Summer Guest Blogging Series: Assessment Practices

A few months ago, I invited about a dozen people to write guest posts on this blog on the topic of practical methods to inspire change. I was so impressed by the level of writing and insight, that I have been wanting to do it again ever since. Lately, there has been a lot of discussion both on this blog and in my building about grading and assessment practices. I would like to invite you to write a guest blog post here on any aspect of that topic. Just drop me a comment or an email, and I will give you author access to this blog.

Some ideas to think about:

1. What is the purpose of grading/assessment?
2. How are you planning to assess your students next year? (teachers)
3. How have you seen grades effect your students? (teachers)
4. What are you guidelines/expectations/vision for how your teachers should grade? (administrators)
5. How do you assess your teachers?  Is this indicative of best practices we should use with students?(administrators)
6. As a parent, what purpose do you feel grades should serve? Are you happy with how most teachers grade?
7. What is standards-based grading and is this a shift we need to adopt to help our students?
8. What would be the effects of getting rid of grades completely and just giving individual feedback to students?
9. What advice would you give to new teachers?
10. Any other idea that you have within the realm of assessment.

Last time, I waited until everyone else wrote to share my own views. I have been thinking a lot about this lately and 3 of my last 7 posts have been about it. I have learned and grown a lot, but I believe that is always room to improve and I want to think deeply about this issue before we actually have to start assessing students again soon.

Update

The following great educators have agreed to write guest posts on this blog. If you decide to join us, you will definitely be in good company.

Joan Young – @flourishingkids
Philip Cummings – @Philip_Cummings
Patrick Larkin – @bhsprincipal
Alfonso Gonzalez – @educatoral
Matt Guthrie – @mattguthrie
Matt Townsley – @mctownsley
Gregory Thompson – @akamrt
Stephen Davis – @rushtheiceberg
Jeremy Macdonald – @MrMacnology
Chad Sansing – @chadsansing
Joe Bower – @joe_bower
Luke Miles – @Lhmiles2
Russ Goerend – @russgoerend
Tony Baldasaro – @baldy7
Elizabeth Horner
Tamara Hagen of the Digital Bluestocking