Join us as we explore small ways to open a conversation about grading with other people, without them necessarily realizing that its a conversation about grading. In this episode, Sharona and Bosley talk about 7 ways you can crack the door open on grading. Everything from using the four pillars to finding common ground and discussing why we teach. If we listen carefully, there are more ways than we realize to turn small moments of opportunity into larger conversations.

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!

• Taking the Grading Conversation Public
• When We Talk About Grading We Are Talking About People
• Ungrading, AI, and Feedback as Scholarly Work
• The End of Grades: An Afterward to Undoing the Grade

Seven Opportunities to Open Up the Conversation About Grading

1. Pick a Pillar
2. Talk About Purpose
3. Find Common Principles
4. Discuss What Will NOT Change
5. Think About Systems
6. Talk About People
7. Ask Why We Teach

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.

83 - 7 talking points

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Sharona: Well, and then even beyond that, as we've talked about before, there are two main purposes for grades, which is communicate learning or rank and sort. Like those are sort of the two general things that people say. They either want to say it means they've learned this amount or whatever, or it's ranking and sorting them relative to their peers. When you really boil it down, that's what the two possible purposes for academic grades are.

Boz: And you know, I know we've talked about this quite a bit, but the ranking and sorting, I think that is more of a higher ed. And I could be wrong...

Sharona: I disagree, because you guys have valedictorians and salutatorians and all that, and National Honor Society, and that's all ranking and sorting.

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 to The Grading Podcast. I'm Robert Bosley, one of your two co hosts, and with me as always, Sharona Krinsky. How are you doing today, Sharona?

Sharona: I am doing well, you know, both of my jobs have kind of kicked up and my brain keeps jumping back and forth from the university to the theater because we're back in auditions, so that's really fun, but it's also kind of stressful.

Boz: And what are you auditioning for right now?

Sharona: So we just finished auditions for Little Shop of Horrors in our teen program, and as we record today, auditions for our upcoming show of Anastasia the Musical, which is one of my all time favorites, are starting. So it's a busy time. Well, how about you?

Boz: I'm doing all right. I'm getting into the semester and, it's a busy time cause we're trying to do a lot of our trainings and stuff, but we're trying to get them all done early enough that we're not affecting testing, you know, pulling teachers out close to testing. So like I've done two full day PDs where I'm facilitating in the last week and a half. And I've got another one coming up in a couple of days. And so a lot of that. Enjoying it.

Sharona: So, my university is kicking up. My theater's kicking up. What else is kicking up for us?

Sharona: Exactly. And there's one other feature of the conference that I wanted to shout out. We're trying to be a very accessible conference, so we're trying to keep the costs down. We offer an institutional registration that we make super, super simple for institutions to sign up for. And it's $500 that includes up to 20 participants and then additional participants are $25 each billed after the conference. So if any of our listeners are at institutions that have like a center for effective teaching or anything that would find it easy to spend $500. We already have, I think we have five inquiries, like two set up and five inquiries and registration's only been open a week. So I would love, last year we had 14 institutional registrations, I love to blow that out of the water. So you know, it's really easy. An institution can just send us an email at [email protected], we'll get back to them. Really, really, really simple. And I would love to see more institutions promoting this.

Boz: And I found that, and I wish I can remember which one of them, but there was one of our institution registrations last year that actually a large group of them just logged on as one person was in like one of their technology classrooms or a conference room or something. So they were attending together, so they could also have kind of that in person feel and some discussions with them, which I thought was a great way to do an institution or a even a FLC or PLC type of attending the conference.

Sharona: Exactly. So help us out guys, get your institutions to email us.

Boz: And then we also have a little bit of a apology.

Sharona: It's really my apology. I don't know about an "us" apology.

Boz: But our last episode, which was episode 82? Right. We ended up being a little late getting that out.

Sharona: We were a day late because my brain malfunctioned. My brain malfunctioned actually, like you said, on Monday I thought it was Tuesday all day. And Monday is the day that I'm supposed to finish the editing. So in the middle of the day Tuesday, somebody asked me, and it was like somebody completely unrelated to my life, it was like a physical trainer or something like that. I said, Oh, how, you know, what's, what's this week's episode. And I went, Oh, goodness gracious. I forgot to post it. So I have, I have a huge apology. The episode came out a day late and not because, Bosley did his part! My brain just completely malfunctioned.

Boz: Well, but part of the reason it malfunctioned is you are, I mean, we talked a lot about this over the last several months, but you're in a new position at your college. But this semester, even though it's your second semester now doing it. It's almost like starting all the way over because you've got so many professors that are teaching in one of your coordinated classes that weren't teaching last semester. Is that correct?

Sharona: Yes, it's, I have instructors that are new to coordination or even ones that were teaching me with last semester, many, if not most of them are teaching in a different class that I coordinate this semester. So all of the instructional teams have reformulated. The size of each course is different because we have some courses that are sort of on schedule, like, when you come in and you start in the fall, these are the typical classes and then some courses are off schedule. So that changes the number of sections in each one. Additionally, I kind of felt like I was just trying to catch a runaway train last semester, because I had so little time. This semester I feel like I really own the job. Like it is my responsibility soup to nuts because I had had the time. So that's the other part of the challenge this semester.

Sharona: So it depends. Yes, depending on whether it's an on track or an off track sequence. So in the fall, our one semester precalculus is quite heavy. And the first semester of our stretch precalculus is very heavy because all the entering freshmen are coming in to take one of those two courses or they're taking the Calculus I. So what happens in the spring is the single semester pre calculus and the first semester of the stretch go down dramatically. And the second semester of the stretch increases dramatically. However, the Calculus I tends to be more even. Because in the fall, we've got a group of freshmen coming in straight into Calculus. And in the spring, all of the one semester pre calculuses that finished successfully go into calculus. So we have a little bit more balance there.

Sharona: Not quite as bad but still pretty dramatic in that first semester of the stretch. We go from, I think we had, gosh, 20 something sections of the first semester of the stretch last semester. And we probably have 10 this semester. So it definitely dramatically reduces, but not quite as imbalanced as the GE course.

Boz: So how with the shifting of where the sections are and the shifting and new professors, how's it going so far? You guys are in, what? Coming up into week four? So you're really starting to get into it.

Sharona: Exactly. And the people have been listening to the pod for a while, know that one of the things that's challenging for me, especially as relates to the work on this podcast is, I can't just wave a magic wand and redesign all these courses immediately into an alternative grading structure. But, because I'm me, I can't not do that. So one of the things that's been really interesting is both last semester and this semester, as I start working with new instructors, there's a lot of opportunities to have accidental or opportunistic, maybe is a better word conversations about grading and that's been on my mind this week. A lot.

Boz: So let me guess. That's what we're going to talk about today.

Sharona: Yeah, that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about starting a conversation with grading about with others, but doing it opportunistically. It's sort of like a few. I should have looked this up, but we did an episode about small steps to alt grading for individual instructors. This one to me is starting the conversation about grading with others. But it's the small entry steps. So if you're going to sit down and have an intentional publicly acknowledged conversation about grading, which is what we do when we go present, that's a specific type of conversation. And we have that pretty well down. You start with the purpose and then you, a lot of times we go into grading is the misuse of math. And then we go into what Alt grading is. That's not what I'm talking about today. What I wanted to talk about is some experiences I had and some of the opportunities I'm seeing to have tiny conversations. Essentially to try to crack the door open and then kick the door open.

Boz: Yeah. So how do you approach and start to get your foot in the door with colleagues that just aren't ready or don't see the need for grading reform conversation?

Sharona: So I have seven ideas. But I want you, Bosley, to jump in because you've been actually doing, I think, a little bit more of this door kicking even than I have because LA Unified has a bigger push for it.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: But I wanted to start with one that I think we both can relate to. I call it pick a pillar. So instead of going in and saying, Oh, there's these four pillars of alternative grading, I'm going to pick an opportunity because something's going to come up in conversation. So the conversation that came up this week for me is one of the instructors that's new into one of the courses is questioning why we're doing a multiple opportunity testing situation. Why are we giving students multiple cracks at showing evidence of learning? Although he's not using this language. So first he was just objecting, and then he said, the issue is retakes might enhance grades, but that doesn't necessarily enhance learning. Well, that was a crack. It was a crack for me. Because I was able to say, okay, I would love to talk about why we do multiple chances. And he kicked this crack open publicly.

Boz: So you weren't just having the conversation with one person.

Sharona: Exactly. So, and, and he did it in email. So like, it wasn't like I was being obnoxious by suddenly replying all. This conversation started in a group and an entire course team, someone asked the question, why are we doing this thing that, which by the way, this was designed prior to me coming on this structure for this particular course was designed not by me. It was designed by people who I've worked with and they know how I feel about this, but that wasn't why they did it. They took a piece and so it gave me an opportunity.

Boz: Well, that's interesting because this has come up in a lot of our conversations. I think the latest one was with Patrick Morris. With Patrick's episode, I think I really made that realization that there's a lot of people in this kind of line of work that some of them come at it from a grading reform and realize that assessments have to be adjusted and have to be changed to fit the grading. But a lot of them are coming at it from adjusting the assessment first. And then that leads them down to the path that ultimately ends in whole grading reform, which is exactly how Patrick got into it. Like he was changing, wanting to change the way they assess and in his journey that quickly became complete full out grading reform. But that's interesting that we can use that adjustment of assessment or looking at the way we assess. And you're right. I think that's a great way to try to crack the door open to eventually going, okay, we've adjusted, we're doing these second chances quizzes, we're doing these assessment adjustments. Why are we doing that? And how is our current traditional grading system still hindering the goal? That assessment reform.

Sharona: Exactly. Now, I had another pick a pillar experience this week. So, I was involved in a conversation about a course that I don't coordinate, but that probably should be within my purview. And we're looking at how to try to increase the number of sections of that course. It's another gen ed and the statistics course that we currently have in the department is competing with some other statistics courses in the university and we're losing students for various reasons. But there's a sense that there's a group of students taking the statistics course, either ours or someone else's that really shouldn't be in that course. That there's a different course that should be a better fit for them. That course exists, but it's being very under enrolled. And when I went with some administrators to look at the syllabus, the public facing syllabus, the course learning outcomes were not I want to say not accessible to the general population. So if someone is trying to figure out, should I advise a student to take this course, or should the student consider taking this course, and they go look at the public facing syllabus on the math department website, it's going to turn you off from taking the course. Because of the learning outcomes that are in that syllabus, the way they're written.

Boz: So when you say the way they're written, we've done several episodes on writing learning outcomes, from back in our original getting started series. We've had conversations, multiple ones with Joe and with several other people. So when you say they're inaccessible, what do you mean? Are they not student facing? Are they so abstract that you just can't tell what you're going? Are they not really clear on the direction of the course? Like what's wrong with them?

Sharona: In this particular case, it's actually more that it's too detailed in a way that I think would turn people off if they're not a mathematics person. And this is supposed to be the least mathy course that we have. So this is essentially like a math for liberal arts. And included in the very first learning outcome, it says, list the elements of a discrete sample space, assigning appropriate probability to them, whether they are equiprobable or not, e. g. spinner spaces, identify the outcomes that comprise various events to compute their probability, find the probability of the intersection or union of two events, and it goes on. And that's one learning outcome.

Boz: Okay. I, yeah, just there's already just the way it's written with multiple actual targets in there, but yeah, I see what you mean with the language, cause as someone that loves probability, I know exactly what it's talking about. And you can say that in half as many words and not nearly as technical.

Sharona: And then several of the other learning outcomes say compute this, compute that, compute this, compute that, understand this, use this formula. And again, these are liberal arts students. So these are your art historians, your English students, your music majors, your theater majors. This is a fabulous course that is actually well designed for those students. But if they go and read this syllabus with no other context, they're not going to want to take the course. So the opportunity that came up is, we had some administrators are, well, oh, you got to redesign the course and the people who've designed the course feel very strongly that it's a really good course for liberal arts students. So my suggestion is let's rewrite the learning outcomes. It's a low hanging fruit, we don't have to do course redesign. But if I'm going to rewrite these learning outcomes to basically still do these things, I'm not changing the math of the course. But instead of saying, list all these elements and find probabilities, why wouldn't we say something like, use the mathematics of probability to calculate risk and reward in the real world. Something like that, right?

Boz: Okay, so I see how the conversations around assessment can lead a path towards eventually having a full blown grading reform conversation. How do you take this conversation about learning objectives or learning outcomes and rewriting those, how do you take that conversation eventually to grading reform?

Sharona: So once I have had an opportunity to work with the instructors on these learning outcomes, I'm going to start asking the next questions. So how will a student know if they can use the mathematics of probability to evaluate risk and reward? And how will you know if they can? So let's look at your assessments and let's make sure they're aligned. So then I'm going to sort of start with the universal design and backwards design principles. Still not talking about grading, because I actually think the assessments in this course are pretty good. And eventually I'm going to kick down the, well, what do you think about using proficiency scales and letting students revise them, or are they revising them? So I'm going to go a very forward process instead of a backwards process. And hope to eventually get there with this course.

Boz: So that's interesting. Cause again, I brought up Patrick's episode where in the middle of that, I had this just realization of how related assessment reform and grading reform are and how, if you do one, you almost ultimately end up at both. But here's another one where you are actually going to use the learning outcomes to go to assessments to then go. So we're still going through using assessments to lead to grading reform. It's just, I don't know why it surprises me, but it does just how incredibly related these are. And yet. Like, I, I know almost no one that has done grading reform that has not done assessment as well.

Sharona: Right.

Boz: I do know some that have done assessment reform that don't get all the way to grading reform. And I think part of the lack of success that those teachers in those classes have, I don't want to say lack of success. I think they're limiting themselves. They could have even more success if they just take that next step too.

Sharona: And what I want to remind people, in this conversation, neither of these conversations came up in the context of grading. Well, let me rephrase that. One of the conversations came up in the context of why are we doing this. And that conversation, which was the, the multiple opportunities. And to be frank, it came up in the context of this is too much work. So I have another one of my. seven entree points that I'm going to talk about related to that in a minute. But this other one came up with actually, to be honest, it came up in the context of we are losing students out of our college to other colleges at our university. We want to get them back. We want them to enroll in this course that we think is really good for them, better for them than what they're taking. How do we do that? And the place I started and what I had to explain to the math department, because in the math department's mind, rewriting the learning outcomes is course redesign. That's what they think it is. And what I explained is, no, this is a marketing, huh?

Boz: It's where it starts. It's not the entire process.

Sharona: But that's what people think it is. And I explained to the department, I said, we have an internal and an external marketing problem. We have to market this course to students, but we also have to market it to advisors and administrators. And one of the only tools we have to do that, except for conversations, is the syllabus template, the catalog description, maybe possibly even getting into our curriculum systems and looking at learning outcomes. If that's the case, then our learning outcomes become part of the marketing of the course. They are getting to the purpose of the course. So, again, not technically grading, but I'm going there. Even if they're not going there, I'm going there.

Boz: Yeah, like you said, you're using that as an entry point to get your foot in the door to eventually have conversations about full on grading reform.

Sharona: So what about you? Have you done the Pick a Pillar? Can you come up with any sort of tiny entree points you've used?

Boz: So, first, we don't have the issue that you were talking about with having to market our classes. Yes, some teachers might want to try to get more sections of this or that, but it's not as big of an issue. And not all schools force teachers to like have publicly displayed syllabi, especially before classes start. And there's not as much choice for k 12 students. Like a student might, as they're doing their advisement, might want an Algebra 2 class. They don't have as much choice as they do in college to say, I want person A that's teaching Algebra 2, not person B. Just because of the limits of the day, the requirements that basically you're in classes the entire day, the logistics. So we don't have as much of that kind of marketing concern that you guys do at the higher ed. That's not one that I usually am able to bring in most of my conversations. And again, it's also slightly different because I I'm working at a district that has now for almost a year, put out a new grading policy that, without mandating, highly encourages the use of, what's called EGI or equitable grading and instruction, a form of mastery grading. So it's a little bit easier of a conversation. So most of mine, really do go back to the heart of our trainings, which is the misuse of mathematics and looking at how points, percentages, weighted averages, how those affect things. And, the looking at if this is our learning target, especially in math. And we're grading, taking off every little point for other mistakes. And so that's how most of my conversations get in. But again, I'm in a much, much different setting, especially since that grading reform.

Sharona: But we do have K 12 educators who listen to the pod who don't have LA Unified's equitable grading and instruction. So before that came out even, did you have the pick a pillar conversations? Did you have those little opportunistic conversations and which ones were they?

Boz: You know, I really didn't. It was, when I was having these kind of conversations they were usually at least a PLC level and most of them were around the misuse of math of, if I can make people understand why the way we do it traditionally with averages and weighted averages, why that was inequitable, why that was inappropriate. We've talked about the average as a statistical measurement for measures of center, how that's not really appropriate to do grades. So that's really my conversation of what do we want our grades to mean mathematically? Now let's look at it. Do they really? Okay.

Sharona: All right, so pick a pillar is not so much your experience. I do want to move on to my second thought of a small place to go, which is kicking open opportunities to talk about the purpose of grades. Because I do, again, I'm on meetings where people are like, we need to improve our pass rates or I'm really unhappy. This is happening a lot in my department right now, "My students are coming into my 4, 000 level class, which is a senior level class, and I'm shocked at how little they know." That's a very common issue that we're having, is that students are going through our own courses at this point, supposedly succeeding, and yet the follow on courses Instructors are feeling not prepared.

And so that, to me, is an opportunistic moment to say, okay, well, if you're complaining that these students have a certain grade, and yet you're feeling they're not prepared, so why are we grading? What does that grade mean? So again, I'm kicking open that door because someone else said something. Someone complained or someone said, I'm really concerned and I think we should do X, Y, or Z. Because my students are not prepared for, say, the upper level linear algebra class, having just taken our lower level linear algebra class. Things like that.

So I try to listen for those opportunities when someone says, our students are not prepared, to say, okay, well, if we want them to be prepared, what does that mean? And I kicked the conversation open that way. Again, I'm not jumping straight to, well, the problem is you're not doing alternative grading and you should, I don't go there most of the time.

Boz: Yeah. And see, that's one where we, I think we do have more in common because, and I won't say this is a universal truth, although I'm guessing it probably is close to it, teachers, especially at the high school level are scrutinized about their fail rates, just like you were talking about with your whole courses, that's something that is a big topic and something that, especially high school, I won't speak for middle school and elementary cause I just don't know. If anyone's listening that's in a middle school, and you guys have those "your fail rates are too high" conversations every five weeks like we do at the high school, let us know cause I am curious now.

Yeah, we have those conversations quite a bit. And I usually, when I was still at Santee before I took my new job, my official title was intervention support coordinator. So that was one of my jobs, one of my roles, was working with teachers that had high fail rates. And one of the first things we would do is, okay, what is the purpose of your grade? What's your own idea of purpose of grades? And then we would get into looking at their grade book and what everything was everything that was in there to compile their grade. Because especially in high school, I know some in the higher ed, but especially in high school, there's a lot of behavioralistic components to grades. This is something that Guskey talked about with yes, those things are important. Coming to class on time is important. Turning things in on time is important, but those are behavior, not academic.

And even at a district like mine, LAUSD, I've been here for 20 years. And even before I got here, they already had the grade separation. We have three grades that we give to every student, a work habit, a cooperation, and an academic. So trying to pull out and show how certain things in a grade book might not be appropriate for the academic part of the letter grade is where I would come in a lot, but it was only after having that conversation of, okay, what is the purpose of a grade? What should an A mean? What should a B mean?

Sharona: Well, and then even beyond that, as we've talked about before, there are two main purposes for grades, which is communicate learning or rank and sort. Like, those are sort of the two general things that people say. They either want to say it means they've learned this amount or whatever, or it's ranking and sorting them relative to their peers. When you really boil it down, that's what the two, the two possible purposes for academic grades are.

Boz: And you, you know, I know we've talked about this quite a bit, but the ranking and sorting, I think that is more of a, a higher ed, and I could be wrong. C you know,

Sharona: I disagree because you guys have valedictorians and salutatorians and all that, and National Honor Society, and that's all ranking and sorting.

Boz: I, I agree. But when you ask an educator, ask a high school science teacher. What's the purpose of their grade? They're not going to be talking about ranking and sorting students in their class.

Sharona: They're not going to be talking about it, but especially some of the most resistant instructors, I think across the spectrum, if you say, "are you okay if all your students get A's?" They're going to get uncomfortable. So, so it may not be, they may think it's communicate learning levels. But there is a deep seated sense of, but how will I communicate that this student is more excellent than that student?

Boz: Yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true.

Sharona: And again, although I don't like ranking and sorting students, I think it is naive to assume that there is no need to rank and sort students. I just think we do it too much. Because until we burn down the whole system, which yes, I know that that's our goal, but we haven't done it yet. There's a legitimate question in my mind of are you hurting students if you don't find some way to rank and sort them as they try to progress from institution to institution? Because if your institution gets a reputation of "they just get all A's" and it's not tied to "because they have these amazing grading and teaching practices that means that their students know everything in the world", there might be graduate school admissions or there might be college admissions people who go, well, I can't trust the grades from that school because all of their students have the same grade.

And I know there's people trying to work on this, like the mastery transcript consortium who are like, well, that's because you should be communicating something other than a single letter about a student. So, and it was just something to be aware of as you have these conversations. But that's another one of my little opportunities. I do want to move on to the third one which is another opportunity that I really like is this idea of common principles. And there's basically sort of, I break that down into two things. One question that comes up, I'm sure quite a bit, is fairness and accuracy. So when the same student work from instructor to instructor is graded wildly differently. That's again, the misuse of math or or whatever. Is that fair? And is it accurate? And I think these conversations come up the whole idea of instructor roulette, right?

Boz: Yeah. And but you would be surprised, until you're able to get someone, at least in my experience, until you're able to get someone to a point of having the full blown conversation about the misuse of math, you would be surprised at how resistant or blind that fairness and accuracy is, at least in the conversations I've had with a lot of my K 12 colleagues.

Sharona: So I would agree at an individual instructor level. But I feel, at least at the university, at the administrative level, they're very aware of it.

Boz: Yeah. Oh, I agree.

Sharona: So to me, this might be an opportunistic thing to have in an administrator conversation. Maybe not starting it at an instructor, but when an administrator says, what do we have to do so that we don't have instructor roulette? You get to say something like, well, I have a few ideas about that and then you're going to pick a pillar or maybe it's a kick open the door on the misuse of math, but it's another opportunity that you can take. But I agree taking that with the individual instructor is probably a nonstarter.

Boz: Now we've said this term a couple of times now teacher or instructor roulette. I don't know if we've ever actually explained what that meant.

Sharona: So. Basically, we literally mean it in terms of gambling. So roulette as a game is basically you bet on a ball and you spin a wheel. And then wherever the ball lands, you win or you lose. So instructor roulette, it's like your throat, you know, whichever instructor you get, which you have absolutely no control over. Chance or you might not know anything that will be more indicative of your grade than you're learning.

Boz: Yeah. And that's what it boils down to is that the likelihood of your outcome is based more on the instructor you get than what you actually do in class. This is actually a term that I think I first saw reading some of the DuFour's work. Again on PLCs, cause this is an argument for PLCs as well of coming together as a group and, especially at the high school level or at the K 12 level. I think it's even more of a concern because if you and I are at the same high school, and we're both teaching algebra two, then there is a real need for my A to mean something similar to your A and my D to mean something similar to your D. So, yeah, that's a term that, like I said, I don't remember if it was one of their published papers or I think it might've been the whatever it takes DuFour book, but.

Sharona: Well, and just a little bit of history as I was looking about the Wikipedia page. So there's a type of roulette that is one of the reasons that actually leads to instructor roulette. So the type of roulette that is sort of the bridge is Russian roulette. And no I, this, I'm being totally serious because if you go on the Wikipedia page about Russian roulette, there's a whole probability calculation section. There's the mathematics of Russian roulette included. And the idea with Russian roulette is you could die. You literally could die.

And so instructor roulette has sort of some shades of if you get the wrong instructor, getting a bad grade could be so damaging and so detrimental to your future. Because as we know, especially mathematics, they've studied this, that if you fail your entry level math class, the chances of you failing out of School and college are very high or leaving school, and that translates to like a million dollars in lost lifetime learning earnings. So there's just these severe consequences that are not quite as severe as Russian roulette, but sometimes not as far off as we'd like. The other common principle that, I do want to get through some of these, because we're going to go really long otherwise, that is sometimes mentioned when talking about grades. So this is another one of those opportunities to kick the door open, because oftentimes when you ask people what their grades are supposed to be, especially now when we're not talking about whole course grades, but grades like on an assessment.

Boz: Yeah, talking about grades on assessment, not the end all grade. And I do. One of our episodes, one of our guests was talking about actually giving different terms to these things. And I see why that that's something we really might need to start doing.

Sharona: But in particular, a lot of times this will let you kick the door open by talking about, Oh, so, you know, what do you think is effective about feedback? And then sometimes people say, well, students don't read it. And then it gives you a chance to talk about specificity and timeliness. And again, that then sort of kicks open the pillar of feedback loops. Yeah. So it kind of ties back to that first.

Boz: Or actually that conversation, I could see that conversation going in a few different directions that could lead to kicking open, whether it's talking about proficiency scales, whether it's talking about the alignment to learning outcomes. So I actually see that having the opportunity of having like three different pathways that could eventually get to full grade reform.

Boz: Oh, and we saw that you had firsthand experience with that last year, our last semester with the whole, we need to do a trial on using traditional grading. Some of the things that they actually went and changed wasn't about grading. So yeah, this idea of when someone hears this, having all these other kind of things that they might think is part of it that you might end up changing as part of the redesign process, but it actually has nothing to do with grading reform.

Sharona: Exactly. And so this particular article, which is more K 12 oriented, started with some things about what to say to parents and they say things you could say, for example, we will continue to have an honor roll and transcripts and IEPs. Right? So starting with the things that are not changing before you start with the things that will change. So sometimes at the university, when we say things like we're going to give multiple chances, people will jump immediately to unlimited chances and they're like, well, you know what? You're ridiculous because I can't spend 24 hours a day grading. So multiple and unlimited are not the same.

Sharona: Or even. If we allow retakes, students won't take the first one seriously. And I'm like, well, that is definitely a possibility and it completely subverts the point. So there are a couple ways around it. One is you have to do an honest effort at the first try, or you don't get the second one, things like that.

There's all kinds of different ways to control that, but what won't we change? We're not changing that we're holding students accountable to learn this stuff. And if they choose to not take advantage of the system that we've built, as long as we have properly communicated it, then that's on them.

Boz: Yeah. I mean, and I also still think going back to Becky Peppler's episode she did with us, I think it was episode 70, because we've actually experienced this and I think a large part of it was because we didn't do the best job of communicating with our students why we're doing multiple chances, quizzes and why we're giving them the opportunity.

And we've also had this conversation. About, oh, if you're doing this, aren't you lowering your standards and your rigor of your course? And I'm like, no, actually my expectations of my students are much higher. But because of that, that's even more reason why I need to explain this to my students. So they aren't shooting themselves in the foot by throwing away that first opportunity.

Sharona: Exactly. So here's another, this is my fifth opportunistic opportunity moment is being aware of sort of what we would call systems thinking. So someone might say something like, by week 12 of the semester, all these students are disengaged. Like I've lost them. What am I supposed to do?

Boz: Well, sometimes a lot sooner than week 12.

Sharona: Right. But week 12 is when one of the answers is, they really are mathematically eliminated from passing. So that's why I said week 12. So when a faculty member or an administrator says, I don't understand what to do, I can't get them to stay engaged past a certain point.

Again, that's an opportunity to say, okay, well, let's look at why they should stay engaged. What's possible for them at that point. Oh, they can't pass the class. Then why would they stay engaged?

Boz: Yeah. And

Sharona: So there's conversations we can have.

Boz: And you keep going to week 12 cause most of your instructors that you've experienced at your institution have a two midterm final at bare minimum.

Sharona: Right.

Boz: That's not necessarily always the standard. I mean, a single midterm and final, which is why I'm saying it could happen a lot earlier than week 12. Cause if you've got those two major assessments and that's majority of your grade, Hey, students are locked out after the first one.

Sharona: Yes. And I get a lot of answers like, well, but they should continue to try so that when they retake it. I'm like, that's not how students think. So again, the point is the opportunity is to think about it systematically. We might be talking about why are students disengaging? And I'm going to go back and look at, well, what are their grades telling them? Right. It's just, again, an opportunity to insert a grading conversation when you might not think that you're talking about a grading conversation.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: I read something as I was doing this. I want to get to my sixth opportunity. And I read something by Sean Michael Morris, who I'm going to email and invite to come on the pod. But what he said is talking about grades is talking about people. It was one of his posts. He gives an example. He had a 3.89 in his undergraduate.

He got two B's in his whole undergraduate career. And one of them was in a jazz class, a dance class, he was not a dance major. And the reason that he got that B is he missed class one too many times. And he missed it one too many times because he had taken his in laws to the airport, gotten all the way to school, they were going overseas to a fabulous trip, and his father in law had left his regular glasses in the car. And he had to turn around and he knew, he knew the minute he turned the car around that he had just given up his A in that class. This is about people. And if you're an instructor, if you know someone who cares so, so, so deeply about their students.

Being able to get them to start to have these conversations about how the grades are interacting, policies that we think we do for the best of intentions, might not be there. They might not be working.

Boz: Yeah. And, and, I mean, I think that's a bigger conversation about any, any policy, any rule, any regulation that you have, if you don't ever take into account the individual and being willing and able make exceptions to those, then at some point they're going to end up hurting somebody and they're going to end up being, you know, causing an, a, not just harm, but an equity in your class.

Because especially at the college level. Our students have lives and it's not 100 percent around their education and not, I'm not saying they ever should either. They, we have bills, we have lives, we have fam, like there's a lot of responsibility that is outside of just what they're doing in classes.

And you know what? I'd love every one of my students to be as passionate about mathematics and about education and that be the center of their focus. That ain't the case. That's, that's, it's just not reality.

Sharona: The problem is, I want to, I want to quibble a little bit with one thing you said, which is something about making exceptions.

My challenge that I have is every instructor will tell me, I will make exceptions if a student asks. Every single one. Whether or not they actually will, they will say that they will. But we have research that shows that who asks depends on your identity. That women, students of color, things like that, they ask less.

So what I want to do is I want to take it a step further and build those exceptions into the system so that any one thing that happens probably can be washed over like, the system has already enough flex in it that we don't have to make exceptions. They're built in.

Boz: Exactly.

Sharona: Because we we know that requiring students to ask, which we don't think we're doing, but we are, is inherently inequitable. So in the case of our math 10 90 up to a point, you can miss any one checkpoint. You can miss two! You can miss one on every single one of the learning outcomes. You can miss homework assignments. There's lots of flexibility built into what is a very highly structured class. So again, when someone is talking about these things and talking about grades or talking about things. Or the other way around, if they're talking about their students as people, that's an opportunity to start the grading conversation.

Boz: That's a great point.

Sharona: And the last one that I have in my seven opportunities is if it's if a faculty member is talking about whatever their frustration is, and you think that at the core of their frustration is a grade thing, one other way to kind of kick the door open again is ask them why they are teaching.

Why did they choose to spend their time teaching? And the reason I say that is because we've got a lot of stuff coming out now that are supposed to help us with grading. AI things like that,

Boz: LMS systems,

Sharona: LMS systems. Everyone's like, Oh, AI is going to provide feedback. But feedback is the most human thing you can do in relationship to a student.

So when we ask them why they teach and they're like, well, I teach because I care about people learning. It provides an opportunity to say, Hey, well, you know what? Having an AI do your feedback on important assessments is removing the human element, is removing the relationship you have with your students.

So if we have two standards, it's two hours per class, per week. Do we really think that two hours of feedback per class per week is too much if an instructor is not having to write the assessments, not having to write their lecture notes, is not having to update their LMS systems? If all of that has been automated, which we have in a coordinated course, are we really going to say that on a three unit course, two hours of providing feedback to students is too much?

If so, why are we teaching?

Boz: Well, and I think there's another caveat to this bullet point of yours of how to get into this conversation. I don't think most people that are educators got into education for anything other than the most noblest of reasons. Like you just, you don't see it, you don't see that many people say, oh yeah, I got into education cause I hate kids.

Or because I like to torture students, which I will sometimes joke with my students that yes, I teach math cause I like to bug you. But most people want to say something about wanting what's best for students, wanting to share the love of education and love of subjects.

And I see that as a great opportunity to get into, again, use that as a path to assessment reform that then leads to grading reform. Because if, so someone comes and tells me this, that, yeah, that, you know, they want to make sure the students learn and and, you know, anything like that. I think that's a great opportunity to go, well, okay, well, what happens if a student learns a week after you tested them on it? Did they still learn? Is that still? So I like taking that crack down that pathway.

Sharona: Well, and especially because you can tie it back to not only did they get in it to educate students, they also did it for the love of their own subject matter. And one of the biggest frustrations is that students don't engage with the subject matter. They engage with the points of the mathematics of the grading system. Most English teachers didn't get into teaching because they love doing averages. It's not why they did it. Most mathematicians did not get into teaching math because they love calculating averages.

So being able to say and use a personal story about how much more I love teaching because of this. And how much more grading is meaningful because one of the worst parts of our job prior to grading reform is grading. So those are my seven starters. Did you have any that you came up with that I didn't cover?

Boz: No, most of them I think would fit into one of these. I think our personality differences, but more so our contextual differences, like I lean on some of these more, much more heavily than others, but yeah, I think most of mine would fit into one of those seven.

Sharona: And the whole point of this is it's not that you're going to go out and find these opportunities, they're going to fall in your lap.

And so we want to activate your brain to be on the alert for these coming up and have you prepared with some conversation starters. that when someone does say this, you go, Oh, there's a crack. Let's have a little conversation. And then next time, let's have a bigger one. You don't always have to start with a sledgehammer, even though I prefer the sledgehammer.

That's me. I want to break it.

Boz: All right. Well, that is bringing us up on time. So any, any last minute thoughts before we sign off?

Sharona: I do. If you have one, listeners, if you have one we should add to this list, please write in and give us a comment on the website. Either use the contact form or add a comment to the, this episode's page on our website.

We'd love to hear what are your opportunistic moments. to start the conversation about grading.

Boz: Yeah. Or if you've had experience where either you use one of these or someone else use something like one of these to kind of start your conversation and your journey, write us, share your story with us, and if you do, please let us know in the email if we have permission to share. Because if you share one of these stories, we would love to be able to share it on air. We can change names if you want to, or we could use your actual names if you let us, but yeah, I'd love to hear some of the stories of how you've heard these conversations or been part of these conversations.

Sharona: Absolutely.

Boz: All right. Well, I think that's going to bring us to the end of the time. Don't forget, get those abstracts submitted, go register for the conference and we'll see you next week.

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.