Sackstein - Hacking assessment : 10 ways to go gradeless in a traditional grades school

Hacking Assessment

2015 by Times 10 Publications

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Published by Times 10 Publications

Cleveland, OH

http://hacklearningseries.com

Cover Design by Tracey Henterly

Interior Design by Steven Plummer

Editing by Ruth Arseneault

Contents

Goodbye, grades; hello, growth

Start a no-grades classroom

Open lines of communication with stakeholders

Design comprehensive projects for optimal growth

Work smarter, not harder

Ease data collection and inform learning with technology

Confer inside and outside of class

Discard your traditional grade book

Help students become better learners with metacognition

Put the power of grading into students hands

Transition to portfolio assessment

Hack Your Growth

Acknowledgements

N o book could be written without the help of others, and this one is no exception. Thank you to Mark Barnes, who wanted me to share these ideas with other folks who are ready for this change in education.

Id also like to acknowledge and thank the people who willingly provided anecdotes for the Hack in Action sections. Your stories enrich and add validity to this book; Im hoping that, together, we will make meaningful change. Without Sarah Donovan, Garnet Hillman, Aric Foster (additionally for your support in the editing process), Adam Jones, Joy Kirr, Jimmy Bailey, and Jim Cordery, the book would have been flat, and only about my story.

A special thanks to Dr. Michael Curran who repeatedly answers my bat signal at a moments notice and works hard to give me the best advice he has to offer. Im grateful for our friendship.

Thank you to the students of World Journalism Preparatory School (WJPS), who patiently learned with me while I took this risk for the first time. Your candor and open-mindedness, as well as your challenges, made me a better teacher. A special thanks to Samantha Aversano and Anastasia Papatheodorou for allowing me to share your excellent work with the world.

Thank you to the administration of WJPS, who supported me while I took this risk and encouraged more teachers to get on board. I truly couldnt have done it without you.

To all of the dreamers and visionaries who know theres a better way that has yet to be found.

About the Hack Learning Series

Hackers dont take realities of the world for granted;
they seek to break and rebuild what they dont like.

Sarah Lacy, Author/Journalist

A hacker is someone who explores programmable systems and molds them into something different, often something better. Hackers are known as computer geekspeople who like to take applications and systems to places their designers never intended. Today, hackers are much more. They are people who explore many things both in and out of the technology world. They are tinkerers and fixers. They see solutions to problems that other people do not see. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg might be considered technologys greatest hackers. No one taught them how to build an operating system or a social network, but they saw possibilities that others couldnt see.

The Hack Learning Series is a collection of books written by people who, like Jobs and Zuckerberg, see things through a different lens. They are teachers, researchers, and consultants; they are administrators, professors, and specialists. They live to solve problems whose solutions, in many cases, already exist but may need to be hacked. In other words, the problem needs to be turned upside down or viewed from another perspective. Its fix may appear unreasonable to those plagued by the issue. To the hacker, though, the solution is evident, and with a little hacking it will be as clear and beautiful as a gracefully-designed smartphone or a powerful social network.

So many facets of learning need to be hacked: the Common Core, digital literacy, reluctant learners, special education, cultural diversity, teacher preparation, and school leadership, to name a few. When teachers, parents, administrators, and policymakers see the amazing insights that hackers can bring to various issues, they are sure to want more. Enter the Hack Learning Series an evolving collection of books solving problems that impede learning in the world of education and beyond.

Inside the Books

Hack Learning books are written by passionate people who are experts in their fields. Unlike your typical education text, Hack Learning books are light on research and statistics and heavy on practical advice from people who have actually experienced the problems about which they write. Each book in the series contains chapters, called Hacks, which are composed of these sections:

• The Problem: Something educators are currently wrestling with that doesnt yet have a clear-cut solution
• The Hack: A brief description of the prescribed solution
• What You Can Do Tomorrow: Ways you can take the basic hack and implement it right away in bare-bones form
• A Blueprint for Full Implementation: A step-by-step system for building long-term capacity
• Overcoming Pushback: A list of possible objections you might come up against in your attempt to implement this hack and how to overcome them
• The Hack in Action: A snapshot of an educator or group of educators who have used this hack in their work and how they did it

Editors Promise

I am so proud to be a contributing author and the editor of the Hack Learning Series , written by experts who are dedicated to improving teaching and learning. I promise that every Hack Learning book will provide powerful information, imagination, engaging prose, practical advice, and maybe even a little humor. When you read a Hack Learning Series book, youll have solutions you didnt have before.

Mark Barnes, Author/Speaker/Hacker

Introduction

Goodbye, grades; hello, growth

F rustration. Every time I had to complete report cards I felt frustration bordering on anger. How was I supposed to communicate learning with one grade without making every students learning seem the same? Averaged scores say very little about actual learning: any number of students can earn a B for many different combinations of reasons. A gifted student who does little work may receive the same grade as a struggling student who has improved steadily throughout the course or a student who started off strongly but performed poorly in the last quarter. Unfortunately, in high school a single number or letter grade on a report card is supposed to communicate a great deal of important information.

Every time a grading period ended, I struggled with how to assess my students meaningfully and became increasingly less satisfied with how the system expected me to do it. Something had to changeI was doing my students a disservice even if they didnt realize it.

Assessment must be a conversation, a narrative that enhances students understanding of what they know, what they can do, and what needs further work. Perhaps even more important, they need to understand how to make improvements and how to recognize when legitimate growth has occurred.

Two years ago I started dabbling with the process of eliminating grades, initially taking the risk in one of my elective classes. It was a safe testing ground to pilot the idea, as the class wasnt essential for graduation. After getting mostly positive feedback from students despite my relatively novice understanding of the practice, it was time to go all-in. I decided to make the move at the beginning of the school year, accepting that it would likely be messy and that many things would need to change as we went forward. With the permission of my administration, I sent a letter home to parents, and when students arrived we immediately started talking about learning.