to allow the most recent assignments to carry more weight than earlier ones. This practice promotes the idea that the most recent student work offers a more accurate representation of what a student has learned and is able to do at that particular moment in time. Not fully understanding content at the beginning of a unit should not negatively impact a student’s grade later on.
Separate Academics From Behaviors
The grading system must separate academics from behaviors. If educators are to trust grades and use them as a measure of learning, the grades must simply measure what a student knows and is able to do, and nothing more. The challenge for most school leaders is to find ways to maintain the academic purity of grades without losing the ability to motivate students to practice good behaviors.
Allow for Reassessment
If students are not proficient on a particular assignment, they must have the opportunity to be reassessed for a new grade. Doing this ensures that their final grade is a more accurate representation of what they know and are able to do. The trick to reassessment is developing a system that is manageable for teachers and the school. Reassessment should be an expectation, and the student must play an active part. Students must first complete a reassessment plan with their teacher. This plan may include an opportunity for the student to go back and redo formative tasks related to the assessment, the scheduling of specific intervention or reteaching time with the teacher, and a timeline to complete the plan. For younger students, teachers may need to take the lead in creating the plan in the beginning by scaffolding the conversation for students or providing them with a template of the action items in the plan that they must complete. Schools must not allow students to fail; so it should be understood that a student will continue to be assessed and retaught until he or she demonstrates proficiency.
Use Rubrics and Scales, Not Percentage Scores
The grading system must use rubrics and rubric scales, not percentage scores. Most U.S. high schools still use the same flawed one hundred–point scale they have for generations. With a traditional one hundred–point scale, all grades typically start at 100 percent and the teacher deducts for missing or incorrect components to arrive at a final percentage score. These deductions can vary from assignment to assignment and teacher to teacher, and they depend on the expectations the teacher sets for each assignment. Many students think they must accumulate a certain number of points over time to reach a passing grade in this system. With a rubric scale, a teacher determines a grade by first looking at the student work and then determining which rubric level is the most appropriate match for that work. Teachers generally develop rubrics specific to the course, competency, or skill they are assessing. Students receive the rubric along with the assignment or task so they have a clear expectation of what they need to do to complete the work at a proficient level or higher.
Students Receive Timely, Differentiated Support Based on Their Individual Learning Needs
As a school administrator, take a moment to consider how you respond when parents ask you what supports are in place to help their child be successful. If, when responding to the question, you have to hesitate—even for just a minute—to think about which teacher the student is assigned to before you can answer, then your school has a problem. If there is no consistency in how teachers approach differentiated support, your school is not going to be effective at responding to the individual learning needs of each student. In effective schools, it doesn’t matter which teacher a student is assigned to; all students receive differentiated support. Effective schools not only have consistent practices at the classroom level but also schoolwide. This is important for any school, but for schools that embrace competency-based learning, it is essential. Here are some examples of ways such schools ensure all students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs.
Create Flexible Time for Differentiated Support
Effective schools build time into the school day for all students to access differentiated support, which often takes the form of intervention, extension, or enrichment.
▶ Intervention: Small groups of students work with the teacher on content support, remediation, or other kinds of proactive support in the area of study skills and other work-study practices.
▶ Extension: Whole-class groups work with the teacher, who extends the current curriculum beyond the learning objectives that students have already mastered.
▶ Enrichment: Students do activities beyond the work outlined in the curriculum to expand their experiences and also receive differentiated first instruction, particularly those students the teacher or education team has identified as benefiting from such support.
This time is as flexible as possible, meaning that students can attend different support sessions on different days based on their learning needs. Many schools that offer differentiated supports do so for thirty to sixty minutes at least two to three times per week and often daily. At the elementary and middle school levels, grade-level teacher teams often handle the scheduling for this flexible time. At the high school level, scheduling can be a mixture of teacher team input and student input. There are several software systems available that allow schools to schedule students efficiently for intervention, extension, and enrichment. In chapter 6 (page 129), we explore in more detail how schools can structure and maximize this time for student learning.
Group Teachers and Students in Collaborative Teams
DuFour et al. (2016) write extensively about the power of a PLC as a “group of people working together interdependently to achieve a common goal for which members are held mutually accountable” (p. 36). When teachers share students, they are mutually accountable to each other for meeting all of the learning needs of those students. In schools focused on competency-based learning, students often organize into smaller groups that share the same set of teachers who work collaboratively with those students. In these teams, teachers are able to become laser focused on the four essential questions that every team must answer (DuFour et al., 2016).
1. What knowledge, skills, and dispositions should every student acquire as a result of this unit, this course, or this grade level? The answer to this question becomes the course competencies and performance indicators that guide the team’s instructional planning. Teams work together to align their curriculum and instructional practices with these learning objectives.
2. How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills? Teams work together to develop quality performance assessments as the ultimate measure of student mastery. Since team members share students, they have a mutual interest in making sure all students demonstrate competency.
3. How will we respond when some students do not learn? The answer to this question defines how the team will approach intervention, both at the classroom level and beyond. Effective teams work together to use flexible time to support the needs of all learners. Some teachers on the team may offer reteaching sessions to students, while others may offer targeted intervention. Students recognize that it will be not just their own classroom teacher, but any teacher on the team who will work with them when they have not demonstrated mastery.
4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient? Teams work together to develop opportunities for extensions and enrichment for students who have already mastered a skill or concept. Perhaps some will need a blended learning approach to allow them to extend their thinking in a new way or even move ahead. The team can also use flexible learning time to provide additional instruction and resources for students who already demonstrate mastery.
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