How do we ensure a grade actually reflects what a student knows?

In the premiere episode of this four-part mini-series on The ForwardEd Network Commons, Dr. Chad Lang and Dr. Matt Townsley reflect on 20 years in the "grading trenches." They tackle the critical shift from an industrial-age "rank and sort" mentality to a modern, evidence-based approach to assessment.

The focus of this discussion revolves around the inherent complexities of curriculum and assessment reform. Refining these processes is often an arduous, time-consuming task fraught with disjointed methodologies that can hinder genuine student learning outcomes. Drawing from their extensive backgrounds, Dr. Lang and Dr. Townsley illuminate effective strategies for navigating these challenges, emphasizing that grading must be regarded as a means of communication rather than a rigid framework for ranking.

In this episode, we explore:

1. The "Illusion of Precision": Why points and percentages often hide the truth about learning.
2. The "MyChart" Effect: How instant grading notifications and "scoreboard watching" create anxiety without context.
3. Technology & AI: How 2026's digital landscape is forcing a return to authentic in-class feedback.
4. Systemic Success: The necessity for clarity, consistency, and equity to foster educational success in modern systems.

Special Thanks to our Sponsors: We are proud to partner with CLI (Curriculum Leadership Institute) and SpacesEDU. Both organizations share our mission of assessment reform and helping districts implement systems transformation through thoughtful, student-driven tools.

1. CLI (Curriculum Leadership Institute): Empowering school leaders to build systemic clarity and essential curriculum improvement. Learn more at https://www.cliweb.org/.
2. SpacesEDU: Helping districts capture durable skill development and digital portfolios to make learning visible. Discover how to transform your assessment tools at https://spacesedu.com/en/.

Key Takeaways:

1. Grading reform requires a shift toward standards to ensure fairness and rigor.
2. Accurate communication regarding student learning is the foundation of the educator-parent relationship.
3. Systemic transformation is necessary to ensure a student’s long-term economic viability and success.

Subscribe to The Commons on the ForwardEd Network for the rest of this mini-series as we dive deeper into communication, sustainability, and the evolution of the modern classroom.

1. #EducationLeadership #GradingReform #StandardsBasedGrading #ForwardEd #K12Education #Assessment #SpacesEDU #CLI

Today's episode is brought to you by

our partners at the Curriculum Leadership Institute.

Let's be honest, curriculum and assessment work is hard.

It's time consuming, oftentimes disjointed, and if it's not done right, it doesn't actually improve student learning.

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Welcome to the commons on the Forward Ed Network.

This is Modern Grading Reform, a miniseries with Dr. Chad Lang and Dr. Matt Townsley sharing nearly 20 years in the trenches of grading and assessment reform.

Let's get started.

Hey.

Well, welcome everybody to a modern grading reform miniseries put on by myself, Chad Lang, and my good friend and co author, Matt Townsley.

Matt, what is going on?

Hey, good to see you again.

You know what, it's been a number of years since we've first met and so it's really neat to get together back again.

And we're emailing and texting all the time and writing books and articles, but great kid with you and doing this little podcast series.

It's really just everybody getting the opportunity just to listen in on our conversations about when we get super excited about grading and assessment.

So I think hopefully that's really helpful and fun for people with some years to pass after we're able to get this online.

Our friends over at Forward Ed are putting together this podcast miniseries for you and for school leaders, educators and everyone else alike to hopefully take take in some thoughts and ideas about grading, an assessment reform that Matt and I have experienced and almost 20 years in the trenches of doing grading reform.

It's crazy to think that it's been that much time already.

We're going to lay out this podcast in four episodes.

Now that we're into this new year and move into talking about things that we've seen over the years that are really working with grading reform, assessments, protocols, even report cards and assessment tools.

In the second episode, third episode, jumping into communication, what works and how do we make sure this reform is on the Same page for everybody.

And then trying to finish up that last episode with talking about sustainability.

So what works and what, what's hanging in there for schools that are doing such a great job in this, this journey that schools can go on and this evolution as a part of their school improvement process.

So we're excited about it.

There'll be so much we can throw in on the way.

I hope that everyone finds it super helpful and we look forward to interacting with anybody through email and LinkedIn and those kinds of things.

So awesome stuff.

Matt and I were talking before we jumped online.

I think we crossed paths doing this work or at least being fans of the work in school leadership roles.

Matt here in Iowa and then I was in Missouri actually at the time as a high school government teacher.

It was awesome and a great experience there.

So I'm going on to 19 years specifically I think being involved in standards based standards reference grading reform in PK12 systems.

What about you, Matt?

I got your years up right?

Yeah, pretty close.

And that was really a result of just going to a state of Iowa math teachers conference.

In fact, I was just talking to a principal over this week and we're just trying to figure out when do we first meet each other there.

And we're pretty short way all the way back to that, that math teachers conference.

And you know, but even before that I was like you, Chad, just interested the topic I'd be talking to my, you know, high school math teacher colleagues saying how many points you take off for this?

How many points do you work for this?

And just always been something that I've been interested in as an educator.

And then of course transitioning to a district office role also when Solon, it became something that we had to address when our high school principal, Nathan called me up one day in the district office like, yeah, we, you got some teachers do it this way, some teachers do it that way.

Nobody's doing it wrong as in relation to how we expect them to do it.

But it's just very inconsistent right now.

And that put us on a journey to really, you know, for me to experience this shift as an administrator.

I know, Chad, you've been a part of the shift as an administrator, as a teacher.

Well, as well.

I think that's what makes it fun to talk about this.

Our Stories aren't exactly the same.

We have just a lot of years in seeing it, talking about it, thinking about it, even, you know, exchanging emails and doing workshops and things like that for other schools, too, which has been really fun to broaden our horizons in that regard.

Yeah.

What do you think?

Wow.

I think a lot of pieces of their grading reform are the exact same.

And it's really just whether or not a district or a community or a school or the group of educators are already in prime for it, and maybe what pressure has been put on their system that says, you know, this is.

This isn't working at all.

I know you and I believe that grades are a form of communication, just as a communication device, as our friend Rick Warmerly says.

They're not tattoos permanently put on your forehead.

There's just a temporary indicator of what you could know or do at any given time.

And that's not to take away from the great work that people have done over their career.

It ends up on their transcript.

But I think it's amazing of, you know, so many different schools can be in a different journey, maybe moving away from, you know, this ranking and sorting element that history has kind of set us up for in an industrial and agricultural economy in the United States, really, for most of our educational history.

And now their roles change.

You know, we.

We don't need to use PK12 settings to rank and sort students, really.

There's a lot of other institutions and avenues to do that, and I think that's different.

And.

And I know you have some good thoughts about that, people's understanding of that.

And.

And I'm really challenged by the idea that, you know, even, like, when my parents were growing up in the 60s and 70s, like, truly, if they didn't get all of that, what the curriculum they were exposed to and their grades really didn't reflect even that, they got a lot of what they were exposed to, they actually could still go on and be great contributors to society.

You know, get a good job, make a good earnings, you know, buy a house, two cars, all that kind of stuff.

I just wonder if that's the case anymore, you know, if you don't have some level of proficiency of state standards or, you know, industry standards, you know, just what opportunity will you have to be successful, you know, and viable economically for yourself?

And so I think the stakes are really high, and I think schools are seeing that I Think families are seeing that as well.

And they want to really make sure that they have a good understanding of what their, what their child's competencies are.

And I think the thing that's interesting that I've observed over 20 years is those standards and those competencies are a lot more rigorous than what people give them credit for.

It doesn't take long to go all the way down to probably an elementary, like open house or even conferences.

And I've heard, know, parent teacher conferences.

I've heard parents say, like, I can't help them anymore.

I don't even know how to do this stuff.

And so I think we have to think that at the same time, you know, over time, the rigor of the standards, contrary to probably what a lot of people believe, maybe in the media or something like that, have really risen.

And then our ability to report the accuracy of what the students can do with those is super important.

Like, they're truly, I wouldn't say it's life or death, but I think they're economic life viability really depends on doing the best job we can at teaching them, assessing them and reporting them.

So, you know, those things are on my mind.

What about you?

Like what, what resonates with you about that?

I think there's a lot of things that are the same, no doubt.

I mean, I think there's schools that are focusing on it, you know, whether it's from a classroom consistency perspective.

You know, I see a lot of that, like, hey, why does this class do it that way?

Why does this kid X credit over here?

And so I think there's still, you know, conversations around classroom consistency.

And of course we see that, you know, in the research in the past, you know, 20 years or so, as I think there's also the clarity conversation that you alluded to as well.

That's one I'm probably the biggest fan of this idea of moving away from points and percentages as this counterfeit pursuit of precision.

It's just something that gets me really excited.

I think it's very defensible to dig into clarity and communication as being a reason that grading assessment practices can change.

And of course, Joe Feldman's book and just political things out there have really also brought up the equity side of things.

But there's probably more, you know, resources out there and in a stronger rationale they can point to.

I think many of those things were true back, you know, 20 years ago.

Chad Maybe not as much the equity.

You know, I don't know if that was necessarily a conversation about grading reform, but I think that those three, you know, there's three reasons.

Consistency, clarity, and equity are ones that schools are talking about today.

Right.

Hey, we tried this out five years ago.

We just kind of lost track of it.

And so now we're really trying to, you know, go back and get after it.

And I think that's good.

I think that's really good, obviously, since you and I are excited about it, because no one's making them do that, Chad.

Right.

It's not like, you know, like here in the state of Iowa, where you have to adopt a certain cell phone policy because the state says you have to.

Right.

Or you have to adopt some new state standards because the state says you have to write like it's.

Schools voluntarily are saying, we need to get better grading practices.

I think that's pretty, you know, pretty neat to see.

Yeah.

And to jump on that, like, that's courageous to do.

I mean, yeah, there.

There's hardly anything that's universally 100% accepted.

Like, even school safety can be controversial for people to think, you know, we're gonna maybe think about our.

Our school entry policies and systems a little bit differently.

And, you know, we want our schools to be more safe.

And, like, we'll.

We'll hear people push back and say, well, we don't want to be a prison.

Like, it's supposed to be a great place, you know, there's just hardly anything.

And so if you think about grading, which potentially could be one of the most hot topic issues, and I can argue whether it should be, but certainly I understand why it might be.

I think that really tells you something about how broken some systems have really become.

And for a variety of reasons, you already shared.

But I wonder, too.

You know, you think about change and evolution, you know, Know, I can probably speak for you, but I know for me, like, I didn't actually know what my grades were as an elementary student.

Like, my teacher had this big red book, right?

Like, he opened this book.

There's these.

Your kids.

Their names are down the side, and then the ti.

The titles of entries are on the top, usually chronologically by date and so on and so forth.

And there were all These things in pen or pencil or I can't really remember.

But see, it really wasn't aggregated into any reporting measure until maybe a quarter or a semester.

And even then it was such a lagging measure.

It really didn't make a difference to me, particularly as an elementary student, and I think maybe even into middle school and probably even high school for me, maybe dating myself a little bit.

But I think about technology being a little bit of a hindrance actually to grading reform.

And you and I talk about the perils of scoreboard watching with all the electronic grading systems and student information systems that can do any number of calculations with grades, giving this sort of illusion of precision sometimes and how that's actually been detrimental maybe, and you and I can talk about that more later.

But you know that technology and then other influences of technology to grading have made it challenging for teachers around clarity and consistency.

You think about AI as being a perfect example, like, who's really doing this work.

Well, that's not really a new problem for teachers who assigned a bunch of homework and put it in their grade book for four points because we didn't know if their brother was doing it, the kid on the basketball bus, their parents, and all leading to, you know, sort of invalid entries of what the student could actually do.

You know, we didn't, we didn't know that.

So now we have apps on our phones and all those kinds of things that can do it lickety split.

It'd be really, really tough for teachers to know if that's evidence of their learning or not.

So I would say that's really changed.

Maybe it's pushed people or schools to say, you know, the, we can't fight up against that, that, that hill, that wall of the Internet, AI and everything that comes with it.

We need to get more clear about what it is, the evidence of learning actually is.

And how can we make sure it's.

It's coming from the students themselves.

And ironically, I think it's pushed more back into the classroom from, you know, think about the one to one initiatives over the last 20, 30 years and so on and so forth.

Like so much was getting done in a flipped model.

But now I'm really starting to see a lot more practice done in the classroom with the teacher present and hopefully that thinking that everybody's cheating or whatever.

But what I like about it is you and I know that the research on feedback is tremendous for learning.

And so it's hard to get feedback when I'm not right there with my students.

And so I Think it creates that opportunity, so long as we can make sure that teachers have the training and the time and the support to be able to provide timely feedback.

So those are some, like, evolutions and changes, maybe not so positive or positive from technology during the last 20 years.

And maybe state standards, you know, national standards and, you know, depending upon the state that, that you're in as a listener and of course, the evolving nature of state standards.

Right.

I mean, there's school, There are states that adopted Common Core, then went away and vice versa, or modified the Common Core for Baffin ela.

Next generation science standards came in.

Different states have different social standards.

You know, states like Iowa and others have some type of cycle.

They're going on to review the standards.

And, you know, that's.

That that in itself is both a good thing.

Right.

That we have state standards.

If you want to grade based upon standards, it's great you have standards to base them upon.

But it's also a challenging thing when somebody out there is like, oh, my gosh, we got new standards now, or they don't like the standards.

There's too many of them or not enough.

And so.

But I think that's something that's maybe, you know, ingrained in part of the conversations now that wasn't 20 years ago.

Yeah.

We found through research and interviews that parents just didn't know what.

They didn't really know what standards were.

How long have they been around?

What did they look like, how were they composed?

And I think they're pretty blown away by what standards are.

You know, it's funny, we talk about technology.

I think everybody probably listening or watching the podcast has seen, you know, a Common Core Math, you know, slam on Facebook or whatever.

And I can understand that if you're coming from a perspective that just seems so different than what maybe you experienced in school.

And I, and I totally get that.

But largely and more broadly, I think the state standards I've seen, you know, bring a level of rigor and context to what students are supposed to learn.

That was really just the Wild west before that.

And you think about globalization, you think about how long parents or stay in one job and, and then how transient I guess our cultures become and the importance of having some system of a semblance of continuity for kids.

And the challenge it would be, and we still see it today, I mean I, I see it in our schools all the time.

Students just move four miles down the road, come to a different school district.

Their, the scope and sequence is entirely different.

Even within the courses, the standards might be just completely different.

So still a really big challenge for students today.

But nonetheless that's, that's been a change.

Whether you do standards based grading or not, you still have standards that you're accountable to for the most part in most states.

So it's something that has certainly evolved and I think worth exploring.

If you're a parent, it's like, you know, I don't get it.

Take a look at some standards or at least do some inquiry of just what it might look like and ask your teachers of your students, like, can I see an example of what standards are really important for this grade level or for this class?

I think it'd be pretty eye opening.

One of the things about thinking about Chad, you know, obviously there's some things that are the same, some things that are different.

Like why is it still, you know, we're, we're doing this podcast and you know, people been talking about grading forever but like why, why do you think it matters now more than because, I mean I get just as excited about it, even more excited about it.

But like why now more than ever before?

I think for me it's different probably as an individual than it is maybe for a system, I think for a system and a school.

Certainly there's some schools that have a really altruistic endeavor in front of them.

They want to do right by students, they want to make sure they're doing equitable practices.

You mentioned Joe Feldman's work and that's absolutely important.

I think for me as an individual, I think the opportunities lost when we don't have the opportunity to communicate accurately what a student can know or do right now, wherever they're at in their educational journey, just taking a 10,000 foot view and looking backwards on a student's life and at every opportunity in which a grade is produced that may or may not be accurate of what the child can know or do, and the waterfall or cascading effect that has positively or negatively and the importance of it being accurate about what they can know or do, whether that's Getting into a gifted program, whether that's getting provided opportunity to meet an IEP goal, whether that's getting into maybe a really advanced career and technical program or the military or a scholarship and then actually like the long term effects of it not being accurate while on the face.

You know, we talk a little bit about grade inflation being a hot topic today.

You know, what if you have straight A's in high school and you and you get to your university on some great scholarship and you just don't know what your grades say you do and the ramification that has on your mental health and the ramifications it has on your pocketbook or your parents pocketbook when you're taking remediation classes or whatever, you know, that's deeply personal to me.

I think we have the responsibility just to make sure.

And I think thirdly, systems are just feeling squeezed down to a nub with the traditional metrics.

They're becoming so useless.

It becomes the wild wild west with points and so much arbitrary use across their school or their system.

Even within a school the variability is just so wild that it's really, you know, a teacher lottery could have a greater impact on your GPA than your ability to know the standards in some systems we've seen and I think that's just completely unfair.

And I think it puts school administrators, sometimes school boards just in absolutely no win situations to try to defend one practice over another where there's just knowing, no consistency in reporting.

And then the last thing I would say is that it's not created really very good relationships and schools are sick and tired of it.

They don't have the best relationships with their students.

They don't have the best relationships with their parents and their guardians and oftentimes their grandparents because they're talking about this idea of lagging measures, grades and compliance and completion, which doesn't really do a great job at developing relationships.

And all the while I'm not talking about or ever advocating for lowering the standard.

In fact, just quite the contraries.

Grading reform is a long term shift, not a one time program.

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Those are different pressure points from different lenses, and some of them all work together as schools and school systems and families are really thinking about teachers.

Of course, too.

What about you?

Yeah, of course.

I agree with all the things you said there.

So it just.

It just flows.

Yeah.

And, you know, think.

Think back to that area you were talking about where, as a student, when we were in school, you didn't know what grade you're getting because it was, like, hidden in that teacher's book.

Right.

You had to go ask, you know, Mr. Smith, what's my grade right now?

And, you know, you get some answer from them.

Then we introduced, you know, electronic grade books.

And I remember, like, when I was a teacher, we had to, like, we were constantly encouraging parents to sign up for, you know, the access and to.

And do that.

Now we've got you, like, like you talked about.

We've got scoreboard watching as one paradigm for it.

You can get pinged on your watch.

Yeah.

When your kid gets a new notification from whatever.

And so I think now there's an opportunity for both sides of the spectrum to happen.

What I mean by that is one is just to not even question what the information is, but just to chase getting better at it if you're a parent or a kid.

Right.

So I think that's one opportunity.

And school can maybe get away with that as long as things are going okay.

Right.

As long as it's consistent from one class to the next.

As long as it's perceived to be clear and equitable.

All those things we just talked about.

Right.

On the flip side is because information flows so freely, there's also another opportunity, I think, for parents, educators, even students to question, you know, hey, how come in this class, my kid had a test today and this other section, they didn't?

Because parents wouldn't have known that, you know, 20 years ago.

That's right.

Well, they wouldn't even maybe know them.

That you just, you know, if you're a parent and your kid just got, you know, I'm making this up 30 extra points for extra credit on something that can get around the neighborhood in five seconds now.

Yeah.

It shouldn't back then.

And so I think there's information for things, both the.

The unquestioned traditions to be okay, but also the not good things.

Those things can also be a hindrance, I think, because that information flows so freely.

Schools are saying, to a certain degree, the ones that we feel Are, you know, working the right direction?

We gotta get this right.

Yeah, we've got to be consistent, clear and equitable in the way that we do this creating thing.

Because kids just aren't recycling their stuff in the recycling box when they get it back anymore.

As a high school kid, it's stored on canvas or whatever the system is, and so a parent can access it and then begin to question it if they so desire.

Yeah, and not only that, like, not only that, like one of the things you and I have spent a lot of time thinking about in the recent years is this notification culture.

We're all victim to it.

And we, I'm sure we've seen, you know, Jonathan Heights work and anxious generation and, and so much of it.

It's like we know it, but we really challenge ourselves from not having that.

Just, it's just so set up so easily between the watches and the phones and all those kinds of things.

But when you start infiltrating, grading and like scoreboard watching of your kids grades, the danger that we've seen is you have no context to it.

You know, I mentioned earlier that parents really struggled to understand standards.

Not when they're getting exposed to them.

Like eventually they, if they have an opportunity to really understand, you know, like, oh, so this is what it is, they're being, you know, assessed or evaluated on.

Okay, I get that, that makes more sense to me.

But off the jump, they rarely have time.

You know, schools really typically falter in the phase of we haven't given any context to this data that we're communicating to you that you signed up for that the moment the teacher submits it, you get a notification, you have no context for that information.

And I always make it analogous to like other areas that have professionals that have these things.

You know, I just got a new doctor, we moved to a new community this year and I got a new family physician.

I had, my wife's been using the, my charting and all that.

Perfect example, but, but I'd never used it before.

And so like to get a new family physician, I had to like get a wellness check, get a blood panel and all that kind of stuff, which was fine.

I thought it was a great idea.

But ironically enough, it's really ironic coming to me before this school year.

I think it was like in August when I had this done, I got all these pings.

Like I just kept getting these pings while all these lab reports were coming in.

And they didn't tell me like when I left the position and it was really great.

Visit and everything.

They said, you know, I'll call you when your lab reports come in.

We can go through them together.

Well, whoever was doing the lab work, right, like, they were inputting it and I'm getting charts and I mean, triglycerides and I mean all this kind of stuff.

And, you know, thankfully most of it was good, but one of them was, like, out of the medium range and into sort of the red zone, which, you know, I'm not super smart, but I know what green and yellow and red mean.

And so of course I'm panicking.

I'm like, okay, do we need to go to the.

You know, I'm not like, go to the er, but I'm kind of like, hey, this is surprising.

Like, I didn't.

I feel pretty good.

I definitely could shed some pounds, like, whatever, but I had no context.

So I'm like, messaging, okay, because you can message into the ether, like, I don't know who it's going to.

I'm like, do I need to set up an appointment right away?

And is this something to worry about?

And blah, blah, blah.

And so, you know, eventually actually my physician was able to get the message.

It got routed to him, you know, and he called me and he's like, hey, I meant to call you.

I had to see a few patients.

I'm sorry.

It was only like two hours later.

Like, I was on his list.

Right.

But think about the panic, the anxiety and everything that I went through and didn't take any drastic actions.

I mean, I was ready to give up Doritos, like, in the moment for sure, but.

And you know, I'm doing okay there.

But I think, you know, that illustrates the exact point that I mean to think about.

And you and I both know we've probably even experienced this.

And I've most certainly seen it as a principal, when I was an administrator of, like, parents texting or calling their kids during the middle of the day at lunch.

This is unacceptable.

Blah, blah.

I mean, really.

And, and I applaud the accountability.

Like, I have no issues with parents.

I think that's great.

But I have some major issue.

When we take professional data that was curated within context with the best intentions in mind, and then we haven't set the stage to have a conversation about what that data means.

That's pretty dangerous territory in any profession.

Um, you know, and so it is professional data.

You know, you're evaluating standards that are pretty complex for people to try to, you know, and so, you know, I'm sure you have said this, but I've always worked on having opportunities to say, hey, what preview opportunities do we have to communicate with parents when things are going to be evaluated and what's going to be evaluated and what it might look like and maybe what the reporting metric might be.

Is it going to be a letter grade?

Is it going to be a rubric, performance descriptor?

Is it going to be percentage or something?

So I think that's kind of some new territory as well.

But we've definitely seen some, some pretty poor stories come from the electronic grading and getting out of control, you know what I mean?

Back to the information flow and all that stuff.

I, you know, of course agree with what you're saying there, Chad.

I love the pie chart example that was.

I could, I can relate to that.

As, you know, going to my annual checkup here soon, gonna probably get some of those same pings, all that fun stuff.

It's easy also for, for educators, families, parents, whatever it might be to get really excited or not excited about changes to grading, right?

Like it's easy to hear, hey, the school is going towards proficiency based grading or whatever.

And you hop on Google and you start seeing the success stories or the not so great stories, right?

Like I have Google alerts set up for, you know, phrases like standards based standards, reference proficiency based grading.

So every time a news story comes out, like, it goes to my inbox, Chad.

And so I see all these headlines or schools are doing a great job or there's this perception of their grading reform isn't working.

I know that, you know, don't want to skip too far ahead.

But later on in I think episode three, me, we'll talk about this idea of, you know, how you communicate it without drama.

And I think that's what we're also seeing is schools that have communicated it at a high level are figuring out how to help parents understand how advantageous for their kids and advantageous for the educators in the system.

And of course, on the flip side, that's not the case.

And I get it though, it's not anybody's.

I mean, we'll talk about some great strategies to communicate, but from the parent perspective, I understand where they're coming from.

We both got kids that are, you know, going up through the K12 system.

And I think of, I think it was Anne Franklin, Tom Buckmiller and somebody else that did this paper called something like Understanding Parents Aversion to Standards Based Creating.

And this phrase sticks out to me to this day.

The Phrase was parents confidence for the known.

They were like, you know, in this study, like part of the reason that they were like frustrated with the, with standards based grading in their school was because they were confident in that, you know, points percentages, letter grades, all that stuff.

And I think it really goes back to communication.

Right?

Yeah.

In absence of solid communication, that's we're going to revert back to is what did I experience in school?

Yeah, yeah.

And I think like to steal from our own thunder.

If you've been to a Matt Townsley and Chad Lang presentation, you probably have seen analogies to the adult world because schools that are rocking grading reform have done an awesome job saying like, hey, you know, we don't just let people reassess willy nilly.

They have a contract or they have an agreement that says they'll be here at this time.

Sort of like your dentist does when you miss your appointment.

There might be an extra charge or you might get bumped to Friday at 8am or whatever.

And so the schools that have done a great job saying, hey, we're not lowering the bar for students here by changing the communication methodology or even the calculation methodology, we're actually doing a better job aligning to the adult world.

And I feel like that's been a great success point.

We could talk more about that later down the road.

So we're seeing better schools doing that over the last 20 years.

I think that's been awesome to see.

And another thing, like if we have parents that are listening to the podcast, schools do things a little bit different and it's kind of what makes a neat fabric of American education, you know, from school safety to school lunch.

I think I'm in my seventh district now in my career through student teaching and so on.

And they all were awesome by kids.

That can't be just the seven I've been to.

Right.

Like, I think most schools and they have, you know, quirky kind of, you know, traditions or bell schedules or homecoming things or, or you know, what you need to do to put more money on your lunch account.

But when it comes to grading, you know, just any variation from what they experience seems super uncomfortable.

And our students are experiencing a lot of variation anyways.

We certainly don't want to see a variation on the output.

You know, that can have ramifications long term for them.

So if we line up differently for milk from one school to the next.

Not a big deal.

If we line up differently for how we calculate your 4th grade math proficiency score, that's something we should be majorly concerned about or second grade reading or chemistry or whatever.

So we're excited to jump in and share some stories over this series.

You can be in store for a lot of probably stories of self deprecation from Matt and I.

You know, we, we've been really lucky.

We have been grading practitioners as teachers.

I have a social studies background in math, has Matt has a math background.

We've been in school administrators and district office leaders.

Matt's at higher education and I've been at central office and we've been able to do a lot of different things.

I've been able to implement some competency based grading at the university level and graduate school.

So we feel like we have a unique offering for folks and we're so happy to be able to share it as well across time.

Certainly not unique to us.

You know, we really believe, and I think you can see that by our work that we stand on the shoulders of the giants before us in this work and we're even fortunate enough to call some of them friends.

You know, I wouldn't be on this podcast if it wasn't for the Rick Warmly video series.

So I was so grateful to get to tell Rick that in person here last November.

So, you know, I'm excited for the journey.

Matt, with you in this miniseries, looking forward to it.

What do you think?

I mean, what do what gets you fired up for the next three episodes and where, where would you like to go?

And that I think is why we're getting together, Chad, to have this conversation.

Not because we've done it right or well every time, but we want to share how we've curated ideas like from Rick and from others and applied them in our schools and classrooms.

Because back when we were doing as teachers, all there was was the how to get started maybe in the why you should be changing books and resources.

And now we've got, you know, hundred books or something like that that can help schools that really want to do this.

And so our, our podcast is a humble contribution.

These episodes are a humble contribution to help leaders that maybe don't have time to pick up the book or they're on their commute from one place to the next to listen in here.

And so that's what gets me excited.

Just a different way of spreading the good word out there.

Yeah, and the thing is too, like, for all the listeners, we don't claim to be experts.

We, we have sort of a, maybe a greater passion for the work.

And, you know, one of the things that really chides us who are in the work is, you know, what does the research say about grading reform?

And there certainly is research about grading reform.

But I think when we try to take it a bridge too far and say, well, you know, what's the research about, you know, academic achievement or, you know, that's a bridge too far, we're not, we're not advocating to say that how we communicate about what a person can know or do could lead to, you know, wholesale school improvement or the downfall of society.

But there's certainly some tangential issues or concerns that we can connect to the research.

And it wouldn't take too far of the Google search like you've mentioned to find that.

And our friend Tom Shimmer always says, you know, it's not always about the research, but certainly, you know, we've had a hundred and some years to try to get it right with points based grading and what that does for student motivation and accuracy and validity.

And there's just not much there to support that work.

And so, you know, we're excited about continuing to evolve and help folks dive in wherever they can and whenever they're ready and provide this opportunity as a podcast to do that.

So any last thoughts, Matt, before we close up this first episode of the 20 Years in the Trenches miniseries featured on Forward Ed, we're super excited for them to be able to feature us and all of our sponsors as well.

What's on your mind as we head into episode two?

Yeah, I hope, I hope this podcast series is kind of like going to the ice cream shop where you can ask for just a little sample on a spoon.

There you go.

And you get it and you like it and you'll want to come back next time to try the other flavor that you couldn't get your tooth.

There you go this time.

Yeah, I think that's what this is all about.

Just, you know, tasting the ice cream at the ice cream shop and liking what you're eating.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great way to end it.

Well, Matt, I, absolutely, I, of course, have enjoyed our conversation immensely.

Like I said from the jump, it's kind of like just our normal conversation.

It's just recorded for everyone to hopefully enjoy.

There's a lot more coming down the line in our future episodes.

You can always reach out to us on X or LinkedIn.

Give us a look.

Matt Townsley Chad Lang we'll be connecting with you soon on episode two.

Thanks a lot for your time and be well everyone.

Thanks for spending time in the Commons on the Forward Ed Network.

You've been listening to Modern Grading Reform, a miniseries with Dr. Chad Lang and Dr. Matt Townsend.

Honest conversations, practical insights and better communication about learning.

Join us for the next episode and find even more on the Forward Ed Network.