This summer, I had the opportunity to facilitate a multi-day K-5 standards based report card design workshop in a new-to-me school district that has recently begun shifting their assessments and assessment practices. As this initiative began, I blogged my previous experiences with standards based reporting in this space, and I also wrote about this team’s efforts to establish norms and attend to transparency. I entered this work on the heels of significant curriculum and assessment…
In today’s standards based report card design session, I shared a story from the road. It featured a devoted and tireless leader from another district that I supported in the same capacity a long, long time ago: I was doing a bit of norm-setting and establishing expectations relevant to transparency when it became clear that something was off. I wondered aloud if my friend was having second thoughts. Did he still want to move forward?…
Sharing My Thinking and Learning and Work As promised, I’ll be sharing a few peeks into my work facilitating a standards based grading and reporting initiative in a New York State public school over the next several weeks and months. Each visit will bring me back to this space, where I’ll try to make our process and more importantly, our greatest discoveries and tensions, as transparent as I can. I’m hoping that this will…
When I was a fellow in Communities for Learning, Leading Lasting Change, I learned a great deal about seeking representation. “Who will be most affected by the shift you’re making?” I was asked. “How do you plan to assess their needs and interests and include them in the planning?” These questions came back to me as I began planning to plan a new standards based grading and reporting initiative a few months ago, and they…
Over the last ten years, I’ve facilitated district-wide shifts to standards based grading numerous times. As I prepare to begin again in a new-to-me school district, the memories of those professional experiences aren’t the ones rising to the top of my consciousness, though. I’m thinking about how standards based grading helped me parent better. I actually wrote a tiny bit about that on this blog, way back when. My daughter Nina was in fifth grade. She…