Rethinking Grading: Meaningful Assessment for Standards-Based Learning

by Cathy Vatterott

Overview

Grading systems often reward on-time task completion and penalize disorganization and bad behavior. Despite our best intentions, grades seem to reflect student compliance more than student learning and engagement. In the process, we inadvertently subvert the learning process.

After careful research and years of experiences with grading as a teacher and a parent, Cathy Vatterott examines and debunks traditional practices and policies of grading in K–12 schools. She offers a new paradigm for standards-based grading that focuses on student mastery of content and gives concrete examples from elementary, middle, and high schools. Rethinking Grading will show all educators how standards-based grading can authentically reflect student progress and learning—and significantly improve both teaching and learning.

Cathy Vatterott is an education professor and researcher at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, a former middle school teacher and principal, and a parent of a college graduate. She has learned from her workshops that "grading continues to be the most contentious part . . . conjuring up the most intense emotions and heated disagreements." Vatterott is also the author of the book Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416620495
Publisher:	ASCD
Publication date:	07/13/2015
Pages:	130
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Culture of Grading

2. Why We Need a New Grading Paradigm

3. What Grading Looks Like in the Standards-Based Classroom

4. What, How, and When to Grade

5. How to Reform Grading: Making Change Happen

Afterword

Appendix

References

Index

About the Author