Education Without Grades

 
       Imagine P - 12 schooling without grades.

       Learning?  Yes.
       Art?  Yes.
       Clubs?  Yes.
       Teachers, friends, computers, classes, classrooms?  Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
       Grades?  No.

       The idea of an educational landscape without grades is not so new and (in fact) there are a significant number of schools that are experimenting this idea right now.  New York High School English teacher, Starr Sackstein, has been talking about this for years.  We still teach and we still assess.  We just don't use the traditional grading system of attaching a number or a letter to that assessment.

       The problem with "grading" is that it has grown to be a monster that we can't control.  Parents and students alike will tell you that they care more about "getting-a-good-grade" than they do about "learning".  As with so many other aspects of American life, grading has become a competition to be won, rather than a method for measuring learning and understanding of academic content.  Add to this that grading systems vary widely from school to school and even from teacher to teacher (sometimes) in the same school to the point that it is hard to say what a particular grade actually means; or if the same "grade" means the same thing from one class to another.

       Still, it can be hard to convince a generation that (whether they like it or don't like it) has grown up with the letter grade system, that a no grades system is a better way to conduct our middle and high schools.  Here is a great article that contains students' thoughts about living through a "no-grades" experiment.  (Spoiler alert: One-third liked the idea, one-third didn't like it, and one-third didn't care.)

       I often say that the goal of education is learning.  If something hampers our efforts to help students to learn, I think we should do something about that.  Grades and grading have (in many cases) become the new goal or the more prominent goal of education in the minds of many students and parents.  That's a problem.  If we are preparing students for the world of work, what will be their motivation if without grades in the workplace?

       Colleges regularly get rid of students that can't keep up academically.  It doesn't matter what their grades were in high school.  What matters is what they know and are able to do.  Same thing with employers.  Good grades might get you the job, but only true ability will enable you to keep the job.  We need to teach students the value of learning exceeds the value of earning good grades.  Maybe the way to do this is to get rid of the grades.

       What do you think?

Three Simple Steps to School Success

       Every parent wants their child to do well in school.  When kids are in elementary school, parental influence and assistance is usually plentiful.  Parents generally understand the content well enough to help their children during homework time.  And elementary children are more likely to do as they're told to do, and to respect the authority of adults in the school.  They generally want to please their parents and their teachers.  When elementary students struggle academically, public schools provide lots of help and assistance in a caring and nurturing way.

       As children move on to middle school and then to high school some of those attributes that helped students to be successful in elementary school tend to lessen.  The school work is more rigorous, children are more concerned with pleasing their friends, and parents who may feel that their children should be more responsible for their school work may take a step back when it comes to reminding them of due dates.  Also, parents may find that they can no longer help their children with homework due to the level of the content.

       Still, all students can do well in school and here are five simple steps that can help:

1.  Do your best

       I know this sounds trite and cliche, but I'm going to define "doing your best" in a way that may sound different from what most would think.  It doesn't mean getting an "A" or even necessarily striving for an "A" all of the time.  In fact, "doing your best" has little to do with the way your child's school assesses students.  Instead, it has everything to do with your child looking into the mirror at the end of the unit or a marking period or the school year and being able to say that he/she did everything they could to be successful.  Sometimes students really, honestly don't have time to everything that are asked to do.  Sometimes they ask for help and stay up late to study and take on the responsibility for their learning and end up with a "C".  That's OK.  But if the child feels that he/she didn't do their best, then this is the time for self-reflection about what can be done differently the next time.  Everyone (including adults) fall short of doing their best sometimes.  Striving to do better is part of what we want students to learn in school.

2.   Adult support outside of school

       Middle and high school students are not too old to need support from a caring adult outside of the school building.  Students today have lots of distractions and when given the choice between school work and social media it can be hard to plan time for both unless someone is there to help.  In 2006 there was a study of high school dropouts.  Many high school dropouts in this study said that they would have tried harder if someone insisted that they try harder.

"Nearly 7 in 10 respondents (69 percent) said they were not motivated or inspired to work hard, 80 percent did one hour or less of homework each day in high school, two-thirds would have worked harder if more was demanded of them (higher academic standards and more studying and homework), ..."

3.  Get involved

       Students that are involved clubs and sports and other school activities discover that "school" is more than a place with teachers and homework.  Involvement in activities helps students to connect with other students who have similar interests and these connections can be positive in and out of the classroom.

       School success should not be all about grades.  We want students to graduate with lots of skills that can be hard to measure with the standard "grade".  These include:  communication skills, computer and technological literary, adaptability, research skills, problem solving skills, strong work ethic, and conflict resolution skills--to name a few.

       Our public schools along with home support help our students to succeed.

When Students are Engaged, Grades Don't Matter

       My daughter's girl scout group had their annual Thinking Day recently.  Thinking Day is a special annual day when Girl Scouts around the world think of each other and express their thanks and appreciation for the International Girl Scouts organization.  Since my daughter is in high school, her group was tasked with creating a game or activity for the younger girl scouts to do.  They decided to do a Lifesize Hungry Hungry Hippo game.

       The game has four competitors who begin the game in one corner of a square floor space with lots of small balloon in the middle of the square.  Each competitor is on a scooter facing the middle of the square and holds a laundry basket.  An older girl pushes the competitors towards the middle of the square and their job is to capture as many balloons as possible with their laundry baskets.  A jump rope is tied to each scooter and the older girls pull the competitors back to their original corner and collect the balloons they have captured.  This continues for one minute.  The person with the most balloons wins.

       My daughter set up a white board to keep track of the number of balloon caught by each competitor.  But after a few rounds it became clear that no cared who "won" the game because it was so much fun just to play the game.  The points didn't matter.  There was a line of girls waiting to play the game.  Girls came back again and again to play Hungry Hungry Hippos.  Parents were taking pictures and videos.  The game is fun and exciting and full of action.  Everyone could participate and everyone had fun.

       In education circles, we refer to this scenario as Student Engagement.  When students are engaged in the activity that takes place in their classroom, the "grade" becomes much less important and the "learning" becomes much more important.  Students want to finish the task or express their viewpoint or add to the discussion.  They become so engrossed in the activity that other matters such as grades and the remaining time in the class and social media and all of the things that distract students when they are bored suddenly become invisible.

       This sort of engagement doesn't have to be a rare occurrence for our students in school.  In fact, teachers who understand the value of student engagement strive to find and to create activities that engage their students intellectually and emotionally and even physically everyday.  Students who are engaged are more likely to do their best everyday.  They are less likely to zone out and doze off in class.   Some strategies for engaging students are simple and basic such as:

• calling on every students every day
• allowing a time in every class for students to get out of their seat
• getting to know every students and establishing a good relationship with each student
• dividing each class period into several 5 to 15 minute sections with different activities in each class section (such as: whole group discussion, individual work, small group work)

Other strategies involve more preparation such playing a game to review material, using manipulatives in a math lesson, students using technology for part of a lesson.  The 20th century classroom with a teacher doing all of the talking is not the best way to conduct a classroom if you want all students to achieve.  When students are engaged, students are learning.  While teachers are not responsible for creating an entertaining environment in their classroom, they are responsible for motivating their students to do their best.

       Every student should be Hungry Hungry for learning.

High School Should Not be a GPA Competition

       You may need good grades to get accepted to college.  But what you really need is good learning (and a good ability to learn) to graduate from college.  Lots of people go to college, but not a lot of people graduate from college.  A study completed in 2015 found that only 52.9% of students who began college in 2009 had earned a college degree by 2015.  This means that even if we allow students an additional two years to complete a 4-year degree, we are still have only barely half of the students graduating from college.  (Imagine the outcry if the high school graduation rate was 50%!)

       Another study has found that one reason for this dismal college graduation rate is a lack of preparation in secondary schools.  As a educator with 30 years of secondary school experience, I would suggest that it isn't so much that we don't prepare students well, but instead (perhaps) we struggle in our communication with students (and with their parents) when we talk about their actual academic ability.

       First of all, our grading system probably doesn't tell the whole story.  Grades are often the primary communication tool that a school has with its students (and their parents) about how well they are doing.  High grades imply high ability and low grades imply low ability.  But is this always true?  And what to medium grades imply?  We don't have a uniform method for determining grades from school district to school district, so does a "B" mean the same thing in every high school in America?

       Secondly, we have high school graduation requirements that are developed in each state in the United States.  Different states have different requirements; although there may be similarities.  But the bigger issue (to me) is:  Is "Graduating from high school" the same as "Being prepared for college"?  Should we have one set of criteria that says "This is sufficient for high school graduation." and another set of (higher level) criteria that says "This is sufficient for good preparation for college."  I think a lot of people feel that if they graduate from high school, then they are prepared for college-level work.  But this isn't always true.

       Hence, high school should not be a place where we only care about getting good grades and getting a high Grade Point Average (GPA).  That might be good enough to get you recognized in high school; and good enough to get accepted to college.  But students who only know how to get good grades without an accompanying ability to learn, will struggle in college.

       Everything in life isn't a competition.  Your education is one of these things.  It doesn't matter if you come in first place.  What matters is that you learn well.

Flaws in the Letter Grade System

       What does it mean when you get an A in a class?  I'm not asking, "What is it supposed to mean?"  I'm asking, "What does it actually mean?"  Does the "A" in Chemistry mean the same as the "A" in History?  Does the "A" in Physical Education mean the same as the "A" in English?  What does a "B" mean; what does a "D" mean?  Did you ever get an "A" in a class--middle school, high school, or college--and then brag to your friends that you didn't learn a thing?  Did you ever get an "A" or a "B" in a class and fail the final exam?  Did you know someone who consistently earned "A's" and "B's" in math classes and couldn't score over 500 on the math portion of the SATs?

       Howard Pitler list four major problems with our current system of using letter grades:

1. There is no consistency from teacher to teacher or from school to school.  Schools and school districts may have different policies about grading; and these policies aren't necessarily the same from school to school or from school district to school district.
2. Teachers decide the factors that go into a course grade and they decide the weighting for each of these factors.  So called "hard teachers" and "easy teachers" is actually a real thing when it comes to grading in the letter grading system.  Some teachers are more demanding than others; some teachers award "points" for non-academic behaviors such as showing up to class on time or not using all of your allotted bathroom passes. Merely completing homework can be part of the grade regardless of the quality or the "learning" that may have occurred while completing the homework.
3. Grades discourage students from learning.  Pitler quotes Alfie Kohn who says, 

 “Kids who are graded—and have been encouraged to try to improve their grades—tend to lose interest in the learning itself, avoid challenging tasks whenever possible (in order to maximize the chance of getting an A), and think less deeply than kids who aren’t graded.” The target becomes the grade rather than the learning. Students take less challenging classes because they want to “protect” their GPAs.

 4.  Lastly, true learning often requires multiple attempts in which ultimate success doesn't happen until the end of the process.  When students are more concerned about "getting grades", they tend to try less, they are less willing to go through the necessary struggle needed to achieve the ultimate level of true learning.

       There is another way to measure student learning and that is to compare their learning against standards (or proficiencies or competencies) that everyone can agree on.  Proficiency-based Learning is not new.  In fact it is growing in popularity among educators who want students and parents to have a better understanding of the actual learning that is taking place in our schools.  One of the hallmarks of proficiency-based learning is the idea that students need time to re-visit topics and ideas in their journey toward true learning and true understanding.  Hence, assessments are used to help students and parents to "see" the learning that occurred and to recognize the learning that still needs to happen.  When students are re-assessed, grades aren't averaged.  Instead, higher grades at a later time in the learning process are recognized as the actual level of learning that occurred.  Therefore, students are encouraged to try harder.

       Proficiency-based Learning should also allow students to work at their own pace.  Ideally, they should not move on to something new until they have a good understanding of the current lesson or idea or standard.  Also, students may have opportunities to demonstrate their understanding in multiple ways; not always via a summative test--however these tests can be still be used.

       Schools are for learning, not for "getting grades".  And we need to have a better system for identifying the learning that takes place.  Too many students are graduating from high school without the skills to hold a job or complete college or make good decisions for themselves.  We need to do better for our students so that they will have better options for their futures.

Is It Possible to Help Students Too Much?

       How much is too much?


       Can you care too much?  Can you love too much?  Can you help too much?  When it comes to students and learning, sometimes teachers and parents help too much.

       Their hearts in the right place, but goals are short sighted.  Teachers and parents help too much when they tell students the answers in an effort for them to complete the classwork or the homework.  They seek the short-term goal of compliance with an assignment.  But they don't see the longer-term goal of helping students to learn how to learn.

       Educators have an expression for the results of too much help.  We call it, "Learned Helplessness".  It's when students learn to purposefully not try too hard because they know that a parent or a teacher or someone will eventually give them the answer or do the work for them.

       Since most students (and some adults) don't see or understand the benefits of learning, they believe that school is only a series of assignments that they have to complete because they are told to do so; or because they get a grade for completing it.  Therefore, they don't see the need to try hard and fail sometimes and learn from these failings and try again.  "Learning" isn't their goal; compliance is their goal.  Therefore they only seek to complete the worksheet, or answer the questions, or write the paper; because they only seek to get the grade.  And if the student can find someone else to do this--and the students basically gets the same reward (the same grade) either way--then the easy route is to let someone else do it.

       Of course teachers and parents want their students (and children) to succeed, so sometimes they provide this help in an effort to help them to get success.  But there is a terrible downside to too much help.  When the parent isn't there and the too-much-helping teacher isn't there, the child (maybe now a young adult) isn't able to solve problems on their own.  Since there was always someone there to do the hard stuff, the young adult is now either helpless or forced to learn how to learn new things at point in life when mistakes are more costly.  One area where this is often seen is the first year of college.  Students who haven't learned how to struggle to learn something new and expect someone else to do all of the hard stuff for them, fail and drop out of college.

       School is about learning; and it's about learning how to learn.  We aren't helping our kids by doing the work for them.  As teachers and as parents, we have to try to worry less about "the grade" and much, much more about the learning.  There is no benefit to children who graduate from high school but aren't able to think for themselves and make decisions by themselves and solve their own problems.

       Yes, you can help too much.

Teaching to the Test Is Not a Bad Practice Anymore

       Education has this phrase:

Teaching to the Test

In the past, this phrase was a derogatory phrase that meant (at the extreme) the only thing we do during class time is to prepare students to take a test.  This implied that we never taught additional topics that weren't on the test, and that we never taught at a higher rigor level than what was required on the test.  The other (more broad) implication was even worse; We didn't concern ourselves with whether or not students actually learned anything, our only concern was that they got a high score on a test.

       This sort of Teaching to the Test probably did occur at many public schools, but I would hope that teachers (and schools) never lost their desire to encourage learning over mere test grades.  Indeed, teaching at a higher rigor level than was required on a test would serve the dual purpose of (1) helping students gain a higher level of conceptual understanding, as well as (2) helping students to score well on a test.  So we had incentives to go beyond the content that appeared on a test.  

       Today we see teaching to the test much differently.  First of all, we are now seeing standardized tests that require much more than merely a single-word, or single-number answer.  Today's test require students to demonstrate a high level of understanding.  This means that the days of memorizing formulas or (even worse) memorizing shortcuts and tricks are over.  Student who are only able to follow procedures and answer low-level questions will not earn high marks on today's tests.  Secondly, I feel that there is a renewed interest in teaching students how to engage and reason and think and argue and prove.  These are the skills that lead to a better conceptual understand over and above the old get-the-right-answer sort of teaching that took place in the past.  In this world, Teaching to the Test is the same thing as simple "Good Teaching".

       I know that the issue of standardized testing has become as controversial and divisive as the abortion issue to some people.  I found a great article on the Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing that may provide additional information to those folks that only see one side of this issue.  Regardless of your views, all people want their children to do well in school and (I hope) "doing well" means learning and not getting-good-grades for most people.  The primary objective for our public schools is certainly learning.  If students aren't learning, than there's no point in coming to school.  

       Today I am seeing a resurgence in helping teachers to explore classroom strategies that help students to learn concepts so well that they can teach them to other students.  Gone are the days of rote memorization. That sort of teaching isn't good enough if we want to prepare our students for the world of work and further learning in their futures.  Teaching to the Test is good if it helps our students to be better problem solvers.  

       Teaching to the Test is just good teaching.

The Time Has Come to Question Everything We Do in Education

Why is the school day six-and-a-half hours?

Why is the school year from September to June?

Why do have to use Carnegie Units in high school?

Why are grades so important?

Why does every class have to have a textbook?

Why do I have to use a pencil in math class?

Why does high school start so early in the day?

Why do schools compare themselves to each other?

Why do I have to memorize things that are easily found online?

Why does the teacher do most of the talking in class?

Why do we rank students in high school?

Why do we brag about high grades and not about high learning?

Why do have student desks and chairs?

Why do all of the chairs face in the same direction?

Why is there 14 years of schooling from Pre-K to high school graduation?

Why?

       Cars change; buildings change; clothes change; planes change: people change; the world changes.  Why don't schools change?  

       Why?

Schooling Isn't a Game to be Won

       Americans love competition.

       We follow sports teams.  We compare our Olympic medal count with those from other countries.  We brag about having faster cars and the newest cell phone, and the whitest teeth.  At times (it seems) everything is a competition; that we are always trying to surpass what our neighbors have or can do.

       This sense of competition (unfortunately) extends into our schools as well.  Our students want to know who got the highest test grade, who takes the most Advanced Placement courses; who got the best report card grades.  We are constantly comparing ourselves to each other.

       When it comes to schooling, I have a statement for our students (and their parents):

       School isn't a soccer game, it isn't the Olympics, and it isn't a Reality Show to be won.  School is about learning.  Some students will excel in some areas, some might excel in all areas (or appear to excel on all areas), and most will probably be average.  The goal for all of these students is to learn.

       The danger of the "competition" aspect of schooling is when students strive for high grades or correct answers by means that don't require a lot of learning.  Some students are good at "playing school"; they do what they need to do to get good grades (such as turning in homework and classwork on time and participating in class), but avoid actual studying and real learning.  They do this because of a misguided notion that the goal of school is getting good grades.  When student compete for "grades", they can miss the most important purpose of schooling which is learning.  In a classroom, this means that they are afraid to try new things or to offer suggestions or ideas for fear of being wrong (and perhaps labeled as "less smart").  This isn't what we want in our schools.

       Learning is a lifelong skill.  School cannot be a place where students merely learn how to do what they are told to do.  School has to be a place where the skill of learning is learned and understood.  A place where students learn how to problem solve and how to ask the right questions and how to access resources that they need.  Students shouldn't have to worry about doing better than other students.  They should only be concerned about learning.

       Let's make our schools a competition-free zone.  After all, there are plenty of other areas in a student's life where they can compete.  School should be one of them.

Good Enough Isn't Good Enough

       Schools, educators, teachers...they are never satisfied.  We are the ultimate Olympic athletes when it comes to our desire to constantly improve.  In education, "Good Enough" is never good enough.

       While it is often true--though not in all schools--that most students do fine; most students learn to read pretty well, most students move on to the next grade, most students graduate.  There are always some students that don't or that struggle to reach these accomplishments.  And even for those that do succeed, What is our standard for success?  Is it a passing grade?  Is it to barely exceed the minimum?  Is it to be merely good enough?

       The best teachers are constantly striving to find ways to reach all of their students.  The students that do what they are told and are able to "succeed" in school without much effort should be pushed to do more.  The students who always excel academically should be pushed to do more.  And the students that struggle to meet the minimum requirements should be given the help they need to do better.  All students can do better; all teachers can improve; all schools can strive for better results.

       The goal of school is learning.  But students approach this goal from many different viewpoints.  Some strive to be "Number 1"; some do their best everyday and accept that they may be stronger in some areas than in other areas; some students struggle in math but are good at reading; some students seem to struggle in all academic subjects but are talented in the arts.  And some students have been beaten down so often by their schooling experience that they have given up on trying.  All of these people come together in the typical public school and it is the job of the educators to more all of them forward.

       It is hard to have one policy or one standard that applies to everyone when "everyone" is so different.  Maybe the goal shouldn't be to reach a standard as much as it should be to improve based on whatever your starting point is.  If you come to 7th grade able to run a mile in 9 minutes and 36 seconds, maybe you should strive to end 7th grade with a time of 9 minutes flat or 8:30.  Similarly, if you begin 7th grade with a reading ability that is considered "average", may you should strive to end the school year above average in reading.  And if you are a teacher who always struggled to help those students who always want to sit in the back of the classroom and never participate, maybe you want to have the goal to encourage them to answer questions and to offer their ideas at least twice in every class.

       The goal isn't to be Number 1; the goal isn't to "win".  School is not a competition.  The goal is always to improve regardless of your starting point.  Nobody should accept "Good Enough" as good enough.

My Favorite Teacher

       My favorite teacher wasn't supposed to be my favorite teacher.

       I heard he was tough.  I heard he makes you write a lot.  I heard there was a lot of reading in his class.  One person said he was mean.

       He was my 7th grade English teacher.  I was 12 years old.  When I got my class schedule for the year, I started to ask friends if they knew any of my teachers.  The comments about this teacher (it seemed) were all bad.  Of course, at 12 years old, when I said things such as, "Everyone says he's a mean teacher.", what I really meant was, "The extremely small number of 13 year old boys (3) that I spoke with about this said he was mean."

       But they were my friends and I believed them, so when the first day of school came I was worried about this teacher and this class.  His class was third period and up to that point in the day, everything had gone pretty well.  I entered his class with a more than a little concern.

       He let us sit anywhere we wanted to sit.  He gave each of us a number and then told us to sit at the desk that had that number.  So all of us got up out of our seats (after just two minutes in the class) and moved to a different seat.  After that, he had each of us "meet" the two people who were sitting next to us.  Then we went around the room and each student said something about one of the students sitting next to us.  Then he told us about himself.  But instead of saying how many years he was a teacher and how much he loved English (which is the sort of introduction that most teachers give) he told us that he had three sisters, he weighed 265 pounds, and he liked to go bow hunting for deer.

       I actually remember more about that first class, but the point is his class was all about relationships.  He wanted to get to know us and he wanted us to get to know each other.  Everyday as students walked into his class he would ask us specific questions about things we were interested in and some students would ask him about things that he was interested in.  Our class involved a lot of discussions and he always linked these discussions to something the someone (or many of us) were interested in.  He never made a big deal about grades.  He never put anyone down for getting a bad grade or even for failing to complete an assignment on time.  If students earned a "D" or an "F" (and some did) he didn't get mad at them.  In fact, one student in particular who failed his class seemed to have a great relationship with him.

       We did do a lot of writing and we did do a lot of reading.  It was an ENGLISH class [!].  That's what you do in an English class.  My friends' opinions of what determined "a lot" probably meant that they didn't want to do any writing and reading.  Another thing that he often did was to not accept the first answer or idea that a student put forth.  He wanted many ideas; or he wanted us to be able to expand on our ideas.  The goal in his class was learning.  It wasn't "answering questions".  We didn't earn "points" for cleaning the chalkboard or for not using all of our bathroom passes.  We only earned grades for good writing and good thinking (participation).  This was probably the part my friends referred to as "being mean", since they were generally pretty good at "earning" good grades while learning very little.  Those techniques probably didn't work in his class.

       I didn't refer to this person as "My favorite teacher" until years later--after high school.  And the reason he was my favorite was because he didn't belittle us.  He pushed us to do our best.  Some were more ready for that "push" than others, but all of us knew that we couldn't just slide by and earn a high grade in his class without producing something of quality.

       My favorite teacher wasn't a popular teacher; he wasn't a coach of a sports team; he made us laugh from time to time, but he wasn't known as a "fun" teacher.  He probably didn't care about being liked.  He was firm and fair.  He spoke to his students in pretty much the same way he spoke to our parents.  He knew what he was doing and he had a reason for everything he asked us to do.

A Tale of Two Classrooms -- Create

This is the eighth in a ten-part series based on the poster: A Tale of Two Classrooms.

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Create

       Should school be a place where students (only) do what they are told to do?  Or, should school be a place the encourages and even requires students to think and hypothesize and create?

       When educators get together to talk about the factors that go into determining a course grade, we sometimes refer to some of these factors as "compliance" grades.  These are things such as: completing homework, completing classwork, following the school or classroom rules, and behaving properly.  While these are certainly going to be a part of the school experience for students, is it appropriate that a student's grade should be based on these "compliance" factors?

       Learning doesn't occur when teachers tell students exactly what to do and what to say.  Learning occurs when students are reminded of past lessons followed by additional information (or "content") and then students are given the task to put these two experiences together to make sense of them.  Learning is demonstrated when students can explain their thinking either orally or in writing (preferably both ways), when students ask questions about the new content, and/or when students take in the new content and find ways to use it to create something new.  The learning process may involve some level of compliance, but compliance alone isn't learning.

       In today's classroom, we want students to struggle with questions that can't be answered with a single word or in a very brief period of time.  We want students to go back to their notes, or the book, or the online resource to recall something they were taught yesterday or last week and to use that information to connect to what they are being asked to understand today.  We want students to understand this process for making connections and extending beyond what the teacher says.  We want students to imagine bigger, to think bigger, and to create bigger.

       The classroom isn't just a place to follow rules.  The classroom should be a place of thinking and talking and reasoning and arguing and offering solutions.  The classroom should be a place of "new" everyday.

A Tale of Two Classrooms -- The Goal is Learning

This is the sixth in a ten-part series based on the poster: A Tale of Two Classrooms.

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Goal is Learning

       Don't get me started.

       The idea that the goal of schools is "Learning" is a major theme of mine.  Last year I wrote a piece called Are Your Students Obsessed with Grades.  In this post I included a list of things that students do that suggest they are more concerned about grades than then are about learning.  Some of these include:

• They are constantly asking, "Is this going to be graded?"
• They refuse to do anything if it is not being graded.
• They ask for "extra credit" or make-up work at the end of the marking term to raise their grade to the next letter grade.

These sort of behaviors from students suggest that we have created what I have called The Grading Monster in our schools.  Grades and grading and Grade Point Averages (GPAs) have grown to oversized importance in the minds of students (and sometimes in the minds of parents) to the point that many have forgotten that the goal of school is learning.

       Of course, we need a way to measure the degree or the level at which students are learning.  But that method of measuring is not the goal of schooling.  It is the result of schooling.  I wrote a piece called Learning vs. The Appearance of Learning last year.  In this post I talked about the problem of seeking grades over seeking learning.  You might think that they are the same:  If I get a good grade, than I must be learning.  But this isn't always the case.  Grades can sometimes be manipulated to be artificially high--which would give the student (and the parent) the appearance of learning.  And I'm not talking about grade inflation--which is the purposeful and unearned raising of grade.  I'm talking about students who (perhaps) always do their homework and always participate in class and (perhaps) don't do very well on tests and quizzes; but the way the final grade is calculated causes them to end up with a decent grade even though they didn't actually learn very much.

       For many people, the idea of viewing schools as having the goal of learning will require a major shift in their thinking.  However, for individual classrooms and individual teachers this can be accomplished through relatively minor steps.

• Encourage student discourse - Allow students to ask questions and offer ideas and solutions without judging the "correctness" of these ideas right away.  Allow other students to question these ideas and suggestions.
• Formative assessments - Exit passes, classwork assignments, activities that provide feedback to students that is not a grade.  Instead the feedback could be teacher (or student) comments relative to the thinking that they have expressed in the assignment and (perhaps) suggestions for going further with that thinking.
• Allow a little productive struggle and recognize students who tried and didn't get it the first time and tried again.  Help students to see that effort is important in the learning process.  Everything isn't "a grade".  No one expects students to "get it" the first time they are learning something new.

       There is a movement to abolish grades altogether in the effort to help students (and parents) to see the importance of learning.  I don't think that this will come to pass in my career, but if we truly want schools to be viewed as a place of learning, we will see the importance of grades and grading diminish.  This is important in the classrooms that we want to have in the 21st century.

       Learning is key.  Learning is everything.  If we aren't in school for learning, than why are we there?

Parent's Role in Improving Student Achievement

       If you have a child in elementary, middle, or high school, then your main concern is helping your child to do well in school.  You have a person or persons in your household that is a member of the most important cliental in the educational community--the students.  And as a parent, you have influence over your children.  Your attitudes and actions toward school matter.

       We need your help!

       So here is my short list of the three top things that parents can do to help their children to do well in school.

1. Healthy relationships all around.  

Help your child to make friends with classmates and to get to know the teacher or teachers.  You (the parent) should try to get to know your child's teacher(s) too.  Communication is the key to all healthy relationships.  So try to discover the best way to contact the teacher.  Make sure that your child knows that you have a relationship with the teacher and a way to make contact on an as-needed basis.  This shows that you care about your child's education.  

   2.  Emphasize "learning" over "getting-a-good-grade".

The point of school is learning, not getting a good grade.  There are lots of ways to get good grades without learning much.  We want students to learn how to learn; to read; to study; to try and fail and try again; and ask for help.  Your child's grade should reflect his or her ability; but sometimes it just reflects his or her ability to do what they're told.  Remember that the goal of school is learning.  It's the "Do you best." philosophy (that your parents probably said to you).

    3. Don't help your children too much.

Let's face it...nobody likes to see their children struggling.  But if everything is easy and can be obtained without effort then you have to ask, "Is my child really learning anything?"  Real learning comes from a little struggle from time to time.  Just because your child doesn't "get it" the first time doesn't mean they will never get it.  They just haven't gotten it yet.  If you tell them the answer or do the work for them, they will get the right answer, but they haven't learned anything.  Remember, the goal of school is learning.  Instead of telling them the answer, ask questions.  "What do you know?"  "What don't you know?"  "What do you need to know?"  "What questions should you ask the teacher?"  We want students to learn how to deal with struggle; we want them to problem solve when the problem is difficult.

       School means a lot of things to a lot of people.  Clubs, sports, friends, activities, requirements, homework, pens, paper, teachers,....  It can be hard to remember that it is all about learning.  As the parent, you can help your child to focus on the important parts of school.

       Have a great school year!

Creating a Better High School - Part 3

       This is the third in a three-part series that will look at the structures in place in our current high schools that don't make sense or are not needed anymore.  I want to think about the best way that students learn and create a high school that will serve these learners.  I also want to think about the true purpose of high schools in our time.  My goal isn't to imagine a "High School of the Future", but instead to consider what can realistically be done today.  As always, I encourage my readers to add their thoughts and ideas.  Together we can create the high school that our students want and need today.

Create a Better High School

Part 1 - Current school structures that aren't necessary anymore.

Part 2 - How students learn and how schools can react to these learners.

Part 3 - The purpose of high school

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The Purpose of High School

       This could be a short post because all I really want to say is that the purpose of high school is "Learning".  That's it.

       Indeed, the purpose of schooling in general is learning.  However sometimes it seems that the purpose of high schools is "getting-a-good-grade".  This can be stated in many ways:

• Getting a grade
• Doing what your told
• Compliance
• Grade Point Average (GPA)
• Test scores

But this is not the intention of high school.  The purpose of high school is learning.  We want students to learn.  In fact its more than that...We want students to learn how to learn.  Our current system is all about doing stuff to get a good grade.  Learning might take place; and we (as educators) certainly want learning to take place.  But many students are stuck in the rut that says, "I just have to do what I'm told to get the grade; to get the credit."  For many students, "Learning" comes in second or third place (if rated at all) in their list of priorities.

       So how do we create a better high school that emphasizes "Learning" over "getting-a-good-grade"?  We know that when students are interested and excited about what they are doing, they are more likely to try their best and more likely explore, to ask questions, and engage in the effort to complete the task.  Therefore, we need high school to include more project-based tasks.  We also need students to engage in tasks in small groups so that they have the chance to debate ideas with fellow students and allow their peers to evaluate their ideas and suggestions.

       I believe that we (also) need high school to include instructional techniques that encourage a growth mindset in our high school students.  Part of the reason that students sometimes show such a small amount of motivation is because they believe that no amount of effort will enable them to learn.  We want students to understand the value of effort.  Growth mindset teaching helps students to understand this.  But growth mindset is not well understood by our current teachers.

       Our better high school will evaluate learning in different ways.  Rubrics, peer evaluation, presentations, portfolios.  We already use a lot of these methods.  This is not futuristic; this is today.

       We have to separate the "Learning" of high school from the "Grading" of high school.

Is Your Child Advanced in Mathematics?

       It seems that, more than in other subjects, the placement of students in advanced mathematics is often a contentious issue. Elementary schools have different policies about placing students in classes that teach math at grade levels that are above the student's current grade.  Middle schools often offer high school mathematics classes, but some stop at Algebra 1 and some go beyond Algebra 1.

       The ability of a school or school system to determine a student's math ability (or "advanced" math ability) can be hard to do with great accuracy--especially when we are trying to make this determination with eight and nine year old children.  It's not enough that they are getting good grades in their math work; math is more than mere calculation.  And higher-level math is all about reasoning and thinking and understanding.  The kid that is good at memorizing, isn't always good at (say) the abstraction that comes with manipulating variables and graphing a line.

      Yet, I think that (too often) we get a false impression of a student's math abilities from merely looking at their elementary grades on the report card.  Sometime students are placed in advanced classes and at some point in middle school they start to struggle because they were pushed to learn higher and higher levels of math too fast.  On the other hand, there are certainly students who are highly able in mathematics and they should be encouraged to take more challenging classes that are commensurate with their abilities. So goes the dilemma of trying to identify the truly highly-able students from those that only appear to be highly-able.

       One method that helps is using multiple data points.  When students breeze through their multiplication tables and get "A's" on their report cards, but do poorly on standardize tests or on unit tests, this should be a cause for concern.  Maybe this student is good at memorizing facts and procedures and not good at understanding concepts.  This student is successful at procedural assignments (such as long division with whole numbers), but may struggle with more abstract assignments (such as a math task with multiple answers).

       Of course, we know that it is OK for students to struggle as they learn new concepts (see previous blog post), but many students view this struggle as a sign that they aren't good at math; or a sign that the teacher is doing something wrong.  We don't want students to struggle because they have been inappropriately placed.  Truly able students (and Growth Mindset students) don't mind the struggle because they enjoy the journey toward learning.  Also they understand that it is OK if they don't get it the first time.  Continual effort will eventually pay off.  Students who never tried hard to do well in math and then are placed in an advanced math class and then are upset when they don't get it the first time...these may be the students that we are pushing too quickly.

       Is your child advanced in mathematics?  How do you know?

Is There Too Much Testing?

       Testing.  

       The very word conjures up emotions in students and parents and school officials alike.  Within the educational community, this word conjures up other words like: measuring, accountability, fairness, purpose, practice, instructional time, online, paper/pencil, formative, and summative.  Your connection to these feelings and issues probably shapes your views about testing in our public schools.  Part of what makes this such a big issue is that there are no simple "right" and "wrong" solutions.  It is a complex problem that requires thought and discussion among many stakeholders.

       The goal of schooling is learning.  There may be other benefits such as socializing, joining a club or team, earning a diploma; but the goal is learning.  Our ability to measure learning has grown significantly over the past twenty years as educators come to understand the value of frequent formative assessments in combination with teaching strategies that engage students.  In the past, the school classroom was a very dictatorial place:  Teacher in the front doing most of the talking; students sitting in rows listening to the teacher and taking notes; test or quiz every Friday.  This system worked fine for the student who was able to learn by listening, but if you needed to ask questions, or clear up any confusion with the content prior to the test you probably struggled to learn in this environment.  And if you weren't able to concentrate on the teacher's words for two or three hours, you might have missed your first and only chance to get that precious information from the teacher.


       Today we know that learning requires doing and talking and questioning in addition to listening (and note taking).  We also know that we want to get a sense of the learning that is taking place on a daily basis and not just once a week or whenever the "Big Test" occurs.  This "measuring of daily learning" is what we call Formative Assessment.  It could be a game, a series of verbal questions from the teacher, an activity during class, a exit ticket (or exit pass),  Anything that gives the teacher and the student information as to their level of understanding the content or the objective for the day.  Usually when we argue about "Testing", this isn't the sort of testing that we are arguing about.

       The discussion over testing usually centers around what educators call summative tests.  These are chapter or unit tests, final exams, end-of-course tests, and major state tests.  These tests might be required to graduate from high school; or they may command a large portion of a final grade in a course; or they may be used to determine if you are ready for college (or if you will be accepted to college).  These are the tests whose results have some sort of consequence.

       A common issue that arises is a student who appears to be learning very well based on class grades and report card grades, but then this same student demonstrates a lower level of learning on one of these big tests.  I think that I worry when there is a public outcry over testing because of this scenario.  I feel that rather than arguing against giving the test, we should question why the discrepancy happened in the first place.  Clearly a student who fails an end-of-course test and earns an "A" or a "B" as a course grade cannot (both) be very knowledgeable about this content AND be very weak with this material.  Something is going on.  Perhaps both the course grade and the test are not true reflections of the student's ability.  Perhaps it is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.

       Since the goal of school is learning, there should be accurate and valid methods for determining the extent of this learning.  It isn't enough for a student to come to school everyday and do what he's told to do and then walk out of school without some measure his learning.  Getting grades isn't enough.  What does it benefit a child to get good grades in school and not be able to read or do math at an acceptable level when he leaves school?  This is one of the reasons for instituting summative and state testing in the first place.  Also far too many students begin college but never finish college.  If more people took the results of these big tests seriously, they might be less in a rush to go to college until their abilities were more in-line with college-level expectations.

       Is there too much testing?  Why are you asking this question?  If it is because you don't like to see your child getting poor results on this test, than you should question the discrepancy between the course grades and the big test.  If it is because the results are not used for any useful purpose, then you should discuss this with you child's teacher or school.  Everything done in public schools should have a purpose; this includes testing.

High School Graduation and Beyond

       May and June is the time in the school year when we think and hear a lot of graduation.  High school and college students are graduating; completing one important life event and moving on to the next.  It's exciting, it's a happy time, it's a time to celebrate!

       As a nation, we have a lot to celebrate because we have seen a rise in the high school graduation rates over the past few years and that's a very good thing for our nation.  In the 2013 - 2014 school year, the high school graduation rate was 82.3%--an increase of over three percentage points from the 2010 - 2011 school year.

       Our society demands a workforce that is willing and able to continually learn and to use the knowledge of past learnings.  Students who succeed beyond high school are the people who understand that their ability to do a job is not dependent on the grades they earned in high school as much as it is on their desire to continually learn and to do their best.  We need thinkers and doers and believers.  While high school graduation is a big step (and an important step), it is still only one step.  Those students who were only successful in "playing school" and earning grades without any concern for learning will find it difficult to succeed in college or the workforce in places where thinking and problem solving is necessary.

       Sometimes it seems like we put too much on our schools.  We teach courses, but we also teach how to work together, how to get along with others, how to learn, how to struggle, how to accept responsibility.  No one gets a grade for these things; no one is denied a diploma for not attaining these traits.  But those that lack the ability to do these things often struggle to live in a society that doesn't always give you second chances; a place where breaking the rules have real consequences and no one is there to remind you what to do and when to do it.

       We all get one chance to make the most of our 13 years of K-12 education.  After that, the number of opportunities rise with the number of decisions.  It's not enough to do what you're told; just ask those that barely graduated high school.

A Passion to Make Education Better

       I often say to my children, "It takes less time to do the thing I'm asking you to do than it takes to argue about it."  Am I allowed to say this to adults who are critical of public education?

       Of course, I don't mind if people disagree with decisions made about their child's school or school district.  But mere negative comments don't usually help to make our schools better.  If everyone who disagreed with a school-level decision, instead, were to offer a possible solution, or make an effort to understand the reasons behind the decision, or step up to make things better we could accomplish a lot.  We can help to improve attitudes about public schools AND we can help to improve our schools.

       We want people to be passionate about their local schools and we want people to be partners with their schools.  Education is important.  It's more important than sports; it's more important than grades; it's more important than social status.  Education helps everyone: students, businesses, society.  The effort to improve schools has to be a group effort.

       Be passionate about education.  We need you.

It's Time for Our Schools to Leave the 20th Century

       You know the old joke about Rip Van Winkle and schools?  He falls asleep for a hundred years and upon waking up he sees everything he used to know has changed dramatically.  The houses look so different.  The clothes that people wear are very different.  And the cars...wow.  Then he finds a school and walks inside.  He goes into a classroom and he is comforted to see that schools and classrooms haven't changed a bit.

       We educators don't think this is very funny.

       In fact, it is embarrassing for us carry out the important work of education today in the same way that we did this work 50 or 30 or even 20 years ago.  Doing so ignores the research about learning that has been done over the past few decades.  It ignores the research about how the brain reacts to the stimuli that occurs in classrooms.

       For instance, we know that most students can't learn to the best of their ability strictly by sitting in class for a whole class period and listening to the teacher talking (and taking notes).  We know that students are more engaged when they have the opportunity to participate verbally and when they have a chance to get up out of their seat and participate physically in some way.  We have technology that we didn't have (even 20) years ago that can be tapped to help our students to prepare for the information world that they will enter after high school.

        We are not preparing our students by merely teaching them to read, write, and do arithmetic.  These things are important, but they are not enough.  Memorizing facts long enough to get a good test grade will not prepare our children for the world that they will inherit.  Our schools have the responsibility to mirror the society that our students will experience.

       Twentieth Century schooling is not what our students need.  Most of them have never even lived in the 20th century.  I believe that our current education leaders understand this need for our schools to change.  Part of the responsibility of our public schools is to explain this need for change to our parents and to our communities.  Staying the same is easy; change is hard.  Schools often face opposition from communities who tend to say that "The old way was good enough for me and it's good enough for our kids."  We need to make the case against this sort of thinking.

       Someone needs to speak for our students and for their futures.