Why am I doing this? Why do I care? The goal:
Give students more control over what they learn and how they demonstrate what they learn. Encourage them to take ownership. ENGAGE them!
Ever since transitioning to only grading summative assessments four years ago, it's been VERY test heavy. The spirit of the policy is supposed to be that a student's grade is representative of what they have learned in the course.
My fear is that the unintended message that we've sent is:
"It really doesn't matter what you've learned or how hard you try. The only way that you can demonstrate your learning is by solving these problems on this test on this day. (Unless you re-take it later. Even with re-takes, the same thing happens.) Regardless, the goal is not to learn math, but to accumulate the number of points needed to achieve your desired grade. You can play the 'tank and re-test' game. You can cheat as long as you don't get caught. If you're lucky enough to have 'a study guide that's just like the test,' just do that and not anything else. You can do very little most of the semester and then do massive re-takes at the end. Again, it doesn't matter what you've learned. As long as you have enough points, it's okay."
Jon Hasenbank's use of indicators kind of helped guide my thinking about how to use standards and learning targets. We've used learning targets (of course written in student friendly "I can" statements!) since I've been at my current school (I think I actually brought the template we use from my pre-service courses), but they've always seemed kind of shallow, merely a laundry list of skills. How my understanding has evolved is that the "I can" statements should not be the learning targets, but should be the indicators of meeting them. The actual learning targets should be the Common Core Standards, because those explain what we actually want students to know. Common Core calls for a combination of Procedural Fluency and Conceptual Understanding, so I thought it was important to separate the two, and then create "I can" statements that would indicate understanding of the standard. I included a sample document below.
Main Concern #1: How do I make sure the evidence I'm seeing is legitimate (not "fuzzy") and definitely attributed to the student?
It's amazing the variety of answers you get when you ask a question that requires a written response. Then, as a teacher, I'm left with the task of judging whether or not the group of words that the student decided to collect together and write on his paper is an acceptable response or not.
It's really not that simple though. Depending on the student's writing skills, the student might have the right thinking and understand what she's supposed to, but it gets lost in translation when she writes it on the paper. Not to say that communication isn't super important, (It is!) but now I'm grading a student on writing and not accurately representing her mathematical knowledge with her grade. Responses might suggest that I didn't word the question well, which is difficult to figure out if the question hasn't been used on an assessment yet. Or, I could just train the students in advance to give the answer that I want and turn it into a useless memorization and regurgitation exercise. The goal is to see what a student is thinking, but I worry that judging it for a grade undermines that goal.
Therein lies the first major concern. Students' own evidence submissions could be either useless or total garbage. One submission clearly shows that the student didn't care about learning much from the assignment; they just tried to get it done and accumulate points. Another student spent ten hours on their submission, but the submission doesn't indicate any understanding or might have a lot of correct stuff on, but completely misses the point. Now we're both very frustrated, if not angry with each other. Practice and feedback will probably improve this issue, but I don't want to inflict frustration on students (or myself!) that isn't particularly helpful. We all already have enough stress to deal with. The "How do you know what/how much/if/to what level your students have learned?" question is crucial here. The problem is, it's difficult to get myself and students on the same page with what the answer to that question looks like.
An obvious worry of attributing evidence to the student is plagiarism. It could be very difficult to detect given the vast amount of videos out there. Busting a student in the act could be a very time-consuming and possibly fruitless venture. Also, the prevalence of Google and algebra manipulation tools give plenty of opportunities for students to mis-represent their understanding and avoid putting much thought and effort into their submission.
I think the metacognitive memoir format does well to address many of these concerns (although not necessarily the plagiarism), in forcing the student to articulate their thinking. For topics that are more symbolic in nature, I require students to communicate clear connections between class activities, previous knowledge and topics, etc., so that even if Google or Wolfram Alpha finds its way into the students' work, there still has to be some degree of understanding visible.
It's non-negotiable that the procedural fluency indicators need to be done in front of me. The conceptual understanding is where I feel I could give students more flexibility. But, I still think I would like to see students do some deeper conceptual assessment items in class, too. I also wonder if I need to have more specific rubrics for communication and articulating connections with observable behaviors indicative of the different levels.
Dealing with this concern effectively is huge, as it is unfair to future teachers (and the students, too!) if they just get passed along without learning what they were supposed to.
Main Concern #2: Is the format/layout, etc. understandable for students?
So I'm a kid who struggles a lot with my executive functioning and "student skills" in general, not to mention that I read below grade level. The point of learning targets, objectives, whatever, is to clearly communicate a goal and/or help students focus on what they should be doing.
I think it could work, as long as I consistently used the document explicitly and showed students where we were in reference to the document. I might also have them mark dates on the document. Perhaps there are also ways to link the document to students' notes (if they primarily use Notability for note-taking), or they could make a table of contents and number the pages in their physical notebook. I would also need to support students in self-assessment, which is very difficult. (I don't think I've practiced this with them enough.)
The beauty is that ideally, students working on the same task might be working on different learning targets or indicators at the same time, but this would concern a lot of people, especially those who have a very linear view of math education. I'm not sure how to deal with that.
Main Concern #3: How do I deal with the logistics in place in a traditional grading system?
The biggest areas here are weekly athletic eligibility and a student knowing how they are doing.
I think the best solution here is to set a time limit until a student's current level gets locked in (still with opportunity to re-submit/provide more evidence.) Probably the most reasonable would be about two weeks past when assessment would be expected. The problem with this is that could be 4-5 weeks before a student who isn't performing has an actual consequence to deal with. This isn't necessarily the biggest problem with honors students, but in a regular class this could be a f-ing disaster. "You don't technically have an F right now, but you would have an F, and you'll have an F when I put the score in next Friday" doesn't seem to incite action as "You have an F right now" does. (However, you could make the case that "You have an F right now" has other equally or more damaging effects.)
I also wonder what an efficient way of parent communication of student progress would look like. Ideally, the student would be the best vehicle for this, but that's not always feasible. Maybe a portfolio or learning log kind of thing would be best, but it needs to be something that will engage students and be genuinely beneficial, not just a task I have to do because the teacher said so.
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So, that's my working description of my system. It will likely change, and I'm not sure to what extent I'll get to use it in my co-taught classes and courses I teach with other teachers (which leaves two classes). I still plan on using the rubric in the same ways I have been and cross-referencing between levels and percentages the same way.
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