In this episode, Sharona and Bosley look at what some of the complications are when there is a mismatch between grades and actual learning. Based on some research coming out about grades not matching up with other measures such as standardized tests, we explore the ways in which grading schemes (both traditional and in some cases alternative grading schemes) can unintentionally cause miscommunication between teachers, schools, students and districts.

Links

Please note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!

• First Education
• The STAGR Conference - Join us virtually on December 5, 2024!
• California Math Council - South
• Episode 20 of The Grading Podcast - An Interview with Sean Nank
• False Signals - a Report on Pandemic-Era Grades
• Episode 48 of The Grading Podcast - Implementation Challenges and Opportunities with Becky Peppler
• Episode 70 of The Grading Podcast - Reassessments with Becky Peppler
• Episode 46 of the Grading Podcast - 46 - Extinguishing the Fires within Assessment and Grading Reform: with Dr. Matt Townsley
• Episode 18 of the Grading Podcast - 18 - The Sportscaster of Alternative Grading: An Interview with Matt Townsley

Resources

The Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.

The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.

Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:

• The Grading for Growth Blog
• The Grading Conference
• The Intentional Academia Blog

Recommended Books on Alternative Grading:

• Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David Clark
• Specifications Grading, by Linda Nilsen
• Undoing the Grade, by Jesse Stommel

Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.

If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.

All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Music

Country Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Sharona: And at the university level, and I think this is true actually at the state somewhat to some degree at the K 12 level, we think we agree on what it means to know certain content. Everyone's like, oh yeah, I've taught calculus. I know what students need to do to pass calculus one. If the student passes calculus one, I have the same idea in my head of what that means as you do. But when you sit down and talk to people, one group is like, they have to know this skill. And another group is like, no, I never teach that skill. It's completely useless skill. I need this other skill. And then you go to the bigger picture and you're like, well, I need them to be able to solve problems. And a lot of people are like, oh no, my students can't do that. I didn't teach them that.

Boz: Welcome to the grading podcast, where we'll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students learning from traditional grading to alternative methods of grading. We'll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our students success. I'm Robert Bosley, a high school math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist, and instructional designer in the Los Angeles Unified School District and with Cal State LA.

Sharona: And I'm Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor at Cal State Los Angeles, faculty coach, and instructional designer. Whether you work in higher ed or K 12, whatever your discipline is, whether you are a teacher, a coach, or an administrator, this podcast is for you. Each week you will get the practical detailed information you need to be able to actually implement effective grading practices in your class and at your institution.

Boz: Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I'm Robert Bosley, one of your two co hosts, and with me as always, Sharona Krinsky. How you doing today, Sharona?

Sharona: I am doing well. It's the end of week 13. I have a lot of exams to write because we have exam three in several of the classes I coordinate next week. So as soon as we're done recording, I'm on exam generation.

Boz: Sounds like fun.

Sharona: How about you? You know, I, I don't mind it in that I'm really trying to make them meaningful, both in the alternatively graded class that I coordinate. And even in the traditional classes, I'm trying to really think about what problems we actually want them to be able to do. More as a setup for the future than anything else. So how about you?

Boz: Oh, honestly, I'm still recovering. I, I took a bit of a fall a few days prior to us recording this and banged up my bad knee pretty good. So I I've been hobbling around, my oldest girl has been laughing and making fun of my cane that I've been hobbling around on. But it's feeling better today. It's still a little swollen and I'm still a little bit hobbly, but it's getting better.

Sharona: Well, between the cane and the hair color, I don't blame her for making fun of you. Well, and I'm still recovering from, believe it or not, it was just a week ago that we were presenting at.

Boz: Yeah. I don't know if we talked about the fact that we were doing that. So where were we presenting last week?

Sharona: So we were at a conference called the California Math Council South Conference. It happens in Palm Springs every year in November. And we were presenting on authentic assessment and alternative grading in an age of artificial intelligence. So this is one of the new topics that we are focusing on this year is trying to figure out, if we're going to do alternative grading that purports to measure our students authentic evidence of learning, and if our students are not in some sort of a proctored environment, how can we be sure that we're getting their work and not AI work?

Boz: You know, it was an interesting one. I wouldn't sure what to expect with our audience and stuff. And we ended up having a packed house. In fact, we had to turn away about a dozen people because the room they had us in was completely full.

Sharona: Exactly. And it was also very interesting because this is the first time that we had explored, we hear a lot about the negatives of AI when it comes to assessment, that it's enabling students to cheat and stuff like this. For me, this was the first time we worked with using AI. to improve our assessments. To create ones that were more authentic. So that was kind of fun, sort of a, a friend or foe kind of discussion of, of AI.

Boz: Yeah. And this conference has a special place in my heart because this was the first conference as an educator in California I ever went to. And I went to it for several years when I was first starting off as an educator. So it, and with a group of people that I started at Santee with, that even after they left Santee, we still use CMC as a place to meet back up and spend a weekend together learning things, but also having a bunch of fun and catching up. So CMC is always a special conference to me.

Sharona: Well, and it's one of the few that really crosses over between higher ed and K 12. It's definitely one that it says, it's specifically for math, it's specifically for pre K to grade 16 is what they call it. So it's a really good conference. And a year ago we did our first on site podcast recording at CMC South.

Boz: Yes, we did. Where we were talking with one of the other presenters at that conference, who was also doing a session on alternative grading.

Sharona: Sean Nank, that was Sean Nank and we will put a link to his episode in the show notes and he was presenting again this year.

Boz: Yeah. Which if you don't know who Dr. Sean Nank is, go back and listen to that episode, his credentials are absolutely just astounding. And kind of his career path through his many years as being an educator is a really unique and interesting career path.

Sharona: And he is still very committed to leadership in this space. So we got to go to his talk. We got to talk to him a little bit.

Boz: We got to see him and his very different kind of presentation this year compared to last year. This one was not just about alternative grading, although it came up. And then, yeah, it was kind of cool at his presentation. He gave us a shout out. And then we tried to meet up with him outside of the conference and our schedules just didn't quite match up, but we did get to spend a little bit of time after his session. And he's always just a fun person to hang out with.

Sharona: Absolutely. And speaking of fun people to hang out with, we recently had Becky Peppler on. Yeah. To talk about reassessments and we're going to be hanging out with her very soon.

Boz: Yeah. And where exactly are we going to be doing that at?

Sharona: So we are going to be presenting at the STAGR conference, which is an online conference. It's going to be December 5th, I believe. So we'll put the link to that in the show notes as well, but it's a one day virtual conference. We're going to be speaking on grading as the misuse of mathematics in the measurement of student learning. This is one of our intro talks, so if you know anybody that you've been talking to and they're not quite sure about alternative grading but you really think that they might get something out of that, we recommend that they come to this conference. I have to admit, though, I have a little bit of imposter syndrome here because our photos and bios and speaker level stuff is up there at the same level as Matt Townsley and Ken O'Connor. And then the keynote is Joe Feldman. So I'm like, wow, I've made it to the second tier level of speakers.

Boz: Yeah. And you know what? I agree with you about the, Oh, wow. But what great company to be in. I mean, we've not had Ken on, but we've had Matt Townsley on a couple of times and we absolutely love him. And we're very grateful for him because he's the one that actually put us in contact with Becky and several other people from first education, which is the group that runs the STAGR center. We've talked about it before, but just to remind people that stands for Standards, Targets, Assessments, Reporting and Grading, or Grading and Reporting. I said those backwards, but yeah, we're at that conference. When is that conference?

Sharona: So that's December 5th. It's a one day conference. It is a paid conference. It's virtual. And I believe that we are talking in the morning Pacific time. I think that we are talking maybe nine or 10 a. m. Pacific time, something like that. Or it might even be, yeah, I think that's when we are because the conference is from 9 a. m. to 3 p. m. Central time. So I think we're not quite that early on, but but yeah.

Boz: I think they know we're West coasters and tried to be nice to us and not put us in the first session.

Sharona: Exactly. Well, and they have the keynote, which again, is going to be Joe Feldman. So we'd love to see some of you there and have you participate or refer people who might be interested in that. We have another thing though.

Boz: We'll link those, right? We'll, we'll link.

Sharona: They'll be linked to the show notes to all of these.

Boz: Yeah, both to the First Education website and to the STAGR Center and conference specifically.

Sharona: Now, we want to throw out to people a question, because the other thing we're considering doing is, as many of you know, we do professional development on redesigning courses to use alternative grading practices. We have a number of different workshops that we do, but it looks like we may be running one in the spring that is designed as a two day intensive. And we'll probably be running one at one of the local universities for those faculty. But I was wondering if people in this audience would be interested in attending one, because we could put one up publicly. We do have some grant support, so that would largely offset the cost of everything. So, I'd like to get some feedback, maybe some messages through our Contact Us on our website. Do you know people who would be interested in attending a virtual two day intensive? Might be back to back days, might be over a couple weeks, might be over spring break. It's not decided yet, but if we get enough interest, then maybe we'll run that two day workshop.

Boz: Yeah, or if you're not sure, if you're just interested in finding out more information about it. Yeah, we would love to find out what kind of interest is out there. And who knows, this is something that you and I, Sharona, developed working in one of our projects. That was a lot of fun, so I think it would be enjoyable to do this with a different group, but.

Sharona: Right. And really starting to continue or continuing to push this work out there, which I think is really important. So enough with the intros for today. What are we going to be talking about today? We don't have a guest in the studio, so it's you and me.

Boz: We do have some really fun guests coming up, but yep, it's, you're stuck with just the two of us this time, but no, we're going to be diving into and looking at this research that came out what, about a year ago?

Boz: But the title of it is False Signals, How Pandemic Era Grades Mislead Families and Threaten Students Learning.

Boz: Well, and, but you say we didn't in California, 21, 22 school year was the year, was the school year at the, at the high school level that most of California had come back. It was interesting the fall semester at the college level, we still weren't, but at the high school, the K, the K through 12, that was the year we came back.

Sharona: Yeah. You were back in school, but I don't think that you had gotten away from the pandemic era grade policies. I think you still had a lot of those policies. So this particular research, this report, is really talking about what the disconnect between grade levels and other measures of learning and other behaviors that we started to see and how that might be hurting student learning. So do you want to share some of what this report finds?

Boz: Well, I think one of the interesting things that it points out, that we've been talking about, but I did not realize it was a national wide issue, and it seems to be, is the chronic absences that we've continued to see since pandemic. I know you and I have talked about that anecdotally in our own classes. And I know through a lot of my data work at Santee, this is definitely the case, but yeah, this was bringing out just how much, not just absenteeism, but chronically absence.

Sharona: Well and this is interesting to me because one of the big pushbacks we get when we start talking about alternative grading, is that when we say don't bring in non academic factors into your grade, everyone goes, Oh, but if you don't grade attendance, they're not going to come. But this report is not specific to alternative grading. This report is district wide in districts that may have done some pandemic era grading reform, but have largely gone away from it.

Sharona: Exactly. And so it's, this article, this report, which was published by EdNavigator, Learning Heroes, and TNTP, they partnered with two public school districts to analyze the pandemic's effect on student absences, learning, and grades. So, again, this is general grading research, but I think it can inform what grades can and cannot actually do. And it's important to understand this as we attempt to bring grading reform into our classes.

Boz: And pretty well documented.

Sharona: And chronic absenteeism skyrocketed. So in this report, they talk about the fact that I believe it was less than 10 percent of students in one of the districts were chronically absentee, chronic absenteeism is defined as missing more than 10 days, I believe, of school in a school year.

Boz: No. 10%.

Sharona: 10%, sorry.

Boz: So that's about 18 days in most districts, in most states.

Boz: Six. Yes. So we're at this all time high with absenteeism. And here's one of the big connections that they made. So they were looking at students that fell into two kind of what we would call early warning groups. The students that were chronically absent and also far below grade level proficiency levels based on whatever state or end of course exam that they were given. So they were looking at students that were in both of these groups, and they found a couple of interesting things.

Sharona: Well, before you say what they found, how many students were in that group of both of those things?

Sharona: So, so nine times more.

Boz: 9 times more and District B that had about 3 percent is now looking at 14 percent so 14 percent of their students are both missing a lot and are well below grade average on state exams.

Sharona: And yet, what happened with grades?

Boz: Grades did not reflect this. Grades in fact, looking at just those two groups, from District A and District B that were in both, if you look at the percentage of students that are getting a B or higher, so not just passing, but an actual B or better, over a third of the students in District A, that were in that group, have a B or higher in their courses. In District B, 40%, nearly half of the students that are chronically absent and well below state averages or proficient levels, grade level, proficient levels, are getting a B or better in those courses.

Sharona: And let's be clear, this is district wide. And as far as we can tell, this is not districts that have implemented full blown alternative grading practices.

Boz: No, but one of the things in the introduction that this points out is why they were doing this research. That they were looking at students. We understand that students are still well behind pre pandemic proficiency levels, but yet according to a survey, parents aren't that concerned with students actually what they're achieving in school.

That they're seeing these grades and they believe either their students have caught back up from that learning loss, or they will be soon. That these B's are signals, B's or higher are signals that the students are on track and there's nothing to be concerned with.

Sharona: And that's the challenge, right? Because if grades are communicating to parents that the students are doing fine and the schools are saying they're not doing fine. That's a massive disconnect.

Boz: Yeah, it's a huge issue. And the question is, and I think this really came up in one of Townsley's episodes, the, that importance of. Communication and cooperation with parents. In fact, he's got a whole book on it, but yeah, this is, as an educator and I think any educator in the K 12 world, obviously not the higher ed, but the K 12 world, this should be a major concern.

Sharona: And what concerns me is how are we getting this huge disconnect? Because one of the things that is argued when we talk to people about alternative grading, who are not fans of it for whatever reason, is we get everything from you're inflating grades to students don't understand the system so it's not going to motivate them, to students don't understand the system and it's too hard. So we get that it's too easy because we're grade inflating and it's too hard because students don't understand it. We literally get every criticism about grades. And then we also get, but if you don't insist, if you don't include attendance in your grade, students won't come, especially at the higher ed level.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: So there's all this stuff baked into these conversations. So how do we figure out what to do about this? What are the grades actually communicating?

Well, after that didn't happen, and a mad dash tried to get Chromebooks and things to people's, all of our students hands and tried to get internet issues that a lot of my students and students in LAUSD had, one of the policies that came out was, You just couldn't fail anybody. Like we flat out, we could not give an F. And rightfully so. Most people don't understand how difficult it was with a lot of my families that don't have great internet or any internet or in areas that you couldn't get because of bandwidth issues and the bandwidth drain of corporate America and downtown LA and the jewel district and the financial district. What that does to the students that live in my areas, there was no way.

So I completely agreed with the policy at the time. But yeah, that first semester, just flat out. Didn't matter if what was happening before pandemic didn't matter. We just, we couldn't fail them. So that was one of the grading, the pandemic grading policies that I believe this article is talking about, or this research is referring to. And then we did have some post. Like that first semester back. You know, that, that year that we were out we had to jump through quite a few hoops, but we could give F's and D's. We had to do more communication and things like that than we would have pre pandemic, but we could. Except when we came back, there was a way that students could get those D's and F's forgiven. Like there were policies in place where basically they would fill out a sheet of paper and their D's would turn to C's and their F's would turn to in C's and just like, it never happened. So these are just some of the pandemic grading policies that happened in my district.

Sharona: Well, and the challenge is then, and I think what we're saying is, that you're conflating grades, which are supposed to communicate certain things, with consequences of getting grades that show that you're not meeting certain criteria. And this is where we run into a lot of trouble is we use grades for more than just communication. There's somehow in our schooling system we have defined graduating, from, say, high school, as more than just you went through the process. You're supposed to have gone through the process and successfully done certain things. Gotten certain amounts of knowledge, succeeded in certain ways. And when you don't do that, it's got very real world consequences. If a student is unable to graduate high school and have that diploma, it has dramatic impacts on their life.

And yet that means that we're not allowed to communicate clearly and accurately. Because the risk of that accurate communication, if we actually say this student does not know this material, the consequences go beyond just informing the student and their parents that they don't know something. So not that we can solve the whole school system, even though you and I want to.

Boz: Well, you know, I don't think it's solvable. You know what I think.

Sharona: Right. Well, solvable for you means replacing it. I don't have the patience to try to replace it. I want to fix what I can now. Let's get something done now. So I think it's really important to disaggregate the reality of grades and talk about those consequences. I really think that it's very important to be able to communicate with students and parents actual achievement. And I don't want to ignore the consequences to students. Especially depending, you know, it's different in ninth grade than it is in college. Developmentally, a ninth grade child is at a different level of capability in terms of self efficacy and self discipline than someone in college. And not all college students are the same in their self efficacy and self discipline.

But because ninth grade is required by law, and college is not, at some point I'm okay saying, yeah, if you don't do the work and you don't know the material, I'm okay with you not getting credit for this class. As long as you know upfront what the consequences of that are. You're going to have to pay to replace it. You might lose your financial aid. If you drop below a certain number of satisfactory academic progress, you can lose your on campus housing. As long as you know those consequences ahead of time, I'm much more okay with it. I'm much more ambivalent in the high school area. I'm not sure what to do about that, about this conflation of communication and consequence.

Boz: Well, and I think part of that comes down to some of their findings in this research and their recommendations based on this research, which I cannot agree with more. One of those recommendations is to provide training for educators on grading practices, reviewing what grades actually mean, and having this message that it's not that we need to fail more students, but we really do need to look at these grading practices and look at how to provide information about what students really need.

Which this is where I think alternative grading comes in, because I can communicate much more effectively with my students and their parents now about what the student needs, what the student knows, what the student doesn't know, and how the parents can help that I ever could with traditional grading. And you and I have gotten this argument all the time. In fact, I was having this conversation last night about alternative grading practices lowering the bar and making grade inflation. My grades, my rigor, my standards, I hate that word, but my bar for my students is higher now than it ever was with traditional grading. And when done right, I think this is usually the case. But that ability to look at my students parents and go, Yeah, your son or daughter is really having a hard time with graphing, and understanding the purpose, meaning, and ways of graphing. I couldn't do that in traditional grading. I could look at them and tell them, yeah, they need to study more for their test because they're doing fine in their homework, but it's their test that they're struggling with.

Sharona: Well, and I think that conversation that you were having last night, though, relates to something that I've been really toying with in my mind recently, is I have a new metaphor for grades. I have been describing traditional grades as the cinder block wall at the front of an obstacle course. It's the first thing you have to get over and you can't see through it. And that alternative grades are the deconstruction of that wall. It still leaves the rest of the obstacle course. So the challenge I think we're having is when we are doing our work in our alternatively graded class, and we're asking how good is good enough to get credit? That's where some of our instructors are getting really uncomfortable.

Because at some level they're like, well, I want it to be completely correct. And I'm like, but in traditional grading, you didn't require a hundred percent to pass the class. You were okay with 90 percent or 80 percent or 70%. So traditional grading obscures what is good enough. And that's where we get that lowering of the bar. It's like, can you make one big mistake? Can you make two big mistakes? Can you make one and a half big mistakes? Can you make no big mistakes? And that's part of that conversation, right?

Boz: I think that's part of it. And just like I said, re norming what grading standards are and what districts believe they should be. Because that's another thing. I don't you know before going to really alternative grading and also some of the PLC work that I've done, looking at and understanding this concept of teacher roulette where a student's grade is more based on what teacher they got than how much they actually knew about the content because of mathematically how much of a difference things like weighted categories can do in a traditional graded class that we just don't examine. So, like I said, one of these recommendations from this report is we need time with training and just re norming what grades mean. And again, message is not that we should fail more or fail less, but that, we need to use these grades and identify students supports and help that they need. Which again, I don't think traditional grading does well.

Sharona: And at the university level, and I think this is true actually at the state somewhat to, to some degree at the K 12 level, we think we agree on what it means to know certain content. Like everyone's like, Oh yeah, I've taught calculus. I know what students need to, to do to pass calculus one. If the student passes calculus one, I have the same idea in my head of what that means as you do. But when you sit down and talk to people, one group is like, They have to know this skill. And another group is like, No, I never teach that skill. It's completely useless skill. I need this other skill. And then you go to the bigger picture and you're like, Well, I need them to be able to solve problems. And a lot of people like, Oh, no, my students can't do that. I didn't teach them that. And you're just like, Oh, my God, just getting and yet people will tell you. I literally had a conversation with one of my administrators a couple years ago who said, Well, everybody knows what's in first year calculus. There are entire tracks at conferences, multi day tracks of talks about what should be in first year calculus. So, there's an opportunity here, when you go to alternative grading, to say, what do we really think students should know, and how do we communicate that? To the students and to the other stakeholders.

Boz: But there's another part of this, because this recommendation isn't for teachers. That we need to do this with teachers. It's that we need to do this with district staff. So it's not just teachers. And I might get some slack from this, but there is, at least in the K 12 world, or at least in the high school world, and at least in California, I'm not going to speak more general than that, although I suspect it to be true, I don't have any evidence, so I'm not going to assume it, but there is real pressure on teachers and their pass rates. Like that was one of my jobs at Santee was putting together these big grade analysis every five weeks when we had our grades. So I know there is real pressure on teachers that if your fail rate is too high, you're doing something wrong. And this report, if you've got that kind of pressure and the absenteeism that we're seeing post pandemic, I don't see any other way besides grade inflation. I like, I don't see any other conclusion that can come out of these two opposing forces. Now, I know that there is some discussion about pass rates and stuff at the college level too, but that's more your world. So I didn't want to speak on it, but.

Sharona: So the challenge we're facing is you've got administrative pressure on the pass rates, because again, the consequences to our students of failing out of college are huge student debtloads and lifelong earning complications. So there's really significant issues with that. So the administrators are looking at that, but the faculty who have a lot more independence from administration than you do in the K 12 world are pushing back to say, we're not willing to put our stamp of approval on courses that we don't think our students are learning the things in. At least that's what the faculty think they're doing, right? They're like, we have to maintain our academic standards. And again, I'm listening to this and I'm hearing this and I'm like, yeah, but we don't actually talk about those academic standards because most of the time people are very focused on passing means 70 percent or better in my class. On these random traditional grading systems that even the faculty don't always understand, especially with the way that automated grade books lie to students and teachers.

Boz: So I'm not saying that we shouldn't, and the admin shouldn't, be looking at grade analysis from teachers. There absolutely should be. But there also needs to be this clear expectation, and this is some of the findings that it was talking about with retraining district staff. But what is the purpose of grading? And if we're going to really maintain those purposes, then the grade should be messaging that purpose. If a teacher rightfully so has a higher fail rate, then we shouldn't be putting pressure on that teacher. The entire system should be having pressure put on them, which is another one of their findings is that. We know which students these are. We can look at absenteeism, you know, absenteeism throughout the semester. We can look at it from previous semesters. We can look at it from previous years. We can look at performances on those key concepts and on those proficiency test. So we can be identifying schools need to be doing this, that we need to be identifying those students with that need the most additional support and start providing those and part of those additional supports is also really educating families about the importance of attendance, like, and I have to, yeah, I, yeah, I don't care what you do, how good of an educator you are, what kind of reform, you could be the world's greatest educator and there is, and ever has been and if you can't get the students to your class. You're not going to be successful.

Sharona: Well, and we have to address the same issue from a different angle at the university. Because we can see that attendance policies may sometimes, or often do, drive attendance, often in very biased and inequitable ways. But they don't drive learning. So just because a student is physically sitting in your classroom doesn't mean they're learning. And the grade is not enough most of the time to get them there.

Because we do have graded attendance in the traditional version of our statistics class, and we're having terrible attendance. Absolutely terrible attendance. And students have more and more and more choice at the university level now. So a lot of students at a four year will go take a community college class for a GE, even while they're fully enrolled. Like, it's not like they're transfer students, right? I'm seeing a lot of, they're enrolled in the four year college and in a given semester, they will take a GE at a community college that's less, letting them not have to attend, just watch a bunch of stuff and do some things. They'll then transfer that GE in.

So we can't get them to even enroll in the class then, let alone attend it. So I'm going to argue from the university perspective, we need to make that time that they're physically there incredibly valuable to the student. They need to find value in it. And these forced grading policies of grading attendance, they don't do that.

Boz: No, no, absolutely, I agree 100%. And you're right, we're seeing this, if, all it took was forcing students to show up by putting it in our grades, then we wouldn't have attendance issues. So the idea of that's what it takes is just ridiculous to me.

Sharona: And yet, let me be clear, what we're seeing in the traditional class is when we put attendance in the grade, there are a certain set of students who will show up. They are not performing any better. In fact, many of them are performing worse on the content material. So we're actually having the opposite effect. We're forcing attendance and then killing our classroom environment. Because there's a bunch of people in our classroom who do not want to be there.

Boz: I want to kind of get back to this research and some of the other things that they have in their findings. Another one of the suggestions that it makes that I could not agree with more is providing education and training to educators. On a couple of key components, and I will say, I don't think I have ever seen in all my years as an educator. I've never been to a training that did any of this. So here are some of the things that they recommended that we need to really provide training and support to our, our educators. One maximizing parent teacher conferences. You know how many, I mean, yeah, I've gone to a PD or two about doing student led conferences. That is, would be about as close as a I've ever come. Another one is providing training on talking to families and parents about test scores and another one that I absolutely love leaning into having how to have candid conversations with parents. I know most of your professional career as an educator has been in higher ed, but it's not all been right?

Sharona: It's not all been, I mean, all of my official professional work has been at the higher ed.

Boz: But you've taught at.

Sharona: I've taught at lower grade levels, but not in the public education system.

Boz: Yeah. Have you ever had trainings on how to have candid conversations with your parents or how to maximize parent teacher conferences.

Sharona: So not only, no, I've experienced a lot parent teacher conferences and I have to say at the elementary school where my kids had standard based report cards, we actually had really good parent teacher conferences. Because I would ask a lot of questions about what this report card means and the instructors that we had, the teachers we had, they were able to explain it.

We got to the middle school and the high school and they actively fought you from enabling you to have a parent teacher conference at our district. First you had to request one, because there were no individual parent teacher conferences scheduled by the school. You had back to school night and you were told explicitly, this is not individual. So don't ask your teachers anything individual at back to school night. And then there were none scheduled.

Now I didn't have students who were in distress. So maybe if I had had students who were not performing, it would have been different. Although my kids were getting bad grades at different points. I had to request it. The teacher took a long time to get back to me. And their first question is, well, what is this about? So I had to direct the conference. I then had to schedule it during very specific times during the school day, usually during the teacher's conference period. So if I worked full time,

Boz: So a teacher's convenient, not your convenience.

Sharona: Not my convenience. And then depending on what I said, the topic was, They would either insist that my kid come or not allow my kid to come. It was a very extreme. And so I had to pull my kid out of another one of their classes if the kid had to be there. And then a lot of times I had to have a conversation with the teacher. In front of my kid, that was very uncomfortable. So it was, there was an active, extremely active resistance to parent teacher conferences in my world, in the world I lived in, which was one of the better performing school districts with a lot of helicopter parents. So this was their reaction was to push the parents out of the educational system.

Boz: Yeah. And you know, like I was saying earlier, my parent conferences, looking back at when I was doing traditional grading compared to alternative grading, it is much more effective. It is. And I, I can, because of my grading system, I can look at and be more specific about what a student is doing well in and what they're struggling in that I do think. I was able to have more candid conversations with my parents because I had, you know, a more focused place to point them at you know, I can look at and say, yeah, these are the things that they're doing well. And these are the things that they need help with. So again.

Sharona: That's what Becky Peppler said about why she even moved to alternative grading.

Boz: Exactly.

Sharona: Was due to a parent teacher conference. So, I think there's a lot of opportunity here, but training, training, training.

Boz: Yeah, I, I know, like I said, some people might look at this report and, you know, blast alternative grading, but it's talking about pandemic grading practices and most of their recommendations. at least for, for the districts is supported by alternative grading.

Sharona: I think the challenge is when you, when you have districts that are moving to alternative grading without proper training for administrators or for teachers, without getting into the nuance, a lot of it, it's risky and it can backfire. That the things that they're complaining about, if, if all you hear is take attendance out of your grades. So you take attendance out of your grades. That doesn't address the real issue. So I think that a poorly implemented alternative grading system can actually increase these problems.

Boz: Oh, I 100% agree. And, and think this was one of the, my favorite things that I heard once one of the solution tree PLC conferences was the worst thing for PLCs was PLC light. I would say the exact same thing for alternative grading. The worst thing for alternative grading are people that implement it poorly with little to no understanding or training of what it is. And yeah, when you do that, it is, it's, it can be disastrous, you know, like what you were just talking about with the attendance policies. One of the things that, that Becky said on her last interview was, One of the things that she learned, you know, by doing it incorrectly, was that with her reassessments, if the students didn't understand why there were reassessments and the purpose of them, then they absolutely misused it. You know, she, she was saying how her students would walk in on the day of the test before even sitting down and looking at problem one, we're asking when the retake were. So they were just throwing this first one out. Same thing with, you know, these kind of attendance policies. If you just take it out of the grading and don't have an understanding yourself, and then also communicate that why It is, it's going to send the wrong message. Same thing with the, the zeros with, you know, a lot of the equitable grading practices that Joe Feldman talks about. If you don't first educate the educators about why, but then also communicate that why to the students. Yes, it's going to be misused and yes, it's going to at best not do anything to address the issues and at worse, make it much, much worse.

Sharona: That's why our talk is called grading is the misuse of mathematics in the measurement of student learning. We actually unpack the mathematics of points and averages, because if you don't unpack that, You might recreate it.

Boz: Exactly. But here's kind of the last one because we are coming up on time. This is one of the recommendations to the families that this research came out with. And that is to go beyond the grades. Stop just looking at the student grades. Look at other indicators. But I would go even further than that, and this is what we have talked about, and this is what sold me in alternative grading, is if you can get the students to go beyond the grade. Stop making it about the grades and make it about the learning. Which is, I've said this a thousand times, what sold me on alternative grading. The first conversation I had where my conversation wasn't what do I need to do to get a better grade? It was about what math do I need to show you? If we do that, if we can make our students value the learning instead of the grade, that will actually take care of a lot of these issues. In my opinion,

Sharona: I completely agree.

Boz: That's something I don't care how good of an educator you are, traditional grading is going to fight you on that every single time.

Sharona: Which is why I call it the cinder block wall.

Boz: Yep

Sharona: So as we're gonna wrap up here, I did maybe want to tease some of our upcoming Interviews for those of you who are still around does that work for you?

Boz: Absolutely because we've got some fun ones coming up, right?

Sharona: So, we have interviews with some authors I'm really excited. I'm crossing my fingers this will work out, but we've got Jack Schneider from the Off the Mark book coming up. We're going to be talking with also a couple of educators who do this alternative grading in science and social studies. We've worked with them before and they are just powerhouses and they're going to unpack their experiences. And then we, we got a response. So from Colin Madland's episode about PE, we had a listener write in that he is a PE teacher, a physical education teacher doing standards based grading. And he's going to come on. And then a little bit later, we have interviews with Josh Eyler, who runs the Center for Teaching Learning at Ole Miss and has written a book about grading that's, that's relatively new and we have some more scheduled after that. So I'm really excited that we're going to have, I think currently, which I think this is the most we've ever had, we have seven people already scheduled for interviews over the next several weeks.

Boz: Yeah. And I, I'm really looking forward to a lot of those, the Josh Eyler one, of course, but also it, correct me if I'm wrong, the PE educator you were talking about, is he also from Canada?

Sharona: He is also from Canada.

Boz: Well, we've got, we've got another Canadian coming on, another neighbor from the North. Now we just need to get some people from the South. We need to get some, some Central American, some Mexican or further down into Central. But yeah, we, we got to get some, some of our neighbors to the South, but I'm excited to have another Canadian on.

Sharona: Well, and also, I mean, we've looked at our listener maps, and we have listeners from, I don't know, over 100 countries or something like that. So we would love to hear from other people that are experiencing either if you're an expat American, and you're teaching in sort of an American style system overseas, how that works. Or, if you're experiencing a completely different grading system, it would be incredible to, to hear from the different grading systems around the world. Because I know a lot about the history of how about how grading came about in this country. But I know that other countries have a lot of different places. So we'd love to hear from people from around the world, because why not? Let's bring people together.

Boz: All right. Well, with that being said, I think that's a great way to wrap this up. So I want to thank everyone for listening and we'll see you next time.

Sharona: Please share your thoughts and comments about this episode by commenting on this episode's page on our website, www. thegradingpod. com. Or, you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. If you would like to suggest a future topic for the show, or would like to be considered as a potential guest for the show, please use the Contact Us form on our website. The Grading Podcast is created and produced by Robert Bosley and Sharona Krinsky. The full transcript of this episode is available on our website.

Boz: The views expressed here are those of the host and our guest. These views are not necessarily endorsed by the Cal State system or by the Los Angeles Unified School District.