Grading Guidance for Progress in Distance Learning - Year 2021 (CA Dept of Education)

Grading Guidance for Progress in Distance Learning - Year 2021 (CA Dept of Education)

State Superintendent Thurmond Announces New Grading Guidance for Student Progress in Distance Learning

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced today the release of guidelines that address grading student progress and the ongoing issue of equity in distance and hybrid learning environments. Resources that support local control are included in the new guidance, allowing schools to make the best decisions for their respective student populations.

“As the majority of California’s public schools continue to respond to distance learning needs, we should reflect on how student progress is measured and consider how to shift to more equitable grading systems and policies, whether the instructional setting is in-person, virtual, or hybrid,” Thurmond said. “This is an opportunity to make a significant change.”

The new guidance includes research-based approaches to grading that may be especially helpful if students are not in class and access to technology and learning supports may be unequal. These include replacing grading quantities, such as the extent to which students have completed assignments, with grading qualities in student work that reflect students’ current achievement level at the time, and using flexibility in timing the collection of evidence for grading decisions so students are graded on the learning they do, not when they do it.

Resources for Making Local Decisions Regarding Grading Student Progress is located on the CDE Support tab on the CDE Distance Learning web page under “Grading and Graduation.” Contact the CDE Curriculum Frameworks and Instructional Resource Division at CFIRD@cde.ca.gov with any questions regarding the grading guidance and resources.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Grading Guidance for Progress in Distance Learning - Year 2021 (CA Dept of Education)

CURMUDGUCATION: Selling Roboscoring: How's That Going, Anyway?

CURMUDGUCATION: Selling Roboscoring: How's That Going, Anyway?

Selling Roboscoring: How's That Going, Anyway?

The quest continues--how to best market the notion of having student essays scored by software instead of actual humans. It's a big, bold dream, a dream of world in which test manufacturers don't have to hire pesky, expensive meat widgets and the fuzzy unscientific world of writing can be reduced to hard numbers--numbers that we know are objective and true because, hey, they came form a computer. The problem, as I have noted many times elsewhere, is that after all these years, the software doesn't actually work. 

But the dream doesn't die. Here's a paper from Mark D. Shermis (University of Houston--Clear Lake) and Susan Lottridge (AIR) presented at a National Council of Measurement in Education in Toronto, courtesy of AIR Assessment (one more company that deals in robo-scoring). The paper is two years old, but it's worth a look because it shows the reasoning (or lack thereof) used by the folks who just can't let go of the robograding dream. 

"Communicating to the Public About Machine Scoring: What Works, What Doesn't" is all about managing the PR when you implement roboscoring. Let's take a look.

Warming Up

First, let's lay out the objections that people raise, categorized by a 2003 paper as humanistic, defensive and construct.

The humanistic objection stipulates that writing is a unique human skill and cannot be evaluated CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Selling Roboscoring: How's That Going, Anyway?

Another F – Tennessee Education Report

Another F – Tennessee Education Report

ANOTHER F

The Education Law Center recently published its annual analysis of school funding in the states. Once again, Tennessee received a grade of “F” in both funding level and funding effort. I could actually write this exact same story every single year. Tennessee doesn’t adequately fund our schools. The bipartisan group TACIR – Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations – says the state is $1.7 billion behind where we need to be in funding for schools.

We also fail at funding effort – that is, we have significant untapped revenue and high dollar amounts held in reserve while our schools lack the critical resources they need to be successful.

Meanwhile, so-called education advocates like SCORE run around touting the latest new thing (this year, it’s a literacy scheme) instead of using their considerable clout and fundraising ability to push for meaningful investment in schools. Of course, the leadership over at SCORE is not hurting for cash based on their salaries.

Here’s the Education Law Center’s state-by-state breakdown on school funding: CONTINUE READING: Another F – Tennessee Education Report

Teacher Tom: Getting Straight A's

Teacher Tom: Getting Straight A's

Getting Straight A's

Over the New Year's break, I spent a few days reorganizing our laundry room/storage closet. Among the items in there were boxes of keepsakes, which is why it was a multiple-day project: I found myself considering each item, remembering, and telling myself and my family the stories they evoked. Among the memorabilia I found my very first report card from Meadowfield Elementary School. It was a document that Miss McCutcheon had filled in by hand. I'd received straight A's. 

I'd been proud of that accomplishment, although considering it from the vantage point of some four decades later, the feeling is much more complicated. For instance, as an eight-year-old I'd capably done the calculation, figuring that what Miss McCutcheon was telling me with these high marks was that I was the smartest kid in the class. I knew enough to not voice this aloud, but I thought it. Also, in looking back, I know that those grades also indicate that I must have been a "teacher's pet," which is to say an obedient goody-two-shoes.

I don't recall comparing report cards with any of my classmates. For all I know, Miss McCutcheon gave everyone CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Getting Straight A's

NYC Educator: Today in PTA (Pass Them All)

NYC Educator: Today in PTA (Pass Them All)

Today in PTA (Pass Them All)

Yesterday, I got a prescient comment from SC Math Teacher, and I'll repost it here. The first part is a quote from me, but he comes to an inescapable conclusion directly afterward:

“The last I heard, the DOE was holding individual teachers responsible this year for NX students. That means that next semester we could be burdened with not only our regular caseload, but also following up on students who didn't pass.”

This sounds like an incentive — an awful one, but an incentive nonetheless— for teachers to just pass everyone so the DOE can boast about fantastic graduation rates.

It's true. There are two possible interpretations here, and that's one of them. The other is that de Blasio and Carranza have decided to cut down on expenses, via not paying people to examine their "NX" grades. After all, why pay people to work when you can get them to do it for free? This is exactly the sort of thing we'd have expected from Bloomberg.

Currently, in my building, there are all sorts of per session gigs looking after previous NX grades. So teachers looking for extra hours can sift through work these kids may or may not do, make calls to which they may or may not respond, and try to get as many kids as possible pass these courses. I'm happy for the teachers who make CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Today in PTA (Pass Them All)

Going Back to School? Now What? | The Merrow Report

Going Back to School? Now What? | The Merrow Report

Going Back to School? Now What?

Because I’ve reached the age and stage where memories blend, fade away, or are exaggerated beyond recognition, I cannot recall whether the insight, “If my students aren’t learning, then I am not teaching,” was uttered by a veteran colleague from my 4-year teaching stint, whether it came from one of the thousands of teachers I interviewed over 41 years of reporting, or whether I read it somewhere.  I know I didn’t come up with it.  But it really doesn’t matter.  What matters is that, even though many other factors–such as health, nutrition, inadequate shelter, and abuse–can and do interfere with learning, good teachers always take it personally when their students aren’t succeeding.

That’s why it’s truly depressing to read that, in some school districts, about half of the students are receiving failing grades.  The reliable Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post is on the story.   

Here are a few site-specific stories you might want to peruse:  Maryland. Iowa City, Iowa.  Tucson, Arizona.  Houston, Texas.  Northern California. 

When the pandemic struck this spring, most school districts shifted to on-line schooling, and grading became ‘pass/fail.’  That approach to grading has been abandoned, even though on-line learning is ubiquitous, because, as Ed Week’s Stephen Sawchuck noted,  

“…as the crisis continued and school began in the fall, most districts reverted to their old CONTINUE READING: Going Back to School? Now What? | The Merrow Report

I'm Not Sure I Want My Students To Succeed | Blue Cereal Education

I'm Not Sure I Want My Students To Succeed | Blue Cereal Education

I'm Not Sure I Want My Students To Succeed

I’m not sure I want my students to succeed.

How’s that for an attention-grabber? Now I'll skillfully jump back and lay the foundation for such an outrageous claim and hope it’s enough to keep you reading until we reach it again further on.

Four-Point Scale or Back Hoe?

The question of how to grade, what to grade, or even IF to grade isn’t exactly new in the world of public education. Sometimes it’s set by building or district policy (although enforcement is problematic at best). Other times it’s at least discussed within departments. By and large, however, it’s something no two teachers seem to do quite the same.

Many of the differences are cosmetic. Categories or total points? Are quizzes worth 10% or are they worth way more points than daily work and the math ends up with pretty much the same results? Other differences are philosophical. Completion or accuracy? Effort or quality? Improvement or achievement?

Things quickly get messy. If I grade entirely on objective standards, the kid who rarely shows up and never participates but has a great memory might pull a solid ‘B’ in my CONTINUE READING: I'm Not Sure I Want My Students To Succeed | Blue Cereal Education

Grades Tarnish Teaching as well as Learning – radical eyes for equity

Grades Tarnish Teaching as well as Learning – radical eyes for equity

Grades Tarnish Teaching as well as Learning

Recently on social media, a professor asked if others used rubrics with graduate students. Since rejecting rubrics has been a central component of my career-long efforts to de-grade and de-test teaching and learning, I chimed in.

My posts in the comments explaining why I don’t use rubrics were significant outliers because the thread of comments was overwhelmingly endorsing rubrics, almost entirely in terms of making grading easier or more transparent as well as providing teachers/professors protection against (hypothetical) students challenging their grades.

One immediate response to my comments is also worth highlighting since a person who doesn’t know me made fairly nasty assumptions about me being like the professors they had in grad school, the “gotcha” professors who use grades to ambush and punish students.

While most of my public (see here and here, for example) and scholarly work rejecting the use of rubrics—especially when teaching writing—has focused on their negative impact, along with grades, on students and learning (see this example), the recent social media thread highlights that grades also tarnish CONTINUE READING: Grades Tarnish Teaching as well as Learning – radical eyes for equity

More students got F’s in first term of school year - The Washington Post

More students got F’s in first term of school year - The Washington Post

More students than ever got F’s in first term of 2020-21 school year — but are A-F grades fair in a pandemic?

Students’ grades for the first period of the 2020-21 academic year are being recorded and we are seeing stories from around the country about an unprecedented rise in F’s.

Is anybody surprised?

Millions of kids are living through the most disruptive school year of their lives because of the coronavirus pandemic. They are forced to learn at home online or wear masks in classrooms without the benefit of their usual social, sports and artistic outlets. Anxiety among students is exploding, as is depression and loneliness and trauma, according to health officials and students themselves.

To be sure, many adults are having a hard time staying focused on their work amid the health and political chaos of 2020, so why would anybody expect young people to be any better?

And is it fair to give kids regular A-F grades when nothing has been regular about the way they are living and learning since March, and won’t be for some time?

Last spring, when the coronavirus pandemic began and schools across the United States closed and reverted to remote learning — literally overnight — many districts decided to halt giving A-F grades and institute some form of a pass-fail system.

School and district officials said then that giving A-F grades wouldn’t be fair because of the inadequacy of remote learning at the time and because many students did not have sufficient technology and/or Internet access and/or a quiet, safe place to learn at home and/or no resources to help with their school work. Before the pandemic, millions of children attended poorly funded schools and lived in poverty, but the pandemic exacerbated the inequities.

When the 2020-21 academic year began this fall, A-F grading systems returned even though many students were still learning from home. Now there are news stories from across the country about a CONTINUE READING: More students got F’s in first term of school year - The Washington Post

Failing grades surge for poor L.A. students amid COVID-19 - Los Angeles Times

Failing grades surge for poor L.A. students amid COVID-19 - Los Angeles Times

Ds and Fs surge, attendance slips among L.A.'s poorest students amid distance learning

Grades of D and F have increased in the Los Angeles Unified School District among middle and high school students in a troubling sign of the toll that distance learning — and the coronavirus crisis — is taking on the children, especially those who are members of low-income families.

The district released a chart Monday indicating that based on 10-week interim assessments, failing grades are increasing across the board, but are surging the most in lower-income communities. Compounding the disturbing trend, students in these same communities, hard hit by the spread of COVID-19, have the lowest attendance.

“The attendance figures and interim assessments don’t reflect the desire or capability of students,” said L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner in remarks recorded for broadcast Monday. “They’re eager to learn and every bit as capable as they were before school facilities closed. But the struggle to cope with COVID-19 and online learning for children and their families is very real.”

The data on grades made another announcement all the more painful, even though school board leaders foreshadowed it last week: Campuses will not reopen for most students before January, the superintendent said. And even that timing could prove doubtful, Beutner said, unless the coronavirus pandemic subsides and unless the state and local agencies offer more guidance and resources.

In the meantime, the district is expanding attempts to reach more students in person, providing instruction for groups of up to three students at a time. All participants, including teachers, will have to take a coronavirus test, even if they’ve had one recently. This gradual growth of in-person services is expected to reach several thousand of the district’s 460,000 K-12 students.

The district also will be speeding up the in-person assessment of students with special needs and will allow sports teams to begin conditioning work — outside with physical distancing and no team drills.

The next two months need to be spent in an all-out effort to get ready for a hoped-for January opening, Beutner said in an interview with The Times and in his broadcast remarks. As part of that effort, Beutner said that L.A. Unified is part of a coalition of seven California school districts calling for “a common standard of health, education and employee practices so schools have a clear path to open in the safest way.”

Some state legislators expressed overlapping concerns in a legislative hearing last week, directing their comments to the governor’s office and state agencies, including CONTINUE READING: Failing grades surge for poor L.A. students amid COVID-19 - Los Angeles Times

NYC Educator: When Carranza Says PTA, He Means "Pass Them All"

NYC Educator: When Carranza Says PTA, He Means "Pass Them All"

When Carranza Says PTA, He Means "Pass Them All"

Our friends at the DOE have done it again. They've unilaterally issued a grading policy, and haven't bothered to consult with those of us who actually do the work. Of course they know better than we do what goes on in classrooms. After all, we spend all of our time teaching, and what do we know about sitting around in offices and generating reports that no one wants to read? That's why they're in charge and we aren't.

One recent innovation, aside from the grading policy, was telling parents if you don't opt your kids in now, you can't do it at all. To Bill de Blasio, parents have had enough time to make up their minds whether or not they want their children in school. Evidently, conditions are going to stay the same November through June and there is no possibility whatsoever of anything changing. And he knows that for sure because he's taller than any of us. Or perhaps there's some other reason, but it makes just as much sense as the last one.

Never mind that he made an agreement with the state. The thirty-dollar-an-hour lawyers over at "legal" have told him the state doesn't matter, and that should be good enough for anyone. After all, why should they be bothered reading agreements when they can just say Any Damn Thing, and please not only principals, but also the mayor?

And then there's the agreement itself, which brings back the NX rating. I have mixed feelings about that. I don't think anyone should suffer as a result of the pandemic, but I have students who actually deserve to fail. We ask students to show themselves, and most do. Some don't. Sometimes they have camera issues. Sometimes I don't CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: When Carranza Says PTA, He Means "Pass Them All"

NYC Educator: UFT Executive Board October 26, 2020---DOE Unilaterally Issues Grading Policy

NYC Educator: UFT Executive Board October 26, 2020---DOE Unilaterally Issues Grading Policy

UFT Executive Board October 26, 2020---DOE Unilaterally Issues Grading Policy

Roll Call--5:50

Minutes--approved

UFT President Michael Mulgrew--City put out a grading policy. Not discussed with us. Should've come up with something more flexible. We will look at it and decide what to do. DOE hasn't done much work because it's very similar to last year's.

There are supposed to be four opt in periods for parents. We wanted parents to see how things were going. While in schools we have procedures, but they unilaterally announced people had to make decisions right now. Doesn't follow what's in state plan, and may lead to a fight. Newark just went into complete lockdown. Country had largest 7 day average ever. Not smart to force a choice now. Will be conversations. 

Operational side--complaints are moving and being resolved. Still have issues with superintendents unfamiliar with concept of work. Grievance dept. getting involved. DRs are pushing. Some districts have no issues, but others have many. 

Election will take up a lot of energy, hopefully for no longer than two weeks. Our retirees and volunteers are working very hard. We understand what everyone's facing so we're CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: UFT Executive Board October 26, 2020---DOE Unilaterally Issues Grading Policy

When Algorithms Give Real Students Imaginary Grades (Meredith Broussard) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

When Algorithms Give Real Students Imaginary Grades (Meredith Broussard) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

When Algorithms Give Real Students Imaginary Grades (Meredith Broussard)

“Meredith Broussard (@merbroussard) is a data journalism professor at New York University and the author of “Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.” She is working on a book about race and technology.” This op-ed piece appeared in the New York Times on September 9, 2020.

Isabel Castañeda’s first words were in Spanish. She spends every summer with relatives in Mexico. She speaks Spanish with her family at home. When her school, Westminster High in Colorado, closed for the pandemic in March, her Spanish literature class had just finished analyzing an entire novel in translation, Albert Camus’s “The Plague.”She got a 5 out of 5 on her Advanced Placement Spanish exam last year, following two straight years of A+ grades in Spanish class.

And yet, she failed her International Baccalaureate Spanish exam this year.

When she got her final results, Ms. Castañeda was shocked. “Everybody believed that I was going to score very high,” she told me. “Then, the scores came back and I didn’t even score a passing grade. I scored well below passing.”

How did this happen? An algorithm assigned a grade to Ms. Castañeda and 160,000 other students. The International Baccalaureate — a global program that awards a prestigious diploma to students in addition to the one they receive from their high schools — canceled its usual in-person final exams because of the pandemic. Instead, it used an algorithm to “predict” students’ grades, based on CONTINUE READING: When Algorithms Give Real Students Imaginary Grades (Meredith Broussard) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice