Mastery Learning, part one

I’ve been away awhile, but it was intentional.  I’ve been doing some research on grading and literacy, and the two have blown my mind and led me to other research, such as Hattie’s work, effect size rankings, and a plethora of materials on improving adolescent literacy.  To make a long story short, what I’ve been discovering is a lot of the things that we do in schools are interconnected; we just have to make sure we’re focused on what we want to do and be intentional with the work that we do.  When this happens, our students start to make progress and we can provide the supports that they need to become proficient learners.  Whatever the case, we have to keep our focus on what’s most important and continue to measure and monitor those things.  I heard a quote that either said, “What gets monitored gets done,” or perhaps it was the other way around, but the point is monitoring progress is an essential component in moving a school forward.

Our school is currently doing a study of The New Art and Science of Teaching.  We began our studies with the leadership team during the summer, and we still had some questions and concerns in regards to how to make certain things work in our school.  My principal and Ms. Douglas had an opportunity to go to Colorado a few weeks back, and they brought me the book, A School Leader’s Guide to Standards-Based Grading which is just what the title says…a school leader’s guide to standards-based grading.  The book covers some specific strategies and steps that schools can take to move to clear reporting of student proficiency in accordance with the standards.  It’s essential that leaders read this book, especially if the leaders want to move their schools towards reporting of grades that don’t include factors that skew students’ grades.

Since my last post, I’ve gotten emails and retweets and direct messages from people asking me how we started the journey to teaching students for mastery, and my response was that it’s a work in progress.  It continues to be a work in progress, but I believe that our teachers have the best intentions for our students, and they want to make sure that the students learn the material.  I’m working through the book, but I plan to share some of the things that we’ve done to ensure we focus on what matters most-student learning and mastery of the standards.

“Multiple studies have shown that teachers who teach the same subject or course at the same grade level within the same school often consider drastically different criteria in assigning grades to students’ performance.”

We know that grading practices have to change because there’s a subjective component in grading that prevents teachers from reporting the students’ true performance in reference to the standards.  Reeves (as cited in Hoback, McInteer, & Clemens, 2014) states the following:

Three commonly used grading policies…are so ineffective they can be labeled as toxic.  First is the use of zeroes for missing work.  Second is the practice of using the average of all scores through the semesters.  Third is the use of the “semester killer”- the single project, test, lab, paper, or other assignment that will make or break the students. (p.5)

As education professionals, we have to work to remedy these three things, but we’re all in different places in discovering the solution.  Grading experts such as Rick Wormeli, Douglas Reeves, Thomas Guskey, etc. have discussed ways that we can work to reform our grading practices, but we have to be proactive and forthcoming of our shortcomings when thinking of our knowledge of what works best.  There are many things to consider.  For example, how many of us had teachers that gave us zeroes when we didn’t turn in our assignments?  Did it teach you anything?  I can remember forgetting to turn in an assignment in seventh grade science, and my teacher gave me a zero.  That zero brought me from an A to a C, all because I forgot to turn in the work that I’d done.  Luckily, the teacher took the work late, but then 25 points were deducted because I’d forgotten to turn the work in on time.  I had A’s on my tests, but at the end of the semester, I received a B (because of my memory), which was not an accurate grade.

Wormeli discussed a swimmer’s progress and how the swimmer’s “grades” are recorded by the coach.  Imagine if Michael Phelps’ coach would average his starting time at the beginning of training season with all of the times throughout to give a performance measure.  It would be inaccurate.  Hopefully, those times would improve consistently, and the last time, or the “mode” time, would be the most accurate because it would communicate what happened at the last practice session or competition.  That’s where we need to get as educators, and now is the time to do it.  There’s tons of PL that has to be done before educators get to that point, but it’s necessary.

When I started my dissertation back in 2012, my dissertation chair immediately directed me to Educational Leadership’s publication on Effective Grading Practices, which was published in November of 2011.  You can find that resource at the end of this post.  There was an article in this publication about Redos and Retakes Done the Right Way.  I was team leader at the time, and I shared it at our team meeting.  I believe my team was the first team in our school that tried implementing this policy, and we made some progress, but not the type of progress we wanted.  The issue was we’d decided to do it as a team, but there were other grade levels and other teams that didn’t believe in it.  Therefore, the support wavered from it, and we didn’t know how to sustain it because parents were unsure of how we were even allowed to do retakes or grade students by standards.  One parent said, “Why does my child have five test grades when you all only took one test?  That doesn’t make sense.”  Surely, it wouldn’t make sense to anyone who went through traditional schools.  It wouldn’t have made sense to me either.  It was new, and we eventually reverted back to our old grading practices because there were too many questions, concerns, and uncertainties.  Now, I wish I would have developed the process out more because we would be even further along with this….five years later.  Perhaps, that’s why it’s so important to me now.

This year we did some intentional work at the beginning of the school year and prioritized our standards for each grade level and content area.  Next, we had the teachers create proficiency scales and pacing guides that were broken down by days and weeks.  We knew that some of these things would be altered, but we decided to jump into the work and make revisions as the school year progressed.  Lastly, we had teachers create a grading plan for their units that were common for collaborative teachers.  This was an essential component because we wanted teachers to be intentional about the assessments they used, and we also wanted teachers to understand that they have to respond when students don’t demonstrate an understanding of the content.  In speaking with one of the teachers this year, she stated, “Planning is probably the most important because it’s different when you’re teaching and following the pacing guide along every step and when you’re teaching for mastery.  I guess we want to work to find the balance there.”  She was correct, and it’s a balance that’s difficult for many because it requires a lot more from educators.

We’ve put a lot of these things in place, and we’re still working to perfect them.  The best part about this work is that all of us are going through and growing through this process together.  We came into this knowing that we had to do something that would seem radical, and as I go through these mastery learning post, I’ll give you more details about our step-by-step process.  Right now, I want to make sure our students get what they need to master the content, and I want our teachers to get the PL they need to execute a clear plan to get students to mastery.  It’s all a collaborative effort, and we will continue to grow through it.  Our #2185Pride is at stake, and we know for sure that it’s not going anywhere.

 

Additional Resources:

Dr. Gardner’s Initial Training on Proficiency Scales

Proficiency Scales for Learning Handbook

Ed Leadership, Effective Grading Practices, November 2011

 

 

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