Jim suggested that I turn this recent comment on grading into a blog entry so that we can access it via the categories. Here it is:
Most kids have to want to be in the classroom in order for most approaches to grading to be accurate and honest and true indicators of progress. In my view, that one fact changes everything about grading.
If it were clear to me that all my kids wanted to be in my classroom, I would then use standards based grading in a heartbeat, because both my students and I would see it as fair and helpful – we would want to know how we are doing in this acquisition of language process.
But, since all the kids don’t really want to be there (maybe 20% really do), then why should I go to the trouble of assessing them relative to various standards when heart/mind effort isn’t there?
When they walked into my classroom for the first time they didn’t just drop what they have learned to do to survive in all their other classes since about fifth grade, which was to find out what the teacher wants and provide it. I’m not talking about the four percenters – just the majority of them.
Maybe I have different kinds of students than y’all. The fact is that it just isn’t worth my time to put all that effort into thinking about their work for me when, in my opinion, it is not reflective of real effort from them.
It’s like getting all excited about keeping stats on a basketball team in a gym class. I would do it for a real basketball team where a lot is at stake and the athletes are really into it, but not in a gym class where the confidence and the desire to excel is there in only a few of the athletes.
Honestly, Susie has talked all along about simplicity in grading and I do that and it saves me so much time and is at the same time, in my opinion, extremely accurate – more accurate than all the comlicated stuff I did before. Of course, I had to adopt Susie’s simple approach because this past year I had 165 students, and some were fairly rough individuals for whom French was not the number one item of their day.
Now all I have to do is pop some quiz grades in from readings and stories, simple quizzes written by kids for kids, and evaluate what I see in their eyes (to me, the true barometer), and throw in a few dictations and such, which I use largely to make sure that they come to class on time. En bref, I make it more than simple so that I can relax and not be a flailingly accurate teacher.