InDepth

6 — Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021 — North Pointe

IN-DEPTH Out with the old In with the new

By Farrah Fasse, Annabelle Julien, Bella Yoakam & Elly Meteer EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, SECTION EDITORS & INTERN

The primary focus for administration and faculty this year is to “optimize learning,” according to Principal Dr. Kate Murray. Due to the pandemic’s effects on the education system, there have been many nationwide conversations about how to support students and their learning. Along with those discussions, additional topics such as reassessments and late work, and how they can benefit the students on both grades and learning became important issues discussed throughout the faculty.

One of the silver linings of the pandemic was that it allowed teachers to rethink grading and learning. English teacher Paul Golm believes that the pandemic helped him and many other teachers develop new policies that best support students.

“I think we were really kind of shown during the pandemic that holding really strict philosophies about grading leaves a lot of kids behind,” Golm said.

Furthermore, senior Sophia Graham says she thinks many teachers’ flexibility is beneficial following an unstable school year due to the pandemic.

“For right now, after the craziness that was last year’s Zoom, school, hybrid, everything, flexib[ility] is basically what students want and what’s going to be most effective right now while we transition back into a more normal school year,” Graham said.

Another way for teachers to help provide meaningful feedback is with formative assessment, according to Murray. Overall, this allows teachers to check progress and understanding before a summative assessment, such as a test or quiz.

“A formative assessment system, combined with meaningful feedback, has been shown to drastically increase student learning,” Murray said. “Meaningful feedback for a student should be able to, one, restate what the goal was, two, specify where the student is in relationship to the goal. Then, three, explain to the student how to close the gap between the two.”

During Monday morning faculty meetings, teachers have been gathering in subgroups called Application Teams, or A-Teams for short. These groups cover different forms of meaningful feedback for students, such as social emotional learning, alternative forms of assessment and grading. Science teacher Colleen Byrn is a part of an A-Team on metacognition, which focuses on helping students self-reflect and analyze their own thought patterns, in order to better understand not just how to do their work, but also how to approach it.

“Metacognition is, it sounds weird, but it's thinking about your thinking,” Byrn said. “It’s the idea that if you can recognize how you think about things, you can better how you think and/or change how you think, which really impacts learning and students doing better.”

Byrn says she, along with the other members of her group, is working on formulating self-assessments and reflections to help students hone these skills.

“[We are] trying to figure out what students are aware of in terms of their learning habits and what they aren't,” Byrn said. “That's not like ‘I do my homework, I don't do my homework’ but, ‘when I'm doing work, how do I think about it?’ We're strategically trying to figure out ways to ask questions, just to see where students are, so that we can better address navigating through that.”

In A-Teams this year, staff has also been utilizing a 2021 guidance report from the Educational Endowment Foundation entitled “Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning.” The report, based on educational research, contains six recommendations for upholding the principles, methods and implementation of meaningful feedback. Murray hopes that what staff learns from this will help them as they ensure all their practices and policies best support students’ learning.

“I think that we continue to learn as we read and discuss together the impact of these different strategies,” Murray said. “I would like to see us continue to learn, grow and change in ways that are holding students accountable for the learning, and not just the date on which they learned it.”

Balancing the scale Currently, the Grosse Pointe Public School System utilizes a non-equidistant grading scale for secondary students within the learning management system, Schoology. Passing grades, As, Bs, Cs and Ds, span 10% increments while an E, a failing grade, makes up 60% of the grading scale. This is a typical procedure within many school districts across the country, and is something that is currently being questioned as a part of a national conversation about equitable grading in education. Schoology automatically assigns zeros when teachers mark assignments as “missing.” Some educators, including Golm, have taken to overriding automatic zeros and giving students a 50% for missing assignments. “The lowest score I would like to give students on [tasks], especially big tasks, is a 50% , because a zero doesn't adequately reflect [a student’s ability] when it calculates their full grade for the quarter,” Golm said. “It doesn't adequately reflect where they actually are. When you look at the mathematics behind choosing to be more lenient, or trying to assign grades that better reflect the skill, the actual tools we use need to actually support [their grade and growth].” However, when calculating a student’s final grade for a quarter or an exam, GPPSS uses an equidistant grading scale, with the lowest possible percentage being a 50. If a student scores lower than 50%, “I would like to see us continue to learn, grow and change in ways that are holding students accountable for the learning, and not just the date on which they learned it.” Dr. Kate Murray Princpal

the grade is automatically rounded up to a 50%. Murray believes teachers should have the freedom to assign a 50% on missing assignments and will be meeting with GPPSS’ Schoology representative to discuss the ability for teachers to adapt their gradebook to their philosophy more easily.

As a proponent of a more progressive and flexible grading system, science teacher Don Pata believes that the traditional, non-equidistant grading system is antiquated. In addition to this, Pata believes grades calculated based on the non-equidistant grading scale do not accurately reflect a student’s true knowledge and ability in a course. Because of this, Pata allows students to retake assessments and accepts work at all times in his courses to make sure a student actually sees their academic progress when looking at their grade.

“The ideology for my progressive grading system revolves around the idea that grading and assessment should be a means toward learning,” Pata said. “This necessitates two focuses: connecting grades with learning targets and creating multiple opportunities for students to show what they know and are able to do.” Revisiting policies

Flexibility caters to the students' benefit when it comes to teachers’ work policies such as assessment retakes and late work. Sophomore Jaden Laster believes that the current non-equidistant grading system sets an expectation for students, but also recognizes that learning tools like retakes help students improve understanding and show growth.

“I think [retakes] give students the opportunity to improve and study more,” Laster said.

Retakes can come in different forms, including an entire new assessment, test corrections, or sometimes even a conversation between a teacher and student about a lapse in understanding. English teacher Jonathan Byrne thinks retakes help ensure that a student’s grade reflects student progress, as opposed to only giving one attempt and then moving on.

“I always offer a student opportunities to show me that they have done more learning,” Byrne said. “I do always offer opportunities to show growth.”

Teachers should consider flexibility for student’s late assignments, according to Graham. She also states that it’s beneficial to students who need to maintain a

balance between in school and out of school issues. “I feel like especially after last year where deadlines were basically completely flexible I know a lot of people appreciated the extended due date policy,” Graham said. “I know a lot of friends that have had family issues, or jobs, or other “The ideology for my progressive grading system revolves around the idea that grading and assessment should be a means toward learning.” conflicts that make it hard to get work in on time.” Byrne acknowledges the difference in student technique and pace. He says that he wants students to reach his expectations, and one of the many ways he can do that is by offering retakes and encouraging additional learning. “English is largely a skill class, not a knowledge class,” Byrne said. “I have goals for each of my classes about what I want the students to be able to do by the end of the class. Those are the things that I grade — their progress towards those goals.” Graham believes that teachers who offer different forms of reassessment and who have more lenient late work policies positively influence student learning. She says that teachers’ compassion and understanding is important to students. “I don’t see a problem with retakes,” Graham said. “I know a lot more teachers have been offering them this year and people have really appreciated that, because if you got questions wrong you can do it again and apply what you want.” Along with offering retakes, Byrne says that he doesn't deduct points for late assignments, instead grading solely based on effort and quality. “I don't mark the assignments late. I mark them for quality,” Byrne said. “I believe that the grades should be reflective of students’ abilities and not behavior. I don't offer any extra credit in any of my classes because of that.” Pata believes the non equidistant grading system is also often harmful and leads to students disengaging in their learning, but he believes that his more forgiving approach will spark students' interest in learning. This is especially true for his due date policies. “We want to turn ‘due dates’ into ‘do dates’ so that students see the value in the assignment and create their best products,” Pata said. “It really shouldn't matter when this happens, as long as it is quality.” For the first quarter, English teacher Erin Tabor allowed students to turn in late assignments up until the end of the marking period with no penalty. However, this quarter, Tabor says she will be implementing a stricter policy, and will allow students to turn in work up until a week after the due date. Tabor is

Don Pata

science teacher

changing her policy because she believes the quality of work goes down after a week, and thinks that equity involves more than leniency and understanding. “In terms of equity, one thing that I think is that there are different ways to approach equity,” Tabor said. “That is, sometimes it requires mercy and grace and leniency and extra support. Sometimes it requires holding high expectations, so that students can learn to meet that standard. I am veering stronger towards that this quarter, because I felt that students needed to remember what real school feels like. Since [during the] pandemic, we gave so much grace, which we needed to.”

Adopting a growth mindset A growth mindset in school allows for students to view their own abilities as malleable, and able to improve through effort. This perspective causes students to view school as less of a competition, and more of a means towards broadening their knowledge. Tabor believes that many students currently don’t focus on learning and that they are still attempting to make this switch. “It's not their fault,” Tabor said. “That's the way they've been trained to think of school — as a game. Like, ‘What can I do to get x points?’” Pata believes retakes and other chances for improvement create a supportive and fear-free environment to learn. “Retakes lead to deeper learning, students are able to analyze their mistakes, learn from them and improve their understanding,” Pata said. “They promote a growth mindset.” Although grades are traditionally seen as feedback for students, Murray believes teachers should be cognizant of their impact on student learning, and use grades as a way to inform their methods. “We know that the teacher is the most influential factor in the room, and that they are a powerful catalyst for student learning,” Murray said. “The students' grades or class grades are a reflection of where what students know and are able to do, therefore that would tell me as the teacher, what skills my students have acquired and where they are missing some skills should ultimately drive my instruction.” “ I feel like especially after last year where deadlines were basically completely flexible I know a lot of people appreciated the extended due date policy.” Sophia Graham senior Contributing: Gabby Miller