Sept 2, 2011 Grading, first thoughts

Overall

I am still pleased with this sytem. The summative tests taken today in honors chemistry match up well with the data gathered so far from formative assessments.  In one case, a student didn’t do as well as the formative assessment suggested he/she should and thus has a case to argue for a retake of that section.  As a mastery-based system, I feel compelled to allow retests, particularly if the formatives support that decision.  I think I will do the retake in sections according to the substandards instead of having the student retake the entire test.  The test was divided that way to begin with.  I still need to come up with a better way to arrange my grade book.  It is difficult to track a student’s progress on a particular piece of a standard when it is all jumbled together by date.  Even in the online grade book, while it is chunked by standard, the sub-standards are all mixed together.  In my paper grade book, I think I will mark off sections for each sub-standard and if I don’t use all column, I will mark them out later.  I need to organize based on sub-standards as well as standards.  It's all about the patterns.  

Tests

Honors chemistry took the first test today.  It had multiple parts.  The first part was regular old pencil and paper.  I chunked it into the sub-standards, so all of the questions pertaining to 1.a were together and all the questions pertaining to 1.b were together and so on.  The number of questions varied.  There were 6 questions for a, 12 questions for b, 5 questions for c and 2 questions for d.  It proved very difficult to come up with equal numbers of questions.  Also, it was difficult to categorize the notes.  So many of my standards are math concepts, configurations, dot structures and the like.  It is providing difficult to categorize vocabulary.  It would seem I will have to add that standard in next year.  I originally had a standard specifically mentioning mastery of pertinent vocabulary but took it out last minute. 

The second part of the test is a considerably more applications based assessment.  It will be given its own score.  It contains tasks that require the student to apply his or her knowledge of the standard instead of simply answering a black and white question.  (Ex: 1.b required students to design an experiment, 1.c asked students to draw a line of 2.54x10¹¹nm in length with a metric ruler)

Grading the Test

Since the first part was a multiple choice test, the answers were either right or wrong.  Before I began grading the test, I decided what score would equal a 5, a 4, and so on.  This kept me from being biased towards students.  Each section was scored independently resulting in four different scores for this part of the test.  I recorded them all separately in my grade book but only the average of the 4 scores will be recorded in the online system as the summative grade for standard 1. 

I intend to create a rubric to grade the second assessment since it is less concrete than the first.  It should make assigning scores easier. 

Communication

 I am concerned about parent understanding of this system.  I explained the system in detail at Parent Night and also sent home a detailed parent letter to be signed and returned.  If it was not returned, I emailed the parents personally explaining the system.  However, it would seem that there is still quite a bit of confusion.  I think the system will be clearer to students after this first test is completed but I still worry about the interpretation from home.  I hope the folks who have difficulty understanding the grading system will email or call me.  Parents are the backbone of the whole education system and without their support, typically my success is hamstrung as well.  So I hope this system will spawn more communication between teacher and parent.  At Parent Night, those parents that were there expressed a great liking towards this new approach to grading and I am hopeful that most parents will agree.  I think, overall, this system will clarify student progress in the course.  It allows me to show quite distinctly though numberical data, which by virtue of being data is unbiased, how a child is doing in the course and what kind of progress he or she is making.