Repair Kit For Grading

Repair Kit For Grading. This post is the first part of a book review of Ken O’Connor‘s, “A Repair Kit For Grading, 15 Fixes for Broken Grades“. O’Connor identifies 15 different areas where he believes that grades are “broken”. He then gives strategies that would “fix” the problem.

Today I’ll be looking at the first 3 fixes.

Fix #1

Don’t include student behaviors in grades; include only achievement.

If you’ve taught for any length of time you can likely recall a student who received a lower grade because of their poor behavior. Let me jog your memory:

• You took off points because a student didn’t participate in class discussion.
• You took off points because a student was disruptive in class.

Grades are “broken” when we take off points for behavior. When we take off points for behavior we’re not giving an accurate measure of student achievement of a standard.

Factoring behavior into a grade distorts that grade and warps the measurement of their achievement to the targeted standard.

We should be measuring a student’s achievement of a given standard.  A student’s behavior is irrelevant to this measurement.

Behavior can be indicated separately from a grade. And, behavior should be dealt with separately from a student’s grade.

As an example, student X might receive an A in class as a grade but also receive a mark for citizenship, teamwork and interpersonal skills. And, possibly serve in an after school detention, etc.

Fix #2

Don’t reduce marks on work submitted late; provide support for the learner.

We want the students to do the work.  If they do the work on time or late and the work is up to our standards then we should give full credit.  We’re measuring student achievement and not timeliness.  Timeliness is a behavior issue and should be dealt with in a separate manner.

Students might be required to attend a remediation session after school that focuses on the standard that was covered in the late assignment.

Be sure to be extremely clear with students on deadlines.  Invite them into the process so that they have ownership of the process.

“The appropriate consequence for failing to complete an assignment is completing the assignment.  That is, students lose privileges, free time, and unstructured class or study hall time, and they are required to complete the assignment…” (Reeves, 2006, p. 122)

Fix #3

Don’t give points for extra credit or use bonus points; seek only evidence that more work has resulted in a higher level of achievement.

Bonus points distort the measurement of achievement to our standards.  And, bonus points frequently have nothing to do with the standard that is being taught.

How many times have we given extra points to a student for participating in a school “dress down” day? How often have we given extra points for attending a school function or bringing in classroom supplies?

These activities have nothing to do with our standards. When we add bonus points into a grade we’re raising a mark and indicating that a student has a higher grasp of our standard.

But they don’t!

Higher grades must come from a demonstration of a higher level of performance and understanding. Students must go above and beyond in regard to the standard in order to earn extra credit.

Wrap-up

It should be evident at this point that these “fixes” won’t work unless we rework a school’s system and gear it towards standards based teaching and grading.

This will become more and more obvious as we look at the remaining “fixes”.

The book review will continue in my next post.