Reply to Madison H.S. Parents - Principal Survey and Skills-Based Grading

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[quote=Anonymous]I just read an interesting critique of a teacher that tried to make SBG work for years while teaching in DC.
http://www.anurbanteacherseducation.com/2019/05/a-critique-of-standards-based-grading.html

This article is full of interesting ideas about education but here are a couple of interesting paragraphs:

"One of my biggest struggles was what to do with activities that seemed to be valuable for learning but didn't seem to connect with a standard, or activities that could fit five or six standards at the same time. Then there was the challenge of determining whether the assessments I gave actually assessed a standard. (Many professional developers in the world of SBG will spend hours with teachers "unpacking" a standard, claiming that most people don't really understand what's in the standard, as if reading what it says is not enough for your average teacher.) And then there were the mental acrobatics involved in finding a way to push all of those rubrics with circles on them into a single letter grade for students' transcripts."

[b]This is what I assume will be happening this year at Madison: § Consultants will be brought in to help design better assessments[/b]

"In my beginning years, I was a vocal advocate for SBG, assuming that many of my challenges would fade with more practice. Over time, however, I ran up against problems that I began to see as immovable walls. Three or four years ago, I stopped advocating for SBG. I began to understand that there are serious limitations to the practice, and I began to suspect that it needs a much clearer analysis than what most teachers have access to in schools where [b]administrators effectively function as SBG propagandists[/b]."

Later on he makes an argument for the following:
"Standards, as I see them, are best suited to serve as reference guides for professional educators who are entrusted to guide the learning of young people who they know and love."

He goes on to say:
 "And when we understand this, we understand that the way we employ standards and grades is a question of equity, in [b]that our grading practices either support all students in becoming their best selves or they don't."[/b]

I think there are currently many great educators at Madison. The administration should back off and let these teachers do what they always have and grade the way they want. A great idea would be to give experienced teachers that have been identified as highly effective a mentorship role for incoming teachers. This could be done by giving a new teacher one less class to teach so they could observe the "master teacher" for 1 period.

Why not copy what we know works. This is a way of improving instruction for all.

[/quote]

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