Perspectives on Grading

I'm constantly thinking about why and how I grade, and I believe these considerations have led me to make positive changes in my own classroom. Check out the latest issue of NEA Today and my column What's In An 'A'?

In addition, why do traditional grading practices still persist as the dominant paradigm?

Data, Now What?

Perusing testing data has been a common experience for many of us educators over the past five years.  It seems to get more intense every year.  But do these efforts seem to be leading towards significant changes in teaching and learning, student and teacher attitudes, and other important factors?  I'm not sure.  Check out these questions in my recent column from ASCD Express...how else can we collect and use data.  What other types of data and questions can, or should, we ask?

This Shouldn't Be Ingored.

In one of the best Education Week commentary pieces I've seen in a while, Cal-Berkeley professor Heinrich Mintrop has stated what is an elephant in the room--in general, schools that score highly on test scores don't do anything differently than schools that perform poorly during testing season.

A telling excerpt:

"Both high- and low-performing schools get stuck in a mode of school improvement that searches for the most direct connections among content, teaching, and testing. Students’ motivation for learning, as well as instructional quality, fade from view beyond the “rigorous” alignment and a “razor sharp” focus on material that needs to be re-taught."

Education "reform" and improvement efforts represents anything but reform and improvement until we start rethinking the purpose of school. I agree with Professor Mintrop: the importance of student engagement, intrinsic motivation, and innovation instructional approaches are all overlooked aspects of teaching and learning.