Your Morning Boost - Stop Lowering the Bar: Rethinking the Core Misconceptions of Grading Reform

Welcome to your Morning Boost, brought to you by AWB Education. Here we amplify knowledge, widen reach, and broaden impact in education, delivering your daily dose of professional development. This program is sponsored by Grundmeyer Leader Services, where together we are transforming education, one leader at a time. Now, get ready to amplify your day with your Morning Boost. All right, Happy Monday, Boosters, Welcome back to your Morning Boost. We've got an exciting week ahead of us because we've got two amazing guests here to talk about the art of grading. I know a lot of people might think, Wow, that's not a topic I want to get into, but I'll tell you what, it's a very very important topic. So I personally am really excited about this opportunity to get a chance to talk to two experts that are in this field. Before we dive into that, I want to get a chance for our listeners to get to know you guys. So I have doctor Chad Lang and I have doctor Matt Townsley. They're both here for us all week long. Doctor Lang, let's start with you. Can you give us a little quick introduction about you and who you are and what why you're into this business? Sure? Well, thanks a lot for having me you on. It's an honor. I love the podcast, so thank you so much. I'm a spy year educator, public school educator. I was a middle school and high school social states teacher in Iowa and Missouri for a little over a decade. I've been in as system middle school principal and activities director, central office administrator now both in Southwest Iowa and Eastern Iowa. I was fortunate to co author a book, A Parent's Guide Degrading Your Reporting with doctor Matt Townsley's joining us tonight, which is awesome, and it was just a great experience. And been blessed to be able to support of course teachers and administrators in our own districts that we work at, and then also have the opportunity to support other school districts, school leaders and some conversations about grating reform along the way through some support and consulting that we've been able to do. So it's been great. That's awesome. You know, Chat, I've known you for a little while now, and when I've heard you say your your list of jobs, I've thought maybe I should just say, hey, what haven't you done at least at an administrative level. Yet that's awesome. That's quite the experience there, Doctor Townsley, your turn. Tell us a little bit about you. Yeah, you bet Hey great to be on the podcast here. Matt Townsley, former high school mathematics teacher turned district office administrator in the Fantastic Soul and Community School district in the eastern part of Iowa, felt the itch to try out higher education, and so as I was a district office administrator, I was doing a little bit of summer weekend like adjunct work, and in a text one day saying hey, Matt, there's a full time opening to teach future principles superintendents at the University of Northern Iowa. And I tell you what, if you are affiliated with you and I, it is hard to resist the opportunity to think about going back to work at such a wonderful, wonderful institution. So for the past eight years I've been teaching in educational leadership again future superintendents, principles and doctoral students, and like Chad, I just love the topic of grading. Thanks again, I've grab us on here. Yeah, that's awesome. I think if I remember I had all three of us are panthograds. So that's kind of finding a little alumni reunion going on here today. That's awesome. We'll tell you what when we get back from our commercial break, after we pay some bills here, we're going to get into our first topic. So we're going to try something new this week. We're gonna try five questions. So this first question is going to be one that the two of you are going to dive into and just give us a little glimpse into how we can get better at grading. And so I'm really curious to see your response to our first question. Well, like I said, we're going to pay some bills first, so gentlemen, hang on. We'll be right back after this commercial break. All right, We're going to start with five questions this week. So here's Monday's question for you guys. So let's see how you do on this one. You're ready. Question is, when transitioning from traditional grading, what is the single most critical philosophical misconception that leaders must address with their staff first? You want to get jeez, this is such a good one, you know, as I support school leaders out there and in my own obviously previous experience facilitating this change in soul, and I would say there's this notion, particularly at the secondary level, of it's kind of a combination of students not being held accountable and or somehow the bar is being lowered. As I think about that philosophical shift, it really boils down to either a misunderstanding of what the shift is all about, or a good understanding what it's all about, but perhaps some of the details not being teased out in implementation. For example, often I'll hear things like, hey, it's just you know, unlimited retakes if we're going away from traditional grading to more like a standards based or standards reference grading, But it's not unlimited retakes. There's some type of qualifier that students will have to go through what doctor Tom Gusky calls corrective and structural activities that students will have to go through to be eligible for, if you will, that idea of reassessments or retakes. And so I think this idea of somehow the bar being lowered or student still being held accountable is something that really comes to mind as a common philosophical misconception when moving away from traditional grading to standards based or standards reference grading. You're mentioning the difference in a couple of words that I think are very important there, retake and reassessment, because there are two there are two versions there that you're talking about. Those are two distinctly different words. I appreciate you bringing that up. Yeah, it's it's definitely more than just you know, going back and making and making the corrections on the chapter three math test. It's more than just verbatim going back and you know, putting those periods or commas where they were missing on the essay. There's a lot more to it than that. Now can definitely be a revision type experience for students, but there's also opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning and an entirely different modality than they did before. And so I appreciate you pointing that out there. Adam J. Lang, how about you. Yeah, Matt took my answer. So that means two great mind sneak alike, hopefully, And that's true, and we can even dive deeper into that. There's of this idea that we're softening the experiences, we're backing off of expectations for students. The reassessment is sort of a straw man's part of the argument frankly, really there's so much more to it. It's you're not preparing them for the real world, and it's just we're giving in to students and just just lowering in the bar. But it's quite the contrary actually, when you really dig into the practices where you're ensuring that students have the opportunity to demonstrate proficiency of what they're expected to know or do, and the stakes are super high. They're as high as they've ever been in all of the core areas and even in student interests as they get older, whether it's career in technical education, competencies, king in our society. We live in a twenty first century economy. Students need to be able to know what they're actually doing, and traditional grade metrics sometimes can put a mask on what it is that students can nowhere do, whether that be through an inflated grade, through a compliance and completion, but not really any guts to the learning. Afterwards, nothing really stuck and they don't really have any competency, and they end up maybe in a higher education environment where they're not prepared, and they spend a bunch of money or their parents are in debt, and that's not good either right, And so we want students to be able to have the opportunity to excel and be proficient in a minimal amount of a lot of standards, and if they can be maximualily proficient, that's great. So I think it's taking that and peeling back the layers of the onions about in it. As you're transitioning away from traditional grading practices, you're bringing more clarity to what it is that we expect students to know where do and we hope that the practices help it endure long term so they can be successful whatever they want to be. And I think that's a really critical piece. And then the part that I would add to that is just making sure that we're clear on what the purpose of grading is in our school and our districts and getting crystal clear about that. And we're big proponents that grades are a form of communication. So just with that in mind, then you start to unravel some miss and traditions. Hence the traditional part of grading just based off tradition that really aren't serving that purpose. Statement if you even don't have maybe you're going to have one and it just work on developing one. So i'd say those are the two major areas. Well. That's a heck of a start. Gentlemen. That was a good job on question number one. But I'll tell you what, what we're getting here quickly is that you know, it's it's not just an easy switch. And I think that's hard for some school leaders to understand that I can't just decide tomorrow we're just going to change grading. We're gonna do something completely different. You got to start somewhere. That's a big part of it. But you know, moving along the lines of shifting your grading practices is certainly something that's that's not an easy task, but one that's worth the time and effort and energy for sure. All Right, Well, that's like I said, it was a good start, So I appreciate what you got for us here on Monday. I'm going to look forward to question number two when we come back to you guys tomorrow with more on grading practices. But again, a big thank you to doctor Chad Lang, doctor Matt Townsley for joining us all week long here on your morning Boost. I'm listeners, you'll hear more of this all week long, so tune in every day to get another little tip or trick as it comes to grading practices, but outside of that, like usual, thank you for listening, Thank you for doing all the work that you do for our kids every day in our schools, and we will talk with you again tomorrow. That concludes another episode of Your Morning Boost. We hope today's daily dose of professional development helps you amplify knowledge, widen reach, and broaden impact. Your Morning Boost is an AWB Education production brought to you with the generous support of Grundmeier Leader Services. Join us again tomorrow for more. Until then, keep boosting your impact.