YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS - Modern Grading Reform on The Commons

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Welcome to the Commons on the Forward Ed Network.

This is Modern Grading Reform, a miniseries with Dr. Chad Lang and Dr. Matt Townsley sharing nearly 20 years in the trenches of grading and assessment reform.

Let's get started.

Well, welcome back to another episode of Modern Grading Reform, the mini series with Matt Townsley and myself, Chad Lang.

We're digging through two decades, I think, of grading reform that we've been involved with, sharing some great lessons about our experiences in the trenches, both as educators, administrators, authors, friends, parents, all the like.

Matt, how you doing?

Two decades is right.

I'll just make, I'll poke a poke on it myself.

There's probably a light reflecting off my bald head.

Maybe you as well, Dr. Lang.

That's 20 years of losing hair in a good way.

Good experience, the ups and downs, everything in between.

Great to be back with you once again.

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt.

It's been, it's been a lot of fun, obviously, getting to share just some of the conversations you and I have all the time and recording them for folks that are thinking about the work and grading reform or are in the trenches themselves or just sort of acknowledging and sharing different ideas that, that we were able to capture along the way.

This episode, we thought we'd jump into thinking about, you know, communicating grading reform and trying to do it without a lot of drama and change is hard.

We know that there's all kinds of great implementation science out there to study and look into that, but man, when it comes to grading, it just seems like another can of worms for folks.

And so you and I have experienced and had some conversations with some really interesting and challenging transitions for schools and some that just didn't work.

But we've also had some just awesome experiences and, and, you know, some great anecdotes to share probably throughout this episode.

So I'm excited to jump in.

When you think about it, Matt, communicating and grading reform from sort of an outward facing piece.

And you, you've done some homework, you've developed some purpose gradings and some policies and procedures internally and done some research within your own organization.

What's that turning point to think outward to a whole nother set of stakeholders, students and parents come to mind?

What are some things that you've seen that have worked really, really well and maybe some ideas that you could steer for our listeners?

Yeah, I've seen school districts do a great job of creating like FAQ type documents.

Hey, here's some of the frequently asked questions we know that you're going to have.

Sending those out along with a short video is obviously a really fantastic thing.

I know there's some schools that know have done some really great parent meetings and we're invite parents to come in and kind of preview maybe a mock up of what the new electronic grade book or report card is going to look like.

I think that's a great idea like some like a parent university type feel, if you will.

I'm sure you've been a part of those Chad, where it's, you know, hey, come and learn and ask questions.

It's pretty neat.

Some really kind of interesting things I've also heard of is not just assuming that one communication is enough.

I, I'll honestly say that's the, the part where we, in my former school district we did not so great a job of.

We thought that kind of, you know, one specific way of communicating was going to be fantastic.

And so, you know, fast forward 20 years or so, got to do it in multiple ways and in multiple kind of iterations, I guess you'd say.

Chad.

No, the, the FAQ document's good, the parent university is good.

But how and when we do that can be just as important as to, you know, what we do along the way.

Chad, what I'm kind of curious from you too, like what have you seen?

And then also like why maybe do you feel like it's not always gone well?

Like what's been the thing that's maybe broken the communication?

I think maybe our listeners would be, you know, be interested to hear that as well.

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Yeah, you know, you Hit on some really great points.

And anything that has been really traditionally rooted, I mean, when you're in grading work like we've been and, and people are the opposite of grade reform is called traditional grading.

And that's, it's not called research based grading.

So it's just really been evolved around tradition, like even in higher ed and from Europe even and in over hundreds of years in the American education system.

So, you know, there's some deeply rooted traditions.

And I think, I always think about the Tom Gusky piece that he wrote for solution tree in 2020 about, you know, what hasn't worked and, and some ideas about thinking about what has worked for districts.

And I always love this idea of replacing old traditions with new ones, you know, and you know, every school community has awesome, you know, traditions and things that they're so used to, you know, don't pull the rug out from underneath people and think about, well, we have to change some different things around.

Maybe our report card or our transcripts.

And then they just, there's just like a vacuum and it feels like there's this something that's been lost.

And of course that's true if, if, if it hasn't been explained very well and we haven't replaced it with really good ideas.

And so I can't tell you how many awesome ideas I've seen at graduation ceremonies where instead of class rank or valedictorian, they've had different tiers of learning recognize.

One that I really like is, you know, they're still computing a gpa, for example, with their grading practices.

And you know, they ask for each of the students from a certain bandwidth of grade, you know, cumulative GPA to stand up when they're recognized and their parents or family in the, in the gym, I think is what it was.

And I thought that's really awesome.

And it just sort of took all this sorting and ranking away.

And you know, before long I think there's probably like 175 kids in that graduating class.

Like so many of them were recognized.

And it wasn't, it wasn't lowering the bar, it was just replacing a tradition from, you know, maybe just honoring the Valentorian or something like that, or the, or the salutatorian.

So there's a lot of great people that's done a lot of great work over 13 years of education that in certain, like four years of high school that, that had the ability to be recognized and along with their parents.

So what an awesome idea that I've seen just still, you know, not getting into the mechanics, the clinical nature of it, but still, you know, really recognizing excellence in academics, which is just awesome.

And when parents and families like have an expectation for what, what they want for their kid, like if there's not a way for them to achieve it in a way they understand and make sense to them.

You're right.

It's going to feel like this, like this incredible sense of loss.

So great, I mean, important point there.

Great point.

Yeah.

It's just something you really need to think through.

And I, I think that as schools are that have been successful, they, they've taken some micro steps that have led them down a path over time to just improve validity of their grading practices without really tinkering with a lot of the external facing pieces.

You know, when I was a government teacher, you know, the saying was, is the laws and sausage are the only two things you don't want to see being made.

But I think, you know, that can be true as well.

Probably with, you know, the computation of a grade, I suppose I think you need to absolutely be able to explain how a grade's determined.

But sometimes, you know, it can get, it really can be lost on folks.

It just becomes a clinical exercise and it's not real relational, honestly, for the school and the students.

And we hit on this a lot, not to publicize our book a great deal, but I'm super proud of the work we did together.

In chapter five, we talked about this parent student in school triad.

And what was great about that is that's sort of the dynamic that most students have, right?

If they're lucky enough to have some family, parents, guardians, grandparents, they're going to have some sort of a triad of communication.

But the problem with 3 is that someone's always left out.

And I think with traditional grading, the student has oftentimes been left out.

And if it hasn't been the student, then the parents were left out.

And it was sort of this two on one approach all the time.

And that's just no good for building relational capacity and confidence.

We need all three entities or parts of that triad to be on the same page about what it is the student's goals are, where they're at towards them.

And I, we think, and I think I could speak for both of us that we advocate for grading practices that'll help improve that communication and transparency.

And I can't count the number of times where the a parent who's frustrated because they don't understand the new grading reform system or whatever, and it's some, I shouldn't Say always, but often there's a direct connection between the kid that also doesn't understand it.

Right.

And so like, if, if this try, if this triad that we describe in our book is really doing what it's supposed to do, it's sometimes as an educational system, we have to think, how do we help our parents better understand the system, which is important.

But ironically, we can also help our parents better understand the system by helping the students understand what this new grading reform thing is all about.

And when they understand it, they can be our best advocates for how it's advantageous for them, where they're at in their learning.

And then parents, of course, are going to have, you know, probably fewer questions or less frustration because their kid can explain it to them, which is, I

think, the ideal 100.

Yes.

I couldn't agree more.

I mean, if I had to distill down 20 years of trials and tribulations in this work and just reading about success stories and, and then being in the schools where I felt like, you know, the grading reform was super successful and it really became new entrenched way of, of, of a way of being.

The students, by and large, totally got it.

Now, we're not going to ever purport that any systematic change in a school is, is equally accepted by every single student or parent.

That's probably foolish, but it's amazing.

That's the thing.

If the kids get it, and you have a responsibility as a system to make sure that they do.

But figuring out that unlocks a whole lot for your external stakeholders.

And really the parents, as we talked about in our book in 2023, I mean, that's a huge piece.

Right.

They need to be able to understand the work that we do inside schools.

But a lot of time and ground has traveled underneath their feet since they've been in school.

So that's all they have to hold on to.

And I totally get it if I used to say this all the time.

Like, I felt, I felt like if parents experience with grading in school as a parent, not as whenever a student doesn't feel logical, it's going to come off personal.

Yeah.

Like,

and if we can just get to a piece where it feels logical.

And usually if, if we've done a great job with the students, like, they'll, they'll interrupt their parents.

They'll still, they'll.

They'll break up misconceptions, say, no, that's not true, Mom.

You need to be able to do this before you reassess.

And we have to fill out this Agreement or I've got to be able to do this new practice that I didn't do before or whatever, whatever it might be.

And that's what I've seen as a huge key.

So, you know, people that are listening, the more you can get your students to be in clarity and alignment and think about all the new students that come to your school and maybe are from a different community or moved in, it's just so much learning for them to figure out.

That's a big piece if they're not coming from, you know, standards based standards, reference type grading, school districts.

So, um, and where did I learn that?

Like, I actually really learned that from seeing it in schools, but also when I was an athletic director, like, it's astounding to me.

It became very crystal clear to me that there was this motivation, you know, when you were a team or a show choir or a band, to be elite, like at a competition or make it to state or whatever it was.

There was always these, like, technical things that had to happen, like, how do we become the one seed and host a home game?

Or how do we make it to the finals of the show choir championship?

Or how do we get adjudicated A1?

You know, who always knew?

The students.

They always knew.

They're like, this team has to lose so that we can get the two seed because we beat them in head to head.

And it's like, how do you know all that?

Well, they had some great coaches and instructors and leaders of their organizations being very specific about what the proceedings were.

And so consequently, what did we always find out at the parent level?

The parents knew, like, the parents would run into me as an athletic director and they're like, so I heard that so and so has to beat so and so for us to not have to travel Tuesday night in the first round.

I'm like, how do you know that that you'd have to be into the deep part of the website of the state association to figure that out?

Well, no, their kids had told them that and they were right.

So I always kind of stole that idea from extracurricular activities.

I'm like, if they can have that level of clarity about things that are so technical, surely grading is not always that technical.

Like we can get the students that level of confidence.

And it's all about communication, as you know.

So that just the little story it always kind of reminds me of, you know, it can be done.

There's no doubt about it.

One of the things I was thinking about, Chad, where you mentioned that is, you Know, we're talking today about communicating, creating reform without drama.

And you asked me earlier, hey, what are some of the things to mention, the FAQs, the parent universities and all that.

But I know you are a good fan or big fan of a good metaphor.

Right, I know that.

And, and we've, you and me, as we've, you know, work with schools, we've used a variety of different metaphors.

And so if I'm a listener of this podcast, I want a good metaphor or two that, you know, could be used to speak to parents, school board members, community members that just, you know, don't have an educational background maybe, but they need to understand about this thing.

So like, just maybe succinctly walk us through a metaphor or two that have, that you would, you know, recommend that, you know, school leaders consider use as they're trying to educate their, their parents, their stakeholders.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

We do love them.

And I think I've even shared a little bit of an anecdote of getting my lab reports back from my, from blood work in the, in previous episodes.

That would be a good one.

But I think our favorite is, is we call it the Jiffy Lube example.

Love it.

Could be any, any, you know, oil change, place the multi point inspection, Tell me how my brakes are doing.

Yeah, you know, they literally produce a report for you.

It could be digital now.

I don't even know.

I think the last time I got like this sort of color, really nice one page color for sure.

It had the battery, it had the, you know, how much tread was left and so on and so forth.

It had no percents, it didn't have any calculations.

It was literally red, yellow, green.

This is dire straits.

You can't leave here today.

I mean, and it was super clear.

You'd have to know anything about cars or very little about cars to understand the health.

Right.

Most people can get the red, yellow, green analogy.

So really that's been something we've used a lot to just say like, hey, let me show you a picture of a proficiency scale.

Let me show you a picture of a rubric where we're trying to describe the descriptors of learning.

Think about it as red, yellow, green.

Not yet.

Like, it doesn't matter how many levels there are.

Imagine if we just had shades of green or something like that and we just show them side by side and they're like, oh, that would be really hopeful.

Yeah, we break it down and we don't average them together and send you out the door at the 71%.

Like when your tires are nearly bald, it doesn't matter how good your oil is.

And we would never average those together.

But that's what's happening in traditional grading and we don't do that here.

And that has been, you know, really great resonance with, with, with parents.

That's one analogy.

Can you think of another one maybe that we've used?

I, I just, I'm a big fan of the, the Jiffy Lube one.

I always try to, to, you know, in fact, a parent group, just late in 2025, I was talking to them, he's like, this school we're working with here, we're trying to help create the equivalent of a Jiffy Lube, a multi point inspection.

Except it's not about breaks and breaks and batteries and, and windshield wipers.

It's about how well can your kids cite textual evidence or cause the effect of civil war.

Like, I think that, and I think your health one is huge.

Like, just like kind of going the opposite direction.

Like, would you ever want to go to the doctor and just be told that you're at 85.2% health?

Like, no way.

Right.

Like there is.

You want more detailed information.

You know, I think there's kids that play video games nowadays.

You know, you can find out on fantasy football.

There's just all these different, you know, like, you know, is this a high level, a mid level or a low level?

Pick those.

Like, there's just so many different metaphors out there.

And I think most people just, if I could just quote some research from Ann.

I think it's Anne Franklin, Tom Buckmiller and Randy Peters from a while back.

They did some, you know, interviewing and so forth of some parents that were experiencing grading reform.

And they use this phrase that has always stuck with me that parents have this confidence in the known.

Right.

Like they're familiar with how they were graded with points for this and percentages for this.

And so we have to help create a sense of urgency and a sense of understanding why and what this grading reform is all about.

And you know, last episode we talked about you kind of like internally as a school, we're creating a grading purpose statement.

So internally we know why we're changing, but it doesn't mean that our parents yet understand why we're changing and what we're moving towards.

And I think again, like the, the Jiffy Lube metaphor will help them hopefully eventually move beyond this confidence of the known that they have in looking at a grade book, you know, that has points for everything.

And you know, these 95.6 percentages in there.

It can be hard though.

Like, let's, let's just admit it, Chad.

It can be hard because our parents aren't yet used to that.

And so it takes some very intentional communication and some very intentional conversations to help them understand why this benefits their child, you know, and they just want to know how they're doing.

And so if they don't know where their kids at, they get into like this scoreboard watching mentality of I don't really care what it's telling me or what it means.

Like, is there just a lot of it and enough of it for my kid?

And I think that's just where it gets kind of hard for parents if, if they're not educated to understand why and what this new grading reform is along the way.

Chad, would you like, I mean, did you even have electronic grade books in your day?

I did.

I don't think so.

I mean, I feel like it's a new thing.

Probably not that I remember that comes to mind.

Maybe there was some computer program, maybe that certainly wasn't cloud or web based.

I doubt that.

But even then though, even though we didn't have, you know, electronic grade book, we would still ask our teacher and our parents would, and we would still get the, well, he didn't turn in the 10 point assignment or he's at a 94.3.

So there still was this like, you know, we learned as parents to think in points percentage, traditional grading way that we have to overcome now in this grading reform world that can make it, you know, different.

Different.

Yeah.

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Explore how@spaceses edu.com grading well and you know, you have to acknowledge that change in and of itself, change is difficult in that, you know, when, when we go out, I know I was just with some, with some teachers like two weeks ago and I asked them this question.

I'm like, raise your hand and think back to your most memorable grading, your assessment experience.

Now these are teachers, they went on to become teachers.

They're not, you know, an average cross section of adults.

Raise your hand and then share it and then I want you to share it with a elbow partner.

And then, you know, report back and there's someone always shares something that's fun and funny or sad or not so great and not, not really memorable, but they're willing to share with the whole group.

I think it's like 90, 10 negative to positive.

Wow.

And so that's pretty typical.

Like in any, in any group, I rarely have someone like, share out.

Like, I can't.

I, I'll never forget when I got it, you know, an A minus on that chemistry test.

I studied all night.

You know, every once in a while that'll happen, but for the most part, it's really, really negative.

And, and that's, that's what creates a weird paradigm for parents.

And that's hard for schools to navigate because, you know, they're trying to, they're trying to move forward and they're like, wait a second, I thought most of you didn't like that.

I thought those, you know, getting zeros and, you know, studying for a test that didn't have anything from your notes and some of those things that were just misaligned.

I thought you didn't like that.

But there's something that happens right when you become a parent.

You and I are parents.

We get this and that we start to feel like naturally you should be protective over your child.

And so like this, the system, or I dare say the grading game, so to speak, how they view it has changed.

And, and so you lose some shared sort of like cultural currency that people are sort of used to.

Yeah, it.

You start losing the familiar at first.

It doesn't really seem as predictable, even though I think it is when done well.

And, you know, lots of cultural things aren't really, you know, your insurance company, you know, are they going to be able to make heads or tails of this for my auto insurance, you know, reductions and things like that.

I mean, those are really logical things, right?

To, to be thinking through.

And so when it's your child, like, your risk tolerance drops, like, yeah, you're not going to, you're not going to be, you know, gung ho for something that's so foreign perhaps to you.

And that's why we've really advocated to, like, start making some micro changes in practice that are, you know, internal.

Like, do we need to calculate a grade for everything that comes across our desk or should we really focus on trying to give more feedback to students?

And that's just a move.

Like, that's a move we can do in schools.

And if parents, you know, we start to, they start to, hey, you know, my, my daughter was working on assignment.

She, she said it didn't calculate towards her grade, but she really appreciated that you took five minutes and really gave some good feedback.

I think she feels more confident about the summative or for essay or whatever on Friday.

You know, those are positive experiences.

So you kind of in the adult world, right, like, we tend to value, you know, results before, before words like, hey, what's the experience like for our kids?

And so that comes, that just always comes to my mind when I'm trying to acknowledge what that change can feel like and does feel like sometimes.

As, as a parent.

One of the things you said earlier, I just want to reiterate, Chad, is this idea of, you know, every school community has their traditions and to not try to, you know, uproot those traditions or to try to build upon those traditions through, through grading reform.

And I think another maybe extension of what you said is, is that as we're moving forward with these, you know, 21st century standards based reference, wherever we're calling them, you know, grading systems is what's still staying the same.

Right?

Like, you know, when you mentioned things like insurance, it's like, all right, if we're making this grading change at the high school level, like, all right, we're still going to have a transcript and there's still going to be a gpa, which is ultimately probably what your, what your insurance company wants to get the discount.

And so like, let's just be clear.

And again, unfortunately in my school district, we didn't, we didn't come out hot with what was staying the same.

We focused a lot on what was changing.

And so that was a mistake that we made, Chad, was that we did not often, you know, explain what was staying the same.

And so we got, you know, caught playing the, the catch up game in our communication in that regard.

So, you know, whatever it is that's going to stay the same, make sure, you know, parents understand that because they're probably familiar with that too.

Whatever that thing is, they're staying the same as that's going to give them a sense of, you know, a certain sense of certainty and continuation of what they're used to.

Right.

One more thing, Chad.

I just, it's kind of nerdy, but there's this thing called Google alerts, Chad.

All right, I know you know about them.

Okay, so I've got a Google alert for these different phrases like standards based standards reference, proficiency based grading.

All these different, you know, like, names for it.

Okay.

So anytime that Google finds something out there, like in a news story or blog post or whatever that has that phrase in it, it automatically comes to my inbox.

Okay.

Every day I get an email that has the, you know, click this link, Click this link, Click this link.

Okay.

So what that means is, is people like you and me like to nerd out this stuff.

We get to not only see what's going on in the schools that we work in and that we support, but also, like, what's happening around the country.

Okay.

And what's been crazy is I've been doing this now for, like, the past five or six years is there's like, this theme I found of where in some situations, the school community, the parent, whether it's parents teach, whatever it is, wants to throw the baby out with the bath water.

What I mean by that is, like, they.

They want to get.

They want to, like, revert back to traditional Grady because of some miscommunication or misnomer or, you know, you can read the headlines like, you know, this is all about grade inflation or something like that.

And I think what if there's one, like, takeaway from this, you know, episode is if we communicate it and communicate it well, using things like metaphors, continuing on with the traditions that.

That a school community has, making sure that a school is, you know, continuing to communicate what they're doing, the same that.

That will minimize the effect of trying to throw the baby out with the bath water along the way, for sure.

One thought that just sticks with me is just like, this idea of grade inflation and lowered expectations.

Chad.

So, like, what would you say or how would you approach it?

What would you recommend for someone listening to this episode where that's the.

The headline in their school district or the.

Or the.

The current narrative in the, you know, the community Facebook group or something, how would you recommend they approach that specific, you know, communication misnomer about?

I would actually revert back to, you know, hopefully your schools have a way in their grading reform endeavors to make learning visual.

Like proficiency skills or success criteria or learning targets or rubrics, progressions or gradations of learning.

Like, there's all these different ways.

Sometimes my friend Cassie Irkins calls them attending tools.

Like, they're tools to attend to the learning.

Like, you can visually see the learning a little bit better, and maybe it has some sort of progression or some tiers.

Clearly, oftentimes people associate.

I mean, I've even seen schools just say an A means this on the Standard A B means this show, don't just tell.

You know, I think schools get a little obsessive with their FAQ and their 20 page PDF policy manuals, but they don't really show the learning.

And I stumbled upon this only on my own as a piloting teacher in like 2008 or nine, maybe.

We had proficiency skills that we were learning to develop and I was teaching government and I'm having parent teacher conferences like one to one and occasionally, not super often, the junior or senior would actually attend with their parent.

And I, I love this because I often collected their proficiency scales.

Eventually I would like collect them and distribute them back out.

But at the very beginning, like when I was going through their grade and we, let's say we had covered like three standards or three units or whatever, 30 learning outcomes and we have three different proficiency skills.

It was amazing.

I didn't know any different when I was.

Well, your child's A is a B right now.

And here's their three standards and here's how well they did on each of those.

You can see they sort of made it to here.

They were missing a few police pieces here where they weren't quite analyzing.

Here's an exemplar what that might look like, you know, with no student name on it.

And they would kind of sometimes like just look at their child and go, man, I wish I would have had that.

Like, this is, this is so clear to me.

And so I think the strategy is make it visual.

The reason why all those things around metaphors that have worked in the private sector, like your dentist and your lab reports and your Jiffy Lube and your fantasy football and your video games, is the dashboard becomes visual.

You can see what it means.

You don't have to know to do the math, but you can see it.

And I think we need to be able to show that.

Now if you're just transitioning to reform grading practices at face value and you don't have any attending tools, I think that's going to make it difficult for you because how are you then creating descriptors of learning aligned to standards?

I love it.

I love it.

I mean, that's, that's me, that's where I'm at is like, the more you can make it visual, the more we can, you know, put some even physical, tangible things on it.

It's like I have heard more parents tell me, they're like, wow, that is just a lot more than I thought.

Like in order to get an, an A, like they're going to have to be able to.

They sort of like move their hand up this sort of progression, even like, and tap it out.

Or they'll even see it become visual.

And they're like, I just thought it was solving problems.

You know, they're thinking of like 1 through 51 odd, right.

And it's like, oh, so they have to like build the water cycle by, you know, drawing the cycle.

And you know, it's just, it's so fun to see them go through it because it becomes visual and if they don't understand it, you can, you can.

Or the student can take the opportunity to say, well, tell, tell them what it would mean like at the next level.

They're like, yeah, it's like we're given like a, just a little bit of like behind the curtain view of what a student's doing to demonstrate their learning.

Yeah, I, this is crazy, but, you know, this is a.

We're just, we're just past Olympic season here and, you know, curling was a big deal.

Yeah.

And I, it's fascinating to watch curling.

Back in 2014, Chad, I had a chance to try out curling.

Oh, wow.

And now when I watch Curly, I'm like, those people are elite.

Because one time for me, I was terrible.

But I gotta admit, up until that point, until I had gone behind the curtain, I'm like, I don't know.

I'm sure they're good, but how.

Not really.

But you think your head, how hard can that be?

Right.

Yeah.

And so I think you've got a really great point here.

If we can just go behind the curtain a little bit and for parents to see like, what really are, what really is the criteria to get a four or a three or whatever on the standard or, you know, a proficient or whatever, like, that's can be really telling.

I think it can quickly take away this narrative of, you know, we're lowering expectations or grade inflation.

But up until that point, you're right.

It kind of seems just like a, a number crunching exercise that they don't quite understand yet because of what they're used to.

And so we can't blame them.

Yeah, I don't, and I don't want it to be a number crunching exercise.

Like, that's not really what our expertise is as educators, is to be, you know, statisticians and things like that.

And, and you know, we've, we've always talked about the challenges associated with an electronic grade book is, is sort of parlaying us into some problems.

Like, honestly, because of this superpower to Compute data that is really qualitative, like descriptive of what students can know or do and then just mashing it together and trying to squeeze it into some single solitary grade.

It just, it's really tough to be able to mean the same thing to lots of different stakeholders.

And, and that's why we really advise to have a purpose statement at your school and tell, you know, what do grades mean here?

What's our purpose?

So, yes, it reminds me once at a school board meeting, our superintendent, a great idea.

This is a number of years back, we're doing some new, like, you know, cool thing with like, writing instruction.

And so that the superintendent invited in a couple students and one of the elementary teachers and actually demonstrate a part of it, just a really small part of it to the school board.

And they're like, wow.

And they could see that the investment of time was well worth it, that teachers were learning these, you know, new writing teaching strategies.

And so, like, again, just behind the curtain a little bit can really illuminate those that, you know, may not have seen that yet.

So I just, I love your point.

And to be honest, it's one I hadn't really thought about a lot as being maybe the solution to this, but I'm sold.

I'm sure our listeners are as well.

Yeah, well, that's trial by fire, you know, and honestly, like, in my case, I was just naive to having a great parent teacher conference.

I was probably like a fifth year teacher in my third school and I'm piloting this entirely new methodology of grading.

And you know what I did?

I just took everything I had for the student learning.

Like, I, I just took it and, and lo and behold, like, it was one of my wiser moves.

And so then I just worked like over the years to just.

It's not the only way, but it's really transparent, like.

And the thing I like about it is, is I always have felt really strongly about, you know, educators are professionals.

And so we need to do what professionals do.

And professionals are really good at explaining the data associated with their job to lay people.

Yeah.

So I think if, you know, if you put those legislative branch learning targets in front of me and I kind of looked at the kid and the kid looked at mom, and they're like, yeah, you know, I, I guess I can't really explain the difference between qualifications to be a senator or representative yet, but if I could just get that, I think I'd be more along like at the 3.0 level.

And they're like, well, let's work on that.

And it was like, yeah, wow.

How did I have a parent of a 17 year old say they were going to work on something with their child?

So, I mean, that's a huge victory, I think.

And so you just sort of stumble across it.

But I think it comes, it's, it's much more genuine.

And also, you know, the thing that I, that I, that I feel like that visualization does, and I talk about this a lot with teachers when I'm working with them, is like, we need to think about grading as a form of communication naturally, and not as an adversarial type of environment.

Like, it's really just me as the, as the teacher or as the school helping facilitate, like me and you versus the standards, like to me and all the students.

And so helping to paint that picture when, you know, cartoons and movies and all that kind of stuff.

That cultural piece is always like the admonishing finger teacher, like, you shall not do this or you'll fail or whatever.

I think that modernized image of a teacher really coming alongside to facilitate, it's us versus these standards.

We're going to get you there.

You need to know where you're at.

I need to know where you're at.

Your parents need to know where you're at.

So it's also just what, like you say, behind the scenes looks like in the classroom too.

Yeah, good stuff, Good stuff.

I feel like we've, we've covered a lot of ground here, Dr. Lang, and talking about really, you know, how to do, how to communicate grading reform without drama.

I think it's an important topic, especially for school leaders who maybe are finding themselves in, you know, that, that territory of getting ready to make their grading reform more public or, or future coming for, for their school community, but also for those that you're saying, know what?

Maybe we haven't done as great a communication as we could have or should have in the past, and we want to double down.

I think we've given some really, you know, tangible strategies, some really good things to do and not to do along the way.

Chad, could you just talk just for a little bit, just maybe a 30 seconds, a little bit more about our book?

You know, I feel like, you know, it's, it's our opportunity to talk just for a short while about that.

Obviously there's not, there's a growing number of books out there that are written for teachers and administrators, but we found out that there wasn't a book that was written for parents in something like 20 years.

And so you mentioned the triad.

Why else would someone listening to this podcast wants to pick up that book and recommend it to parents or perhaps read it themselves as a school leader?

Yeah, well, it was, it was, it was really filling a gap that we felt like, you know, as we've been doing this work, like, one third of this Triad doesn't have a great resource, right?

They're.

They're at the behest of their local community, their district, or making sense of materials that were made for educators or school leaders.

And so, you know, naturally we kind of found it as a labor bell blub and we stumbled into all kinds of things as we were kind of pulling it together over a few years.

And some, here's some bright shining moments that I feel really proud of.

One is that we realize what parents know and don't know.

And so, like, we kick off the book of, like, most parents, and there's research that suggests this is true, is they don't know what a standard is.

So we have to be able to kind of lay that foundation.

Where did this come from?

Why are there standards in school and why do they matter and all that kind of stuff.

And we try not to make that too boring or anything.

But just the format of our book is to be a guide, obviously, as well for parents to say, well, what questions would I ask?

Okay, I kind of get this, but what am I supposed to ask now?

Is it besides, like, what do they lose points for?

What do I ask?

And so we built in at the beginning of every chapter, sort of a scenario or a big net that just kind of like, oh, I could see myself in that situation.

And then we wrap every chapter with like, here's some questions you could ask the school or your teachers, and here's some, some questions you could ask your own, your child, like your student, like, that are specific towards each chapter.

And we sort of.

The arc of the book kind of takes us through this piece that, you know, we should definitely wrap this episode up about.

Is this fear about, like, are they going to be college ready?

Are we lowering standards?

All that we kind of take.

Take you through that arc and kind of quell some of those misconceptions.

And then we, we really wrap with this, this final chapter about, you know, parenting.

And it's kind of this parent psychology piece and how grading and motivation and all that kind of works together or doesn't work based off just what we think about motivational psychology.

And so we were really excited to dive into some work from parent authors and experts in this country and fold them in too.

So that's the format of it.

I could see it.

And we've heard from school leaders that are like this helped us launch our communication to parents.

Yes.

Bingo.

And so they, they reverse engineered the book, which is exactly what we designed it for to be able to be done.

We wanted to call it a parents guide because that was our focal audience.

But I think we knew all the time that this is going to be helpful for both educators and schools in the triad.

Right.

I don't know if any students would love to read it, but certainly they could probably reiterate some points to both parents and schools from it that we found.

But I think that's how we're seeing it used by people that reach out to us and feedback that we get.

And that was sort of our intention.

Do you think that's right or am I missing something from that man?

The reason I thought about is because my own kids school district reached out recently, said hey, parent teacher conferences are coming up.

You know, please sign up.

And they, in one of my kids schools did a fantastic job.

Here's a list of questions you might consider asking your kids teacher at parent teacher conference.

And I thought that's just like setting up the parent teacher conference for success.

Right.

And so I think that's partly what our book is aiming to do as well is to set up, you know, parents for success, school leaders and teachers for success in the new conversation, the new conversations at conferences, through email, at home, in the new grading reform.

And I think again, as we really wrap up this episode, that's what it's all about is if we can all get on the same page, school, parent, student, if we could all get on the same page, then we're going to be able to understand what we're doing and why we're doing without drama.

And I think that's what we all want.

That's really what everybody wants is, is to do it well.

Yeah, no doubt.

And, and so let's just make sure that we address everything in the room.

This always comes up, you know, in grading reform.

And we'll wrap up our episode with this because it's very viable in terms of the conversation.

But parents oftentimes have some concerns about, you know, as things look differently in terms of grades and how their calculator communicated or determined and potentially, you know, reported onto a transcript, will they be, you know, not as prepared for college or not as prepared for the military, not as prepared to go on to whatever their post high school career may be.

And you know, that's totally normal.

We was expect that to be true, but there's just, there's a ton of things that we can look at.

I just want to talk about like what successful schools have done.

Well, one of the things that I've noticed and I'd love to hear from you on this Matt, is is they continue to celebrate all the awesome things that their students do after grading reform beyond high school.

So I know of a school in Wyoming, they have the banner of every institution that a student has ever went to in their comments.

And they're not a huge school.

They maybe have you know, 500 students in their high school and, and it's like all 50 states and, and it's amazing.

And they've been standards based grading or standards reference grading for a decade maybe or more.

It's only proliferated, you know, under that.

And so I think there's this culture of learning and it's, it's super cool to see that, you know, it doesn't, it's just a form of communication.

It's in a more clear form of communication.

The other thing I, I've seen successfully done is panels of employers and higher ed institutions.

Bingo.

At like a parent night or a parent university or recorded even that, you know, you can provide to say, you know, this is 2026.

We get all kinds of candidates that want to.

I mean we're a really diverse world and obviously and we're diverse in, in people's backgrounds in the United States alone, between homeschool and students from another country or whatever it is, anything about higher ed, for example, we accept pretty much everything to tell a story about their academic abilities and really holistically how they are as a student.

We surely would suspect that high schools would compute grades differently or determine grades differently.

And so it's not really shocking to them is kind of what I've found.

And that's been really good to hear.

What have you seen or heard that you feel like has sort of helped quell that misconception?

Same thing.

Just the school district here in Iowa not too long ago did that, the whole panel thing and that was huge.

I think also bringing in former students that have graduated.

We did that for a while.

My former school district, you know, like the freshmen in college that are back, you know, over the holiday break, you'll bring them in for a day and you know, just allow them to ask questions, record that if you're able to do it.

I think that's also a really good thing.

You know, I think there's, you know, in the, in our, in our community, our students can be a fantastic ambassadors as they've graduated.

You know, the local community college admissions officer or official, the local university that a bunch of kids go to, that admissions person knows the school counselor and they know it.

Like there's just so many connections to build.

I think that's what's important in every school community.

Don't just show somebody else's panel they recorded from five states away.

Make it your own, I would say, is what I think.

At least this school district in Iowa did a fantastic job.

And others I know of as well.

Yeah, I mean, more and more and more every day.

You know, we have so many technological tools, so many different opportunities to gather evidence about who we are.

And when I say we, I mean our students and our children.

And so whatever that's going to look like for them, you know, you can start curating evidence of that.

Grades are certainly evidence of that, of course, but it's just a one, it's just a temporary indicator of how, how they were able to do at that time.

And, you know, what does it tell about their story, their trajectory and what can we use to complement that?

You know, I, I think of an interesting conversation I had.

I think it was like a college, like admissions counselor or something like that recently.

I can't remember what institution it was, but it was really interesting to hear them say, like they looked at their GPA or they were looking at their academic record in relation to like which jobs they did, like which summer jobs, or it was like they really liked certain combinations.

And I was like, wow, that's very detailed.

And they're like, no, we just.

With analytics and stuff, we know who are likely to be most successful even based off the combination of XYZ grades plus, you know, working as a lifeguard or, you know, whatever it was, I can't remember what it was.

And I was like, wow, that's really awesome.

So it wasn't just get a summer job to like beef up your or, you know, work at some volunteer organization one time it, you know, sort of like pad your resume type thing.

It was like knowing the analytics on who is likely to be most successful, who is likely to be prolific at their institution based off that whole picture.

And so, you know, your grades are just a big piece of that.

They're a piece of that, but they're not the only thing.

And so I think that's encouraging as well.

Well, Matt, I think that wraps up episode three.

We could go on forever and ever about all of these topics.

As usual.

But we would just encourage you to reach out if you have, if you have any questions to either one of us on LinkedIn or X or certainly any.

We can be found online at our various different websites and so forth.

And we would love to help anybody that needs it or that wants some more ideas.

We're happy to be in the conversation if you'd like us to be.

We're shooting to finish up this miniseries in a fourth episode that's all about sustaining.

Like, how do we.

We're in it.

We want to be in it, not being in it.

Well, we want to sustain it.

Like, we want this to last.

We don't want this to be another flash in the pan.

And nobody does.

And for me, it's always like, it's not going to be because how do you communicate more clearly about what a student can know or do?

And then what would be the alternative to that?

Be less clear?

I just, I just don't know.

But as you've said, and we know you can, you can go backwards, so to speak, in terms of validity and transparency and clarity.

And I don't think that's good for anybody.

But it's understandable that if the rollout's poor and the communication's poor that it's, it's not going to be great.

So we're looking forward to having that conversation Further, check us out in episode four on sustaining that grading reform culture in your organization.

And if you need anything in the in the meantime, give us a shout.

But Matt, it's been a joy.

Thank you so much for everything.

I always learn from you, my friend and I will see you next time.

Sounds great.

Thanks for spending time in the Commons on the Forward Ed Network.

You've been listening to Modern Grading Reform, a miniseries with Dr. Chad Lang and Dr. Matt Townsley.

Honest conversations, practical insights and better communication about learning.

Join us for the next episode and find even more on the Forward Ed Network.