Professional Learning Communities at Work®and High-Reliability Schools by Eaker Robert;Marzano Robert J.;

Author:Eaker, Robert;Marzano, Robert J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Solution Tree
Published: 2020-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 8.2: Gradebook example.

While there is no doubt it is important to hold students responsible for their behavior, there are many, many alternatives to conflating grades as a reflection of achievement and improvement with grading for punishment and misbehavior.

The other side of the same coin, however, is using grades as reward. If, ideally, grades reflect improvement and achievement, then we must be willing to question the time-honored practice of giving extra credit. For example, a phenomenon occurs every December 1 in many northern U.S. states: loads of extra-credit points are doled out to students when they provide their teachers with … boxes of tissues. If you’re a student of parents with a wholesale club membership—jackpot! So the message we end up sending to students is simple: “Come to the football game on Friday night, clean off the whiteboard, or bring in tissues and you don’t have to understand the periodic table or the causes of World War I. You’ll get extra credit and all will be OK.” To anyone even remotely familiar with the basic principles of PLCs, this is obviously a silly grading practice whose time has come and gone.

In The Learning Leader, Douglas Reeves (2006) states, “Simply put, letter grades do not reflect student achievement in an astounding number of cases.… When providing students with feedback … [it] must take place within boundaries of fairness, mathematical accuracy, and effectiveness” (p. 113). As an educator, if you don’t agree that grades should be fair, accurate, and effective, then we probably need to sit down for a longer conversation than what this chapter can accomplish. Ultimately, we must acknowledge that traditional grading and reporting practices do not reflect learning—our fundamental purpose—which in a PLC must be the basis of all decision making.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.