Coming Soon, in a Gradebook near You...

As I went through high school, there were many variables in the composition of my teachers' gradebooks. Some teachers had hundreds and thousands of points possible; other had just dozens of points possible. Some teachers curved their tests, and others did not. Some teachers accepted late work, and others did not. The variables were seemingly endless. Extra credit was possible in some classes, but not others. Some teachers graded work that was simply complete; others chose not to collect assignments whatsoever and simply used our test scores to compose our final class grades. Starting a new high school class was as much about understanding the "game" I had to play to earn my "A" as it was about learning the new content. Sometimes, the game may have even been more important than actually knowing the new material.

When I began college, however, this changed. First, I had to know the material. Second, the game was relatively similar in each class. In short, my college professors graded what I knew on three to five tests and a final. Many of them threw in an essay or substituted a test and assigned an essay instead. However, for the most part, it was pretty cut and dry: I had less than ten opportunities to demonstrate my understanding of the new material. 

Looking back, this astounds me. My high school was large, but not so large that gradebooks should have been structured so inconsistently. My college, the University of Northern Iowa, had 12,000 students and nearly 200 professors, excluding the adjunct professors that just taught a course or two. However, they managed to find a way to construct gradebooks consistently. Importantly, that construction required me to know the new material I was being taught.

In the past year, I have had many conversations with students, parents, and teachers about some "new developments" in our gradebooks. Some changes to teacher gradebooks may be more like my college format; other changes were quite different. For instance, we have begun to allow students to "reassess" or retest on skills they did not initially understand. Some people like this; others do not. Similarly, we have begun allowing students to turn in late work. This, some said, was not teaching our students the trait of responsibility. Some gradebooks have taken on a completely different look because they were constructed to be "goal-based gradebooks." These gradebooks do not even have assignments in them. Instead, they have a series of skills that are being taught and assessed in the course. However, importantly, these gradebooks have shown what a student knows and is able to do. This is can be really helpful, if students know how to read them. Unfortunately, this was frequently not the case.

When I began working with our teachers to address the need for consistency, I pushed them to use a goal-based gradebook. This is what I had used in the final five years I had taught English, and I favored the system because I had a clear understanding of what my students knew and what they were able to do. This revolutionized the way I constructed my lessons. However, what I did not realize about pushing an entire school to adopt a goal-based format is the many variables the goal-based gradebooks would take on. My effort to fix an inconsistent system resulted in even more inconsistency. Now we had traditional gradebooks and goal-based gradebooks being used, both with their own brand of inconsistency.

To solve this problem, our staff has been working to decide what gradebook philosophies we can agree on. I wanted teachers to be able to use the traditional gradebook structure they were comfortable with, or the new goal-based approach many of them had worked to implement. In the end, we were able to settle on four core philosophies:

1. At St. Francis Borgia, our grades are based on summative marks that measure achievement instead of work. 

2. At St. Francis Borgia, we allow students committed to their learning to reassess for full credit. 

3. At St. Francis Borgia, we place zeroes in the gradebook for incomplete work; however, we accept and grade this work for full credit when received.

4. At St. Francis Borgia, we are a rubric school and believe in data-driven instruction.

In the coming days, I plan to blog again about each of these four philosophies. I want students and parents to know why each of these statements are important to our school. What they mean to me is when our graduates are walking across the stage to receive their diplomas, I will know they have the knowledge and skills necessary for us to guarantee success in college. Modifying our gradebooks to consistently adhere to these core philosophies will not be easy. We will need multiple years for each teacher to comfortably modify some of their gradebook practices, but I am confident our future graduates will benefit in unimaginable ways.

For now, know that our newest graduates, even those in the Class of 2015, will benefit from teachers who have thought very thoroughly about the gradebook construction they use, and I am confident students are already demonstrating learning they otherwise may not have realized had this exploration of grading never taken place.