Report cards went out yesterday. For some students whose average for last quarter is below 2.0, they are now ineligible for extra-curricular activities. A few who were ineligible perhaps just became eligible. Some basketball teams may have lost key players.
For the last few years we had been trying a different standard - if you failed even a sinle course you were ineligible, even if your average was above 2.0 and you were on track for enough credits to be able to graduate. Too many "key players" were becoming ineligible, especially in football just before the playoffs and in basketball in mid-season, so the school system went back to this older standard. I have to wonder what message it gives to some of our students. But that is not my reason for writing about it.
This Saturday reflection is on grades, test scores, and learning, what I think of them, what it means for me a teacher.
And then there is Jxxx - he is the only one of my students this quarter who did not pass my course. Of course, he has not shown up to school now for four weeks. His family has been notified, other students see him near the school immediately afterward. He was officially repeating 9th grade. Had he even shown up for his midterm and gotten 30% (well below his normal performance for me) he still would have passed even with zeros for all the missing homework and classwork.
On one hand, I'm angry because this would have been my first quarter ever in this school with all students passing. On the other, I'm saddened because none of us seem to be able to reach him about what he is doing to himself.
We are now two weeks into the 3rd (of 4) marking periods. Since all of my classes are full-year, I do not have the burden of another group of students whose names I need to learn, about whom I know little. Counting Jxxx I have 175 on my roles. There are a few I still can rarely get to open their mouths in class. But that doesn't matter for most, who are still conscientious about doing what I ask of them otherwise. Those may be quiet but are still learning. I can see it in what other methods I have of assessing them - my tests, external tests, writing assignments, even body language while in class.
Our school system now insists on county-wide Advanced Placement midterms, because the pass rate in some schools on the AP tests is so abysmal. I have been asked by my principal and department chair to explain a relatively low performance by my students on the County midterm. The department chair knew, but the explanation was required in writing, because the raw scores were entered into a computer program so that performance was scrutinized in the central office.
It does not matter that having a countywide exam cannot be a valid measure when we do not all teach the same curriculum. For a number of years the College Board has required each AP teacher to submit his or her OWN syllabus for approval in order to use the AP label on the course. When this was first imposed several years ago, the school system handed us all a syllabus and told us to submit. I did not, because it was drafted by someone who was not an AP teacher, did not come close to what was required, and besides, we were each supposed to submit our own. What I submitted was approved, what the schools system prepared was not.
I teach in a somewhat different order than the county is testing, which makes the midterm an unfair measure of what my students knows and can do, even were the exam a proper assessment of the material, which it is not. For one thing, it is 50 multiple choice questions and only one free response question, which is not a proper relationship between the two types of question: on the actual test, it is 60 and 4, with the two parts carrying equal weight. Thus for each 15 MC questions there should be one free response. For another, there were several bad questions which as they were phrased could have led to more than one answer being seen as acceptable, and there were four cases of the same question effectively being answered more than once (in one case, three times). It was an improper sampling of the material being tested.
If I looked at the raw scores my students obtained, a strong majority of them were performing at a rate which would convert to a passing grade on the AP exam. Until last year, one did not even need to get 50% of the raw points in order to pass. Now that there is no correction for guessing (a subtraction for wrong answers on MC questions) one needs about 53-54% of the raw points in order to obtain a 3 (on a scale of 5). Panicking over students who are getting 57 or 58 per cent is thus nonsense. Besides, I needed to use two class periods to administer the test, because most of the schools in the county are on A/B day schedules with double periods and we are not. I also provided no class time for review of a semester's material, whereas leading up to the AP exam I will have more than two weeks. I am not worried about performance in May. What I am experiencing in the demand for explanation is what happens when we start to drive instruction by data and the data is not itself particularly valid.
Neither are grades necessarily the best indicator of student performance. As part my of my application to a fellowship for writing about education, one of the four examples of my writing I submitted was this piece I did for Huffington Post I happened to reread it again yesterday, and share this much of it in this reflection:
Why do we insist upon artificial levels of performance, determined by percentage scores and weights, as if in converting things to a 100 point number scale, we therefore communicate something meaningful about that student -- s/he performed at an A level, or got a 93 percent overall. Is that really meaningful? Who has done more, the student who begins at a very low performance and then achieves at what we would classify as a C level, or the student who begins with a high A and stays there?
We have set certain percentage levels of scores and converted them into letter grades, even though for individual marking periods we now give exact percentage grades, as if somehow that is more meaningful. I have never understood why we do either of these.. In the past, a B represented a higher performance than a C, even thought the difference could be no more than 1/100th of a percent: a 79.49 was a C while a 79.50 rounded up to a B. So now we show them as a 79 and an 80 - trust me, students still come and beg for something to get that rounding up, in part because of consequences: honor roll, or eligibility, or a parent who grounds a kid because of a single grade below a certain level.
I understand parents - and students - need some feedback on performance. Does a single letter or number really inform all that much? It is a rare baseball player who is "successful" at bat better than 3 times out of 10, so we honor the .300 hitter. Such a percentage in school would represent abject failure. As real baseball fans know, the batting average is not all that meaningful if a player does consistently worse with runners on base than with empty sacks. Baseball has always sought statistics by which to make decisions, and somehow we seem to want to do the same with our students.
My favorite sport is what we call soccer. Scoring is rare compared to shots. Does that make the players a failure? What if I am a defensive player, is it fair when I am forward only on set pieces and thus have fewer opportunities to rank me by my goals or assists? If I am part of a team performance, what statistic is appropriate to use for my individual performance, are you going to argue it is goals our side gives up?
One year Haverford College's Varsity began the season with a 5-0 loss. It was against the team that would be the undefeated national champion, Navy. That might represent a weak performance by the team, but it was a superb performance by the goalie. They had 40 shots on goal. He had 35 saves, which was incredible. Which statistic is a fair measure? IS even the score a fair measure when they were faster and more skilled as players?
As a coach I have been on the other side of such lopsided matches. I have had games where if I turned my players loose we could have scored 20 goals. I have never had a team score more than 9, because I would try not to totally embarrass the other side. I knew going in we would win. My evaluation of my players was not by scores, but by other measures appropriate to the situation, by individual skill, by discipline, by teamwork well away from the opponent's goal.
I can tell if a student is learning if s/he can apply the material s/he has been studying, is s/he can put things into words different than they were presented, if s/he can begin to see connections and patterns, then ask questions that help fill in missing pieces. I do not need a multiple choice test for that.
For my AP students I do not curve work, even though I expect the class median should result in at least a B - I am a demanding teacher but I also do not want to discourage them from taking on the challenge of my AP classes, and given the emphasis upon grades even with a weight added in AP courses they are reluctant to damage their GPAs, and who can blame them. Instead on multiple choice items, they have the opportunity to go back and look up the questions they miss, provide me a correct answer and explain why it is correct and why they missed it. For this they get half credit. It provides them an opportunity to self correct. In the process they are experiencing metacognition - an awareness of their own learning and thinking processes - as well as correcting mistaken understandings.
Nationally,roughly 55% of those who sit for the AP US Government and Politics exam achieve a 3 or better. My percentage has always been higher, last year at 78%, despite the fact that the majority of national test takers are seniors and my students are sophomores. Does that make me a superior teacher, or is it just an indication of how bright my students are? Might it also reflect in part that we are in the DC metro area where news about national government and politics inundates them, that many of their parents are involved with government, politics or both? Do statistics and scores and grades by themselves really tell us all that much?
I understand the importance of grades and test scores for my students and for my school. For me my concern is different: are my students becoming empowered with the material? Are they developing the skills to continue to learn it on their own? Can they perceive the connections between what they study and their own lives? If they want to participate in the political/governmental process will they know how? Are they engaged with their learning?
I am not opposed to GOOD tests as one indicator for all concerned - for students about where they did not necessarily grasp, for teachers if there is a consistent pattern in a class of what students missed that the question(s) might be flawed or the instruction on that material inadequate or confusing.
I am opposed to reducing my students to a number or a letter grade. They are, even in 45 minutes spent each day in my classroom, far more complex than that. I have a responsibility to honor that.
Insofar as I am pushed away from that commitment of honor by the demand for grades and test scores, insofar as those outside my classroom begin to try to drive how I teach by measures that are not all that accurate a measure of what my students have accomplished, I become ever more inclined to leave the classroom. If I cannot teach with integrity, I will not teach. I refuse to dishonor my commitment to my students and my profession.
Our report cards do not allow for much explanation. I can put down up to three out of 15 codes that convert into text:
1 is a positive attitude towards learning
4 is work is outstanding
8 is poor test scores
9 is missing/incomplete work
13 is excessive absences/tardies.
Most of the students who do poorly in my class wind up with a 9 and/or a 13. Were mine the only class in which that pattern were occurring, it might mean the student simply doesn't care about the one class, or that I have somehow failed to find a way to connect with that student. Too often the pattern I see is repeated in at least a few other classes, although with a student like Jxxx the absences and missing work are across the board. Should i be held responsible if he simply does not come to school? if he is cutting my class and only my class, then it is incumbent upon me to find out why, to try to fix it. But i do not need external test scores or grades to know there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Were I asked, i could provide a detailed narrative on each of my 175 students. That is, if you gave me the better part of a week to do nothing else. I have too many total students. MY classes this year max out at 33, which is less than the 37-37-36 in my AP classes last year, but is still too many for effective discussion involving all the students, which should be a major part of the experience of taking my AP class.
Yesterday students got report cards. Some were upset, because they knew the impact it would with their parents, or how it might affect their applications for college and scholarships. I understand that, and know there is little I can do about that.
For my lower level kids, the commitment I make at the beginning of the year does remove some of the pressure - if they do ALL of their work on time, pay attention, and then ask for help if they don't understand, I guarantee their quarter grade will be at least a C. In 17 years of teaching I have only once had to raise a grade from a D for a student who met that criteria, and he had a 78 and had blown one test because his grandmother was dying and he was distracted.
If a student is conscientious and blows one test or assignment, should s/he suffer because of that?
Should we weight later performance more heavily than earlier performance as a way of honoring a student improving her effort, or becoming more skilled?
These and other questions are part of what teachers wrestle with, because we are required to provide grades, because there are test scores.
IT is a part of my work that still gnaws at me, because I cannot escape from it.
I hope I communicate to my students that there are things more important than grades, that I am limited in how much I can adjust from the raw numbers achieved, especially when tests are prepared by others, machine graded, and those scores must be reflected in my grades in some fashion.
Report cards came out, and once again I pondered grades, test scores, and what they have to do with learning.
Just as I ponder when a student or even a whole class does not perform as I expect on a particular test, assignment, or even one question on a test of 50.
The test scores provide me with information. They do not dictate what I do next, because i teach students, individual human beings, and they are far more than their grades or their test scores. i cannot ignore grades and test scores, but the individual human beings matter far more to me.
Does that make me a bad teacher?
I hope not.
And now i have essays from my AP students to which I have to turn - to read, upon which to comment, to absorb from them what the students understand and where i may have to help them.
That is a major part of being a teacher. It is part of how I learn about them.
it is a part, a major part. But it can never be all of what I learn about them, because then i would not only be less of a teacher, but far less of a human being.
Enjoy your Saturday.