Students Should Understand The Educational Expectations And Behavioral Expectations Within A Classroom

Alfie Kohn discussed multiple fabulous points in his article, “Degrading to De-Grading”. The author suggests more effective ways to assess students’ progress other than numerical or letter grades. Kohn goes into detail about why our current grading system is flawed. Grades can cause students to lose interest in learning which causes them to stop taking challenges. If students are not engaged and interested than they are not retaining the information they are being taught. The grading system can also cause students to develop unhealthy competition with one another for instance, “I got a better grade than you!”. Indeed, grades are a wonderful concept, but they tend to be more hurtful than helpful. In some cases, grades can have positive effects on students. For example, setting goals for various assignments, or receiving help where they are struggling. Though, there are alternatives that could make positive changes in the system.

In “How Grading Reform Changed Our School” by Jeffrey A. Erickson, the Assistant Principal of Minnetonka High School in Minnesota, Erickson assessed how and what things are taken into account when distributing grades. Erickson claimed that the accuracy and truthfulness of grades are misrepresented with many common components that seem to be used for general grading standards.

Pragmaticism, indeed, will dictate that schools, assessments, and organizations long-established will not be altered for light and short-lived causes. Hence, a gradual shift in culture and method must occur which reforms the quantitative nature of grading systems. However, let the negative effects of the current grading system be known in a direct way:

Over the years one major issue of grade inflation has often come up. Teachers frequently question the importance of grades and how that data is used to compare students. Many teachers see the need to place a high emphasis on grades, thus causing stress and anxiety when students have a low performance. As a result, we have a school wide problem of grade inflation from teachers who believe students effort and work habits should determine the grade they earn. I would propose taking a deeper look into the purpose of testing. Thoughtful educators see the goal of testing as the observation of progress being made by a student. We need to begin to hold students to high standards by gathering a balanced picture of a student’s ability and mastery. In doing so we must use different forms of assessing students, and not solely test or papers. Once we can begin to utilize all forms of assessments we can begin to get parent involvement in helping children to learn and develop proper work habits and study skills, hopefully resulting in true grade

The third choice of the required reading that I read for my internship is Fair Isn’t Always Equal written by Rick Wormeli. This book is written to help schools and school districts transform their standard grading on assessments and homework to a standards based grading system. The book reasons why schools should look to change to a standard’s based grading system, and the benefits and the amount of information that this type of grading can give us about our students. Not only does this book give the benefits of the grading, it discusses ways to rewrite tests, how to use attendance and effort to give grades, and how to differentiate instruction and assessments to get a true picture of our students and their knowledge of the materials. Wormeli uses quotes from teachers and educational leaders in the different section of the book that have opposite views of standards based grading and the process they used to get to where they are at. This book was assigned to me to read over summer break to begin to prepare us for the change in grading formative assessments using standards based rubrics and the reasons why the change in necessary to truly see if students are learning.

Have you ever accomplished something and to the extent that words couldn’t describe how happy you feel. Others would disagree with this idea. In some ways they are right to disagree. On the other hand, grading can have a positive effect on students. As said by Jerry Jessness, “In the short term, floating standards makes everybody a winner.

Grades: Unneccessary for Learning 30 years ago, the United States of America was ranked the leader in quality of education. However, today it is now reported to be the 36th highest in the world. The learning experience has altered drastically in the recent years. In his essay, “A Young Person's Guide to the Grading System,” Jerry Farber claims that students have become addicted to grades. He further explains that due to the negative impact grades have, people believe they need to be graded in order to keep them in line.

In the 1990s, a movement began across the United States whereby individual states began writing academic standards which outlined the academic content students were expected to know and be able to master at the end of each grade level. Subject specific assessments were also designed and implemented in order to measure whether students were meeting those standards (Gibbs, T. & Howley, A., 2000).

Building on standards in this manner is helpful because as students get older, their cognitive thinking continues to develop. Since these standards build upon each other, they set students up for success in the future. Because the standards are laid out in this manner, each year students are building on their prior knowledge, making connections, and applying their knowledge to new contexts. A kindergartner would have a hard time having a classroom debate or understanding why there is more than one view on a certain topic. A sixth grade student’s cognitive thinking is further developed especially when it comes to judgement, evaluation and

One resisting force for implementing the standards is the fear of the unknown. These standards will be brand new to the staff and the organization. Most people naturally do not enjoy change at all. So, introducing a new measure of educating students will cause shock and make some staff members nervous and scared. Another resistance force is the threat of knowledge and skills. Teachers have become accustomed to teaching students using the previous standards. They have created lesson plans and found strategies to implement with different content. Common Core Standards will cause for educators revisiting the rigor in their plans and content delivery. A third resistance to change will be the limited resources. With any new implementation, all resources desired may not be readily available at that time. Implementing the new standards will take time and will be a learning process for everyone. The resources that were available with the older standards are more developed and have been tested since they have been around longer. There may not be an abundance of programs that support Common Core Standards just

Questioning can get there thinking beyond the comprehension level. Students should evaluate and analyze what they are learning instead of just remembering or understanding. Assignments would be given that encourage them to be creative, whether that is creative writing or making something that has to do with the concept of the lesson. The world around us is all about technology, I want students to continue this skills in the classroom. In English, it is thought that there is no need for technology that you only read books and write papers. This is not true, there are multiple ways that students can use different programs that will emphasize what they learn and help them become well rounded. When students start to have assignment that are all higher level thinking, this knowledge will have them meet higher standards. If teacher give low standard assessments such as, answering closed ended questions or only testing basic easily memorized knowledge, this isn’t a high standard to set. Teachers need to get them to work together in groups, create projects, use technology, or have them teach a proportion of a lesson, etc. to have these students go beyond expectations. High standards in the classroom welcome more competitive thinking and higher order strategies. As a teacher I want to give my students the opportunity to work their hardest and expand their thinking to meet these

For many grades and levels, the standards are too progressive. Performance stakes are being raised for students everywhere. Since the year 2007, the standards were introduced and developed

Over the past few years, the traditional grading system of A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s have slowly faded away only to be replaced by the insufficient “Standards-Based Grading”. While some schools are adopting this unorthodox grading system, several others still continue to follow the traditional “A-F” grading system. Many believe that the standards-based grading system does not work well with all students and doesn’t accurately grade them. Standards-based grading is a fairly new system of grading where the student is evaluated on his or her ability to complete an assignment and master the concept, not by what they get right or wrong on each individual assignment. This has been very confusing to those who are unfamiliar with standards-based

Teachers have always used grades to measure the amount a student has learned. This practice is becoming ineffective. Many students have a wide range of grades, which show that grades may not show what a student really knows. Therefore, the standard grading system should be replaced. Some reasons why grades should be replaced are bad grades can hinder a child’s performance, grades define who a student is in the classroom, and grades are not an effective way to see if students have learned the material. The current grading system should be upgraded and every school should incorporate the plus/minus system in their method of grading.

Keeping the standards in a designated area is there for anyone (administator) to come into the class and see what you are working on. Each day she would have a student read the standard that would be covered that day. The learning objectives were kept in plain sight on a sentence strip.