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Striving for Continuous Improvement
The feedback system currently implemented at Blake Middle School has evolved over many years. After decades of "traditional" grades-based reporting at Blake, Nathaniel Vaughn, Blake Middle School Principal, and a group of interested teachers piloted standards-based assessment concepts around 2015. Over the ensuing years, the use of standards-based practices grew organically, with more and more Blake teachers implementing standards-based or "SBR" in their classrooms. By the 2019-2020 academic year, SBR was in use in various capacities across the school, with some departments engaging in the full implementation of standards-based practices and others piloting the system for a single term.
In response to growing stakeholder inquiries about the standards-based grading practices at Blake Middle School, Christine Power (Director of Instruction and Innovation) launched a self-study to capture stakeholder reflections on the school's SBR practices. Between September 2019 through February 2020, numerous stakeholders across the district, including students, teachers, parents/guardians, and administrators, provided feedback via surveys, interviews, focus groups, and other artifacts. Analysis of these data resulted in the Blake Middle School: Analysis of Standards-Based Assessment Practices report, released in April 2021.
The report indicated many positive aspects of standards-based assessment practices at Blake, including a greater alignment of content to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Frameworks and a more learner-forward approach focusing on understanding concepts. However, the report highlighted operational challenges, communication issues, and parent/guardian worries about the student motivation and the Grade 8-9 transition. The report concluded with four recommendations (p. 36-40) that administrators and teachers could use to guide improvements.
Below, the four recommendations are listed along with the district's response and the current status of each.
Recommendation #1: Provide additional assessment-focused professional development opportunities for 6-12 teachers to develop a greater understanding of best practices, calibration, and alignment to state standards and district expectations
District Response: Interviews with students and teachers illuminated inconsistent assessment practices between High School and Middle School teachers. Parents/guardians and student alumni articulated concern about this mismatch in that it hampered student transition to the 9th grade. Specifically, in many cases, grading practices experienced at Blake were incredibly different from those at the High School. Thus, the report articulates a need for professional development on assessment best practices for all teachers in grades 6 through 12 and to support aligned grading practices that ease confusion experienced by some 9th graders.
The district has led numerous professional-development opportunities throughout the year to address Recommendation #1. Examples include a joint half-day PD session in January on assessment best practices and ongoing department-based work to align grading protocols across and within the two schools to support a consistent student experience.
Next year, Blake and High School leadership will formalize joint 6-12 department meetings to promote 6-12 collaboration and alignment on curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices. In addition, additional department-based work on unifying grading practices will continue within and between 6-12 departments.
Status: PROGRESS MADE in unifying 6-12 assessment practices, especially in aligning specific extra credit and late work protocols. Work will continue in 2022-2023.
Recommendation #2: Develop a uniform report card within each grade level and establish aligned grading processes across all disciplines
District Response: Prior to the 2021-2022 school year, report cards were department-based, resulting in a multi-page document with differing ways end-of-term information was conveyed to parents. Starting in June 2021 and over the course of the 2021-2022 year, Blake teachers and administrators worked together to develop a report card template that meets the needs of all departments.
Moreover, departments adopted many standardized grading processes to provide consistency within and across the school, including no longer using 'precision error' scores in mathematics and developing a standardized algorithm to determine content-priority standard letter grades (see Feedback System).
As of Term 3 (June 2022) Grade 7 & 8 report cards reflect letter grades.
Status: COMPLETE (see Examples and Models).
Recommendation #3: Streamline/centralize documentation processes using ASPEN, Medfield Public School’s Record-Keeping/Learning Management System
District Response: Blake teachers and administrators, and the district's Data Manager, converted the uniform grading template onto ASPEN in time for Term 1 reporting (December 2021). This template centralizes data-keeping and allows for the analysis of term grade data.
Status: COMPLETE (See Examples and Models)
Recommendation #4: Adapt present SBR models in Grades 7 and 8 to incorporate elements of traditional grading, e.g. letter grade systems
District Response: The report highlighted the many strengths of Blake's standards-based model, including its "greater fidelity to standards and a focus on demonstrated skills" (p. 39). However, it also illuminated concerns surrounding the system's ability to communicate students' progress to parents and guardians effectively. Some apprehension focused on the lack of precision of the three-point priority standard scale, arguing that a "2- Approaching Standard/ Partially Meeting Standard" is too broad to convey feedback to parents/guardians adequately.
Other parents/guardians were concerned with the grading scale itself. To some, SBR is an "incoherent and indecipherable 'language" (p. 38), and to others, it "stymies the sharing of motivational well-wishes and accolades and prevents parents from providing adequate support" (p.38). In addition, others were concerned about the perceived confusion of 9th graders of being exposed to the letter-grading scale as freshmen in Medfield High School.
Thus, the report recommended a "Middle Way"- a path forward that preserves the best aspects of standards-based reporting while incorporating a letter-based grading system. When enacted, this enhancement would provide students with experience with traditional letter grades (A, B, C, etc.) and improve parent/guardian understanding of student performance by utilizing a more familiar grading scale. It is important to note that the report was not prescriptive; rather, it provided agency to Blake administrators and teachers to develop a grading structure that aligned with its unique context.
Early work among Blake faculty focused on adopting a four-point scale to address concerns about the broadness of the '2' score on the content priority standard scale to provide a finer-grained level of understanding. An additional focus area was to create a content priority standards to letter-grade conversion algorithm to support the inclusion of letter grades in Term 3 of the 2021-2022 academic year (Grades 7 & 8). Since December 2021, Boston College Associate Research Professor Dr. Nathaniel J. S. Brown (See Work with Boston College) has been working regularly to support this work (See Feedback System).
Status: COMPLETE (See Examples and Models).