Changing the Gradebook

Before our Spring term started in January, I was thinking a lot about how I can see if students are improving on concepts. The tests we administer were already assessing spiraled material. But, the way I graded, there was never a way for me to really tell if a student was improving in an earlier concept. Or rather, I didn't have a way to remember if they were!

Yes - I know what you are thinking .... Standard Based, duh! I've always agreed with the idea, but have been overwhelmed with seeing the implementation (I'm the type that really has to have it all mapped out before I execute). In my earlier years of teaching, I did Grading for Learning, but didn't feel it went too well. Anyways, back to this Fall....

Talking out my thoughts with 2 colleagues (thanks Jackie and Megan), we were able to come up with something that wouldn't be too overwhelming to implement. Our tests category in our grade book would now be broken into Chapters. Each test we gave would now be broken by chapter. So, for example, on the Chapter 4 test, there would be sections for Chapter 1-3. Each would have a new entry in that chapter in the grade book. The goal: see if there was improvement as time went on.

The quarter ended last week. I finally was able to finish up my grades, analyze effectiveness, and have the time to write this up. Thoughts:

1. When it came to conferences with students, this was great because I was easily able to tell them what area they needed to work on.
2. It was a little extra work to reorganize assessments, and record multiple scores for each assessment.
3. Students grades improved!!!!

The last reason is the best! I kept a second grade book for 1 of my classes that was my "old" way. When I finalized grades, I compared final percentages and letter grades. In my class of 36 students, I had 1 student who did worse (went from 91.1 to 89%). I'm not exactly sure why this happened. A third (12) of the students final grade improved. Of those 12 students, half of them increased by moving into the next grade (i.e. D+ to a C-), the other half increased within that grade (i.e. B- to B). I see this as successful!

What makes it worth it:
1. A student that improved from an F to a C-
2. A senior, who took 3 tries to pass Integrated Math 1, passed my Math 2 course (first half) on the first attempt! With this new way, he went from an F to a D.

Final thoughts: this wasn't perfect. It was a good step into concept mastery and encouraging to see that it helped students be more successful. As we start the next semester, I've decided to disrupt the status quo and dive even deeper into Standards Based Grading. I'm not sure how it's going to go and I'm certain I'll be driving myself crazy along the way. But I've been wanting to take this step, so now is as good as ever!