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?…
When I think back on initial conversations that took place surrounding standards based grading in the schools that I serve, I remember that the same questions kept rising to the surface. Establishing clarity and resolving dilemmas on the spot was critical, but often, issues were raised by representatives of grade levels or buildings, and I knew that the potential for the responses to reach everyone quickly and consistently wasn’t as high as we needed it…