PowerSchool Summit Series - Common Core Standards and More

I spent 3 days at the Pearson Learning headquarters in Rancho Cordova, California learning about how you can use PowerTeacher and the PowerTeacher Gradebook to support the 15 Fixes for Broken Grades from Ken O'Conner's book A Repair Kit For Grading. Along the way I have been learning a lot more about the Common Core State Standards and how Singapore American School is implementing them from our Director of Assessment and expert, Jennifer Sparrow.

Ken O'Conner poses two essential questions that all educators should ask themselves about their grading practices:

• How confident are you that the grades students get in your classroom are accurate, meaningful, consistent and supportive of learning?
• How confident are you that grades you assign students accurately reflect your school's published content standards and desired learning outcomes?

In the summit, Pearson took us through an activity of a teacher having a split personality of be a "Traditional" Grader and a Standards-Based Grader. Two classes were set up and the students in the classes were given real personalities - such as Andrew Average, Gwen Gifted and Nicholas Knucklehead.(sound familiar?) I became more familiear with the 15 fixes as we went through these activities.

The 15 Fixes for Broken Grades

1. Purpose of grades - Don’t include student behavior in grades
2. Late work - Don’t reduce marks for “work” submitted late
3. Extra credit - Don’t give points for extra credit or use bonus points
4. Cheating - Don’t punish academic dishonesty with reduced grades
5. Absences - Don’t consider attendance in grade determination
6. Group work - Don’t include group scores in grades
7. Grade report structures - Don’t organize grading by assessment methods
8. Objectives - Don’t assign grades using inappropriate or unclear standards
9. Grading on a curve - Don’t assign grades by comparing students to each other
10. Assessment quality - Don’t rely on evidence from poor-quality assessments
11. Score validity - Don’t rely simply on the mean
12. Missing work - Don’t use the zero for missing evidence or punishment
13. Timing of assessments - Don’t use formative assessments or practice in grades
14. Reflecting current mastery - Don’t summarize evidence accumulated over time
15. Involving Students - Don’t leave students out of the grading process

Here are some of the things I learned that I would like to share with faculty: