Does this count as a grade?

Today’s key topic “What is your philosophy on assessment?”  Well, actually, “What is my philosophy on assessment?

I am certainly of the era that schools are all about assessment and ranking. Homework was graded and recorded. Pop quizzes would make sure kids were staying up on the material. Tests were long and covered a whole bunch of material. And of course, ALL THIS WENT ON YOUR PERMANENT RECORD!

My first real thought of the differences between formative and summative assessments came while checking my kids grades online during their middle school years. I saw these different categories and thought, “Well, that’s different.” I didn’t spend a whole lot of time figuring out how much formatives went into their grades, since I was mainly concerned about the boys getting their homework done and turned in. But the concept of assessing to check progress just seemed natural to me. In the business world, this should be done all the time as a manager. I would meet with my direct reports every week to check on how they were doing on their goals. These frequent meetings weren’t an opportunity to rate them every week, but a chance to find out what they needed to be successful at the end of the year. That final check was the biggie, or summative assessment. Of course, the model was a bit different because we had documented mid-term reviews that… YADDA, YADDA, YADDA ... so really, it was close enough.

With this background, I see frequent formative assessments as a crucial step in helping people succeed. Recording the FA’s so both the assessee and assessor agree on status and know where improvement is needed also is internalized into my thought processes. I always worked to make sure that when time came for the big rating, everybody knew where they stood because of our ongoing dialog and action plans.

The very first course I took in the C&I program was Into to Assessments. Maybe because it was first or maybe because it was a good connection between my management style and education, but every time we have discussed assessments since then, it makes sense. Check often to see if people understand and are progressing. Don’t make these checks something that the assessee is afraid to be truthful about – it’s OK to say you don’t know what’s going on. Use that information to design a plan to get them from where they are to where they need to be.  At the end, if the process was done correctly, you end up with a final rating that says the person met the goals, which you then formally document and pass on.

If only we didn’t need that last step. If school was designed to get students to understand instead of to earn grades, ….

The articles by Alfie Kohn (this and this) really got me thinking about how great that would be. If only the summative assessment was just an indication that the student mastered the required material and not a rating of how they did compared to the other students. While I don’t know how much I’ll be able to move a school to the ungraded philosophy, I know that I’ll always use an absolute grading technique. There is enough competition in the world outside education. Inside our bubble, we should use assessment as tool to assist learning, not to pigeon-hole students.