predictive of performance grades
• I will create disaggregate/track practice tasks by standard, so that students will be able to see compare their performance and practice w/ respect to individual standards (which I talked about here)
• I will aim for scoring Practice Tasks 1-2 per week per standard. But it feels like it's important for there to be multiple practice items graded before. (I'm still not confident that this is the best policy.)
• Other Algebra I
• I will run a "practice quiz" for our first assessment, which will include peer scoring (which I talked about here)
• I will run a "quiz bonanza" at the end of every quarter (which I talked about here)
• Performance Tasks, for Discrete Math
• I will create a rubric for assessing performance tasks. This will be a pilot/experiment in developing a rubric/continuum for practice-oriented competency-based math assessment. I'll start with this (which I've used in the past), and work from there.
• Big picture questions 
• These are some bigger picture question I have about how my school does grading, and I need to dive into them more deeply with my colleagues
• Minimum grading school-wide
• How to handle the "max" vs. "avg of top 2" vs. "two 4's > one 4"
• I'd like to work with the rest of the math team to actually develop a robust "rubric" or at least "criteria for success" for each of the Algebra I standards

2) As you try these practices, how will you apply a growth mindset and an embrace of mistakes to your own learning?

• I'm not worried!

3) Will you let students know about the new grading practices you are trying and why? Why and how?

• Fortunately, I just teach 9th graders, so this will be a lot easier. My goal is to discuss how grading works as each element of it comes up. (Talk about quizzes before the first quiz, talk about how retakes work when the first retake happens, etc.)

4) What would a partnership with students to make grading more equitable look like?

• I would like to give a quick survey at two points about 1/3rd and 2/3rds of the way through the school year, asking students to share how they feel about how grades work in our class. Specifically, w/ respect to the principles (fair, accurate, etc.)
• I also will plan on having "soft discussions" about grading, how it's gone for them, and how it is my intent to help grades *not* be as oppressive as they've likely experienced at times in the past (which I talked about here).