November 8, 2007
Classroom Policy Questions
Examining the issues of test retakes and late assignments
By: Douglas Reeves
Adapted from The Leadership and Learning Center (www.leadandlearn.com)
We ALL agree that student responsibility and citizenship is a good idea. Kids SHOULD have appropriate consequences for failure to do homework, complete projects, and doing badly on tests. The only question is how BEST to encourage responsibility and citizenship, and what the appropriate consequences should be.
This is very important-we are not starting with the perspective of “I’m right and the teachers are wrong.” We’re starting with the perspective that you, your staff, and I all love kids, care about them, and want them to grow up with a good sense of responsibility and citizenship.
Now that we are starting from common ground, let’s ask some questions:
1. Are our present practices leading students to improve their rates of homework completion and classroom success? If so, then let’s just check the data: What was the percentage of failures five years ago? Three years ago? Last year? If our strategies are effective, I would expect that the failures–particularly failures due to the failure to complete homework–are declining significantly. But that’s not, in fact, what I see around the country. The typical grading practices–zeroes for missing work, refusing to take late work, refusing to allow students to resubmit work, use of the average–are not providing improved performance. In fact, teachers complain to me all the time that students are not completing work, that they are disengaged and non-responsive. In other words, if our goal is improved citizenship and responsibility, what we are doing now apparently is not working very well.
2. What alternatives have we tried? In almost every school, I find wide variation in teacher grading practices. There are some teachers who, quietly and almost anonymously, have been experimenting with different practices. Before you consider anything I have to say, conduct a “treasure hunt” by analyzing those classes where failure rates have declined and achievement has improved. Look in different departments around the district where success is high (e.g., drivers education, music, computer programming). What do those areas have in common that we can learn from? One thing that I know is true in all three is that when you make a mistake, it doesn’t lead to failure, but rather to listening to teacher feedback, respecting teacher feedback, improving performance, and ultimately passing the assessment.
3. What will be our criteria for decision? Can we at least agree that even if people are skeptical, we’ll let the evidence be our guide? I’ve worked in very remote parts of Africa where people did not believe that vaccinations were effective. They didn’t want to see my studies or hear a lecture on Western medicine. But they were willing to look at children who lived or avoided horrible life-long disabilities because they didn’t get polio (it’s still rampant in parts of the developing world). The evidence, not my beliefs or their beliefs, ultimately allowed for more vaccinations. So in our schools, can we agree that even if we’re not sure, we’ll at least try some experiments, and then let the evidence decide? I think that teachers are smart–they care about kids and love them. But they are skeptical because they don’t like to see another “hot idea” come and go. So, let’s take our time and try it out, but let’s also have the intellectual integrity to let the evidence and not personal feelings, decide.
4. Can we agree on some fundamental boundaries? Even if we disagree on policy, can we agree on values such as fairness? Can we agree that grading practices should not be based upon subjective appraisals that can be influenced by gender, race, economic status, or parent activism? Can we agree that the central purpose of feedback, including grades, is the improvement of student achievement?
5. What’s in it for the teachers? Can we agree that if we can improve policies that will reduce our failure rate, that we would have happier, more engaged, and better-behaved students? Can we agree that if we have fewer students repeating grades and courses, we’ll have fewer angry and bored students?
6. What’s in it for the school and community? Can we agree that if we have fewer students repeating math and English, that ultimately we’ll have more opportunities for art, music, technology, service learning, and other things that both students and teachers find engaging and worthwhile?
Once we have settled these questions, let’s try some experiments. I’m not saying I have all the answers, but perhaps different teachers would try different things. Some might just eliminate the zero. Some might stop the average. Others might try a “menu” system such as I use, where the consequence for missing work or blowing a test is selecting other items from the menu. Others might experiment with rewards for work that is on time or early rather than punishment for work that is late.
In other words, I’m not asking you to use MY system, but rather that you use your good judgment and the thoughtful goodwill of your colleagues to: a) admit that what we are doing now could be improved, b) experiment with different ideas that improve achievement and reduce failures, and c) agree that the final school-wide decision will be based on evidence and not personal prejudices.
4 Responses to “Classroom Policy Questions”
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GTVarty Says:
December 5, 2007 at 1:34 am
Well put, sir. I agree completely with your thoughts, and admire the elegance of your argument. Let me (with tongue firmly in cheek) try another tack, and perhaps open up another side of this issue…
I submit that the issue is not one of prejudice, but rather one of perspective; in simplest form, the assessment practices we repeatedly try, apply, and watch fail HAVE to work. After all, they worked for us! Therefore, logic dictates that if they don’t work for the students we teach now, the problem lies not with the practices, but with the pupils.
This is perhaps the most pernicious of traps for us to find ourselves ensnared; we KNOW that the present system, with its zeroes, deductions and penalties, and one-shot pressure tests is a good one precisely because it is THAT system which enabled us to succeed. The part we have trouble facing is the idea that it may not have increased our learning or success, but may merely have rendered that illusion by holding our classmates back.
And so the system can’t be broken; the problem must then lie with those students who struggle and falter under its weight.
What if, as you suggest, we could agree to start fresh, adopting some of these more enlightened ideas? Immediately, we would face the issue of fairness – not fairness regarding those students who are now getting second chances to complete work or to reach standards, but fairness regarding the diminishing gap between the former ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’… a form of reverse-discrimination that somehow, we can identify with. “It’s not fair to the kids that handed their work in on time, or who got the right answer in one try”, we submit.
Somehow, we don’t notice how silly that sounds. After all, at the outset of the course, we didn’t state a goal of ‘maximizing the gap’, but rather we professed to believe that ‘all kids can succeed’. But we forget that, in the heat of denial.
Perhaps, before we can move on, we all need to re-visit our most closely-held values; do we really believe that all kids can learn? Of course we do… BUT, we add, some kids can learn better than others. Some need more time and support, we prevaricate. And some need more chances, or accommodations in their testing, or need to be assessed using alternate methods… so yes, I guess they all can learn.
But is it fair to those students who learned the way WE learned? Shouldn’t they get the advantages we enjoyed, simply because we finished first, handed things in on time,and did passably well the first time?
That might be the bulwark of our resistance, the internal hurdle, we need to conquer before we can simply start anew, as you suggest, and let the data speak for itself.
We may need to face the fact that we are our own barrier; tearing THAT wall down could be a larger task than we initially thought.
lvincent Says:
December 17, 2007 at 11:34 pm
How BEST to encourage responsiblity is to set the limit and then make sure the limit is not impeded. If a student is allowed to redo an assignment or retake a test, then it should be the standard(s) assessed that are important. I find no comfort in allowing a student to do work over if the only reason is to help my conscience say to myself that I have helped the student succeed by letting him/her redo for a grade.
Massaging the ego of a teenager is not my responsibility. If the standard says “TLW demonstrate understanding of the writing process,” and the teaching and assessment were designed with that standard in mind and the student doesn’t care, what am I to do?
Lawrence
fkeyes Says:
December 2, 2008 at 1:41 pm
How do you move a veteran staff toward developing and using common assessments?
Douglas Reeves Says:
January 19, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Dear fkeyes,
Thanks very much for a very thoughtful question. I’d like to offer a couple of ideas for you to consider. First, before you think about changing people who are reluctant, start by identifying those who are willing to try new ideas. Challenge yourself to find ways to encourage, praise, and support them. The greatest impact on teacher professional practices is the direct modeling of other teachers, and therefore you need to think of ways to create networks throughout your school in which teachers will help one another.
Second, address the inevitable question, “How will we have the time to do this?” If you want people to use common formative assessments, then we need to have a plan to create and implement them in the time that is available. Therefore, I’d recommend taking staff meetings that are already plan and staff development days that are already planned and use them to focus on this objective. Larry Ainsworth’s terrific book, “Common Formative Assessment” might be useful to you in this regard. You could also consider some things that you can eliminate so that teachers know that you are serious about helping them find the time for this task.
Third, make the focus of the assessment reasonable and brief. Formative assessments collapse under their own weight when schools attempt to assess every standard. Use the “Power Standards” approach (another book title from Ainsworth) to narrow the focus and only address a few standards that are most important. You might consider creating some inter-grade dialog, asking teachers in one grade to give advice to a fictional new teacher who is teaching the same subject in the next lower grade. Ask, “What do students in the lower grade need to know and be able to do before they enter your class next year?” When I have done this, I’ll find remarkable consensus on about 80% of these expectations. Then you can use that very limited list to say, “The reason we need common formative assessments on a few key areas is not because of an external administrative mandate, but because our colleagues clearly know what our students need to know and be able to do in order to be successful. Let’s listen to them.”
Fourth, consider an action research project. Ask a few people to volunteer to create common formative assessments this spring. Pay them a fair stipend for taking some extra time and risk. Then, as part of the agreement, have them report their results at the end of the semester. How was student performance compared to the same semester of the previous year? Any changes in behavior and discipline? How about your own motivation and engagement as a teacher? What would you do differently next time?
In brief, you won’t make this work with an administrative command. You can make people give tests, but without their full engagement, they will simply give them, say, “Thank God that’s over,” and return to business as usual. What makes an assessment formative is not the label, but how teachers use it to make better instructional decisions for improved student results.
For other ideas on creating effective system changes, see the book Change Wars, edited by Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan. Thanks for your question.
Douglas Reeves