Superintendent finally made a decision

Just got this email at 2:30 pm today.

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Dear Community Members,

I would like to thank all the community members who have shared their concerns regarding Standards-Based Grading (SBG). From the beginning I have admitted that we should have done a better job of including our XXXXX Middle School and XXXXXX High School parents in the discussions to implement the reporting of SBG.  Even though the implementation of SBG was not a success I still have great respect for our principals and teachers at these campuses for their innovative thinking and desire to push the envelope and try something new to benefit their students.

While some components of SBG have merits and the potential to benefit our students it cannot be completely implemented in isolation. I have spent the past month learning about SBG and how it’s being implemented at XXXXX MS and XXXXXXX HS. A couple of weeks ago I was reluctant to end the implementation of SBG; however, I instructed these two campuses to return to the 0-100 grading scale. As I continued to listen to our parents I learned that the use of proficiency scales was adding to the confusion of the grading process.
After much reflection and guidance from the Board of Trustees I have instructed both campuses to stop the entire implementation of SBG. Beginning Monday, Oct. 31 teachers will begin transitioning away from SBG.  The transition will conclude no later than Friday, Nov. 4, the last day of the six weeks. We have also asked teachers to review student grades for the past two grading cycles and verify that each assignment offered the opportunity to score a maximum of “100%” and not “90%.”  I have asked principals to update their school community on the progress of this endeavor. If you believe your student’s grade does not accurately reflect his/her performance, please contact your child’s teacher and principal.

For future grades, teachers will spend next week preparing grade books to reflect a child’s grade on assignments and not a grade on learning goals. Beginning with the new grading cycle, Nov. 7, you can expect your child’s Home Access account to appear similar to grading prior to SBG. In addition, students will no longer receive rubrics unless it is a project-based or writing assignment.

My review of SBG also allowed me to review the retake/retest practices at XXXXX MS and XXXXX HS.  Beginning Monday, Nov. 7 students will no longer have the opportunity to redo an assignment or test if they score above “70%.” I have instructed both campuses to follow district policy EIA which states students receiving a failing grade must be given the opportunity to redo assignments or exams. Students earning a grade below “70%” will be provided a reasonable and fair opportunity to retake or redo their assignments or exams.

As we plan for the future I will work with the Board of Trustees to review and develop district policies to ensure consistency among schools. Our current grading policy allows for significant campus discretion and through this SBG process it has become apparent that grading parameters are needed in policy to ensure uniformity across the district.  Thank you for your patience and commitment to the success of all students.

Sincerely,
Dr. XXXXXXXX
Superintendent

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I have a fire lit under me!


This of course happens on the same day that we lose our dear librarian in a fight against cancer.  Her motto was "Fight Like Hell".  Well, I'm bringing the fight.


If you pray, please pray.  
If you chant, please chant.
If you sing, please sing.
Whatever you do for those you are thinking of please do that for me now.  I'm walking into the lions den in about 20 minutes.  


Hopefully our School Board listens to us and over rides his decision!  They're the only one that can stop this now.

I need your help!

There's yet another board meeting tomorrow, Thursday 10/27 at 6:30 PM CST.


I need studies, I need citations, I need speaking points that show that reporting grades to students by Units and not Tests, Quizzes, and Homework.


I appreciate any help you can give me!

Educating Parents on SBG

So last night we had an open forum with the parents to educate them on SBG and how we are implementing it at our school.

The parents had many concerns and they were very verbal about them.  Some were concerned with giving kids a 1, 2, 3, or 4 as a grade instead of a number between 0 and 100, which that practice has now been stopped.  Others were extremely upset that their student who up until this year has been making straight A's would be required to go above and beyond to push their grade from a 90 to a 100.  But the biggest push of some of the parents and students was over the concern that it will impact their GPA and class rank.

The problem here in Texas and in our district is that students aren't simply given an A, B, C, etc for a grading period or for a semester grade.  Instead they are given a numeric grade and in our district that number grade is what is used to calculate their GPA as well as their class rank.  And of course in Texas we have the Top 10% rule where the students in the Top 10% of their graduating class are automatically given acceptance to any public university.  I really want to sit down with some of these parents and students and show them how the math doesn't come out to a large statistical difference.

They're so uninformed and we aren't even using TRUE SBG!  We've modified the idea of it to fit our crazy grading system here which keeps it from being the thing that the parents and students are so gung ho against.

UGH!!!!!

Sorry, I just had to vent....

SUCCESS!!!

So I literally just realized that I hadn't blogged about how well my "Keys to Math" students did on their TAKS retest in October.  We got the results shortly before Thanksgiving break and I've been diving deep into the data and crunching the numbers since then.

Last year in the October retest and traditionally we have had ~31% passing rate.  This year I kinda gently tossed the previous system out the window and the passing rate for students in my class as well as the school was 45%.  Here is where you picture me jumping up and down for joy and screaming like a little girl in my Associate Principals office.  And yes I really did that, and yes some of the admin was doing that with me.  :-)

As a result we are taking the system I hit the ground running with and expanding it while also having our Intervention teacher, let's call him "Stu" teach the same course but his is going to be more directed towards the 10th graders that have always struggled.

My principal, the sweetheart that he is asked me to start writing down the process that the students are doing so that, in his words "someday if you wanted to you could have it ready and go out and sell it to other school districts to implement it."  My response; "that would be awesome but I'm happy in my classroom and it seems like a pretty common sense approach to me."  My thoughts now are that I'm going to TM and a circle so that if someone else wants to do the leg work of presenting it to other schools that's awesome and I'll take the credit and royalties :)

So without further ado, here's what I have typed up so far.  I'm also going to share the MASSIVE spreadsheet I have come up with that has tons of the kids historical data in it (basically anything I could get access to).  Feel free to Oooh and Aah when you see the spreadsheet.  It's kinda like my baby.

Here's the whole process
Keys to Math Process

Here's where you can find all of the documents:
this is the one for the beginning of class or when the kid walks in your doors.
Personal TAKS Reflection

TEKS Tracking Chart

Helps me figure out what the kids need help with. Will be online next semester.
Daily Check




My baby <-- This is where you can Ooh and Ahh :) Everything File to Share


Template for Giving New Results
And yes the raw score means more to the Keys Kids than the scale score.

Earlier in the year as the students were still working their way through the steps before the test we had to present to our co-workers and some central admin through a gallery walk things we were trying in our PLC.  I threw this poster together totally last minute at request and got a lot of positive feedback from coworkers, students and the superintendents right hand woman.  Here's the pics of what the poster showed.  I'm going to be moving it to Glogster whenever I find the time.

Implementing SBG School Wide

As the school year has started and my campus has had A LOT of training on SBG practices and procedures it seems like all of the departments are in a rush to implement it now.  As we all are tripping and trying to find out how to exactly implement this in our classrooms I keep wondering if anyone has experienced the same problems on their campuses. 

Did everyone try to implement it at once or was it phased in through departments or levels of teachers?

While the school or district was in transition from the traditional grading system (percentage wise) did all of the PLCs or even departments decide to use the same conversion chart from a scale score to percentage or did different departments or levels have different conversions?

The current hot topic at my school is how do we convert the scale score to a percentage that GradeSpeed can handle.  For my students, and primarily the students I'm intervening with and my DB Geometry class I'm using the table below.

100% = 4.0 = I can do it well enough to make connections that weren't taught.
95% = 3.5 = I can do it well enough to make connections that weren't taught, but I'm not always right about those connections.
90% = 3.0 = I can do everything that was taught without making mistakes.

85% = 2.5 = I can do everything that was taught with a few mistakes.
80% = 2.0 = I can do all of the easy parts, but I can’t do the harder parts.
75% = 1.5 = I can do some of the easier parts, but I make some mistakes.
70% = 1.0 = With help, I can do some of what was taught.


Now that's just the student friendly version that I have posted in my room. In my opinion in those classes the students shouldn't have an opportunity to fail. They always will have receiving help as an option and they will eventually (fingers crossed) be able to get some of the work done.  But that's just my philosophy. 

I'm interested in other peoples experiences and thoughts about this subject especially.  We are having a math department meeting next week to discuss our grading policies.  I hope to hear from people!