Who will pack your parachute

Here is a guest post by Cherra-Lynne Olthof. She teaches middle school math, language arts and social studies. She tweets here and blogs at Teaching on Purpose. This post was originally seen here.

by Cherra-Lynne Olthof

Battle River School Division I applaud your new grading system. I have a few slight issues with how you really are still using percentages, but on the whole you are breaking new ground and I applaud you. You’re trying to change the system and that needs to be acknowledged.

When we changed our grading system in my middle school from percentage based reporting to skill level based reporting there was huge backlash from our parents. They said that percentages were much more accurate and this new system was “wishy-washy”. As a teacher I knew the real truth….the percentage system is actually the easy way out, while the skill based reporting is far more work and requires much more effort on the part of the teacher.

Concern #1: This promotes teacher laziness.

Here’s me teaching using percentages. Assignment, Assignment, Quiz, Quiz, Test….aaaaaaand marks plunked into a computer based reporting system that spits out an average. Little to no effort on my part really, other than the time to physically mark it. And I can get around that by making it mostly multiple choice so a machine can do it for me. And so simple to justify because when a parent says….how did my kid get this mark? I have 5 marks to show them. And our entire conversation revolves around that – the mark. I don’t even need to show you the assignments because when I put a mark sheet in front of you that a computer program processed for me, you won’t even question it.

The skills based system requires that I have much more knowledge of my learner because if I am called to justify the mark I have assigned I must be able to provide evidence in the form of the child’s work. And I must be able to clearly demonstrate what your child CAN and CANNOT do. It’s the reason my students put together portfolios of their best moments. Because then our conversation is around the skills of the child and not the mark. Each time your child hands something in I must sit there very carefully and really look at what your child has proven himself capable of. This isn’t so easy. Throwing your kid’s multiple choice test through a scan tron machine takes me 10 seconds. The funny thing is….parents will accept this as a more “truthful” assessment.

Concern #2: Why change the system that works? Can’t teaches stick with percentages but just add comments?

Dylan Wiliam has 5 strategies to improve student learning. None of them involve percentage based grades.

Wiliam has shown in previous research that when students are given a grade along with feedback that students only look at the grade. They asked students with this type of assessment two questions, “What was your grade?” (Pretty much all of the students reported back immediately and accurately.) “What did your teacher say about why you got that grade?” (More than half the students were clueless because they hadn’t read it.)

Other researchers have shown the same findings (as evidenced in this blog post by Joe Bower.)

Concern #3: Although not said outright like this (because it would be mean), basically the concern is….but how will I know how my child compares to others?

There’s a danger in comparing kids using percentages. When we first switched our system we used this example to say to parents…..who is the better student?

Student A: Unit Test Mark – 75%

Student B: Unit Test Mark – 75%

The parents had no response. Was this a trick question? And so I said to them, what if I could tell you that one of these students is clearly ahead of the other? They were confused.

So I provided slightly more information. Both these students wrote a test on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions. There were 5 questions in each section. Each student got 5 questions wrong. Who has a better grasp of them material? No one knew. So I went deeper.

It was revealed that Student A’s mistakes were quite minimal. A few calculation errors here and there. The mathematical reasoning behind their skills with fractions was sound, he was making simple mistakes like multiplying 4 and 6 and accidentally writing 20 instead of 24. But on the whole, clearly understood how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fraction. Got 1 wrong in each section, 2 wrong in multiplying fractions. All errors that the kid recognized immediately and had nothing to do with process. 5 minutes of corrections and it was done.

Student B got everything correct……until it came to dividing questions where he got every single question wrong. He didn’t have a clue that the second fraction needed to be inverted BEFORE multiplying to find the answer. This is a processing error. And since the outcome clearly states that students need to be able to add, subtract, multiply, AND divide fractions…..? This student would not receive a passing grade in my class. He clearly cannot do all four and we need some extra work here.

Same mark…..but 2 completely different students with 2 completely different grasps on the concepts. The problem is that when a kid goes home and mom says, what did you get on your test? Kid responds with 75% and mom says, “That’s great! Go get washed up for supper.” Conversation over. Kids usually don’t flip open the test to see why they got the 75%. The scary thing is that many of their teachers don’t either……

In the new grading system when mom says, “What did you teacher say about your test?” My student would respond with, “I need to practice dividing fractions. I did everything else right but I got all those questions wrong.”

See how the conversation changes from what the mark is to what the skills are?

THE ANALOGY

Everyone is always so concerned about how we can possibly know who is on top, who is the best, and who is clearly on the bottom. The problem is that percentage grades don’t give us the whole story, especially when we bring averaging into the mix.

I heard this story once and it really hit home with me.

Two students take a course in parachute packing. At the end of each week they are asked to pack 5 parachutes and then they are tested for effectiveness. If the parachute was packed in such a way that it would fail to open when the string is pulled, the student is give 0. If it would open, the student is given a 1. Marks are reported like this…

Student A has learned nothing in 5 weeks. His accuracy is the same at the end as it was in the beginning. 1 out of every 5 parachutes he packs still won’t open. Student B finished with a lower mark and started off really poorly. But consistently packed every parachute accurately in the last two weeks of the course.

But if all you were given was their grade in the course to choose by……who would you have chosen?

Student A has the better mark? I’ll pick him. (Good luck with that, hope the odds are in your favour!)

Neither! I’m not taking anyone unless they got 100%. (Fair enough, you’re missing out on the experience then.)

And this would be my answer….I’ll take Student B. He’s proven he can learn and improve and now has a 100% accuracy rating. Let’s go.

Obviously analogies are meant to prove a point and this wouldn’t really happen but think a little deeper about what the question is asking of you. It asks…..which student is truly the stronger of the two? The one with the better mark? Or the one who has proven he can learn and improve even though he started off as a failure?

As a teacher, my dream class is the one filled with Student Bs.

Anyways…..just something to think about…….

All I know is this. When I began skill based reporting I found that as a teacher I knew my students far better then I ever did when reporting percentages. My time spent assessing increased under this system as did my time spent preparing quality learning assessments.

Who’s being lazy? It sure as heck isn’t me.

Confession: It’s those days when I’m tired and exhausted that part of me wishes we had a percentage based system. Because that was SO much easier than what I’m doing now. And I rarely had parents question my marks. Then I remember that the way I assess now is far more valuable and I suck myself back up to return to what I know is good teaching.

What a zero really says

Here is a guest post by Cherra-Lynne Olthof. She teaches middle school math, language arts and social studies. She tweets here and blogs at Teaching on Purpose. This post was originally seen here.

by Cherra-Lynne Olthof

A story was recently reported about an Edmonton teacher being suspended for giving his students zero’s in class in a school that has a no zero policy. (Incidentally, this article is located in the “news” tab and should be moved to the “opinion” tab. I always taught my kids that reporters should refrain from putting their personal bias into a news article. So if you read it, read it with a grain of salt.)

Many of my friends have had conversations about this controversial subject and I have stayed out of it. I have not written anything back on Facebook as people have made comments (mostly in support of the teacher) but in the past 24 hours as I have stood in groups of people who know me, many have turned to me and said, “You’re a teacher. What do you think?”

Oh boy. Deep breath in.

Ok, just remember… you asked for this people. My response is long so you might want to grab something to drink and a snack before you settle in to read this. My response comes in four stages. If you think this is a simple issue, it’s not. It’s very complex. And it’s about far more than giving a 0. I wrote a blog post back in February about Lates, Deductions, and 0′s but I obviously need to elaborate in my response to this difficult issue.

Issue #1: School Should Be Like The World Of Work

I get it, I really do. Many people equate school to having a job. If I don’t do my job I get fired. So a kid should get a 0. This works great if it’s not YOUR kid and it’s not HIS zero, doesn’t it? I caution you to think about this a little further before making such a snap decision. There are many things about school that have no equivalency to the world of work.

a) If you don’t do your job, you get fired. This doesn’t happen to kids. As a teacher I cannot “fire” a student. So many people say that the 0 is the punishment then. Well be careful here. As a worker someone has hired you. You applied for a job you thought you wanted and someone hired you because they believe you offered a skill set that would make you a valuable employee for the position. As a teacher I have not hired anyone to be in my classroom. You gave birth thirteen years ago and that’s why your child is in my classroom along with the other 26 kids I have. There was no choice involved.

b) Grades are like earning money. To anyone who says this, you clearly don’t understand my legal and professional obligation as a teacher. Grades are not money. John Scammel wrote an excellent blog post that says in the world of work effort is often related to increase in pay or promotion. As much as I would like to say that it’s the same for school, it isn’t. I have kids that do pretty much nothing in class but on the final project they show me they know their stuff. I have to give them a mark that reflects that. Consequently, I have students that put in ridiculous amounts of effort but still haven’t grasped the concept. As much as I would love to give them a high grade for their effort, that isn’t a true reflection of what they are capable of. As a teacher my job is to assess what your child knows about the content the Alberta Education Curriculum has set down for me.

c) If you don’t like your job, you can quit. Kids don’t have this option. They are LEGALLY obligated to attend until they are 16 (this will be changing to 17 in the near future). You job involves choice, attending school does not.

d) My job is to prepare them for the world of work? No. My job is to teach them how to think, how to learn, and how to problem solve. I am preparing them to be a responsible and contributing citizen to their country. This doesn’t always involve work. Ask a stay-at-home mom. She’s not working (in the traditional sense of the word that everyone seems to be talking about). Does this mean school was a pointless waste of her time? Not everyone goes on to “work” in the traditional sense. Not everyone will have a “job” after school. If this were the case, high school would separate kids into vocational classes and start training them right then and there. Why don’t we do that? Because your kids get to make that choice AFTER they graduate, when I’ve given them (hopefully) the skill set they need to make such a huge decision.

Issue #2: The Suspension Itself

This is a dicey one because I only know the details that have been reported in the newspaper. So I’m going to make a couple of assumptions here. It appears to me that the principal/administrator of the building has set down a policy of not giving out 0′s. The teacher violated this policy. This is an issue all by itself, forget WHY he was suspended.

For those of you so quick to equate school to the world of work…..if you work for a company that used to start at 10:00 am in the morning and you get a new change in leadership that says work will now start at 8:00 am but you basically ignore that and continue coming in at 10:00, what would you expect to have happen? Exactly.

As teachers we always have a choice. I remember several years ago I got a new principal and he laid out his vision of how the school was going to be. Right behind it he said, you can either support it or you can leave and find a new school to work in. And we did indeed have a teacher leave. That’s reality. You don’t like your job requirements? No one is forcing you to stay. If the school’s policy was to not give out 0′s and he knew this then he had a choice. He chose to stay and keep giving out 0′s.

According to the article, this teacher has repeatedly refused to abide by the policy. He was reprimanded several times. He knew the deal and he opted to stay and buck the system instead of finding a school that fit into his own personal beliefs. Well, there are consequences for that.

If it hadn’t been a school policy then I would have completely disagreed with the suspension. While I don’t like the way certain teachers teach, it is NOT my place to tell them how to do their job. At least not as a colleague. As an administrator it is their job to run their school as they see fit and set down policies and procedure to benefit their students. But policies apply to EVERYONE, not just to those who “choose” to follow them.

Issue #3: What a 0 really says…..

Dorval says he thinks the policy is linked to a self-esteem factor. That somehow a student will give up if they get a 0. But make no mistake, getting the 0 doesn’t cause them to give up. They choose to take the 0 because they’ve already given up. I’ve found that in my experience a student would rather get a 0 then a 23%. There’s an old saying that it’s better to be thought a fool then to say something and prove it. Well, for some kids they would rather be THOUGHT a failure then do the assignment and prove it. A 0 is easy to take and it’s easy to defend. That’s not the crushing blow. The crushing blow is actually doing the assignment and failing it. So what’s the alternative? I’m just not going to do it. I’m going to fail it anyways so why bother?

GIVE ME THESE KIDS! PLEASE! Give me the kids who think they are failures and so have chosen to not do the work. Because that’s really what a 0 means for a lot of them. The 0 says, “I’m scared of doing this and finding out I’m a failure.”

My husband and I are both teachers. We discuss this on a regular basis. I have a legal obligation to report what your child knows about the content of the curriculum. This is all I can do. How much I like your child can’t factor in. How many hours your kid puts into their assignment can’t factor in. How many assignments your child turned in out of the ten I assigned can’t factor in. All that matters is what your child has proven to me about his knowledge.

Sometimes a kid earns a true and honest 0. After doing the project or writing the test they have actually scored a real 0. I think I can count on 1 hand the number of times I’ve ever had this happen in my 11 year teaching career but if this is the case, then yes a 0 is justified. You know 0% of this content and I can prove it. I have evidence.

My husband and I also admit that giving 0′s is often a tracking system to report back to parents what the child has and has not done. Ok, fair enough. I don’t really agree with it but if this is a tracking system then that’s fine and even as a parent I don’t have an issue with that. HOWEVER….if a kid does none of the assignments I have given and he writes a 98% on the unit exam, I’m giving him a 98% in the course. If I start averaging in those 0′s and now suddenly he’s at a 42% I am reporting false information about what your child knows. I am saying he only knows 42% of the content when in fact he knows 98% of it.

I’m not a fan of averaging. I never have been. Ask anyone who failed their drivers test the first three times (I know people who have, seriously). Should those marks be averaged out? If so some people would never get their license. Do I get a golden license because I passed my test the first time? Of course not. Does your license look different because you took three chances? Or if you failed it the first time should that be it? Your chance is over. You failed. No license for you……EVER! Should I give you a zero because you missed your bus on the way to your test and failed to show up for it on time?

We have to ask ourselves, what is the purpose of giving assignments? I give assignments along the way to check up on the learning that I’m hoping is taking place. It’s actually more for me then for my students. It tells me if I’m doing my job. It tells me if the kids are getting it or if I need to stop and go back. A kid fails to do the assignment? Well I have no way to know where his learning is then, and that will have it’s own natural consequences later on when he writes the test of does the project. I don’t need to give him a zero now. Especially if the kid understands what the purpose of an assignment is. They are check points to see how you are doing as you work your way along. You miss the check point? Well, I can’t help you much then. Especially if you keep missing them. I’m awfully busy with the kids that are stopping at the check points and asking for help. And to be honest, some kids don’t need the check points. They cruise right along. We often refer to these kids as the “independent learners” and I’m ok with that.

What it ultimately comes down to is their final proof of knowledge. I give an assignment/project/test designed to assess what they really know. And if a kid misses that…..?

How do I deal with kids who don’t do their work? I give out something called an Insufficient. People have told me this is a fancy way of saying 0 but it really isn’t. When I write INS on an outcome what I’m saying is, “I have no idea if your child can do this or not. I have no evidence with which to make this judgement.” That is much different then giving out a 0 which says, “Your child knows 0% of the content of this subject.” But what a statement to make!

All kids learn. They learn at different rates and at different times, but they all learn. You have to really try hard to get an honest 0 in my classroom.

Issue #4: We Need More Information

I know this teacher looks like some kind of hero. He’s standing up for himself and his ideas and I give him kudos for that. I don’t agree with his policies but that doesn’t make him any less of a teacher in my eyes. We just have different pedagogy when it comes to teaching students. I don’t think any less of him for that. But before you go and string the rest of us who don’t give 0′s up by our toes, ask yourself…..how much do I really know about this situation? You are looking through the key hole of a door that looks into an entire house. You don’t know what the back story is. You don’t know the history. You are responding only to what you have been told and sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I’d love to have a conversation with this teacher as a matter of fact. I have questions. Like….what kinds of assignments are the kids not turning in? Why aren’t they turning them in? What background do your students have? What home life are they living with?

If the teacher was assigning assignments where your child had to answer 150 textbook problems every night, suddenly that turns things around doesn’t it? You would cry out, “That’s crazy!” Or what if he was an English teacher and the assignment was to copy out 2 pages of text from Romeo and Juliet in perfect handwriting. You would cry out, “But that’s pointless!” What if you found out the assignment was given the day half the class was on a ski trip and when the student failed to turn it in the next day he was given a 0. You would cry out, “That’s not fair!”

My point here is that we all need to ask questions before coming up with our opinions. But I have to admit….I am about to launch into a unit where I am teaching my Grade 8′s about what it mean to have an INFORMED OPINION vs. POPULAR OPINION. This news article and the people who responded to it with their comments couldn’t have come at a better time.

So in spite of everything I say, “Thanks for helping me plan my Monday English lesson.” I can’t wait to see what my Grade 8′s have to say about this.

The Damaging Effects of a Grade

Here is a guest post by Cherra-Lynne Olthof. She teaches middle school math, language arts and social studies. She tweets here and blogs at Teaching on Purpose. This post was originally seen here.

by Cherra-Lynne Olthof


I’m going to step out of my teacher shoes for a minute and put on my mom shoes (acknowledging that really it’s tough to separate the two when you have a child).

First, a bit of background information: My eldest child is in Grade 2 and is very lucky to have two fabulous teachers who share the duties of the classroom in a 60/40 split. She’s in a class of 26 and both teachers have admitted that makes things very “busy”. Luckily my daughter is a strong student and really an independent learner. If you don’t believe me, check out my post on how she learned algebra when she was sick last year. We are lucky that she enjoys school so much and thrives on learning.

However…I wasn’t prepared for some of the ramifications she’s been having this year. She writes a spelling test every Friday. We found out at Parent/Teacher conferences that Kaitlyn is working off of a grade 4 spelling list, and we were ok with that. They felt she needed a challenge and the regular Grade 2 spelling list wasn’t cutting it. Again, I was fine with that. I have yet to meet an elementary teacher who doesn’t have spelling tests so it’s not the test that I object to per say….it’s how her father and I (both being teachers ourselves) have handled how she receives grades and the importance she places on them.

Up until this year, there wasn’t a single test she didn’t get 100% on. She was proud of this and we congratulated her on her accomplishments (our first mistake probably). This year, with the more challenging lists, she’s been getting questions wrong. They are little things like reversing the i and e in thief (a mistake I make myself as an adult) or choosing one homynm of a word over another (dew instead of do).

We took the first test she scored one wrong on as an opportunity to explain to her that grade weren’t everything and making mistakes was natural. We thought she understood. We thought we had covered it well. When we asked her, “Do you understand it’s ok to get things wrong?”….she nodded and said yes at the appropriate time. We thought she knew.

We were wrong.

Today I drove her to school and we were running late. To make matters worse, we got caught on the wrong side of the tracks by the train. While we were waiting there I had a conversation with my child that disturbed me.

She told me she doesn’t think she’s a good speller anymore because she no longer gets 100%. On every test she seems to get at least one wrong and sometimes as many as 4 out of 18 wrong (her “worst” score so far this year). I was shocked! I hadn’t seen this coming at all. She was very focused on the score at the top of the test paper and since it no longer equated to 100% she had convinced herself she must no longer be a good speller.

So I asked her a series of questions, trying really hard not to mention anything about test scores. Throughout the conversation I got her to admit that the words she is spelling this year (thief, neighbour, snowflake) are much more difficult then the words from last year (I, it, he, we, she, they). I also managed to get her to admit that this is a huge improvement from last year. There was the reminder her that even though she got a few of the words wrong, the mistakes were so small that I still knew what the word was, even if it wasn’t spelled correctly.

She made the connection to her e-mail buddy, a pal that she has in her class who e-mails with her back and forth after school (I know….it’s starting already! yeesh). And I asked her, does she always have perfect spelling? Well no, she admitted. Do you still understand what she is trying to tell you in the message? Yes! She agreed. And slowly she decided that spelling wasn’t as important as being able to read a message, or a story, or directions someone might give you. (A message I try to drive home with my own students when it comes to focusing on spelling.)

As I was congratulating myself on a a great conversation while we pulled up to the school, she finished off by saying: ”I still wish I could get them all right.” Grrr……

So we will keep working on this one. What I will continually draw her back to are these three reminders:

1. Are you improving? (Because in the end, this is all we really care about as parents and even as a teacher).

2. Are you feeling confident in yourself and your ability to learn? (Self confidence in a learner is far more important then the grade they score).

3. Can you take your mistakes and turn that into an opportunity to learn something from them? (There’s a reason why pencils have erasers).

I still feel like taking a bottle of whiteout to the 14/18 score at the top of her spelling test…..

But I also can’t help using this moment to reflect on my own teaching. And my decision to eliminate as much grading from my own practice as possible. I will be joining Joe Bower’s: Grading Moratorium very shortly….and you will find my full story there.