SBG Express: Details

The basic idea of standards-based grading is simple: Grade students on their understanding of specific learning goals. It's the details of that implementation that are devilish. In honor of the "publish, then filter" idea, writing this post is my way of working through (and hopefully solidifying) those details.

What standards?

I've started making a list of standards. I keep oscillating between thinking, "These standards are way too specific!" to "These standards are way too broad!" I'm taking that as a sign that they're about where I want them. This is a list in progress. As of this typing the standards cover the first several mini-units of 9th grade Integrated Science. I'm open to any insights, questions, or comments you have concerning the standards. If you missed the subtle hyperlink earlier, CLICK HERE TO VIEW STANDARDS!

Grading

When the rubber hits the road, I need a specific way to calculate a student's letter grade at any point in time. Figuring this part out is spending more mental energy than anything else. An incorrect implementation might make SBG no better than old-fashioned grades by cumulative points- and in face could be worse. I'd like to avoid that.

  1. Each standard is worth 10 points.
    • Points translate directly to % and grades, so 9.5 = 95% = A
  2. The overall grade is calculated by averaging student scores on all the standards that have been assessed.
    • Some SBG'ers don't like the averaging method since some poorly understood standards might be covered up by a few well understood standards. Conjunctive scoring would get around this (Jason Buell gives a nice overview of conjunctive scoring here), but I worry that conjunctive scoring is a bit too "out there" for administrators, teachers, or students to get behind, and furthermore I'm not sure PowerSchool (our student information system) can handle it. I've put conjunctive scoring on the "possible future enhancements" list.
  3. Students may re-assess on any standard on any day.
    • Limits:
      • 1 standard per day, per student (the Cornally Corollary)
      • Students must know what standard they want to re-assess
      • Students can get help from me or re-assess, but not both on the same day (the Nowak Limit)
  4. Mid-terms and finals are summative
    • Meaning these grades can't change with reassessment. Total value of both combined is 20% of the overall course.
  5. I'll be using the SBGradebook along with PowerSchool to record & report student progress.
    • I'm not going to lie, I'm a little worried about how much time it'll take to enter grades in twice. However, the SBGradebook looks like such an exercise in graphy-awesomeness I couldn't not use it. Plus, it should help students track their own progress more effectively.

I'm pretty sure if you've written about SBG in the past 12 months you'll see something of your system here. Hopefully you view it as flattery and not me biting your awesome ideas.

I'm pretty sure writing this post helped me more than it will help any reader. I needed to hash out several competing ideas I had floating around my head. As always, if you see something glaringly obvious that will sink this SBG ship, let me know.

Science = Curiosity + Skepticism

Okay, so there is more to science than just curiosity & skepticism- but if my young students leave my class with that understanding, I'd be a happy human.

I've been grappling for awhile now with how to introduce my 14-15 year old freshmen to what it means to be a scientist. Science is too often presented in our schools as static: Here are the facts; this is the way the world works.

Our state standards push us towards teaching science as sets of information. Even the "inquiry" standards provide a fairly rigid framework for what it means to "do" science1. This is a gross misrepresentation of what it's actually like to be a scientist2.

In all reality, the official science schooling students receive is 12-16 years of scientific background knowledge that they might be able to use later. Background knowledge is important. It forms the framework for new investigations and observations. However, I've heard several research scientists note the hardest thing for them once they started their own investigations was switching from focusing on that which is known to that which isn't. Interesting and exciting scientific research happens on the border between the known and the unknown3.

I can remember a couple events from my childhood that helped foster my current insatiable curiosity for the world around me:

  • Cross-country skiing. There were literally miles of open fields behind my childhood home. I would go out skiing for several hours- out to the creek, the river, the field of tall grasses, and small forested areas- often causing my mother to worry I'd fallen into the river or been picked up by the police for trespassing. I can remember following animal tracks, sitting still listening to the snow-muffled sounds surrounding a small creek, and the shock when I encountered others out in what I considered "my wilderness." Above all, I learned how to observe.
  • Playing with fire. I was a first class pyro back in the day4. When I found some rare time alone at home I often took to burning things in the garage or shed. I was fascinated by how different materials burn in often weird and amazing ways. Did you know burning plastic drips from a milk jug make an amazing whistling sound as they fall? Or that a burning charcoal briquette is nearly impossible to stomp out? Amazingly, I never burned myself or cause serious property damage in my investigations. Looking back, I can see that what I was doing were essentially scientific investigations. They'd start with, "I wonder..." and conclude with an experiment (or quickly trying to hide what I'd been doing as my parent's car pulled in the driveway. "Smoke? I don't smell smoke!").

Michael Doyle does an amazing job on his blog communicating what's important in science education: "A few children chasing butterflies, mucking in the pond mud, and otherwise doing their best to confound our educational system." I'm giving a more investigative learning environment a go this semester. I'm not saying we equip every freshman with skis or hand them each of box of matches, but we need to do more than simply get through the standards. I was lucky to have a supportive home environment for exploration and learning (other than playing with fire, that wasn't supported much). Not all students have those opportunities at home. We can't expect a schooling system where students have to learn to be curious and investigative outside of school to be successful. We need to build it into the system.

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Image credit: Myself. That's Mom & Dad skiing in the Huron National Forest near East Tawas, MI

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  1. i.e. CS 9.0 INQ3: Formulate a testable hypothesis and demonstrate logical connections between the scientific concepts guiding the hypothesis and the design of the experiment.     []
  2. If you are a scientist, I'd love to hear your agreement or disagreement with this statement.     []
  3. I can't remember exactly where I heard these platitudes from research scientists, though I'm pretty sure it was a podcast: most likely Science Friday, Quirks and Quarks, or RadioLab. They're all good. Check them out.     []
  4. Sorry, Mom. Not that you didn't know about this already. I never did burn down the shed.     []

On programming and standards, part 2

[The title of this post is losing its relevance, since I probably won't do much more than refer to programming, but if you read Part 1 hopefully it'll make a little more sense.]

As I argued in part 1 of this series, I believe that explicit standards actually prevent the type of learning most educators say they'd like to see in the classroom. Standards make educators think they have to explicitly cover that topic. What results might be a more uniform coverage of content, but it also lends itself to teacher-focused instruction, and a lack of overall creativity and risk-taking by teachers1.

Chris Lehmann has been known to describe standardized tests as the "coin of the [US educational] realm," and as such they shouldn't simply be ignored. If they're how our school system has decided to measure success, we can't just pretend the standards they cover don't exist (as much as I'd love to do just that). How then should our schools create standards?

Currently each state generates its own standards and all schools in the state are expected to follow the standards. Many big education-policy people in favor of national standards. I'm not. The more I think about this, the more I'm certain we should be heading away from state and national standards and more towards flexible standards set by every district and ideally every school. Locally created standards can be more responsive to the needs of the students. They can be more easily changed, rearranged, improved, and fit to local issues. Deborah Meier has long argued for similar arrangements- and indeed most of my thoughts in this area come from reading her thoughts2.

Instead of mandatory standards, states could generate general guidelines for each subject. For example, they might suggest students should study climate change, the evolution of the universe, plate tectonics, etc. before graduating from high school. Individual schools could then decide how and when to teach those concepts- or perhaps decide to ignore them in favor of something they see as being more important.

The current cycle of state standards then standardized testing is unlikely to change quickly, and it may seem silly to spend time thinking about it, especially since I have no voice in the world of education policy. However, the more discussions and more awareness that exists for these issues, the more likely it becomes that those who have the ability to influence education policy start considering alternative viewpoints. I also believe it's wise for all of us to consider what effect policies have upon the educational system, to suggest alternatives, and have lively debates about the future of education.

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  1. There's some research that suggests this. Liu and Szabo in their article, "Teachers’ attitudes toward technology integration in schools: A four-year study" (2009), note that educators feel pressure to prepare for state standardized tests and so were adverse to taking risks with using technology in the classroom (that was so not APA style).  []
  2. For a great article on Deborah Meier's views on standards, check out this article written for the Boston Review. []

On programming and standards, part 1

There's a lively discussion going on over at Ben Grey's joint related to whether programming should be something students are required to encounter during their time at school. This discussion started at the Constructing Modern Knowledge Summer Institute (CMK09)- which I was lucky enough to attend. Several speakers at the conference stated that programming is something that all students should do. I tend to disagree with this1 , but for me it quickly raised a larger question.

This larger question came up during discussion with participants at CMK09 when discussing our views on mandating students experience some programming in the classroom. There is no doubt that programming can help students learn many valuable things (see Alec & ColleenK's comments, for example) and that including it as part of a school's regular curriculum isn't outlandish. However, many of the valuable aspects (collaboration, authentic engagement with math, creativity, usefulness in real life, etc.) might also be gained from students taking a woodworking class.  Why should programming be mandatory when woodworking isn't? This then led to: How do schools decide which subjects are necessary and which aren't?

This question almost seemed silly to me at first. "Schools teach classes that meet the state standards, duh."

Wait. a. minute. The more I thought about this the deeper down the rabbit hole I went:

"How are state standards determined? What is their view of the purpose of education? How does that purpose affect the standards that are chosen?"

And then: "What purpose do the standards themselves serve? How does having predetermined standards affect the education of our students?"

Your local state board of education would probably say that standards are used to make sure that every student in the state gets the same quality of education. I'd argue that standards do more to prevent real learning from occurring- especially experiences that might help students learn to become better learners.

During both my junior and senior years in college, I was required to do research on a topic that interested me in geomorphology and structural geology. This was not supposed to be the type of research where you read a bunch of articles and report back what the articles say. I was supposed to generate new knowledge, not simply reorganize old knowledge.  I actively struggled with this. In my experience as a student thus far, I had been expected to show that I knew what the standards said I should know. Brian Silverman at CMK09 noted that he marveled at the attitude of his professors toward their research. The professors got excited when their experimentation told them that what they thought was happening was wrong. It meant there was something new to learn that hadn't been discovered as of yet.

State standards make learning a checklist. In my experience as a student, I was good at figuring out how to check items off that list. However, I was a bad scientist (and a bad learner). I was uncomfortable when asked questions that might not have neat and tidy answers. I had yet to learn how to be a true learner.

How can we mesh standards with helping students become life-long learners? Can standards be made flexible enough for students to be able to engage in activities that might take them (and their teachers) down unforeseen and unpredictable paths? I don't have the answers here. I just know that standards-based assessments in areas like science, programming, or wordworking won't create students who think like scientists, programmers, or master woodworkers. Students who are instead given a challenging task (i.e., discover what food ants like best, program a kitty door to snap a picture everytime it is opened, or build a chest of drawers) and the support to help them figure things out as they go seem much more likely to have a love of learning- all the while gaining knowledge in the content area.

[UPDATE: Read Part 2 of this post]

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  1. I'll save my comments specifically on this topic for Ben Grey's post since the conversation's well established over there []