Using Classroom Assessment to More Effectively Engage Students? It’s Possible!

“Grading is not only confusing but may actually cause harm” (Kittle & Gallagher, 2021, 38).

Part I:As we consider why students are becoming increasingly disengaged, it strikes me that we hear little about the role of classroom assessment and its impact on student motivation and achievement. In my experience, students become increasingly disengaged when they don’t see a greater purpose for assessment, whether it be formative or summative. Is the assessment a one-and-done experience, or is it part of a structure that moves students from one checkpoint to another, allowing them to ultimately produce something of which they can be proud? The problem of disengagement was prevalent before COVID arrived, and it will continue until we make changes to a broken system that emphasizes standardized testing and data collection over sparking a genuine interest in learning. In the classroom, teachers can incorporate non-traditional grading practices to create an assessment system that more effectively engages students.A Solution: Undoing “The Game of School” At the end of the school day, I am exhausted, while my students often have too much “downtime” and seem to be waiting on me to direct their next move. They have learned to collect points and sometimes to do as little as possible to get a result, without thinking deeply about the process. I get frustrated that they don’t take more initiative, but haven’t I — and the system of schooling they experienced before me — trained them to play this game of school? Standing amid my biggest class before the pandemic, I looked around the room and realized that I needed to place more of that responsibility in the hands of my students. I needed to develop procedures to engage them in the process, and that meant students needed an active role in developing their own sense of agency through reflection and metacognition.Rethinking the Role of the TeacherI have always felt tremendous responsibility when finalizing a student’s grade in a class. Somewhere along the way, I understood grading to represent my stamp of approval. As a professional with a degree in my content area, I felt I was telling the world this student was or was not ready to enter the world beyond high school as someone versed in reading and writing according to grade-level standards. I never thought of students as being incapable if they failed my class — just that they weren’t ready to learn a particular skill or didn’t do the work required to demonstrate that readiness.Looking back, I have no idea how this belief was formed. I don’t recall any discussions about how to grade students in my teacher prep program in college. We talked about designing lessons and units and how students would demonstrate what they learned, but there wasn’t explicit direction on how to grade students or what those grades meant outside of those about the almighty bell curve.Ahhh…that’s it, isn’t it? The idea is rooted in standardized testing. There should be a certain distribution of scores. I quickly learned that if I were an effective teacher, my students’ grades should be distributed along that bell curve, meaning fewer students would be at the “F” or “A” ends. And that is exactly the grading philosophy I adopted for the first half of my teaching career even though it directly contrasts with my more progressive beliefs about learning. In reality, students respond better when they aren’t concerned about my stamp of approval; they get far more from me when I facilitate and guide their efforts to learn and create as we work together to meet the expectations of grade-level standards.When I closely examined the purpose of grades, many common practices began to bother me. What exactly does a grade — or should a grade — indicate? How do grades impact the way students learn and how they perceive the learning process? Over the years, questions like these gnawed at me:

1. How do I explain the difference between an 89% B+ and a 90% A- as an end-of-quarter or semester grade? Should I round up for the benefit of KEES money and scholarship opportunities, knowing that is how college is accessible for many of our students? What happens if the student with a B+ asks what he can do to get the A-?
2. Why do we assume most students will be average and assign a “C” to mean average? Why is there a stigma around too many students earning “A’s” as long as they demonstrate growth? Why do we create a competitive atmosphere in education?
3. Should students be penalized for practicing a skill but not being successful in the beginning stages of learning? Do we give students enough time to practice and develop their skills?
4. What if a student shows evidence of learning, but it happens at a later date than their classmates? Are inflexible structures such as end-of-term and semester grades hindering our ability to reward students for their growth over time?
5. What happens when I know students’ work doesn’t match their ability level? When they won’t turn in work, but I know they can do it if they just would or if they had support at home?
6. Are all assignments necessary for all students? Do we burden students with unnecessary “busy work”? Is homework necessary? Is it effective for all students? If students can already demonstrate success when applying a skill, do they need to do the same work as their peers for the sake of whole-class pacing or for a (sometimes required) number of grades in a grade book? Should all assignments be graded? Which is more important — a grade or specific feedback? At what point do grades become harmful?
7. Should extra credit ever play a role in a student’s grade? If so, shouldn’t it be restricted to academic efforts instead of non-academic? How is it ethical to give students bonus points for bringing in supplies or donating food to worthy causes? What message do we send when all students do not have the support and financial means to earn these bonus points? Should students be rewarded for doing “extra” work if they don’t do the assignments provided along the way? What message does that send about the value of those assignments?

Part II: My Approach: Engaging Students Through AssessmentThe traditional grading system continues to use antiquated systems that intend to rank students. Shouldn’t an individual’s education be more about their personal growth over time than a comparison to other students? Which is more engaging — scores that help determine class standing and scholarship potential or producing something that shows evidence of individual improvement over time? The way we frame grading to students directly impacts how students perceive the role of learning in their lives.As I researched, contemplated, and talked to parents and students more throughout the years, I began to question if maybe the role of a K-12 teacher is much more about encouraging students and building their confidence and much less about evaluating their performance. Let’s face it; evaluating students is a final step. According to Merriam Webster’s online dictionary, to evaluate means to “determine or fix the value of; to determine the significance, worth, or condition of usually by careful appraisal and study.” There is also a note that it “suggests an attempt to determine relative or intrinsic worth.” Should I be the only one determining how successfully a student has learned during their year with me? How could students lend their voice to make this process more meaningful and impactful? With these questions in mind, I set out to develop a more authentic way to assess students. Below is a list of beginning steps I believe to be essential to assessment practices that better engage students:Step 1: Involving Students in Goal-setting and Progress TrackingIn her book Point-Less: An English Teacher’s Guide to More Meaningful Grading, Sarah Zerwin explains how she uses goal-setting in her classroom. At the beginning of the year, she gives students a list of ten broad goals for her class, such as revising a piece of work extensively. The students could work with the teacher to create these goals at the beginning of the year, or the teacher may decide on a list based on the ultimate aims of the class.Two of my students’ most frequently chosen goals revolved around reading more and extensively revising their writing pieces. (Although specific to an English class, this goal-setting could easily be applied to any content area.) All ten goals are addressed throughout the year, but students choose only a couple of goals to closely develop. Ideally, they would choose their goals based on a combination of their own interests and the strengths and weaknesses communicated during their previous year(s) of learning.What I like most about Zerwin’s method is that it stresses student growth and progress over mastery. This is essential to providing students with enough time and motivation to apply the skills. At the end of each grading period/semester, students reflect on their growth. Zerwin asks students to write a letter of reflection using descriptive feedback from the teacher. These reflections are used to help students discuss their growth with the teacher to decide on a grade together.This conversation is ongoing throughout the year through informal conferences and discussions. Rubrics, guidelines, checklists, and other tools can be used to ensure students are meeting the requirements during the process of instruction, practice, revision/correction, and summative assessment. Students help track and document their progress. Instead of being dependent on the teacher to evaluate their efforts, they come ready to discuss their work and how it shows evidence of growth in meeting their learning goals. This helps students and teachers, as most grading and feedback can be done “live” in class as students work, with scheduled opportunities for teachers to work with small groups or confer with individual students.This process creates a progression that builds motivation as students see the connections between practice and assessment. At the end of the year, they have a collection not only of their best work but also a reminder of their growth over time. Students should be given time to reflect on and communicate their accomplishments to others, including the teacher and preferably their parents as well.Step 2: Providing Ungraded PracticeProponents of both standard-based and mastery-based grading have long since advocated for student practice without penalty. This is a hard shift for many. When I first started experimenting with this, I had a student who approached me after class, visibly upset. He did not hold back his frustration as he told me how stupid he thought my grading system was. He felt it was unfair that students be asked to do work for which they aren’t earning points. Through further questioning and interactions over time, I realized this student depended on points from such things as participation to achieve the overall grade he desired in the class. He played the game of collecting points. He wanted to know exactly what was required to pass the class, and he gave minimal effort to achieve it. Instead, he was challenged to produce work that meets the description of the standards. He couldn’t hide behind these easily collected points, and this is initially unsettling to even the highest-performing students who find security in knowing how to work the numbers.In a non-traditional system, teachers must build trust with students and parents. The benefit is it allows students the time and feedback necessary to make long-lasting improvements without fear and anxiety of taking academic risks they may otherwise worry could hurt their overall grade.Teachers can establish their own guidelines for which work will be graded; ideally, summative work is graded as a culmination of the practice completed along the way. For example, a teacher assessing writing can build in practice exercises for students to learn about grammar concepts, such as using phrases and clauses to add varied sentence structures.All the practice work is formative, and they may or may not be assigned points. One option would be that the student is responsible for collecting evidence that shows the learning process over time — notetaking, identifying different phrases and clauses, imitating example sentences, and finally writing and editing them in an essay. This practice work could be collected as evidence of how the student progressed from the time a new or challenging skill was introduced to incorporating it into a final summative essay that demonstrates varied and complex sentence structure.Grading in this way allows students time to develop the skill without penalizing them for errors in the beginning. Students can experiment and take academic risks while building confidence in their ability to apply the skill. It can be assessed when the student and teacher feel the student can be successful, giving students a voice in a more individualized approach to assessment.Step 3: Realizing There’s a More Effective Way to Give FeedbackThe teachers and professors I learned the most from were the ones who took the time to build my confidence. They acknowledged what I did well. Looking back, I know I wasn’t always where I needed to be, but their high expectations of me were delivered in the form of detailed feedback. The best feedback didn’t require hours of laboring over my work to make corrections to grammar or spelling with a red pen in hand. Effective feedback was most often communicated quickly in concise sentences or phrases that challenged my thinking, sometimes directing me to review a specific skill such as the comma splice.Rather than marking corrections for me, they required that I do something to answer the questions or correct my errors. What I found most beneficial was the opportunity to confer with my teacher during the revision process. If the feedback was final, I understood what I did well, but it didn’t necessarily help me do better the next time.True learning happens in the middle — between the feedback and the revised work. When I was held accountable for making improvements, I retained more knowledge long-term, and this built confidence in my ability.Any teacher has most likely heard the quote, “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” Not every student will remember the specific content we teach them, but every student wants to feel they can be successful. Giving students written or verbal descriptive feedback — telling them what they did and comparing it to a list of criteria for the assignment — can be more powerful than evaluative feedback, especially when the evaluation is subjective in nature.This kind of feedback works really well when long-term goals are considered, and students have a clear idea of the expectations to achieve the goals. At the end of a class, a student may not have shown the same level of achievement as a peer who excels with less support from a teacher. However, the student’s individual growth should be rewarded.What’s Next? After researching and experimenting with different aspects of standards-based, mastery-based, competency-based, contract-based, and “ungrading” methods, I am not sure that any one system is the most effective. I did find that some seemed to be a good solution only to realize the same problems still existed. Putting a number — any kind of number — on an assignment automatically undercuts quality written or verbal feedback. Ultimately converting a 0-4 grading scale to a district-required percentage at the end of a grading period negates much of the work to distance students from being fixed on a grade.Yet all is not lost. While we may have to work within a traditional format, we have flexibility in how we reach that final point of reporting. Involving students in that process is crucial. Allowing them to collect and share evidence of their growth is not only worthwhile for achieving immediate classroom learning goals, but it also fosters motivation and skill sets we hope to see in students well beyond the time in the classroom. I have a plan for making this shift more effective and cohesive in my classroom in the 2022-23 school year, and I invite you to join me as I document the process of making assessments more meaningful for my students.