70 - A Reassessments Deep Dive with Becky Peppler

Episode 70 • 12th November 2024 • The Grading Podcast • Sharona Krinsky and Robert Bosley

Becky Peppler: Hey, I'm just going to try this on an island all by myself. Then it's just, you got to start dabbling in. And I would say, read, like, look at examples. Find, I mean, there's so many options now that I would say weren't there 10 years ago. You know, examples and things that people are doing, you know, reach out, ask others, collaborate where you can. But know that what works for somebody else might not work for you.

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

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

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

Sharona: Well, in some ways I'm doing better than I've been. I'm sort of over my mid semester hump. In other ways, I'm not doing great because I absolutely loathe standard time. We just went through our time change and I'm not a fan. But other than that, you know, we're moving right along. The semester's picking up I had a great opportunity to introduce a senior administrator to alternative grading practices today, where I put my couple of metaphors out. She was so excited. I think she might have offered to get a graphic designer for me to create visuals, so that was a positive. How about you?

d randomly ran into one of my: 2018

Sharona: Well, in: 2018

Boz: Yep. So. Yep. That was, that was the year we've talked about a few times where it was not a pretty new implementation.

Sharona: So speaking of pretty implementations we have a guest today I'm excited to bring back because this is someone who I think the origin story, which we know from a previous episode was interesting and then has done lots of implementation since then. So welcome back, Becky Peppler.

Becky Peppler: Hello. Thank you for having me again. Excited to be here.

Sharona: Yes. So Becky last joined us on episode 48 talking with her colleague, Don Smith on implementing in K 12. So I'm excited, Boz, you excited?

Boz: Oh yeah, thrilled to have you back and actually, interesting note, you know, between that episode and this episode, we actually got to meet each other.

Becky Peppler: We did. We did.

Boz: You and Don are, you know, out on the East coast. You guys are in Michigan, remind me, Michigan,

Wisconsin, Wisconsin, Wisconsin,

Wisconsin.

Becky Peppler: Close.

So yeah, and we're in California and you guys happened to be out here doing a training and we're like, Hey, you're not that far from us. So we actually had the pleasure of meeting and sitting down and breaking bread. It was really fun.

Becky Peppler: It was, it was right place at the right time. It worked out perfectly.

Sharona: Exactly. So Boz, do you want to introduce the topic we're going to be talking to Becky about today?

Boz: Well, look, the first time we had you on you know, it was you and Don Smith, one of your, your colleagues and coauthors of Extinguishing the fires and he had mentioned something about you apparently doing retakes and a unique and phenomenal way. So we've been dying to have you back on to really kind of talk more about that. You know, it's it's taking us a little bit longer than we were hoping because of all of us have some crazy schedules. Yeah, we wanted to, get you back on and really kind of dive into this you know, approach that you have with your retakes.

Sharona: And I think just to set this up real quick, could you remind us just a tiny little bit because I think it informs your retake philosophy of your origin story, just like the brief version. If you really want to know the full version, we'll take, people should go back and listen to episode 48. But what's the elevator pitch version of your origin story?

Becky Peppler: Yes. So I was a high school science teacher. And I taught for 15 years in a district in Wisconsin. So that's kind of where the, the story came from, from implementing reassessment, trying out what it looks like, doing it incredibly wrong. And I can share some of that as well to find a way to make it right. Right. Which, and then led me today. My current role today is in the director of the STAGR center at first educational resources. STAGR stands for standards, targets, assessment, grading, and reporting. So now I get an opportunity to travel around the United States. support schools as they work on grading reform. And a lot of that is conversations around reassessments and how do we make that work? And what does that look like in practice and in an application?

Sharona: But there was a specific story that I was thinking of something about talking to a parent, that was occurring. Oh, yes. Can you repeat that little part?

Becky Peppler: Absolutely. So the what short is referencing is kind of my light bulb moment of understanding the need for change in my own classroom, and it happened tonight at parent teacher conferences and just to kind of give that overview of this story, a parent came in and she was kind of questioning about how her son could improve. And he was taking a college level chemistry class. At that point in time, our grade book was broken down. 50 percent were assessments. 40 percent was lab work. 10 percent was classwork. And at the time of parent teacher conferences, She kind of zoned in on the chapter 2 assessment, which he had scored a 63 percent on, which was right on the cusp of the D to D minus in the grading system at that point in time that we had. And I couldn't answer her question about what he needed to do to improve because all that was glaring back at me in the gradebook was 63 percent on chapter 2. We had covered an immense amount of information in chapter two, and we were already into chapter four by the time parent teacher conferences had rolled around. And so I had to say to her, can I please get back to you on Monday in hopes that when I saw her son, because I, I gave the assessments back to the kids. So in hopes that when I saw her son on Monday, that he one, still had that and didn't, you know, toss it in the garbage on his way out the door. And so that I could look at it and categorize it and say, okay, here's where you needed improvements here are things, here are things that you did well on. And that moment to me was that light bulb moment of if I, for one, I felt horrible that I couldn't answer that. I felt like that was my responsibility as an educator to be able to answer that question. But the even bigger reflective piece that I had was that if I couldn't answer that. There was absolutely no way her son could answer that for himself which obviously would lead to an immense amount of problems down the road in terms of that self advocacy and understanding what they're learning and how could kids help themselves in addition to us supporting them in that learning journey. And so that was really that light bulb moment for me to say what I'm doing in my classroom right now Isn't working in terms of how we grade and report and communicate student learning and share that with the stakeholders and that really led me down that pathway of saying, Okay, what do we need to do differently? So we can answer that question at any given point in time. And that our kids can also answer that question for themselves.

Sharona: I find that amazing and clearly that's not what you're doing now. So what, if you were still in the classroom, which I know you're not now, but where did you get to, if that was the starting point? Where did you end up getting to and how, and how, how did you end up doing assessments and reassessments?

Becky Peppler: Yeah, so the first part for me, it kind of became a, I kind of became a pilot for our district of just trying to have conversations around, okay, do some research, find out an idea, bring it into the classroom, try it out, get some feedback. And so we really started out with just developing, looking at our standards and developing those learning targets about what that, you know, making those make sense to students. And then starting to align assessments to those was really kind of that process. Of me at least doing the work on my own. At that time I was also trying to dig into any resource I possibly could that talked about grading practices. And, and how you could look at those things differently. So I was reading anything I could get my hands on. I read almost everything that Tom Guskey or Rick Wormley was, were putting out at that point in time. Myra Dueck as well. And I was just grasping anything I could and they were putting out these little pieces of information about all right what about not including formative practice within an academic grade and what about allowing kids an opportunity to be reassessed? And what about reporting student proficiency instead of using points and percentages against those academic standards and are those learning targets? And so a lot of it was trial and error for me. I kept Two grade books, three at one point in time for two years worth of time as I was piloting and testing out different ways to make that work. Eventually our district went to an entire shift to what we call target based grading and reporting. Very similar to standards based grading and reporting. The only difference being is that we reported student proficiency against each of the individual learning targets that we developed from those priority standards not just giving the standard an overall level of proficiency. But otherwise, all of the practices that were around that were all the exact same. So we left at a point where we were in full implementation of that. We separated academics from behaviors, and we had a separate reporting system on in our grade books and on a report cards for the what we called behaviors. Sometimes people call work skills, life skills, work habits, scores. We had three categories for those, and then we had a separate place to report the academics using levels of practice proficiency. We did report a letter grade out at the end when semester grades were at time, but how we got to that letter grade looked incredibly different than what it did when we were using averaging and straight points and percentages. We had reassessments on everything that was summative. And all of those practices, so no more, you know, extra credits, no more group scores, all of those things were taken out to truly ensure that those grades were a reflection of that student's individual level of knowledge, understanding, proficiency against the academic standards for the courses that were taught in our high, in actually not just the high school, that happened for K 12 in our district.

Boz: Oh, wow. So your district like in kind of one swoop K 12.

Becky Peppler: Yeah. So we started, you know, elementary had a lot of pieces in place obviously kind of beforehand. But it needed to kind of have a revamp to make sure it and we were a little bit of a smaller district too. So we had, you know, there was one elementary, there was one middle school and one high school. And so then when we made that transition, We went six, 12 all at the same time with that transition to target based grading and reporting. But at the same time, the elementary was still just, you know, kind of re auditing the practices that they had and stated and making sure that we were in alignment and matching from pre K all the way up to 12th grade.

Boz: That's very cool. That's, it's one of the nice things about working with smaller districts. Sometimes you might not have the resources of a bigger, of a bigger district, but You can make things happen a whole lot quicker.

Becky Peppler: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Boz: So. One of the, you know, one of the pillars of any kind of alternative grading is this idea of reassessments and, you know, reassessments without penalty. And one of the pushbacks that I know Sharona, you and I have gotten a lot of is how that works with teacher work load, teacher time and, you know, is this just putting on, you know, a bunch of extra work to the teachers that, you know, everyone knows teachers have all the free time in the world. You know, we, you know, we don't have enough on our plates. So how did, like, what does your reassessment look like? Why was, you know, Don saying this is such a unique and powerful approach? Walk us through what is. Your reassessment,

Sharona: give us the details.

Becky Peppler: Yes. Yes. I am happy to do that. And as I mentioned earlier, it was a work in progress. I will, I always say like it took me four years before I finally had a policy that I felt actually worked. It held me accountable as a teacher, where I needed to be, but it also held the students accountable where they needed to be accountable. And keeping in mind kind of, you know, as we share this through, yes, this was from a high school perspective in terms of what that looked like for that reassessment, But obviously a lot of those things could be scaled back with what was age and grade level appropriate, obviously for students that were in younger grades as well.

But for me, what that final product actually looked like one, I think that one huge piece, I think that's incredibly important when is you're developing a reassessment policy is that you have to define what your why is right. So like I had kids who were walking into my classroom when I, when I first started, and I had said, like, Okay. I'm just going to try this out. I'm reading about it people are saying this is a great thing to try. I had no process. I just told the kids, I was like, Hey, we're going to try this out. Like if you're not really happy with how you did, or you're not there yet with your learning, we're going to give you another chance or another opportunity. And I had kids walking in my room, like as they walked in the door, the first time I offered and they're like, Mrs. Peppler, when's the retake? And I was like, you didn't even make it to your desk to sit down to take the first version of the assessment, and you're asking me when the retake is. And so that was my first, that was my first go. I'm like, okay, clearly, I guess some, that's not right. It's like something, something we got to do. A big piece I think is, is ensuring one, identifying what the why is for reassessment, but sharing that with the kids. Right. And again, when age and grade level appropriate, but the kids need to understand that. It's not just this second chance or the second opportunity. The reason that we offer reassessment is because we understand that not everybody learns from at the same rate and on the same day and on the same time and in the same way. And so the reason we allow reassessment to occur is to accommodate for that. And I think that's so incredibly important to share with kids, right, even before introducing what that policy is or what that's going to look like in your classroom. And I always think analogies are amazing with kids too, you know, and just using the example, you know, typically, when kids are in your classroom, they're about the same age, right? Sometimes in some of the classes I taught, I had from sophomores to seniors. But again, they get the analogy of just if you, if you even ask them back, did you guys all learn to ride a bike on the exact same day? And they'd look at us like we were absolutely crazy, right? Like, No, why would you expect that? That's why we allow reassessment, right? Because we don't all learn at the same way or in the same time or in the same rate like we mentioned before. And so that's what reassessment is about, right? Where it's a process. Learning is a progression over a period of time. And that's why we allow reassessments to occur. So I think that was the first piece before even developing that policy. That was the first piece. But where I ended up landing with the policy is that I ended up having a retake ticket that I would have kids fill out. That was more of a management piece kind of for me and for them, right? I'd love them to kind of be that reflective moment, but also I think a big part of the how with reassessment for teachers and thinking about that overabundance positive you're mentioning in that feeling of time is you have to find a management system that works for you too, right? How can you handle it? How can you keep up with it? So for me, it was the These retake tickets. I printed them on purple paper, and I didn't print anything else in my classroom on purple paper because that was just an indicator to the kids and to me that when I knew I saw that purple sheet of paper, like that was just an organizational piece for me. I knew that meant that that was a reassessment. So on that, the kids had to fill out one of those retake tickets. For each learning target that they needed to be reassessed on. So if an assessment, the summative assessment that we had had, you know, four learning targets that we were assessing them on, they had four different proficiency scores that were eventually put into the gradebook for that. But they just would reassess on a learning target by learning target basis. Right. One, that freed up time for the kids. Right. But it also freed up time for myself. Freed up time for reteaching. It freed up the amount of time that it took them to actually be reassessed on that. The preparation for the reassessment on my end. It wasn't them taking that whole assessment again. So that's something that kind of alleviated some of that time component. So they fill out that retake ticket and then on that retake ticket, there were some things that they needed to do before they were eligible for reassessment. The things that worked for, for me and were important for me is one of the things I required kids to do was every time that they got a summative assessment back, they had to fill out an assessment reflection. for that summative assessment. I found incredible value of kids being able to have that metacognitive thought process to think about their learning and reflect on their learning after they got that summative assessment back from me. So it was something we did in class because I found it to be that incredibly valuable for them. And I still, even though they were high schoolers, I had to model and teach them how to do an assessment reflection.

Sharona: What do you mean, even though? I have to teach it at the university.

Becky Peppler: Correct. You know, but you guys, maybe it's just me. I just assumed some things too. I was like, oh, you know, they're 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 years old.

It really makes me question. I was like, maybe they just haven't had an opportunity or haven't been required to reflect on their learning in the past. And that's what I kind of found is like, they didn't. They didn't know how, you know, like they didn't know, like, what am I supposed to write? What am I not supposed to write?

So it's an interesting learning curve. But that was incredibly valuable. Some of the questions on there were just like, how did you prepare for this assessment? How much time did you spend doing it? Kind of just some questions that had nothing to do with the actual learning. But I think also part of that reassessment is how did you prepare and do you need to prepare differently the next time? Or do you prepare different in chemistry than you do for social studies or than you do for an ELA assessment?

And so those are kind of my first questions in that reflection. We're just about how did you prepare? What did your time? Did you have other distractions? Like how many tabs were open? Like is your phone out, and we did it. It gave some awesome conversations with kids, that they didn't even realize, of different ways that they could prepare themselves.

And then they would say for the learning target that they were being reassessed on or all the learning targets on the reflection component of that if they weren't proficient on those, they would then go through and look at, okay, well, you know, what do I feel like my overall error is? Was it a misconception?

Was it a small error that I made? And they had some time to reflect on that. The value of them doing that during class time was incredibly helpful because I could walk around, they sat in pods, so they could ask their their pod mates as well, but I could also move around and I could address some of those misconceptions, or sometimes kids were like, I have no idea what I did wrong. I did it all wrong, but I don't know what I did wrong, right?

So it gave me that opportunity to correct and have those conversations right away. So that was the reflection piece of it that was required for reassessment to occur. Again, done in class so it's not something that was outside of class for them to do.

I also required that any formative work that was related to that learning target was also completed prior to the reassessment. Because we didn't count formative work as part of the academic grade, we just used it to give feedback and guide next steps in our instruction or next steps in learning for the students. It was just practice. However, if they didn't complete those things, those were required before. That was hopefully to help them realize that maybe that's why you didn't do well this time, because you didn't do some of those practice components along the way to be able to prepare you in time for that assessment.

So they had to have the formative work completed. They had to also make corrections on their assessment. So not only, you know, just write the right answer, but also a little explanation of what was wrong with that answer. Hopefully learning so they weren't making those same mistakes again. I would check those for them just to make sure that misconception wasn't still there prior to that.

And then they had to show additional evidence of learning. That was really the only thing that probably occurred outside of the classroom, to be honest. Obviously the purpose of reassessment is because they didn't know what they needed to know at the day that I chose to give them that assessment, and so there needed to be some additional learning that happens to be able to get them to the point. So hopefully to a level of proficiency by the time that reassessment actually occurred. So I started out by telling kids what to do.

So I'd be like, oh, learning target one. If you're being reassessed, do this extra practice. Learning target two, do this along the way. I quickly realized that that didn't work because I was assuming all kids needed the exact same supports for the learning target. So that was something that changed over time. And so I let the kids decide what that additional evidence of learning was.

Sometimes they would ask me for what I felt like they needed to be able to improve. Sometimes they would say, Hey, can I just watch a YouTube video and share it with you and give you some notes? Because they explained it differently than you did, and it made more sense to me. Absolutely. You know, so some of them would be, I need some extra practice or are their extra practice problems that I can do, or. It would look a lot of different ways.

I would not allow them to say, I studied with a friend. Because I just didn't know. I couldn't validate that. I couldn't validate that they were getting the right information. I didn't have actual evidence of additional learning to say that that would count for that.

So they did those items. And then they had to get it signed off by me. And once all of those items were complete, they were now eligible for that reassessment to occur. I tried to cap it around a two week window. So two weeks from the time they get the assessment back in their hands, two weeks out to be able to do that.

Were there exceptions? Absolutely. But at least that helped. A lot of what we did in chemistry built on itself. So it helped us to try to at least say, well, we don't want to wait till the end of the semester because that's not going to do you any good either.

If a kid wasn't ready in two weeks, but they'd been working along the way to be able to get there, would we extend it out? Absolutely, we would extend it out. But at least it just helped to say, okay, we, we do still want to make this a priority because we're going to use that as we continue to move forward.

Boz: So a couple of things that I, Absolutely love about what you're talking about. First you're really bringing in two of those making learning visible by Hattie's high leverage with the metacognitive reflection of the students going in and going, okay, what did I do wrong?

And you pushing them. I didn't study or actually making them think about it. But then also that self efficacy of, okay, what do I want to represent as my additional evidence? What's helped, what actually helped me? How do I show that to you? So I love those two things, but, Sharona, you and I, our last episode, we were just talking about homework and what role homework has in alternative grading.

And I don't know why, it seems so obvious and so simple, but okay, yeah, you didn't do all the homework and you got proficient on the assessment? Great, but.

Becky Peppler: Moving on.

Yeah, but okay, you didn't do all of it and you didn't get it. Okay, then. Yeah, let's go back and let's get the practice that you miss that might have helped you to begin with.

But what a simplistic and just brilliant way of saying that's how we deal with homework. You do it. You do as much of it as you think. And if that was enough, and you get proficient on the assessment? Great, let's go. Let's keep going. I'm just, I'm, like I said, I'm dumbfounded with how simple it is and how obvious it should have been.

Sharona: It is obvious. And yet, I can see some of the logistical challenges. Because even for you, having to check off this list of requirements, even if it's on a retake ticket, but, have they done their preparation metacognitive reflection? Have they done their corrections? Have they then done additional evidence of learning?

That's three things you need to check off for any given student. And so how did you manage that workload wise? I mean, was it all just you initialing the retake ticket and did they have as many retakes as they wanted,? What limits did you put on this?

Becky Peppler: Yeah. So I, I found very quickly that I had to, I, again, I had to put a system in place.

And sometimes I felt like I was more of a pushover teacher and I'd be like, okay, that's fine. And I realized in this case, I couldn't be right. I had to be very strict about what that looked like. So I would usually put up on the board for the students or somewhere in the classroom, I just found this to be easier for myself.

Yes. It was a little bit more work at the beginning. But I would put like when I, it came time for even before the assessment, if you're reassessing on target one, these are the three things we did in class that relate to that. If you're assessing a learning target two, these are the two things in class that we did to relate to that.

One, I think it was incredibly helpful to kids because as they were preparing for that assessment, they knew what things in class tied to the learning that was taking place. The second piece of that was incredibly valuable, so that when I had to sign off that piece that your formative work was completed on the retake ticket, they knew exactly what they needed to bring up to show me to do that.

And I told the kids, we had some kids who were maybe a little bit more disorganized than others in their papers and their folders or their binders. I would say, please don't come up to me until you have all of those items in order in an easy way that we can flip through and look at those effectively between the both of us.

Because that's a better use of your time. It's a better use of my time as well. So don't, please don't come up to me and have that sign off until that. And I had to be very strict on that and tell kids, okay, we can't sit here and look through 15 of your papers to find the two that you're looking for. I'm going to ask you to go back to your desk and ask you to find those.

I'm going to help somebody else right now. And when you have those two that you're looking for, bring it back on up and I'm more than happy to look through that for you. So I just had to get real tight around those parameters so it was efficient for all of us and that was incredibly important. In terms of the number of times that students were allowed to reassess I didn't have a limit on that.

We ended up structuring things a little bit differently. And what I mean by that is one, right, if a student reassessed and they went through all of those items that were on that retake ticket, every single one of those items on there held them accountable to improve their learning. Going through the test reflection held them accountable to improve their learning, making sure the formative work held them accountable to improve their learning. The test corrections made them accountable to improve their learning. And then that additional evidence of learning.

So very rarely would I see, sometimes the proficiency level stayed the same. Most of the time we saw an increase in the level of proficiency if they took the time to go through all those steps and really reflected on those steps and did those on their own. Very rarely would we see a reduction in a score. If it was more than likely because there was something that was completely unrelated that was going on for that child, right?

So in those cases, absolutely we allowed them to. If a student stayed the same and they're like, I I just need more time and I know I can do better. Can you still work with me through this? Absolutely. I'm not going to tell them no. Like if they want to put in the work and the effort to be able to improve their learning, I can't tell them no. So we're going to find a way. So they would go through the same process again, though. So if the reassessment, they still weren't happy with the level of proficiency, they grabbed a new retake ticket and they re went through all of those steps of that retake ticket for the next reassessment they were taking.

So we didn't lower in terms of like the parameters of that. If we're working to improve learning, we're going to do the same things that we're trying to do before, but we're going to try to adjust some of those things because obviously maybe that wasn't the way that you learned best. We're going to try something new, but we're going to still move forward with that.

One of the other things that we started to do also was final exams became very different than what they had typically looked like previously. So our final exams, at least in my class, maybe three or four learning targets, I would require all students at the end of the semester to show their learning one more time on. These were targets that were something that spiraled, something that they would either maybe use second semester, or if it was the end of second semester, they would be using in their next level of chemistry that they were taking.

And so all students took maybe three or four of those. I would then allow them to also add on additional targets so they could add on three additional learning targets that they were already reassessed on, but that they still weren't at the level of proficiency that they had hoped for, or that they needed more time to learn, and they could add those on to their final exam.

That helped to not say we had this revolving door of retake, retake, retake, retake, because sometimes that's an overwhelming feeling, kind of going back to, where you were saying Boz, like, what are some things that could potentially take the load off of teachers when they speak about or thinking about the implementation of reassessment.

That was one thing nice too. It was like, okay, you did the retake. You still were like, I need a little bit more time to do that. Well, you can go through the process again, right? That's perfectly fine. Or because you were already reassessed once, you can choose to put that target on your final exam also.

And that gives us a little bit more time to work through that and increase your level of proficiency, hopefully by the end of the semester, when we see that final exam.

Boz: So then how did your finals look like? Did you have one version that everyone did? And then personalized versions for students that had some targets that they needed to reassess?

So how did you manage? Cause that seems like a lot of work having to go through and put these individual custom finals together.

Becky Peppler: Yeah. So everybody got the targets that we said, those three or four that were required. And again, just those things that spiraled like we just want to make sure you have that retention.

That's incredibly important. And these were the three to four that we want you to look at. And so I actually just had them fill out, I used just a Google form at the time and had them fill out the Google form and say, which targets would you want to see added onto your final? I usually would say you can add three additional Typically, kids didn't have more than that because they saw an improvement on the reassessments if they were taking advantage of it throughout the semester.

And because I said that you had to already have been reassessed once to be able to put it on your final. Part of that was just talking about that time component. One of the things we hear so often with reassessment, especially at the high school level, where it's more directed by the kids, in middle school a lot of times it's directed by the teachers, or more so. In high school, we kind of start to get hands off and we want the kids to be able to initiate that need in that conversation. Some of the things that we were running into were, Oh, I'm just not going to be reassessed all semester.

I'm just going to dump all of those on my final, right?

Boz: Yeah, that's exactly what..

Becky Peppler: Now that kind of defeats part of the purpose as well, right? Like we're using those skills along. We want it to also be important to be able to continue to work on those after you get that feedback and do something with that feedback. to drive that learning.

And it's not good for us just to dump it all on you at the end either. That's not good for the kids. It's not good for us as educators either. So it did help with that. So then the kids would say, and they would fill out a Google form. They're like, okay, targets. I want to add target one, seven, and three.

And then I would just sort the Google form. I would print it out. I would sort the form. So I know, okay, I have 20 kids doing target number one. I have nobody doing target number two. I have, so that I would just print what I needed. I know it sounds overwhelming. Once I had that system in place, I would just lay them out on the table.

I had their little ticket that was printed with their name on it that would say, from the Google form, I just cut it out, okay, student A needs 1, 7, and 10. Okay, I'm going to add 1, 7, and 10 to the required three targets that everybody else is taking. I'm just going to staple those on, their names on it. And I have it for them.

I taught an overload. So I always say, I don't feel like I spent an incredible extra amount of time to be able to make this happen. Was it time added? Yes. I always say, I will never look through like rose colored glasses when we talk about reassessment. But again, we wanted to improve student learning, like that's the goal of us doing reassessment.

So we just have to figure out those systems and ways to be able to make it work for us as teachers, but also work for the kids with the goal to improve student learning. And to me, that was incredibly important. That was another way to do it. That took some time off my plate during the school year because it wasn't retake, retake, retake, retake? And moved it to a different place.

It was still time. It was just the time kind of shifted where it was allocated.

Boz: But so when was this, what years were you doing this?

k back, I started teaching in: 2006

And that was just trying like. Free for all, clearly not working. And that was just kind of the dabble. Like I tried it once and I was like, Oh, do I keep doing this? Do I not keep doing this? And I didn't know really anyone else in my building or like anyone else that I could collaborate with.

r expectation, I would say in: 2015

Boz: Yeah. And the reason I'm asking is I'm thinking about now, most LMS systems have some sort of test builder in them now to o. Canvas, most of the big three or four LMS systems have those customized test generators and, just how hard would it be to kind of do what you were saying, but just go through and, oh, I need one that's got these three plus these other two assign it to those three people.

And now, like, you know, yeah, I could see it taking a little bit of time, but not that incredibly overwhelming amount of time that some people's picture in their minds, I think, when they hear about all these reassessments. And I know when she was talking about that, Sharona, you were smiling and laughing because you did almost identical to that.

Sharona: I did. And then I gave up and I decided to burn some trees and I just printed full on, like, here's a test that has everything. Do what you need to do, like..

Becky Peppler: Do what you need to. Absolutely. That's just another way to look at it. Right? Absolutely.

Sharona: It would cost me three extra pages of paper per student. And I was like, yeah, it's worth it.

Becky Peppler: Right. At the cost of improving learning. Right. I mean, really? So, okay, that's, that's worth it.

Sharona: Right. And now, whenever possible, I've gone to completely asynchronous testing. It's going to have more and more challenges as we deal with the improvement of the technology tools. But nonetheless, I mean, if possible, I much prefer asynchronous testing.

. Because you started this in: 2010

now I joined the community in: 2016

Becky Peppler: Well, for each, for each unit, they would have like a summit. Yes, correct. Yes. For each learning target. Right.

've been doing this now since: 2016

And we have found pretty consistently that if they don't get it, so we require most of our students to validate twice. So that increases the need for retakes. The first two assessments are not actually retakes, even though they would be, but they have to validate. If they don't get it at least one time correctly by the third time they do it, they're not going to get it without a more significant intervention.

So we actually don't require the corrections and reflections piece on the standards based graded class until between the third and the fourth try.

Becky Peppler: The fourth assessment.

Sharona: Because again, the first real retake is the third one, because the first two, they have to do them both.

Becky Peppler: Right. Yep.

Sharona: So that's, we found that pretty consistently that almost no one who does not get it by the third time will get it on the fourth without intervention. And even then, even with intervention, if they've taken it three times at a college level and they're not getting it, they're not taking advantage of the feedbackin the learning.

So that was one thing. The other thing that occurred to me that you said was the why on the reassessment. And one of the things, because again, since we're requiring two, they already have to take it twice, one of the things that we tell them, because a lot of them are like, Oh, well, I'll just blow off the first one and take the second and the third, in our feedback to them is you have now cut your feedback cycle off.

So doing it authentically on the first one is critical for you because the value of the feedback is so high that if you decide to opt out of that first cycle, you're now behind and have no feedback. So you're most likely, if you weren't going to get it the first time, and you don't take the first time, you're not going to get it the second time and you've already now pushed yourself into times three and four.

So that's part of the conversation that we have with the students. Our why is the value is the feedback.

Becky Peppler: Absolutely. And I think that's a big, like, that's a hard shift for kids, right? Even for adults. We're all living in a world where our time and we are stretched so thin. And that's why I always say to the kids too, like, I get that you came in with that mentality. Like, hey, I was really busy last night and I had a football game and, you know, X, Y, or Z, and we had to travel an hour and a half both ways by bus. And by the time I got home, I just wanted to go to bed.

I understand. But that's not our purpose, right? Our purpose is that, well, then okay, how else can we better prepare for that?

You knew you had this game and you knew you had this assessment the next day. So, and that's where I think the, the, understanding that, and, as you were saying, Sharona, that feedback is so important. And I think from the high school perspective and I don't know if that looks different than higher ed or not, we also have formative work where they're getting feedback onto those targets prior to that summative assessment. So we really do have more touch points, or data points, that we're not putting it in the grade book because we're not using formative work as part of the academic grade, but that's what we're doing to guide their learning process throughout. So that when it does come time for the summative, hopefully they have a better opportunity to be successful because they've gotten that feedback along the way too.

Sharona: Yeah. One of the difficulties that we have is, just because of, at least my specific institutional context. I work primarily with adjunct faculty, and we are extremely low paid for where we live. So many of my faculty are basically doing double full loads, because they are at two institutions. So we're utilizing a tremendous amount of automated feedback. Which is not spectacular.

So we're really relying on teaching students to do their own feedback on the formative stuff. So for example, in our standards based class, we give a practice problem that is essentially identical in structure, although not the same content exactly, to the first assessment. And the answer key for that very first practice problem has been custom written to be the final attempt at teaching based on the common mistakes.

Yeah. So ideally what they're supposed to do is they do the practice problem, the first one, the instructor probably is not going to get to in time to give feedback, but once they turn it in, and if they've done it authentically, they can bounce it against this extensive answer key. But that is one of the issues with the structure of our courses. We're not seeing them as much time as you are. And our adjunct faculty are teaching too much relative to what they are paid.

Becky Peppler: That makes sense.

Boz: But also going back to one of your earlier points about feedback, or not feedback, but the metacognitive reflection. We've talked to Joe Zeccola, who does this extensively, and him talking about how much time he sets up at the beginning of the school year to teach this to the students. To teach not only what it is and what a real reflection is, but how he wants his to look. really what he's specifically looking at. We've talked to several people, Sharona at the college level that, and I, I've got to stop doing this, but, I don't go back and look at every single episode and there's one, who am I thinking of that?

Was talking about how she was afraid that she was doing too much reflection because that was one of the big feedbacks that the students gave. But at the same time, the students also said that it was one of the most useful things they did.

Sharona: Oh, good Lord. I don't know. Was that Ashleigh?

Boz: No, I don't think it was Ashleigh. It was, but it was one of our other college professors. I think it was one of the chemistry or one of the science ones.

Sharona: I'm not remembering now.

Boz: But yeah, she was talking about And this was, you know, a not even a freshman level college class, but this idea of, oh, our students don't do this reflection. It's because we've never required it really. And this question of when are the students ready? Cause that was one of the things that. This college professor was reflecting back on and going, am I asking too much of these reflections? No, if we never asked, they're never going to be ready for it.

Becky Peppler: Correct.

Boz: And that was one of Joe's points. He does this with his AP 11th and 12th graders. He also does this with his freshmen, and

and the, the what was it, the: 2023

Becky Peppler: Yeah.

Sharona: Visible learning, the sequel.

Boz: Yeah,

Becky Peppler: yeah,

Boz: When did that come out? I know it was recent.

Sharona: Well, and the other thing that's interesting for me is, again, I come from this such a different context from both of you with being at a university. I'm listening to both of you and I'm thinking, dang it, I need to do more training with my instructors on how to do this.

I've kind of, we put it in place in the standards based graded class, and we've been sort of letting it sit there. We're not holding the students tremendously accountable for it. We're letting them half ass it, in a way, because we're running into some logistical problems with the timing, and I may need to think about that next semester.

But I just implemented it for the first time in pre calculus this semester, and it's been a little bit of a shock wave. So I literally think I could spend a year just training my instructors on all the things that you guys get at the high school level.

Cause one of the things we're grappling with is how to start off the class as well, because we're getting a huge amount of lack of perseverance within the first two weeks of a class.

And so I'm trying to carve out space out by taking content out of the curriculum. We only meet our students twice or three times a week, so it's a lot harder. But I want to create these classrooms that are vibrant learning spaces. And I think this is one of the places where we may have to add some work and some time in at the beginning, of really reflecting on learning, and how it works and why it's important and how this classroom time is going to be beneficial, because we can't require the students. to be there. And we can technically by penalizing their grade.

Boz: Oh, but that's still not requiring. Right. Yeah. That's not like what we have in K 12 where you literally can get your parents arrested for not being there.

Becky Peppler: Correct. Yeah. Truancy. I think it's really interesting, bringing it up too, Sharna, because I remember getting a little bit of pushback from some people in my own building and in my own district, because when I started implementing them to require them, so whether they were reassessing or not, all kids did the assessment reflection.

It was a requirement for reassessment, but all kids did that. And I knew if I wanted them to do it, and I knew if I wanted them to do it well and do it as it's intended to do, that I had to give them class time to be able to do that. And so that meant, though, like where you said, okay, I have to change the amount of curriculum that I cover or the amount of time that we have.

So if I had 10 summative assessments, each unit assessment throughout the entire year's worth of a course, I was giving up 10 instructional days. to be able to do those reflections. And so I got questions about it. Like, okay, well, you're giving up those. I'm like, yes, because there is such an incredible amount of value that comes out of the kids doing those.

I can actually cover more because they're able to reflect. That's all part of the learning cycle. And so it did. But I also think kind of, Boz, as you were saying, the kids have to understand why we're doing it, and they have to understand that we're doing something with it as a result of it.

If the kids, they catch on real quick. Oh, they're making me go through and do this test reflection, and nobody's going to do anything with it, and nobody's going to look at it, so why am I doing it. We do the same thing as adults. I have to do this to jump through this hoop, but I don't see what the purpose is, or we're not having conversations about it, or it's not being utilized for X, Y, and Z.

So I think those are important pieces. If you're trying to implement those things in, one, I'm a huge person for the why of everything. So why are we doing that? But what are you going to do with it? What is the value for you as an educator to be able to have your kids do that?

And what is the value to the students themselves to be able to do that. And if we just have them check a box that it's done and that's all we're doing, now they're just going through the motions. That's not the true metacognitive reflection of their learning. But again, those are all things that we had to spend time.

I remember the first two units. Okay, everybody let's talk about question number one, all right? Here are some things that... okay, I'm going to give you a moment. Go ahead and fill out question number one. All right. Share your response with somebody next to you if you're willing or feeling comfortable to be able to do that.

Okay. Question number two of the reflection. And then eventually it was just, okay, the reflection looked the exact same. All right. So it wasn't like we were introducing a new way to reflect every single unit. It always looked the same. We modeled what we wanted that to look like, and then we used that. We used that a reassessment conversations.

I used that as I would walk around the classroom that day and just have conversations with kids about things, even if they never chose to be reassessed. So they saw the value. I would bring them up a parent teacher conferences when their parents were here, caregivers were there. And they're wondering like, okay, they didn't do very well.

Hey, here's what they need to work on. But guess what? We had them reflect afterwards. And here's what they had to say about that. That's powerful. That's incredibly powerful also just to be able to share a bigger picture about the student in your classroom, not just the academic side of things as well.

thinking back to some of our: 1090

So it's this self fulfilling prophecy that, So, but yeah, it's, it's not just the students, it's the, it's the teachers also that really need to understand the why. And again, showing how many times now have we done different types of trainings and we come back and realize our biggest mistake in our own facilitating was not spending enough time on the why, on doing the why's, regardless of who it was and if they were bought in or not, why is so important.

Sharona: And that's probably one of the mistakes that we have made, although I think we've gotten much better at it, is assuming that someone is coming to the training because they already share the why.

When we first did our big redesigns with engineering, everybody was already bought in. Some of them had played with it. So we started right in on how to redesign and we never talked about what was really wrong with traditional grading and why we were making this change. And then when we spoke to Tom Guskey, we said, if people could start, what's the very first thing they should start with?

And it's very first thing he said is what's the purpose of grades. So it's the why. We're now working on, we're giving a talk in, oh my God, 36 hours.

Becky Peppler: She's got it down to the hour.

Sharona: Well, cause the slides are not done. We're giving a talk on authentic assessment and alternative grading in the age of AI.

And we had to add a slide, why do we care about authentic assessment? Right. Why do we care about authenticity? And we're grappling with some of that now. And AI really is, at first I didn't think it was going to be as disruptive as I think it is going to be, because for so long in mathematics, we've dealt with, oh, calculators, calculators are going to disrupt everything. No, they're not. Mathematica, Mathematica is disrupt everything. No, it's not. Photomath, Photomath is going to disrupt everything. No, it's not.

AI last year? Did not disrupt everything. This year with what it's done and how far it's come? Absolutely. Absolutely. And so it's even, in fact, you didn't see this Boz, but Robert Talbert, who is one of my mentors and heroes, posted on Twitter, that doing standards based grading in a proofs course where you do feedback and revision, that cycle? Is no longer working in an age of AI.

Because the AIs have gotten good enough to be able to do all of those proofs. If it is an existing proof that is known to the mathematical world, AI can do it. And yet we use, that process is a very important training tool. for ways of thinking because what AI can't do is prove stuff that hasn't been proven yet.

And so this is a really tough question. So now we have to get students to come in on board with why learn it myself when the AI can do it. It's tough.

Boz: We are about to come up on time. So Sharona, is there any last minute thoughts or was that your last minute?

Sharona: No, I do have, I do have something that I wanted to end with, which is.

You now train on all this stuff, Becky. How do you get people started, other than why are you doing it, because we kind of covered that, but where do you direct people to start thinking about what's going to work for them with reassessments?

Becky Peppler: Yeah, I think it kind of twofold. One, it depends if we're looking at it from like a district or a building lens versus are you looking at trying to do that individually?

And the reason I say that is because obviously if you're on an island doing it by yourself in your own building, your own school, there's going to be some barriers for you along the way, just because it's not required in your school and maybe there aren't some protocols that are already put in place.

So if you are doing it on your own, I would say starting to look at one, how can I make it? I would start out with simple, right? Are there targets or standards that naturally spiral themselves throughout the year. If they naturally spiral themselves throughout the year, you have built in reassessment.

Start there. Just start by using that as that. Or start by saying, well, only reassess on your priority standards or your power standards, whatever language you want to do. Those priorities and things that are supporting are not things that we reassess on. So those are maybe some focal points to just narrow it down.

And I think, as we said, yes, the why. But one, I would say start small. Start with saying, hey, I'm going to try it out with this assessment and I'm going to see how it goes. That also doesn't sound so incredibly overwhelming thinking that I need a second version or a third version of every assessment.

Let me just try it with one first. Let me see how it goes. Ask the kids. Get feedback from the kids about it. If they're, again, age appropriate, asking that question. But to me, that's what I would say. Set some parameters for yourself. Thinking about ways that you can manage that, even if it's something little, and start small.

You can always, you're going to change it. No matter, you're never going to start out with a policy that's like, hey, that was amazing. More than likely if you do, more power to you. But typically, you're going to live and learn from the mistakes you're going to make. You have to be vulnerable.

Sharona: If you think that, you might want to do some additional reflection.

Becky Peppler: Yes. Yes. Right. But I think give yourself grace, but you have to be vulnerable. Like, I think you have to be okay standing up in front of your kids and saying, I haven't done this before. I'm going to try it. Here's why I'm going to try it. And let's try. I'm going to try it in this fashion. Even something really, really small along the way.

But I think starting small and then being to be able to reflect what worked, what didn't work, okay, let me try that again. If you're looking at it from a school or a district or a building lens, that I say that you should come together and figure out what are your reassessment. I call non negotiables.

What are something that we would want everybody to agree upon? In other words, you wouldn't want inconsistencies in what you're doing with some of those things. For example, what are you doing with that new evidence. Are you taking the highest score? Are you taking the most recent score?

Are you using you know, a decade? What are you doing with that? Like we wouldn't want kids to go from classroom to classroom and that to be different in a middle school and high school setting. So like, what are those non negotiables? What are kids allowed to be reassessed on? When are they supposed to do that?

Can it happen in class? Does it happen or have to happen outside of class? So that from a building lens might be helpful to figure out, what are our district or building commitments or non negotiables around reassessment? So that now when I do carry that out to all of the staff in the building, now we can say, okay, we're all agreeing to this.

But how you want to bring all of that to life in your classroom is going to be where you have some of that autonomy along the way.

Boz: So I've got to ask, and I know we're coming up on time, but have you ever done any of the PLC trainings or..

Becky Peppler: Back when I was, we did for a little while in my district and then we kind of had gone a different direction with some of that. So no, I would say not. Not any time recently.

Boz: You're using almost the identical language of what the DuFours would do in their PLC trainings, talking about, they called them tights and looses. What things are tight that we have to all agree on and come to an agreement. And then what are the loose?

What are the things that, okay, we know the tights, now how you kind of implement them. You know, you want to put your flavor on it. Those are the, yeah, it was just listening to you. I'm just thinking like, Oh my God, this is, I can almost take exactly what you were saying and put it in a PLC content and it makes the exact same sense.

Becky Peppler: Yep. Yeah. So I, I did know that we just, we call them our non negotiables. What are your commitments or non negotiables around reassessment in this case, at least when I work with a school wide, that's what we go through first before we say, okay, how are we going to make it work in our classroom?

We first have to identify what it's going to look like if we're looking at a system wide versus, hey, I'm just going to try this on an island all by myself, then it's just you got to start dabbling in. And I would say, read, like, look at examples, find, I mean, there's so many, So many options now that I would say weren't there 10 years ago, examples and things that people are doing. Reach out, ask others, collaborate where you can.

But know that what works for somebody else might not work for you. It may and it may not. Someone may, how I explain my policy and be like, there's absolutely no way that's going to work in my classroom. It might not. But it worked for me. And that's where I can always at least try to share that perspective.

Boz: And then the other thing I want to add on for our listeners, and we've made this point before, but find the tools that can assist you in doing this. Your tool was Google form, Google sheet, and some structure. It could be an LMS system, but find the tools that make this easier for you because they're out there.

I mean, there's all kinds of test generating software and platforms that you can put algorithms in that will adjust problems. So you're not constantly rewriting things. There's a lot of tools out there. Try to utilize these tools. It really will cut down a lot of that, that workload and make it much more manageable.

Becky, I want to thank you again. It is always a pleasure to have you on. Your energy is absolutely contagious and it's just fun talking with you. So.

Becky Peppler: Yes, thank you so much for having me. I could talk for hours on reassessment, so probably good that you cut me off, but it is definitely one of the topics I'm most passionate about, finding ways to make it work because we know it's what's right for kids.

Sharona: We'll call this part 1, have you back on in another 20 episodes.

Becky Peppler: Perfect. Sounds like a plan.

Boz: All right. And with that, thank you guys for listening 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.

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