High School Grading Practices: Hope or Failure?

Are you committed to improving student learning in your high school? One of the first steps should involve leading your staff to examine and change traditional grading practices.

For high schools to become student-centered schools with cultures of hope for students, we must ensure that grades students earn are reflective of their learning. Several steps can be taken to ensure that your school's grading practices provide hope for students to succeed.

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1. Have teachers examine their electronic grade books and indicate if each grade entered is reflective of student learning or compliance. Examples of compliance or behavior grades are extra credit points, points for bringing boxes of kleenex, homework graded for completion, participation points, and any other grades given not directly tied to student diagnostic, formative or summative assessment.

In addition, examine building and district behavior policies that affect student performance by not allowing full credit for work missed for truancy, in-school or out-of-school suspension.  We cannot ask teachers to improve grading practices if we as administrators still support policies that penalize learning for behavior choices.

2. Engage teachers in professional development regarding eliminating zeroes as a grading practice.  A number of educational leaders, including Richard Stiggins, detail the extreme adverse effect of zeroes on students' grades, leading to a loss of hope.

In building a culture of hope that focuses on improving student learning, eliminating zeroes as a grading practice is imperative.  We all have dealt with those students who because of ineffective grading practices and zeroes fail a quarter, semester or year early in the term with little or no recourse to pass the course.  A loss of hope and student disengagement from the learning process ensues.

3. Teachers should work in grade level, same-subject, or vertical teams to develop common assessments, teach benchmarks or learning targets in the same scope and sequence, and engage in student learning data analysis.  This ensures common, best grading practices rather than individual teacher decisions leading to reliable and valid learning data.

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4. Provide professional development for staff on successful intervention strategies.  Rick Wormeli's Fair Isn't Always Equal is an excellent resource.  Same-subject or vertical collaborative teams should develop common intervention strategies to intervene for any or all students who have not learned the curriculum's benchmarks or learning targets.

Systemic intervention by the school should stem from a collaboratively-developed pyramid of intervention.  The entire school community should be committed to enhancing student learning.  If a student becomes increasingly academically unsuccessful, the student moves up the pyramid.

Individual teachers and teaching teams should develop and implement common intervention strategies for re-takes and re-dos to allow students multiple learning opportunities.  As Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker stated, we should create schools where learning is the constant instead of time.

Students then earn grades that are indicative of learning through multiple trials and varied assessments.

5. Monitor student grades frequently.  We examined all student grades in our high school every 4.5 weeks and analyzed them by individual students, individual teachers, same-subject teams, and grade level. Students failing more than one class were immediately referred to their guidance counselor and the School Success Team process. Trends in individual teacher or subject data led to collaboration with our staff and further data analysis.

Teachers notified guidance of students who needed extra time and support for learning and gave these students Gold Cards that mandated intervention.  Guidance counselors met by each Gold Card student alphabetically and reviewed with them opportunities available for them to receive intervention.  Students then completed their Gold Card by having teachers who provided academic support sign their card and returned it to the teacher who assigned the card.

Students who received Gold Cards also lost student privileges, including late arrival, early release, coming and going during exam week, and/or driving and parking privileges until their grades improved. Parents, students, and staff understood that we were a school committed to ensuring student learning.

Engaging in purposeful, mindful grading practices can transform your high school into a school of hope for students.

Sources:

DuFour, R and Eaker, R (1988). Professional learning communities at work.  Bloomington, IN:National Educational Service.

Stiggins, Richard (2004). Classroom assessment for student learning: Doing it right, Using it well. Portland, OR: Assessment Training Institute.

Wormeli, Rick (2006) Fair isn't always equal. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Time's Up to transform your school

The #timesup movement has been in the news recently relating to the treatment of women to stress the urgency of change needed in our society. As a longtime female high school administrator and the mother of a daughter and grandmother of a sweet little girl, I understand the importance of this important movement.

But I also believe, as educational leaders, we need to have an acute sense of urgency in the transformation of our schools, and that time’s up for this work.

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Educational research has long purported that it takes 3-5 years to transform elementary schools, 5-7 years to transform middle schools and 8-10 years to transform high schools.

The reason this research theory becomes a barrier is that many principals feel overwhelmed by the enormity and longevity of the work rather than taking immediate steps to initiate change.  It is a daunting task to initiate and sustain school transformation, but it can be done.

Those of us who have chosen school administration as our careers and, more importantly, love our students dearly know that our students’ lives depend on the transformation of schools.

As a high school administrator, In 8-10 years, we would have had hundreds and perhaps thousands of students pass through our buildings, many not college and career ready.  We must get better every day in every classroom in every high school. And we must start now.

As instructional leaders of our schools, we face many challenges of which it seems we have no control. State-mandated graduation tests, growing mental health challenges of students, the anxiety of school shootings, accountability on multiple levels, decreasing student engagement, budget constraints, and union contracts are just some of those challenges.

But we do have a number of areas that we can control in our buildings and on which we can collaborate with our students, parents, and staff to make timely and in some cases, immediate positive impact for our students.

To do so, we must recognize the sense of urgency for our students.  Many of our high school students attend classes in schools where learning data has been stagnant or nearly stagnant for a number of years. 

The same doors that were closed to students any number of years ago are still closed.  Moreover, although the high school graduation rate nationally is improving, minority groups such as those of blacks and Latinos are still lagging significantly behind.  According to the Washington Post, the national graduation rate in 2016 was 84% overall, a record high.  For black students, the rate was 76% and for Hispanics, 79%.

That means that the same barriers for students in life still exist today as they did for many of their parents and why we must increase student learning in our schools now.  Why? Because our students’ lives depend on it.

Students who do not graduate from high school can no longer obtain the low-level entry jobs of the past.  Many of those jobs are or will soon be automated.

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Students who do graduate from high school but who are not career and college ready will also likely be unsuccessful in life. A high school diploma that is not reflective of student learning is not going to do today’s graduate much good. 

And so, we must enact specific changes to increase learning in every high school in order to positively impact student learning and therefore, student lives.

Transformational change of our high schools cannot be a choice, it is a requirement of being an instructional leader.  We based the transformative change of our high school based on the Professional Learning  Community (PLC) research from the work of Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker, but also incorporated other researchers who put student learning at the forefront of their research. 

These areas are the ones on which we focused in our school improvement work and the ones that brought about the greatest improvement of our student learning data.

1.     Curriculum: Has you aligned your curriculum to your state’s mandated graduation tests? Are your teachers teaching it?  How do you know?  Providing collaboration time for your teachers to determine and teach standards and benchmarks in the same scope and sequence and to develop common assessments, common intervention and common enrichment will assure ALL students are learning the intended curriculum.

2.     Grades: Are you leading grading practice research and implementation with your staff? Is an A an A in every class? Are your grades reflective of learning or behavior? Do your teachers allow redos and retakes? Have you led discussions on effective homework with your staff?  Do your teachers still give zeroes? Grading practices of your staff truly do affect student learning and determine whether your school is a school of hope or failure.

3.     Assessment: What is the quality of assessments that your teachers give?  Are they reliable and valid? Do they model the types of questions that students will see on state-mandated tests and on the ACT/SAT? Do your teachers utilize diagnostic, formative and summative assessments?  Do they adjust and make instructional decisions based on data? Do you routinely and systemically monitor student learning based on your classroom assessments? Do you “put the faces” on your data, as Richard Stiggins encourages, and know the name of every student who is unsuccessful and provide intervention for them systemically?

4.     Master Schedule: Is your master schedule based on the needs of the adults in the building or on student learning data? Does it provide collaboration time for staff and intervention time for students? Are your best teachers with all students or with only your “best” students? Do you make teaching decisions based on student data and success or on what teachers want to teach? Are there unnecessary sacred cows in your master schedule based on adult habits and entitlement of years of experience that are barriers to establishing a master schedule that supports student learning?

5.     Instruction: Are you and your staff committed to improving instruction every day? Do your teachers provide specific and ongoing formative feedback each day during class to students? Do they incorporate strategies to determine whether student learning has occurred during class and then adjust their instruction? Do your teachers include student choice and voice in their instructional strategies? Do your teachers evaluate the effectiveness of their instruction based on student learning data? Do teachers engage in a variety of best instructional practices in order to ensure learning?

6.     Intervention: Do teachers plan for intervention as part of the instructional planning and implementation process? Do they collaborate with same-subject team members on effective intervention based on student assessment data? Do they allow redos and retakes? Is time or learning the constant in each classroom? Do you have teacher intervention, teacher team intervention and systemic building intervention based on a pyramid of intervention? Have you instituted student privileges for those students who achieve established levels in academics, behavior and attendance?

7.     Data: Do your teachers, teacher-teams and administrative team regularly analyze student learning data? Do you analyze student data at least every 4.5 weeks by grade level, individual student names, individual teacher names, and same-subject teacher teams? Is every staff member committed to setting SMART goals in order to improve student learning? Do you have specific building SMART goals to improve student learning? Is your classroom and building data transparent?

8.     Learning culture and climate: Do the students in your building receive messages of hope and encouragement for their learning? Do they know that you are a building focused on learning? Are they involved in monitoring and ensuring their own learning? Do your staff members understand that the purpose of teaching is learning and work to monitor and ensure student learning? Do you collaborate with your parents and inform them of all of the building work on ensuring student learning? Are they active participants in the learning process? Do you align all of your building practices, meetings, and goals to student learning?

To be a transformative leader, you must be a learning leader and a leader of learners.  If you commit to learning about learning, you can lead transformational change. We did, and became a National Model PLC at Work School and a National Blue Ribbon School. In doing so, not only was our school transformed, but so were our students’ lives.

You too can do this work—time’s up.

Sources:

Balingit, Mariah. (2017, Dec. 4). U.S high school graduation rates rise to new high. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2017/12/04/u-s-high-school-graduation-rates-rise-to-new-high/

DuFour, Richard & Fullan, Michael. (2013). Cultures Built to Last: Systemic PLCs at Work. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Hattie, John. (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers. New York, NY: Routledge.

Marzano, Robert. (2007). The Art and Science of Teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Ensuring Your High School Reaches All Students

One of the greatest challenges of being a high school principal is cultivating, developing, and implementing a way to help struggling students.  And not just some of them, all of them.

First, you must collaborate with your staff, parents and students to cultivate a culture of learning.  Everyone must understand that you are on a journey to become a school of learning, a school of hope for 100% of your students.

In order to do this your schools must have a clear focus on learning rather than on teaching.  In many high schools, students are either lucky or unlucky.  They are lucky if they have a teacher committed to ensuring learning-- one that aligns assessments to standards, benchmarks or learning targets, provides specific and prescriptive feedback to students, supports students in tracking their own progress in the learning process, and understands that learning, rather than time, is the constant, thereby encouraging and insisting on re-dos, re-takes and additional learning opportunities for students.

But many high school students are unlucky.  They have a teacher who is more focused on teaching than on learning, one that “covers” content without assessment alignment to standards, benchmarks, or learning targets.  Students often only receive feedback in the form of grades or comments on summative assessments, rather than diagnostic or formative assessments that focus on learning.  Once a grade is assigned to an assignment, the unlucky student has little or no opportunity to improve his/her own learning, often leaving the student with a low or failing grade early in a quarter, with little or no hope for improvement.

Much educational research supports the need for developing an intervention or academic support process for struggling students, including Professional Learning Community research developed by Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker.  The central question for schools to answer becomes this one: How do we respond when students do not learn? And students do not learn every day in our schools.

The fundamental purpose of schools is learning, not teaching. -- Richard DuFour

As a National Blue Ribbon School and a National Model PLC School at Work, we found that as our intervention process provided learning support for students, our students and school’s learning data greatly improved.  As our focus on learning and instructional and grading practices improved, the need for intervention lessened.

Want to provide intervention or academic coaching for your struggling students?

1.     Work to create a culture of learning where the message to students is that, as Jonathon Saphier reminds us in On Common Ground: This is important work.  You can do it.  I won’t give up on you..   (DuFour, Eaker, DuFour, 2005, P. 87). Work to become a school of hope for each of your students. Every student counts or nobody counts.

2.     Regularly monitor student grades and identify every student with a D or F.  Monitor your students’ grades by grade level, by student name, by individual teacher’s name, and by same-subject teams or course subjects to better understand the big picture of your school data. Collaborate with your staff and administrative team to develop an action plan to respond.

3.     Ensure that your grades are reflective of learning.  Lead teachers in professional development to determine if the grades students earn are indicative of learning or behavior.  It is impossible to determine what students are truly in need of additional time and support for learning if grades given by teachers include behavior or compliance grades.  Do your teachers still grade homework for completion? Why? Do your teachers still give zeroes for work not completed? Why? Does your discipline policy negate student grades as part of the consequence? Why?  Be a learning leader who leads important grading discussions and initiate change with your staff.

4.     Respond and act on your school D and F data.  Monitoring grades and/or school data are of no consequence if actions are not taken. If a student is not learning the standards, benchmarks and learning targets then that is a learning emergency.  Students who have an academic history of not learning become your most at-risk students.  Develop a pyramid of intervention for all students to receive the opportunity for support in your building.

5.     Academic support and intervention should be by supported and enacted by individual teachers, same-subject teams, and a systemic whole-school response.

6.     Develop your master schedule based on your school learning data to provide intervention to students during the school day. Providing time for collaboration for teachers to discuss and implement intervention strategies is key.  Providing time in a student’s schedule to get extra help and support is crucial.  Your RTI process and intervention process should include time within the school day for support.  We provided a math, English, social studies and science teacher every period so that students could access intervention support. 

7.     Intervention by invitation does not work, Develop a mandatory intervention process for students. Our teachers identified students every 4.5 weeks who needed extra help and support and issued a “Gold” card.  Issuing Gold Cards was voluntary for staff, with some staff members providing the intervention themselves and some choosing to give students Gold Cards. We trusted our staff to identify students who truly needed help. Students needed to get eight signatures on their Gold Card, starting with the teacher who assigned the card.  The second signature was the student’s guidance counselor, followed by the signature of the teachers who provided the extra help and support to the student.

8.     Students turned the completed card back to the teacher who assigned it.  If a student chose to not engage in extra help and support, the teacher could let an administrator know who would meet individually with that student to determine a course of action for that student.

Photo courtesy freedigitalphotos.com

One of the most difficult steps for high schools is creating time for intervention.  At our ideal implementation time for intervention, our teachers taught five periods in a seven-period day.  We removed all other duties for teachers except for providing academic support for students, those with Gold Cards and those who just needed academic help.  This schedule enabled teachers to establish office hours to meet with students that we posted on large laminated charts all over our building in addition to the academic content labs each period.

However, due to district budget constraints, we lost our ability to provide content labs each period. At one point we also ran an adjusted bell schedule one day per week during this time.  This schedule was not ideal but certainly provided academic support time.  By shortening periods that day, we made a Gold Period and students with Gold Cards saw teachers for help and support.  Students without Gold Cards went to various privilege areas, with seniors receiving the most privilege choices.  We utilized classified staff and administrators to supervise students.

Another time to create time for intervention is to look at student privileges and remove those times in favor of academic help and support.  For example, if your seniors have early release or late arrival, only those students who earned all A’s, B’s and C’s kept those privileges.  If a student’s grade dropped, that time became academic intervention until the grade improved.  

In conclusion, providing extra time and support for struggling students is essential to the central mission of schools: a focus on learning.  Every school has barriers to providing intervention time for students, but it is also a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with your administrative team, your staff, your district, and your students to overcome these barriers.  Our students were some of our best leaders in identifying what we needed to change in our practices to enable each student to learn better.

American education is at a crossroads, and it is up to us to change student lives through ensuring that every student learns at the highest possible level. There is no more important work in schools today than to infuse our schools with hope with a culture of learning. . After all, isn’t that the fundamental purpose of teaching?

Sources:

DuFour, R and Eaker, R (1988). Professional learning communities at work.  Bloomington, IN:National Educational Service.

DuFour, R., Eaker, R, and DuFour, R. (Eds.). (2005). On common ground. Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service.