Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook

Almost all of this reading was review for me. Both from this class already and from 309 with Mr. Syrie. In 309 we read an article that had a very similar message, which I found to be absolutely revelatory. I was not at all a good student until my junior year of high school. My grades were crippled by zeros from homework assignments. I hated having to play the grade game of strategizing point values while trudging through a pile of tedium. My conception of going to school became that of a job; points were currency, assignments were work, all with the goal of graduating, or rather, retiring. Then, during my junior year, I was exposed to a different sort of scholarship in Advanced Placement classes. It was then that I broke my long held conception and realized why I was in school: to learn. When I finally began the Ed program and was exposed to the (vast) fundamentals of teaching I understood what my teachers were trying to do, the relationship between it all. As Prof. Agriss delineated in class, and this reading professes, standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessment are all meant to form one line. Assessment is meant to essentially ask a student what they know, and ideally they know what was taught, and what was taught should be the standards and curriculum.

My favorite idea from this reading was homework as practice. I think this is a fundamental element to be integrated into classrooms. It acknowledges that learning is a process of making and correcting mistakes; it is the culmination of the process that everyone is worried about. We are human; we are going to make mistakes for Christ’s sake. Why should we doom student’s for being human? This is why I think the reading’s definition for the purpose of grading really nails it. Changing the way we grade by acknowledging the ultimate goal rather than tradition we do what we are actually meant to.