The Problems With Grading

The issue of grading was at the forefront of my attempt to differentiate instruction in my class.  As I mentioned before, I graded everything equally, whether it was easier or harder.  However, on quizzes, they needed to show they could handle the harder material to receive a better grade.  We discussed grading extensively during the class.  I had the idea that the level 1 assignments be capped at a C, level 2 at a B and level 3 at an A.  This way the better students are rewarded for their skills and knowledge.  But I ran into a moral dilemma.  Was it fair to cap students’ grades in this way?  I guess if they wanted to do better they would try harder and start completing the more difficult material.

Actually, the more I write about it here, the more it seems completely logical and fair.  But I’m sure my original objection exists out there, especially by some people who may read this.  What do you think?

This class also focused on rubrics as a fair way to grade students’ assignments.  That is like the Holy Grail of grading.  Make the perfect rubric!  Share it with the class!  Get them involved!  Be specific!

I got an e-mail linking to the blog Ecology of Education regarding this topic.  Titled, “The Folly of Rubrics and Grades” the author makes the case that no rubric can be perfect and, in fact, the idea of a rubric is wholly misguided.  A few quotes:

For some reason, making these categories out of 4 or 5 or 10 seemed to be a popular way to go. But to this day, I have not reconciled some of the problems that developed from choosing the 4, 5 or 10 scale.

Most rubrics I’ve seen do not go beyond a 5 point scale.  I use a 4 point scale for my lab write-ups.

If I pick the four scale, there is nothing in between 75% and 100% which means that in order to get ‘honors’ (over 80%), I have to assign a perfect grade.

If I pick the four scale, there is nothing in between barely passing 50% and 75%. That’s a large leap.

If I pick the five scale, it is awfully tempting to just pick 60% as it is a pretty average grade that lots of kids might fit.

If I pick the five scale, there is nothing between 40% and 60%, so someone who I’m not comfortable with getting 80% will get the same 3/5 mark as someone I was not comfortable with giving a 40% failing grade.

Awfully good point there. In our grading scale, the only possible grades are F, B-, A. That’s a pretty big difference.

But if I start to go to a larger scale like the 10 or 100 point scale, can I really say with any certainty what is the difference between a 6/10 and 7/10 or a 67/100 or 68/100?

He can’t, and I certainly cannot. Can you imagine making a specific rubric with 10 different descriptions of performance? How about 100?

This starts getting really difficult at this point.  What’s the right call here?  I have no idea but it’s something that can be debated for a long, long time.

The Grading Post

I hate to admit it, but my passive-aggressive method of trying to get my co-teacher to grade something failed.  Miserably.  You see people, he’s way more experienced as a teacher and when he said that we would split the grading, I believed him.  He’s been doing this for years.  At some point at the end of September, I stopped grading our stuff, noticing that he had yet to grade more than 1 assignment for 1 of our 3 classes.

 

We let the papers pile up on his desk.  This is mostly because he doesn’t use it and I use my desk.

They piled up.

And up.

One day there was an avalanche.

Then there were nice neat stacks.  And stacks.  And stacks.

Fast-forward six weeks to when we have to get our grades in.  At this point, the stuff needs to get done.  I started grading.  He said he’d take care of a bunch of it during his off period.  He didn’t.  Had to take care of some other stuff.  He’ll do it tomorrow.

He didn’t.

So I took care of it.  When it was all finished, I graded 75 class sets of assignments in two days.  He graded 3.  !!@$)*@&!@!(*(&

 

As my students would say:  FAIL

 

Music: “Home” by Jack Johnson on A Brokedown Melody Soundtrack

My Pandora radio loves Jack Johnson way more than I do.

I’m Bad at My Schedule

The schedule I have this year is, by far, the worst one I’ve had in 4 years.  It is not conducive to doing work.  Now, before I get too far ahead, let me say that I know it’s my fault.  I’m a huge procrastinator (should I do work? nah I’ll write in my blog!) and it takes quite a bit for me to jump into a stack of 80 labs.  But I have been pretty good so far at keeping up.

This year my planning (aka “off”) periods come at the beginning and end of the day.  So one day I’m sitting here half asleep, trying to wake myself up, drinking coffee, and staring at stacks of papers.  The next day I’m sitting at my desk after teaching 3 consecutive block periods (90 min), worn out and thinking about how I have time tomorrow morning to grade!  Days like today are the worst.  It’s Friday afternoon.  I have last period off.  I WANT TO LEAVE.  I’m going to tackle about 10 labs before I leave today.  At least, that’s what I’m telling myself right now.

Random side story:

This morning I was showing one of my classes a video called Kaboom!  They love it because it shows a ton of explosions.  One guy actually makes flour explode.  Pretty cool.  Anyway, while they’re watching quietly, I have the time to buy movie tickets for tonight.  If anybody has bought movie tickets from moviefone.com you know what’s coming next.  With my volume all the way up, the stupid computer yells, “THANK YOU FOR YOUR PURCHASE.  CLICK BELOW…” That’s when I hit the mute button.  So now 20 kids are staring at me.  “What did you buy?  What are you going to see?  WHO are you going with?”  Apparently “a friend” is not an acceptable answer.  Good thing they all have ADD.  Look!  An explosion!

Homework Grades and Teachers-as-Entertainers

A few things on my mind today after reading the student newspaper:

Our school newspaper is one of the most unprofessional and terrible ones I’ve read.  Every article serves to voice the authors’ opinion, even factual articles, and there are numerous grammatical mistakes in ever edition.  On top of that, the “reporters” make up quotes, attribute them to wrong people or tell you want they want you to say.  And, I save this for last, the teacher is just a horrendous [insert bad word].  If she doesn’t like you, and she doesn’t like me for whatever reason, she will openly talk badly about you to her students.  Now that’s a professional!

Anyway, there was an article about the rules on cell phone use in school.  The student is trying to make the case that cell phone use should be allowed in school (even though the article is about cell phone laws) and here is one pertinent quote (emphasis mine): “While the long, drawn-out days go by, students have to find some source of entertainment to keep them awake in classes.”  They have to find sources of entertainment?  I’m sorry, I didn’t realize my job was to entertain teenagers.  I’m pretty sure I get paid to teach them.  What did all us poor students do prior to 2002?  Sure, we doodled, we daydreamed, we tried to sleep, but mostly we took notes and did the work we were asked to do.  Why?  Because that’s what school is there for.
I completely agree that teachers should find creative and interesting ways to convey their subject to the students.  But sometimes you just have to get through some material.  Or sometimes you have to learn the mirror equation and practice it.  School, like work and life, can’t always been fun.  I’m also of the mind that the reason these kids have such short attention spans is because they’ve been fed snipets of information their whole lives and have never needed to concentrate for more than five minutes at a time.  That needs to change!

Second topic:

There is a new trend in education (I don’t know if it’s in the area or the whole country) that says teachers should not grade anything that isn’t done in the classroom.  No graded homework.  Also, no zeroes if a kid doesn’t hand in an assignment because that doesn’t reflect what he/she knows.  So no effort grades.  What a bunch of crap!  I’m sorry, but there’s really no good way to get a good grade in most classes if you don’t do your homework.  I know some kids pull it off.  But ALL of my kids who get C’s and below skip the homework.  Or they copy the homework from a friend so they get the credit.  I’m happy to give those kids small HW grades, because they invariably BOMB the tests and quizzes.  Now they want to take away those HW grades.  Fine.  So all those C and D students will be F students.  What world do we live in that HW is too much work.  I’ve tried ungraded homework…all of last year in fact.  Maybe 3 students in each class did their homework.  The rest did not.  Then they wonder why they fail tests.  What a disaster.  This is the reason that American students don’t compare to other countries.  We are actively trying to remove their work ethic.

Let’s end on a good note:

I was showing my honors students how to make an image with a curved mirror, in the process creating a reflection of the outside on a piece of paper.  “Mr. _______, tell us again why this class is called ‘physics’ and not ‘magic’?”

Music: “New Slang” by The Shins on Oh, Inverted World

Multitasking

I am not a multitasker.  When something is on my mind, it dominates, and all other things fall to the side.  This is the reason blog posts have slowed to a one-a-week trickle.  Right now I’m dealing with a job search and a home search, so I spend most of my free time looking through house listings instead of thinking of witty things to say in print.  Or grade.  I haven’t done that in two weeks and the pile on my desk is just daunting.  When I wait this long to grade small assignments one of two things usually happens.  1) I will decide that it isn’t a very difficult lab and everybody will get credit for effort.  2) I will give it to my TA to grade.  I’m not sure where I am at this point.  Anyway,  I will try much harder to write more, especially because more people look at the blog when I write in it.  And isn’t that the point?

We started our last unit of the year today: waves.  It just doesn’t feel right because there’s still two months left.  I know that, from mid-May on, it gets crazy and time flies by.  So, really, I have 3 weeks until utter chaos in school.  However, I will know before then what my job will be next year.  In fact, I should have a better idea next week when all of the openings are posted.  Until then I can just wait.

I came into my classroom yesterday to find a big sign on the chalkboard.  Above it is written: SIGN THIS.  Below is a picture of me with a crazy looking long beard attached to my face.  The paper says: Official petition for Mr. ________ (it says my full name) to grow his beard at least 5 inches below the chin.  It’s so far been signed by 18 students as well as Alexander Ovechekin, Sandrito, Barrack Obama, Bunny Man, Jenna Jameson, 2Pac, Biggie, Hitler, Kim Jong Il and Little Giant.  Then below somebody wrote, “Don’t look like a wierdo [sic] with a beardo.”

Begging

The end of the quarter always brings one thing – begging.  I get all sorts of requests, complaints and bargains.

“How can you give me a D?”

“I can’t have a C on my report card.  I’ll lose my car.”

“Is it a B?  Is it a high B?  Can you make it a B+?  I’ll wash your board for the rest of the year.”

“If you raise my grade just 2% points, you can take away 5% next quarter.”

“My dad will beat me if I get an F.”

This is nothing.  Last quarter I had a student stay after school for 2 hours begging for a higher grade.  I literally had to push him out of the room and lock to door.  I’ve been offered food and money.  Anywhere from $1 to $100.  Do they not understand that they’re the ones receiving the grade?  It’s like I just randomly choose a grade for each of them and they can convince me to choose differently.  They’re also only concerned about their grade the day before the quarter is due.  I give them a ton of extra credit opportunities, but they have to take advantage a few weeks in advance.  And…they don’t.  They just like to ask this week.  Or I get, “so, Mr. _____, that homework from the end of November.  Can I turn that in now?”

I really don’t know what to do to fix this.  They get grade sheets all through the quarter.  They know how they are doing.  How do I make somebody care the first month?