Accurate, Ethical, & Equitable Assessment and Grading: Building Capacity for Cultural Shift

Accurate, Ethical, & Equitable Assessment and Grading: Principles, Myth-Busting, Practicalities, and Building Capacity for Cultural Shift with Rick Wormeli

Accurate, ethical, and equitable teaching is a nice idea, but what happens when it comes to assessing and grading students? Being sensitive to different readiness levels, interests, and learning challenges while holding students accountable for the same standards and navigating local country grading requirements can be a challenge. What's fair and leads to real student learning? In part 1 of our cohort experience, we take a candid look at the principles and practices of modern assessment and grading that create powerful student achievement and self-efficacy. Specifically, we’ll do a deep dive into what grades mean, standards and becoming evidentiary, alternative assessments, avoiding conflation and inflation, formative vs. summative assessments and how they are - or are not - graded, averaging or not, disaggregation, transparency of test items and rubric design, zeroes on the 100-point scale turned into minimum F’s, marking homework, handling late work, setting up the gradebook, descriptive feedback techniques, re-learning/re-assessing policies, using or not using extra credit, marking group projects, grading students identified as needing special education services, student agency (voice and choice), how to minimize cheating and plagiarizing, and much more. We’ll present the “why” as well as the, “how,” in grading, all while maintaining actionable diligence regarding equity concerns, modern teaching, and considerations for teachers working with students applying to universities and colleges. Affirming to some, radical to others, these elements are all dedicated to busting current myths about grading, removing barriers to real learning, and facilitating achievement and agency for all students. Since assessment and grading practices imbue practically everything else we do in the classroom, this portion of our cohort experience can be truly transforming.

Just as importantly, however, is facilitating our faculty’s journey toward these practices. Assessment can be a “gotcha" enterprise if we’re not careful, so how do we frame it as growth and building capacity for forward movement and provide teachers the tools for implementation? Part 2 of our cohort experience will included candid and practical discussions of how we reconcile our own grading and equity pedagogy with that of our faculty, if they differ, and clear tips and insights on how to help colleagues and ourselves implement these practices.  We’ll look at specific advice on reflective coaching for grading, extended and robust professional development experiences that help “move the needle,” creating grading philosophy statements, conducting six critical conversations to set plans in motion, how to work with skeptics, how to help teachers get past strong egos and accept new initiatives, and how to help teachers identify ethical principles so they can gather their own solutions as grading challenges occur. Based on work with NASSP, EARCOS, NESA, ASCD affiliates, and in hundreds of school systems in the U.S. and around the world, this compelling segment of the cohort experience provides dozens of practical, leadership strategies to help teachers embrace this shift in thinking, practice, and policy, even among the initially hesitant. And the final product of our efforts? A living document with a workable professional development and experience plan for moving school culture toward accurate, ethical, and equitable assessment and grading practices.

During our year together, we will engage with one another in three ways, all virtually: synchronous instruction, asynchronous instruction, and personalized coaching sessions for each team. We will include specific content, readings, discussions, reflection/processing, handouts, video clips, and practice. Each team will be expected to create a revisable document of assessment and grading guidelines for their school, as well as a plan for professional development on modern assessment and grading for their faculty.