One of my students made an interesting comment to me last
week. They had taken their test on information from a diagram and naming things
such as lines, planes, rays, etc. Needless to say all of the classes did not do
so hot. It brought a lot of their grades an entire letter grade down. The test
wasn’t multiple-choice like the rest of their tests. Brad* asked why the test
wasn’t multiple-choice. “The ACT is multiple-choice and that’s what we are
trying to pass to get into college. In football if it’s going to rain at the
game we practice in the rain. That way we are prepared for the conditions.” He
has a great point! If the ACT is the multiple-choice test that gets them into
college why shouldn’t all tests be multiple-choice to give them the practice to
pass? My counter statement was, “how do I know you really understand the
material and didn’t plug in all the answers.” My goal for my students is to be
proficient in geometry. I have already had a student guess on a test and get
about a 50%. Now if I give a multiple-choice test I make sure to say show your
work or it doesn’t count.
My mentor teacher had a way of grading assessments that I
had never seen before but it made a lot of sense when I heard her explanation.
The only grades in our class are tests. We give the students a test on each
standard when we cover it. This allows us to pinpoint exactly what topic that
students didn’t understand. We also don’t grade on a 100% scale. During my
school career, teachers gave tests that had about 20 questions on them and if
you missed one you got 5 points off for every question you missed. I think it’s
kind of ridiculous that if you scored between 0-60 you failed and you had to
get in the small window of 90-100 to get an A. My mentor’s way of grading is
based on above proficient, proficient, basic, and below basic. There are
usually 9 questions on a test ranging in difficulty (3 easy, 3 medium, and 3
hard). If this was to be graded out of 100% and a student missed one question,
they would get an 89 so a B. I believe that tests should reflect a students’
mastery of a concept not how many questions can they do in the class period and
miss the least. By demonstrating they know the basic concepts (so easy questions)
they should get a passing grade, C. To get an A, students should demonstrate a
deeper knowledge or problem solving skills, aka solving harder problems.The math department also has made common assessments for Algebra I and Algebra II. Apparent,h last hear the math department threw the assessments together and none of them were good. The teachers didn't even use them last year so the main focus this year was to improve the assessments and use them. They have just collected data from their first test. I am not there for the departmental meetings because of a class conflict so I'm not familiar with what they talked about. The data is a great way for teachers to see how they compare to other teachers. Teachers can compared teaching techniques they used if their class dirk really well compared to another teachers class. I read an article during inservice last week that said teachers are more likely to change their teaching techniques because of common assessments!
These are some of my revelations I have been having on assessment. This has triggered my action research topic which is focused around standards-based grading. I’m not sure if I want to compare traditional grading (participation, homework, tests, projects, bell-ringers) VS standards based grading (just tests). Or just focus on my experience with standards based grading (something I’m not familiar with). Regardless I think both would change my views on assessments and grading so I’m excited to see the outcome!
*Names have been
changed
