Grading for Equity

How to Give Effective Feedback

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Feedback loop vs formative assessment

Often the two concepts are considered the same, but the traditional methods of formative assessment of the last 30 years are similar but limited in their impact in a personalized environment. Brookhart gives us a clue in chapter 5 on the subtle differences:

Minstrell, Anderson, and Li (2009) conducted professional development and videotaped science teachers using the formative assessment process. They found that although different teachers may appear to be following the same formative assessment steps—gathering data, interpreting it, and acting on the findings—underlying intentions and purposes made a big difference in the quality of their work. Less effective formative assessment was characterized by teachers’ actions, even if they were doing student activities, and typically answered the question “How many of my students have ‘got it’?” For students who did not “get it,” teachers assigned a review. More effective formative assessment was characterized by teachers asking what students were thinking in relation to learning goals, interpreting the strengths and problem areas in their thinking, and then designing feedback or additional learning experiences for students to target those diagnosed needs.

It is important as a teacher/facilitator to decipher the difference in the two approaches.

Mastery Learning Handbook

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Flash Feedback

While Flash Feedback is written by a writing teacher, the insights and tips on feedback are applicable to nearly all content areas. For example, as he describes Effective Elements for feedback, he states:

Effectiveness Element #2: Feedback Should Provide a Path Forward, Not an Autopsy

Our feedback should always provide direction and incentives for next steps, not drive home how the student did wrong.

Johnson sets the tone for feedback and goal setting by quoting Hattie:

In a discussion of goal setting, John Hattie (2012) argues, “Students often set safe targets. . . . Our job is to mess that up. . . . Our job is to help them exceed what they think they can do.”

Johnson also talks about the role of mindsets with feedback, including some points on praise that support what we have learned in Self Determination Theory:

Grading from the Inside Out

Accuracy and Confidence: Our Grading True North

Grading From Inside Out offers a different mindset with grading.

The standards-based mindset comprises three components that, when put together, reshape the grading paradigm.

1.Give students full credit for what they know.

2.Redefine accountability.

3.Repurpose the role of homework.

With traditional grading practices, teachers often combine what a student knows with what he or she used to not know (typically via mean averaging) to calculate a grade.

Giving students full credit for what they know, regardless of how slowly they got there, is fundamental

As opposed to common grading practices (see previous activity) the role of grading should reflect the learners’ level of mastery:

Grades must be a reflection of student proficiency, not a reward for compliance.

When students don’t follow through on expectations, some teachers believe that they must do something, and while that may be true, the something they choose is often misplaced: an academic consequence for a behavioral misstep. Teachers lose focus—even credibility—when they mismatch consequences with the issue at hand. Nowhere is our true north of accuracy and confidence more at risk than with the issue of accountability.