A Fresh Look At Grading And Reporting In High Schools

A Fresh Look at Grading and Reporting in High Schools by Anne Davies and Sandra Herbst offers practical, research-based strategies for executing effective classroom assessment. It is organized around four considerations, or quadrants: (1) determining the learning destination, (2) researching the expected quality level, (3) planning to collect reliable and valid evidence of learning, and (4) collecting baseline evidence of learning. High school teachers and school leaders will explore what must take place before, during, and after learning to communicate student progress to students, parents, and all other stakeholders. Each chapter of A Fresh Look at Grading and Reporting in High Schools includes examples across multiple disciplines illustrating the authors' strategies in practice. Chapter 1 focuses on preparing for quality classroom assessment. Educators will examine activities, tasks, and plans that support teaching and learning and assess what students have learned. Chapter 2 offers strategies to support learners and encourages educators to engage in standards-based grading and reporting while students are learning. In chapter 3, readers will discover how to effectively report students' progress in effective ways to inform students and other stakeholders. Readers will explore the challenges to classroom assessment and gain solutions in appendix A. Appendix B offers educators a list of planning questions to support the four quadrants.

The essential components of Grading, Reporting, and Professional Judgment in Elementary Classrooms both model and mirror effective practice: preparing for learning, teaching, and assessment engaging students in assessment in support of their learning reporting the learning to others. There is no single right answer, but rather many right ones that respect the structure of each unique subject area, support student learning and achievement, communicate effectively with a range of audiences, and fulfill our required legal and regulatory responsibilities. After the book A Fresh Look at Grading and Reporting in High Schools was published, many educators asked when the elementary edition would be available. This book was written in response to these requests and arises from the important work of transforming classroom assessment. It results from many years of working alongside elementary teachers, as well as school and system leaders. These student-, teacher-, administrator-, and parent-tested ideas will help you find your way to grading and reporting processes that are both possible and practical ? not just during report card time, but all year long.

"An updated guide for educators about quality classroom assessment. Prepares students for their lifelong learning journey by involving them, their parents, and community members in the assessment process and the evaluating and reporting process."--

Assessment has provided educational institutions with information about student learning outcomes and the quality of education for many decades. But has it informed practice and been fully incorporated into the learning cycle? Conrad and Openo argue that the potential inherent in many of the new learning environments being explored by educators and students has not been fully realized. In this investigation of a variety of assessment methods and learning approaches, the authors aim to discover the tools that engage learners and authentically evaluate education. They insist that moving to new learning environments, specifically those online and at a distance, afford opportunities for educators to adopt only the best practices of traditional face-to-face assessment while exploring evaluation tools made available by a digital learning environment in the hopes of arriving at methods that capture the widest set of learner skills and attributes.

With more than 50,000 books sold, this resource for teachers and school teams will open illuminating and productive new visions of how to improve grading practices.

"The authors show how to involve students in pedagogical documentation--that is, students collecting evidence of learning with the guidance of their teachers. They describe why and when you might use collections of evidence and portfolios; introduce five different types of collections of evidence developed in response to five different purposes and how teachers have involved students in documenting their learning. They also respond to commonly asked questions and concerns from students, teachers, and parents."--

Rev. ed. of: Leading the way to making classroom assessment work., c2008.

All the talk of closing the achievement gap in schools obscures a more fundamental issue: do the grades we assign to students truly reflect the extent of their learning? In this lively and eye-opening book, educator Myron Dueck reveals how many of the assessment policies that teachers adopt can actually prove detrimental to student motivation and achievement and shows how we can tailor policies to address what really matters: student understanding of content. In sharing lessons, anecdotes, and cautionary tales from his own experiences revamping assessment procedures in the classroom, Dueck offers a variety of practical strategies for ensuring that grades measure what students know without punishing them for factors outside their control; critically examining the fairness and effectiveness of grading homework assignments; designing and distributing unit plans that make assessment criteria crystal-clear to students; creating a flexible and modular retesting system so that students can improve their scores on individual sections of important tests. Grading Smarter, Not Harder is brimming with reproducible forms, templates, and real-life examples of grading solutions developed to allow students every opportunity to demonstrate their learning. Written with abundant humor and heart, this book is a must-read for all teachers who want their grades to contribute to, rather than hinder, their students' success.