Grading & Assessment

When you use tests, quizzes, projects, homework, and participation as grade-book indicators, you are unable to clearly see a student’s strengths and weaknesses.

There are so many different philosophies when it comes to grading and I’m not going to debate the merits of each today. Suffice it to say that for most, grades rarely have any true meaning. And for me, therein lies the problem. Proficiency-based grading can give grades the meaning they deserve.

If you know anything about standards-based grading, you know it's all about demonstrating what you can DO with what you know. It's definitely NOT about the path you took to get there.

Many people have been asking about my participation system over the last few weeks. It's been a while since I wrote about my ¡Págame! system and a lot has changed since then.

I have really given even more thought to what do grades really mean? Are they an indicator of work given vs work completed? Are they an indicator of correct answers vs incorrect answers? Are they just a number on a scale of 0 to 100? Or do they—or more accurately—should they mean something more?

Having presented for hundreds of people and dozens of school districts, there's nothing that seems to get people riled up more than the concept of the minimum F.