Grading for Equity: Reflection Questions (Ch 6)

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 6: A New Vision of Grading

Initial Reactions:

• Verb choice. I feel like there is, or could be, a meaningful difference between a "grade," "rating," and "score." Whichever noun/verb carries the least sense of "valuation," that's the one I want to use. I don't think it matters, but that's just something I've thought about for a while, and I haven't really ever gotten any kind of resolution.

Questions to Consider

1) Review your classroom's current grading policies through the pillars of our vision: How accurate are they? How bias-resistant? How motivation?

• Standard Disclaimer: I do want to make the point that I'm basically just sharing *my experience* with my school's grading system, which is largely determined by the network my school is a part of. The perspectives shared are my own, and not reflective of my colleagues, school, or anyone else who isn't me.
• Important context: my school uses competency-based grades (CBG). The way my school does CBG is pretty cool, and I don't understand the ins-and-outs of it that well, because the math department uses standards-based grades (SBG). This is because we haven't exactly figured out a way to apply CBG to math content yet. This is a bit of a loss for coherence, given that the rest of the school is on the CBG, but it's something we're working on.
• Brief summary of how we do SBG: each of the courses has a list of 30-40 "standards" that are considered the 30-40 biggest and most important ideas in the course. For example, in my Algebra I course, one standard is called "Graphing Linear Functions from an Equation." Any given assessment might have between 1 and 5 different standards attached to it, but they are each assessed, scored, and entered into the gradebook independently.
• For me, more than anything, disaggregating student assessment by a relatively short list of "big ideas" is useful. I suppose this is a feature that supports student motivation, because it helps make it clear what students need to work on. A student looks at their gradebook, sees that they have a lower rating in "Construction Linear Equations from Context," and know what they need to learn more about. It's empowering because students can do this kind of self-assessment, at least given their grades, independently.
• One thing I've done to further support this is to have a file system in the back of the room, organized by standard, where a student can go get supplemental or missing work related to the standard. This facilitates some independence in them knowing how exactly to "shore up" their understanding, and improve their performance.
• This process of disaggregating scores by standards allows for more accurate grading, because students have precise information about what content they have performed at what level in. It's not one big "omnibus" grade saying they need to generally do better in class, or just "pay attention on the classwork."

• When scoring student work, we look at the student work with respect to the standard, and use the following flowchart. (There's a more detailed rubric, but this is the actual thought process I go through.)

• I think that sorting work into one of just four buckets allows for a higher degree of accuracy. If there were say...10 different levels of performance on each standard, that would require me to have a much more precise assessment of student work. I would need to be able to clearly justify that a student's work should be rated a 5 and not a 6 or a 4. The more granular the rating, the more likely it is that I engage in biased assessment, especially in the pressured context of having to grade 100 student quizzes, typically with multiple standards on each.
• I do still think that this work is less bias-resistant than, say, having a list of "criteria for meeting the objective." In that way, anybody really could make an accurate assessment of whether they met the objective or not. But, as we do it now, without that specific criteria for meeting the objective" outlined, students (and others) really just have to trust me when I say, "yeah, you met the objective" or not.
• I toyed around with creating a pretty specific list of "criteria for meeting the objective" for each standard. For example, for the standard "Solving Linear Inequalities," I made the following list of criteria for meeting the objective:
• Choose a series of algebraic moves that can simplify a linear inequality, with the ultimate goal of solving it.
• Prove or checks the solution to an inequality by showing a series of valid algebraic moves, or by substituting the proposed solution into the original inequality.
• Respect the direction of the inequality, recognizing that some algebraic moves seem to reverse its direction.
• Recognize the solution to an inequality is typically an infinite set of numbers that satisfy the inequality.
• Identifies the boundary points of the inequality, determining if it is a solution itself (closed) or not (open).
• But that's really just a description of solving linear inequalities algebraically. Which means I could expand the list of criteria to include non-algebraic approaches ("Uses graphing technology, or guess-and-check to represent the solution on a numberline"). Or I could simply make the standard more specific, and call it "Solving Linear Inequalities Algebraically." But this brings up an issue I have with cooking up a list of specific content standards can calling their union "Algebra I..."
• Defining "content standards," and rating them with an exhaustive list of criteria, runs into trouble with accuracy. These standards we've cooked up to describe "Algebra I" can't possibly partition the entirety of what we have come to understand as the set of things we want to learn when we study 9th grade Algebra I. We tried to make sure the standards didn't overlap in any way, so standards were fully independent. Which is useful for assessment, but not entirely authentic to how mathematical knowledge is organized.

• Furthermore, there are gaps in the standards--knowledge we value and seek to build in "Algebra I," which is not (and maybe *could not*) be captured in a discrete list of standards with criteria. I think that some objectives are so specific, and in their entirety are so numerous, that it's not feasible to try and cover all of "Algebra I" with non-overlapping standards. I guess that just means that a big portion of "Algebra I" course objectives aren't precisely captured in the standards? Which I guess is okay, right? Like...our goal isn't to hold students accountable to 100% of what we think Algebra I is...we just need to make sure they get the biggest, most impactful, most interesting/useful ideas. So maybe this isn't as big of as issue as I thought?
• In the name of accuracy though, I just need to make sure that I am only ever attaching grades to my assessment of student work done with respect to the stated objective. Maybe I provide some light feedback on the other stuff, but if I'm not articulating it in a standard, I shouldn't weigh it with a grade. It is tempting, however, to "reward" students with grades if they demonstrate an understanding of some unstated between-the-standards content knowledge, and I need to make sure I don't. But that's two different places where my only mechanism against bias is self-monitoring, which is where bias is at its strongest, especially implicit bias.
• And then there's the issue of the fact that these standards totally miss the idea that math education should focus more on "practices and dispositions," rather than discrete, if connected, tidbits of content knowledge. But that's for another summer reading project.
• Students will typically have three or more opportunities over the course of the class to demonstrate proficiency on each standard. And the grade that goes in the gradebook is the average of the top two scores they ever get.
• This is motivating, because students can "bump out" lower grades by improving their understanding, and then performing better at a later date. This also motivates risk-taking, because once you have two ratings in the gradebook, your grade for that standard can never go down, reducing performance anxiety.
• We opted for "average of the top two" instead of the much simpler "maximum score stays." This was because we wanted to ensure that we valued students demonstrating peak performance multiple times, and for two reasons. First, being able to demonstrate understanding on multiple occasions supports the accuracy of our grade, specifically with respect to test-retest-reliability. Second, if we just use the "max" score, we can no longer apply the pressure of grades to incentivize continued effort and performance of students who get it right on the first try. Clearly, our second reason was less noble, but definitely one we had to consider.
• In an effort to provide some grade-incentive for doing work that is not considered an official assessment, the other 50% of a student's grade is called "Practice." For tasks that are graded as "Practice Tasks," it's really the Wild Wild West. I can't speak for other teachers, but I tended to revert to more traditional grading practices, and all that goes with them, for better worse or worse.
• Since I was already applying "SBG" to all of our work for the class, I ended up using the "Practice Grade" as more of a "Completion/Effort Grade." Which is riddled with bias, de-motivating signals, and prone to inaccuracy. I think the original intent with "practice grades" was to be able to grade-value the often-significant amount of work that students need to do before being "ready" to demonstrate performance on an assessment. Which makes sense. I also suspect it was originally intended to take the performance-anxiety-impact-edge off of what could otherwise be a performance-heavy grading system. (Before I got there, I think my school did something like 70% standards + 30% practice, but we changed it for reasons I only partly understand.)

2) How much does this book's vision for equitable grading align with your own, personal vision for grading? What concerns do you have about this vision? What are your hopes? How much does this vision match against your school's overall vision? How likely is it that your school community could agree on this vision?

• Accurate, Bias-resistant, and Motivating are three great places to start, objectively, right? I do think that there is a question of "Authenticity" that should be considered. As a mathematician teacher, I am responsible for inducting my students further into the community of mathematicians. How can I make sure that I am assessing my students in a way that is consistent with the way that mathematicians are assessed more broadly, outside of schools?
• I literally chose to work at my school because they were one of the few (only?) schools that use competency-based grading. And CBG is pretty close to the frontier of equitable grading, as near as I can tell. And they're committed to CBG for all the right reasons (equity, authenticity, inclusivity). So I was excited to join a team that had similar understandings and values associated with grades. Of course, having a school-wide commitment to CBG (modulo the math team) is not easy at all, and we're definitely still figuring it out. But it's a refreshingly radical starting point, and I love it. I think that moving the math team from SBG to CBG, in the name of coherence is the biggest next-step for us. And I'm so pumped to be a math teacher in the school when this is happening.
• The focus of this book seems to be 1) understanding how grades can be oppressive, and 2) figuring out ways to make grades more equitable, and less oppressive. But that gives me very "best worst option" vibes, which I think sells all of us short. I think I've mentioned this in earlier reflections, but I am increasingly interested in abolishing grades as a whole. I don't know much about it, but I understand that more and more teachers are stepping in that direction. I'm not sure I'm ready for that shift yet, and I'm definitely not sure I've got the capital in my new building/district yet to pull it off. But I am very interested in it. There are just so so so many ways that "grading" in the traditional (or even modern?) sense are oppressive and harmful. So why not just bail on them entirely?
• Of course, there would still need to be some complicated "patchwork" to cohere my students' experience with that of everyone else who is doing grades. Because improperly done, I can definitely see how just throwing the switch on "grades" as a whole could lead to issues. But I *have* to have a longer-term plan moving away from grades right? And don't we have to as a whole? Yes, it's going to be harder, and yes, it's going to cause some major systems to have to change, but that's a good thing.
• And yes, we could say that it's the external market of jobs, scholarships, and colleges that force us as K12 schools to commit to grades, but why *should* those entities get to decide? They don't have our best interests at heart when they let kids take out $300K in loans to get a degree. They don't have our best interests at heart when these massive universities suck up community land and resources, hoard wealth in their enormous endowments, and feed their hosting neighborhoods *crumbs* in the name of giving back. Private universities, the labor market, and scholarships are diseased with capitalism, and for as long as we allow them to set the vision for public education in the U.S., we will continue to find ourselves throttled in the clutches of capitalism. [When I say "insert anti-capitalist rant," I usually mean something along these lines.]
• I'm not saying it's easy to abolish grades. But I'm saying that I believe it's important. And I'm not saying we have to do it right away--I know I certainly am not. But for as long as we don't, we are actively perpetuating the way that grades are used as another system of oppression. And yes, we can work to utilize principles of more equitable grading (which is kind of the whole point of this book study), but that *can't* be the end goal.

Grading for Equity: Reflection Questions (Ch 5)

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 4: Traditional Grading Demotivates and Disempowers

Performance goals vs. Mastery goals. Performance goals are goals that you have to perform at a certain level w/ respect to others. For example, a performance goal could be to be in the top 10% of your class. A mastery goal is a goal that you have to be able to do a specific task, which is defined by the task itself. For example, a mastery goal could be to be able to find the roots of any quadratic equation, given in any algebraic form. I think that this is a mostly-useful characterization, and it's not surprising that performance goals lead to much more problematic outcomes than mastery goals. But...

Teacher sensitivity, and the fallibility of self-assessment. One thing that I keep thinking about while reading this book is how really difficult teacher reflection and self-assessment is. Because we're professionals, right? Teachers typically have higher degrees, and some have been doing this work for decades and decades. And I think the classic issue with long-term professionals, in any field, is that they start to crystallize, and they are less and less inclined to make really radical changes, which looks like some combination of "stability" and "stagnation."

But I don't think it's for the "old dog, new tricks" reason that comes up so often. I think it's because we have actually convinced ourselves that we're doing the right things. We keep exhibiting the same practices and beliefs because we thought really hard about it, and came to a conclusion that what we are doing is the *right* thing to do. So for teachers to make major shifts in their practice, like modifying grading practices, there needs to be enough reflection, and enough self-analysis, for teachers to really identify and unseat understandings they've had from before.

For example, last year, I was adamant that I was doing the right thing in my classes, by grading every assignment I asked a student to do. I figured every minute of student engagement was so "expensive," I'd be loathe to waste an opportunity to give a student credit for demonstrating their understanding of the objective. Moreover, I figured that school-from-home in and of itself was such a demanding task that if I was making a kid do an assignment, they should be getting credit for it. I kind of understand better now why that's not a great policy in general (though again, I'm not beating myself up over anything that happened in remote teaching last year).

But I have the distinct memory of being SO CERTAIN that I was doing the best thing I could at the time. And this wasn't even the first time I've felt that kind of conviction with what I was doing. I feel this inside of myself ALL THE TIME. And I think it was even worse this past year because there was so little discourse with my colleagues. We were fully remote for basically the whole year. It was my 1st year in the district. It was my 1st year in the school. My school had not allowed time for content team meetings, and grade-level meetings were filled to the brim with discussing students and the constantly changing landscape.

In isolation, I think we retreat further and further into our own heads, both personally and professionally. At least I do. And so I think fostering rich and frequent teacher-to-teacher discourse time is critical. It's the key to keeping teachers open, flexible, curious, and self-critical to a healthy extent. And if that resource, teacher-teacher time, is both abundant and taken seriously, it's like fertilizer for professional growth. And I know this sounds like an obvious thing, but I just need to say it out loud here, because not all teachers have that. In fact, I'm willing to bet a decisive majority of teachers don't have that. And [insert anti-capitalist rant].

Questions to Consider

1) Interview some students. Are they motivates to achieve success or to avoid failure? What specific actions, policies, or words by teachers cause students to experience one type of motivation instead of the other?

• No students around this summer. RIP.

2) Do you think of your tasks at work as performance or mastery goals? What affects how you define the goal? How does this affect how you pursue the task?

• Let me say both, and why. When I'm clear on the goal, that's when I experience it as a mastery goal. But when I'm not clear on what the goal is, what the path forward is, or how I'm doing, that's when it becomes about performance.
• For example, from the end of my junior year in high school, I just wanted to be a great high school math teacher. And every question, doubt, path went through this lens. Is this going to help me be the great teacher my future students deserve? And when it was time to pick colleges, majors, and activities, that laser-focus made it clear, and it really didn't matter what other people were doing, and how I was doing with respect to them.
• But towards the end of college, and at various times throughout my first 4 years of teaching, what it means to "be a good teacher" is so much larger and amorphous than I initially understood. So I fell to looking at my professional growth as a "performance goal." It's simpler, I'll give it that. I'd look around at other people, seeing what they were doing, and thinking, "I just need to do better than them, right?" Which is awful. And still is awful, and is something I need to continually confront and mitigate in my practice. It fills me with self-doubt, anxiety, negative perspectives on others, and a generalized sense of insecurity.

3) In what ways do schools and classrooms send a message of competition for achievement? How does your school's treatment of awards and honors promote or undermine a growth or fixed mindset?

• I appreciate that my school doesn't do any awards based on relative performance (except for valedictorian/salutatorian). They're usually benchmark awards, like "these students are passing all their classes", "or these students have 95% attendance or better," and then I would say the majority of "award/honor capital" is attributed directly by teachers shouting out students. Which is cool. I think many of the teachers recognize the importance of picking students to "shout out" by more humanizing metrics than "the highest performing students." Which, again, is cool.
• But any time teachers compare students, like, "Be more like student X," you're creating a hierarchy of perceived status and achievement. There are tons of ways that teachers support class status hierarchies through patterns in how they call on people, intervene in discussions, interrupt students, provide certain kinds of feedback, and publish grades that are easy to compare.
• I think that the culture that administration projects towards teachers will basically always get reflected down to students. Sometimes directly through policies, and sometimes maybe it's just through vibes. But let me ask you: say there was one teacher on your team who only gave out A's and B's, year after year. Wouldn't their colleagues get suspicious? Wouldn't students get suspicious? Wouldn't administration be suspicious? If enough teachers at the school did it, wouldn't district administration get suspicious?
• If they're suspicious, it's because there is an expectation that student performance should kind of adhere to a general distribution, where there is a non-zero amount of students performing at a "below average" level. Moreover, that suggests that there is some expected "center" in the B to C range, and at least a small number of students should be getting below that center. And I would expect that teacher to feel some pressure to "curve" their class so that it matches the expected distribution. This is a very powerful, if quietly said, culture that *many* schools and districts subscribe to, and it is very an expression of regressive models of human intelligence (see: IQ tests, and eugenics).

Grading for Equity: Reflection Questions (Ch 4)

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 4: Traditional Grading Hides Information, Invites Biases

On the term "traditional grading". Throughout the book, Feldman refers to "traditional grading," and I *think* I know what he means, and I *think* a lot of teachers would. But I'm not sure I believe in it as a useful euphemism. The descriptor "traditional" feels like it's being used to mean "outdated" here, and I know few professionals who would be okay with someone describing their practice as such. But what makes it hard is that I'm not sure what other way to describe it? Like, we have "standards-based grading," and "competency-based grading." What is the more precise, accurate term? Or is that the point...that there is no central core "idea" after which to name the practice?

Teacher-to-teacher variance. Feldman also talked about how problematic it is that for most teachers in most schools (at least in the U.S.), grading policies changes from teacher to teacher. I think students typically understand that this is the norm (at least by the time they get to high school), and just figure out how to deal with it. But also, Feldman points out that this extra layer of complexity, in an already complex system, is yet another barrier to students understanding and owning their grades.

But forcing all teachers in the same district, or even just the same school, to have identical grading policies in all respects...on one hand, that sounds utopian, and on the other, it sounds horrifying. This is the classic "autonomy" vs. "uniformity" conflict, which has no real solution I think? But it *can* be mitigated by investing heavily in teacher-teacher collaboration, co-developement (as opposed to individual development), effective coordination, and an abundance of resources. But that's not easy to make happen because [insert anti-capitalist rant].

Complexity in grading systems. My school is working to be competency-based, and I think that what we're doing is super cool. But it's also pretty complicated at times, especially for 9th graders who have spent the last 8+ years in schools that likely have "traditional grades." Over the years, students eventually get used to it, and it's fine (or so I'm told--I've only had one year of teaching remotely with 9th graders). And more often than not, in order to make the grading system accessible for students and families, we end up focusing students on just the final "overall grade." That's because it looks like a regular 0-100 grade, with all the associated feelings and expectations behind it. So on the surface, the grades contribute to many of the unhealthy and oppressive practices that "traditional" grades do. But there is technically some underlying theory that goes into the the calculation of that "overall grade" using out principles of competency-based grading. So...that's better, right? Right?

I do think that being a math teacher has seriously benefited my ability to understand the math underlying grade calculations. Even as a student, I remember doing tons of calculations along the lines of "if I get X% on this assignment, which is in category Y, which has an associated weighting of Z%..." Which is good high school level math, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't think every high schooler can do it. Heck, I don't think every teacher can do it. And that's not great. The more complicated the grading calculation, the further it removes students from owning and understanding their grades, and the more it feels like an arbitrary system purely run on bias.

So how complex should grading systems be? We definitely want to avoid what Feldman identifies as the "Omnibus" grade--a barrel-ful of information in a thimble-size container. But if we make it super complicated, that becomes its own possibly not-better system. So why not just invest in taking the time to teach students and families how the system works? That takes a lot of time that might not be worth it, especially if you need to get your own grading "orientation" for every different teacher you have. I guess and important distinction is that of "sophisticated" vs. "complicated." A sophisticated grading system can do "what we need grades to do" (whatever that is?), and can do it with nuance, sensitivity, and accuracy.

How simple should grades be? I don't think we need to come up with a better way to calculate a better summary statistic of the right combination of the right things, so we can all have one, perfect "score." I don't think it should even be *possible* to boil down all your learning into one score. Yeah, that's useful for quickly sorting students, and efficiently assigning privilege and access, and for pressuring students to perform. But like...who wants to do *any* of those things?

If we can't do grades "right," should we do them at all? In this chapter, Feldman also talks about bias, implicit and otherwise. And maybe he's just getting us fired up before delivering some strong, effective, bias-free systems in the last part of the book. If the goal is to create a system that abolishes implicit bias, and systems of oppression...what do we do if we *can't*? What if the idea of summarizing growth and learning with just a few statistics that we would recognize as "grades" is inextricably rooted in oppression and contrary to how "learning" happens? Is it then our responsibility to abolish the concept of grades?

I know some would say that grades are the "lesser evil," but lesser for whom? When we resign ourselves to "surviving" a lesser evil, we are essentially saying that some should be expected to suffer because...we can't find another way? Who has the right, the power, to decide who gets to suffer?

Questions to Consider

1) What confidence or uncertainty do you have that two teachers in your school would assign the same grade to a student?

• Within my department, at least, given the grading structures in place for us as a whole department...assuming we when through the same "volume" of content at the same pace and students received the same instruction...I'm 90% sure that our final grades would be within 10% of each other. Which doesn't sound that good, but I actually do think that's better than the industry average, so to speak. It helps that one of my school's big thing is their grading system, so there is some meaningful investment in allowing us to talk through things together, and connect.

2) Are there teachers with reputations as "hard" or "easy" graders? What, specifically, defines them as that? How does this categorization make you feel? How does it make that teacher feel? How do students react?

• Certainly. And here are some responses I can imagine teachers having, either because I've had them myself, or have seen them in other teachers:
• The "easy" grader might feel...
• "I am being sensitive to students' needs."
• "Grading isn't so surgically precise that it's worth making students feel bad about them."
• "Grades don't actually matter."
• "Giving low grades restricts student access to critical resources like scholarships, in-school prestige, and access to post-secondary options."
• The "hard" grader might feel...
• "I have high expectations for students."
• "If I grade harder, they'll work harder."
• "Other teachers coddle students, which is unfair to them and the teachers that don't want to coddle them."
• "Students have it easy in school. Try having a boss!"
• I think that the vast majority of teachers would consider themselves as "warm demanders" (Lisa Delpit, 2013), and as "tough but fair." I think that students are much more likely to categorize teachers as "easy/hard" graders, than teachers are themselves. I think that there is a general teacher culture to prefer being viewed as "too hard" rather than "too easy," or at least that's the perception that feels like it gets rewarded/validated by leadership. Which feels contrary to "err on the side of doing the less harmful thing"? But then again, I think I just revealed to you a bit of my internal vibes re: "hard" vs. "easy" graders.

Grading for Equity: Reflection Questions (Ch 3)

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 3: How Traditional Grading Stifles Risk-Taking and Supports the "Commodity of Grades"

Initial Reactions. It really is amazing how every teacher, every school, every district, is so very different, but we all seem to land on some of a handful of the same conflicts. At one point, when describing (in very thorough detail) the "commodity of grades," Feldman quoted the student who asked, "Can I erase the board for 10 points?" It was easy to see the student in my mind's eye, in my classroom, asking that question. And it was easy because that experience is sooooooooo real. It's disturbing, really.

This whole chapter was filled with disturbing moments like that. One particularly uncomfortable passage detailed the negative impact of counting every single assignment towards grades. I thought this was an effective practice, because I figured that a student demonstrated proficiency with the standard at any point in the arc of learning, they should get some kind of "credit" for it. Also, given that it was the middle of full-year remote learning, it was arguably the worst school year ever (citation *not* needed). I knew how much it meant that students were still logging into class, and I wanted them to feel like they were getting something out of it.

I won't review all the reasons why grading every single assignment generally harms student learning (even if you are able to make it a feasible undertaking). Nor will I self-flagellate for anything I tried last year. But I am definitely clearer than ever on the degree to which I as a teacher can harm student learning by over-applying grading. Which isn't even surprising to me, but important to be reminded of. The degree to which things are graded is almost perfectly negatively correlated with the amount of joy, healthy teacher-student relationships, and general positive vibes of the classroom. And that is as both a teacher, and a student.

Any time I do a math or teaching course as professional development, and the instructor starts to talk about passing grades, weights, and all that, my trust in the course and instructor immediately starts to decay. It makes me feel like they care more about the products I'm creating (the assignments) than my learning. And I wonder--did I always feel like that? Or is this an attitude I've developed as a result of just getting older? Or because of my work as a teacher? I certainly don't remember caring as a student.

Another thing that Feldman discussed was how it is the teacher's "burden of proof" to show that they, and their class, can be trusted as a safe, supportive, and worthwhile space. As a student, I don't think I believed that, but as a teacher now, I think I do. And this is because I see schools, more and more, as services created to serve. More or less, a community gets together, pools resources, and invests time, money, and faith in the school, expecting that their (typically, but not exclusively) children are going to be nurtured and educated.

So imagine being a child, forced to go to this school that your community has paid so dearly for...and some random adult says that you have to "prove" that you care about your learning? That your family cares? Asking you to "meet them halfway," after everything that had to happen to lead to you being there in class that day?

I think that teachers often feel this pressure to ask students to "meet them halfway," implying that students and families aren't working hard enough. But I don't think that pressure actually comes from teachers believing that students and families don't care (at least not most of the time). I think it comes from the teachers feeling exploited by the exploitive capitalistic conditions of their employment and positioning in society. But capitalism, somehow always able to position itself as the hero, pushes us to direct blame in the wrong directions, toward students and families.

Questions to Consider

1) How have different supervisors (or those whose opinions you care about) responded to your mistakes? How have helpful responses impacted you and your effectiveness? How have unhelpful responses impacted you and your effectiveness?

• I rowed in college, and at one point there was a part of my technique that was ineffective. My coach basically stopped practice, and took the opportunity to provide me direct, explicit feedback on what I was doing that wasn't productive. I won't go into the details, but he basically said, "Look Bear, this is what you're doing. I know X about you, so this is probably why. Now that we *both* understand what you're doing and why, this is what you should do instead, and why."
• I definitely still had to keep working to break that bad habit in my technique, but there was a intellectual switch from that point on. Instead of him fighting me to make a change I didn't understand, I was able to own that development myself, because I knew what I needed to work on and why.
• Moreover, he didn't present my mistake as a character flaw. I wasn't just lazy or stupid because I had a bad habit. I felt seen and understood, because he was able to help me better understand a part of myself that I hadn't before. And that built my trust in him as a coach and a leader--trust that he actually understood what I needed, that he wanted to help, and that he knew how to help.
• That's something I've been thinking about all year--the importance of us, as feedback providers, to make clear that we understand why students make certain mistakes, have certain misconceptions, or have problematic behaviors. Instead of just problematizing a behavior, if we can make clear we understand why that happens, I expect that *alone* will lead to an improvement. Sometimes all students need is support in understanding themselves better. The danger here is that it's important for the teacher to be accurate in their assessment, instead of just assuming. An inaccurate assumption will betray a lack of mutual understanding, and reduce trust that students have in the teacher (with reason). And so truly listening and understanding students and their thought process is again highlighted as an essential practice in all assessment. And this is so hard to do.

2) Recall something you learned to do outside of the school context. What motivated you to learn and to continue learning when you struggled?

• My go-to example here is spreadsheets. I have never done any formal training in spreadsheets, but at this point I would say I have pretty advanced proficiency (at least for my field). When I think about being in a "flow state," where I'm just cruising through problems, fully absorbed, right in the heart of my Zone of Proximal Development...I imagine myself doing spreadsheet projects. I was motivated to learn because the only time I ever learned spreadsheet techniques was when I needed them for a project I already wanted to do.
• All of the best projects I've had started with me not knowing how to do it, but believing deep in my heart that it was possible. Throw in a dash of some useful background math ideas, and increasingly capable Googling skills, and I really do feel unstoppable when I'm spreadsheeting. This is also, incidentally, my go-to example for thinking about what "problem-based learning" can be.
• Over time, my motivation to learn has extended further and further beyond the immediate practical motive of needing this spreadsheet to do something for me in my work. More and more, I want to dive into spreadsheet challenges just because...it's fun! Each new project is like solving a puzzle every time. What do I want to do? What do I already know how to do? What else do I wish I could do? Where can I figure out how to do that? Is this the best way to do it? Yes, there is often some extrinsic motivation from my job, but it can really be paper-thin. Because once that intrinsic passion kicks in...love it.

3) Some teachers think, "If I motivate students to learn with points now, they'll realize success and become internally motivated." If you believe this, how could you test this theory?

• If that's true, then we should be able to "wean" students off of points and grades...right? So over the course of the year, have fewer and fewer assignments worth points, and we should see performance remain at least level, if not improve. But it never feels that way (to me, at least). It always feels like we get trapped, and once you start giving points, you have to keep doing it.
• On the contrary, I actually think it's easier to start by *not* assuming things are graded. At the beginning of the year, students arrive eager to do well for the most part. That's when we can establish policies based on trust, on faith, and on mutual understanding (and the expectation that those three things will grow over the course of the year).

4) How effective are the use of points for students who are the least motivated and engaged? How might the use of points--the addition and subtraction throughout a student's day--affect those students' relationships with adults and their self-concept about whether school is "for" them?

• Imagine if your boss walked around and overtly deducted and attributed wages for individual tasks. It'd be demoralizing. Dehumanizing. It shows that you can't be trusted to "get the job done" on your own. Then, imagine you go look at your grades salaries posted on the wall in the back of the room...and you see that you're making the least. Would *you* be motivated by that? And even if they don't post grades salaries in the back of the room, your peers still talk about them. They still give out awards, and you and everyone knows that you're nowhere close to getting one of them.
• Maybe you're just at the wrong school job. So maybe you try another school. And imagine how terrible it must feel to see that they do the same thing. Makes you wonder what you're even going to work school for?

Grading for Equity: Reflection Questions (Ch 2)

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 2: A Brief History of Grading

Initial Reactions. It definitely feels like most teachers I run into these days are all pretty understanding of the ways that schools have been slow to change, despite society changing at a breakneck pace. Industrial Revolution, preparing factory workers, and so on. But as society changes, our schools should change to fit what society needs them to be.  Like, yes, they should be a reflection of the wants and needs of the hosting community. But this makes it seems like schools kind of...lag...behind society's demands, responding, but ultimately reactionary.

But I also think there is a ton of opportunity for them to be seen as "laboratories."To a certain extent, schools should be able to exist in a bubble that is at least partly independent of society. A sacred space where people (both children and adults) are invited, encouraged, and supported in really taking big risks, and trying out radical ideas and practices, in the name of fostering innovation, insight, and joy. In this way, schools can be the sector of society partly responsible for leading societal progress, instead of lagging behind.

On Dewey. This chapter really presented two theories of development for why schools in the U.S. developed in the way they did. Of course, there was the Industrial Revolution motivating a factory model of education. But he also talked about the role that John Dewey played in articulating a different vision. I won't say that Dewey was the only person at that time advancing a philosophy of education at the societal level, but he was the only one I know of that the white-supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchy would platform at that time.

Dewey's idea that schools were essentially places for young people to learn how to participate in democracy was noble in a way that the factory model wasn't. So people loved it. But creating a school system that reflects those values would not be idea for Industry (read, Capitalism and white supremacy). So Feldman talked about how leaders would present that noble vision superficially, use it to build support, but then still design a school that serviced Industry over all--a classic "bait-and-switch." And they're still doing that today.

Leaders love to say that "kids are the future," but you know what would happen if we actually, honestly, and vigorously supported making schools the true "incubators of democracy" that Dewey was envisioning? With true democracy flourishing, white supremacy, capitalism, the cisheteropatriacrchy, and all the other oppressive backbones of American society would would crumble...because it doesn't take much for the vast majority of people to see and feel that these institutions are terrible.

So in defense of itself, schools are throttled back. Resources are constrained. Visioning is only honored at the "top," where the sociopolitical leadership can ensure that the vision for what schools can be never far exceeds what our oppressors are comfortable with. Grades (and associated statistics), are the "economy" of schools, and by placing top-down pressures on how that economy functions, the leaders of industry and government (at all levels) have us by the throat.

Questions to Consider

1) How do schools in the first half of the twenty-first century--their design, their purpose, their student--compare to schools in the first half of the twentieth century?

• This is a pretty boring question, so I won't say too much? (Sorry, lol.) But the biggest thing I'm thinking of is how we are still weirdly reverent of what "industry" says what young people should be doing in school. While I kind of appreciate the spirit of "21st Century Skills," I think there are more important reasons than "the job market" for young people to learn how to be "problem solvers" and "communicators." I wonder if we surveyed all the *real* community leaders (not just capitalists), the organizers, revolutionaries...what would they say our young people need to learn?

2) How do you see the ideas and beliefs of the early twentieth century manifesting themselves through your school's communications, curriculum, instruction, policies, and grading?

• I am so very grateful that my school is working to be competency-based in their grading. I say "working to be" because it's still a pretty young school, trying to be innovative in a context that makes it tough. Our district has nowhere near enough capacity to give us everything we need to execute this vision of being "competency-based" to the extent that it deserves. And at the end of the year, we still have to submit something that looks like a traditional 0-100 grade, we still have to play the game of "credits" and "graduation requirements," all of which are mechanisms that make it hard for us to be truly radical.
• I'm still new to my school (this will be my 2nd year), so I can't speak too much about the school as a whole. But I can see a lot of ways that my own grading adheres to the oppressive factory model. Much of my grades are largely a function of student "productivity" and "compliance." There are a lot of abstract numerical ratings, and averages. Students put the work and participation they produce into some "black box" that is me, my assessment process, and my school/district's grading system, and out comes their payment in the form of a numerical grade.

Grading for Equity: Reflection Questions (Ch 1)

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 1: What Makes Grading so Difficult to Talk About?

Initial Reactions. I identified with Feldman's explanation of why grading is difficult to talk about. I've been privileged in my teaching experience, that my teacher training and mentor gave me a lot of important ideas and perspectives on teaching. I'm excited to learn more, for sure.

I currently teach at a school that uses "competency-based grades," though there are certainly caveats. Competency-based grading is still pretty unfamiliar to me, and I'm still trying to get the hang of it, and I think many teachers at my school would agree. Even as a whole school staff, we are still constantly trying to figure out what it even means. Moreover, of course we have to ultimately map our understanding of "grades" to the traditional A-F scale that our district requires of us. Which waters things down a bit.

One fear I have is my own tendency to identify some of what I'm already doing in the book, and then write off the whole book, like, "Oh, I already do that, I got it." This is 100% a combination of my own professional arrogance and insecurity, and something I need to constantly watch out for. (Feldman talks a little about this in the first chapter, which I appreciated.) Also, just because I'm lucky to work in a school that already does competency-based grading (which I assume/believe is generally "more equitable"), that doesn't mean that me and my school are done with the work.

Questions to Consider

1) What are some deep beliefs you have about teenagers? What motivates and demotivates them? Are they more concerned with learning or their grade?

• I believe that all teenagers just want to be successful, respected, and included. Grading connects to all those drives, especially the first. How teachers define grades, and how their family and community empower those definitions, is not a universal thing. So how we define our grades matters.
• I think grades are motivating to the extent that students believe they are actually within their own locus of control. If grades seem random, mysterious, and not correlated with their lived experiences, students may come to understand grades as arbitrary. If grades are arbitrary, why should I bend over backwards trying to change them?
• We have to *teach* people to care about grades. The first time a baby walks, we don't say, "That's A+ work right there!" But I think all people are born with a drive to discover, learn, and consume knowledge. Over the course of our education, do some of us learn to grades over learning? Absolutely. But it is certainly a most unnatural state.

2) What is your vision for grading? What do you wish grading could be fore students, particularly for the most vulnerable populations? What do you wish grading could be for you? In which ways do current grading practices meet those expectations, and in which ways do they not?

• The courses where I have felt the most respected as a learner, we weren't being graded at all, or as an afterthought at most. I had one class I took in the summer before my junior year of college. The whole grade for the course was based on our final paper. And at the end, when I was writing that paper, I didn't try to write it in such a way as to maximize my grade. I just wanted to write a really good paper, because I had done a lot of work that summer, and wanted to crystallize it in a meaningful, good way. I didn't think about grades at any point in that course, except when I got my final grade back at the end.
• I think we have a fixed amount of ourselves to dedicate to a course, and the more of that is filled with "worrying about grades", the less is filled with everything else (namely, learning). And the older I get, the more disrespected I feel by grades. If I walked into a grad class, and they were talking about % weights for exams vs. discussions vs. homework...sorry, but I already don't like that class. But when I was a younger student, I didn't really mind. I didn't mind because I understood that it was non-negotiable. I just figured out whatever I had to do, to do as well as I needed to (or could).
• This is all to say, I'm not totally convinced that grades are necessary, at least in the traditional sense. Heck, I'm not even sure they're necessary in the neo-traditional sense (I'm thinking "standards-based grading" or "competency-based grading"). I know there are communities of K12 educators that have basically done away with "grading." If I was constructing a totally new society, a totally new school, totally from scratch...I don't think I'd include "grades"? So from that perspective, I think my current vision for grading comes from a place of "trying to make the best of an already oppressive practice."
• (more in question 5)

3) What brings you do this book? What are your goals for reading it? How will the way you read it help or hinder you from realizing those goals?

• This book was on a short list of recommended books from my colleagues. A few colleagues and I are reading the book over the summer, and using to to drive a "personal learning community" for some portion of time in the coming school year. I chose this book for part of the reason I chose the school that I work at--I feel like there's something deeply oppressive about the traditional grading system. It feels like it's lurking at every corner, fueling so many of the issues we face in schools. And I feel like I have an understanding and analysis of grading that is far below proportional to the scope of the challenge.
• My goals are to read it, about a chapter at a time, reflecting at the conclusion of each chapter with a blog post like this. I will make annotations in the book surfacing questions, reactions, and ideas I have while reading it (yes, I'm the kind of reader that writes in books, lol).
• I hope first to understand better what I already "feel" about grading. I want to cohere the ways my grading is both values-based and research-based, and develop a better understanding of both. I also hope to bring that analysis back to my math team, in support of our goal of realizing and understanding competency-based grading.

4) It's helpful to have someone with whom you can discuss the ideas in this book. Who would be the right person or group to read this with you? How will you construct meaning from what you read, either alone or with others?

• That's where these blog posts come in. I'm hoping to use these reflection questions to drive my own construction of knowledge by writing about them. I'm also hoping to use my own practice as an immediate application of what I learn here. There is also some room for discussion in my math team (and school, more broadly, in the long-long-long-term).

5) For teachers (me!): Which of your grading practices do you believe best support learning? Why? Which of your grading practices are you most open to reconsidering? Why?

• In that context, what I would hope for is a grading system that helps students to better understand what it is they're learning, and how they're growing. Like, I imagine all the things we learn as developing an increasingly complicated network of understandings and dispositions. And maybe an effective "grading" system helps us to navigate and organize that network.
• I think 50% my current grading practices are mostly in support of learning. My school is largely competency-based, but while we figure out how best to realize that vision in the math department, the math team is largely standards-based. So we have a list of 30-40 "big ideas," and students are rated 5-9 based on their demonstrated understanding of the "big idea." We are trying to capture, in discrete bits, the content of an otherwise largely amorphous course (Algebra I, in my case). And by centering discussions of progress and performance around those "big ideas", we're hoping to create a helpful/simple system to navigate the network of "math knowledge" we're trying to get across in that class.
• The other 50% of my grading, what I call "practice," is much less grounded in...well, anything. I have found myself committing to a lot of "traditional" grading practices with that half. I try to err on the side of "lenient" with that half, curving down (never up), as a "well at least I'm not obviously doing harm" practice. But I also recognize that that's not great.

End of Quarter Make-up Assignments

Make-up work policy is one of those classic problems of practice in teaching. There is a TON of important thinking to do, and not a lot of straightforward, always-true directions to go in. But there has got to be some serious potential value to be gained from understanding how to do meaningful make-up work. I tried something new this year, and it had a solid positive impact, so I wanted to reflect on it here.

What I've done in the past

• I usually have a "no make-up work" policy. Instead, I leave assignments and grades open for a super long time, and if kids need to make something up, they can just do the assignment they were supposed to do in the first place.
• I like this because it's a pretty straightforward workflow for me. No need to make or grade extra work. I also value the way this policy doesn't create the opportunity for students to intentionally drop an assignment, in expectation of a make-up assignment (assumed to be 'easier').
• A down-side to this policy is that sometimes the make-up work doesn't translate well from how it was executed in class to how a student would make it up, after the fact. For example, when designing tasks, I try to aim for a challenge level above "what most students can do alone" but below "what most students could figure out with a group of peers." But more often than not, when a student is completing make-up work, they're doing so individually, and so challenge level is often mis-matched. Similarly, I'll often design tasks that reward student collaboration, which again limits what a student can do if they're making up work individually.

The new thing I tried this year

• I kept my normal make-up work policy. But I also added an "End of Quarter Make-up Assignment" at the end of Q3. Here is a copy of the assignment.
• At the end of third quarter, I was looking at my grades and saw that they were surprisingly low. In particular, I saw that there were many otherwise well-performing students who experienced sudden drops from Q1/Q2 to Q3. Given that we'd done a major school-wide schedule shift Q3, and that this year was a mess in general, I figured that many students may have just fumbled a few assignments. Inspired by a colleague, I made a "Q3 Make-up Assignment" for the spring break between Q3 and Q4.
• To make the assignment, I went through all ~10 assignments in Q3 (all individual Desmos activities), and picked out the four most important assignments. I then just pasted them together as one big assignment, one big Desmos activity. I emailed students individually (using a mail-merge), letting them know about the assignment, and the positive impact it could have on their grade. I contacted their folks, letting them know that the assignment was available, and how valuable it could be for their progress in the class.
• On the last day of Q3, before spring break, I presented it in class to the subgroup of students who were not passing the class, or close to not passing. I didn't want to present it to anyone who didn't "need" it, in an effort to minimize the negative effect that make-up work sometimes has (students may rather wait for the make-up assignment).
• The assignment was due the first day back after spring break. I generally don't assign work to be completed over break. However, given that this was an extra make-up assignment, I figured it was as actually a good a time, so students could get caught up without continuing to fall behind. I ended up letting the due date roll for about a month *after* the intended due date, anyways. That said, 90% of students who completed the make-up assignment completed it over spring break anyways. (Heck, almost 50% completed it within 48 hours of being assigned.)

Important ideas when planning for this

• This is not supposed to be a major intervention for students who are majorly not on track in the whole class. A one-off assignment, done independently over break, is not going to get that job done. However, there are often some students who just need a quick "tune-up." These are students who typically can complete work independently, but maybe didn't get a few important assignments done because of executive dysfunction, or just logistics. So let me make one big straightforward assignment that has them do all that work, but hopefully meaningfully reduces the executive demand.
• Don't make new work. At most, just copy-paste the biggest chunks of important assignments from that term. This is important, because the actual yield on this "intervention" isn't necessarily gonna be that high.
• Use a mail-merge to send customized emails to students identifying their current grade, and grade if they complete the make-up assignment. A lot of times, grades and make-up assignments can be overwhelming, and students can get discouraged, even if getting caught up is super doable. If students can unambiguously see the positive impact of this assignment on something that's important to them (their grade), it may be easier for them to get motivated.
• Contact families, letting them know that I have prepared this make-up assignment for their student, when it's due, and what impact it could have on their grade. Family contact is always a little more complicated, so modify as needed. But this definitely improved the traction this assignment got.
• This assignment is optional, technically. If completed, I'll go back and update grades to reflect the newly complete work. But if a student doesn't complete the assignment, their grade won't drop further.

Important questions I still have

• When designing this make-up assignment as I have, I am assuming that some students have low grades for reasons unrelated to the actual content. I'm assuming that some students simply need me to strip away as many non-content barriers (logistics, due dates, coming to class at the right time, managing multiple assignments) as possible. In this way, I am accommodating a need that many students have for a reduced demand for executive functioning.
• How can I prepare, launch, and support this make-up assignment in a way that actually builds student capacity for executive functioning? The way I did it this year was very much a "give someone a fish" kind of support, as opposed to a "teach them to fish" support. What do I need to understand about the work, and my students, to understand how much of this particular struggle is productive? 
• Idea: instead of me reaching out to families to let them know, as a way of almost strong-arming students into getting it done, find a way to get students to bring it up with their folks on their own, so the message is coming from them. In that way, the students are managing their own accountability to their families.
• Idea: have a simple way of customizing how the assignment is put together. It'd be great if kids could see the full menu of activities, look at their own grades, and then go up and pick the 3-4 tasks they need to work on over break. I can almost see it: students walk into class, look at their individual grade report, and highlight the 3-4 most important assignments. They then go to the front of the room where the tasks are laid out in straightforward packets of some kind, and they assemble their own packet of make-up work. I guess the ultimate goal for this is to make this always available...like, there's no reason this can only happen right before breaks, or even that everyone needs to do it at the same time.
• This assignment is a "middle of the road" intervention, targeted at students who are not passing simply because they haven't kept up with assignments. This is not a good fit for students who aren't passing because there are major chunks of learning that haven't yet happened.
• Question: what's the intervention for those students? I ask this almost rhetorically--I know there isn't typically a one-shot intervention that will help students in that situation, and instead it's more about having a strong big-picture system, with lots of different layers of support.
• Question: What's the fair/effective way to determine which kids fit this intervention?
• What about the students who aren't passing, want to do this assignment independently over break, but upon attempting it realize the assignment is out of the range of what they can complete independently? That's a discouraging feeling, with negligible payoff, so I'd just as soon a student not have to experience it.
• When compiling work to put into a the Q3 make-up assignment, here's the idea I was working from: "If a student can complete all four of these activities, and do well, they should pass the quarter." I only ended up doing this after Q3. But what if I had done it after every quarter? Then I would theoretically have four big make-up assignments, each roughly "worth" a quarter of work. If a student did *only* the quarterly make-up assignments, but did them well...how would I feel about them passing the class?
• Answer: I'd feel poorly about that. I'd be discouraged that a full-year course was distilled to ~16 tasks which could be completed independently and asynchronously. I'd feel like I'd gone all in on the "transactional" nature of a lot of modern high school education. You give me a certain amount of work, I trade that for a credit. You accumulate those credits, and trade them for a degree.

Big picture take away

• This last point is an important (read: HUGE) caveat here. And it helps me to understand what the role of this intervention is. It's not a magic fix-all (unsurprising). We can maximize the positive effects, and minimize the negative effects, by targeting it at the students whose situations match what this end-of-quarter make-up assignment is meant to help with. Understanding exactly who those students are, and how to run this intervention with them, requires me to have a deep understanding of what the intervention does (and doesn't do). It also requires to me to try and understand my students as much as possible, and what they need (and don't need).

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this big picture take away is actually not a terrible philosophy to have around interventions in general. Which is both discouraging and reassuring at the same time. At the very least, however, I am glad I tried this out this year, though I don't think this is going to be an "every quarter, every year" kind of thing. I can add this to my "teacher toolbox," in case I am faced with a similar context in the future.