Grades should be clear, meaningful, and accurate. Grades that are an amalgamation of many aspects such as proficiency, attendance, work completion, behavior, and growth do not clearly communicate to students, parents, and teachers areas of excellence and areas for improvement. Guskey (2015) provides guidance for educators to more clearly separate grading and reporting into three grading categories: Product, Progress, and Process grades. Essentially, educators may assign a grade to each category based upon an explicit set of learning criteria. Each of these grades are reported separately.
Product Grade--The Product Grade communicates a student's summative evaluation of achievement on identified standards. It indicates what a student knows and is able to do at a particular moment based upon the standards of learning. The grade is generated from proficiency on summative assessments (e.g. projects, final exams, cumulative learning). In general, Guskey (2010) recommends "four to six standards in each subject area generally work best for a standards-based report card" (p. 42).
Progress Grade--The Progress Grade communicates how much a student gained or improved over time. This grade's focus is on student growth vs. proficiency. A Progress Grade provides another layer of data that may be especially important if a student isn't proficient yet (Product Grade) but is making great growth.
Process Grade--The Process Grade communicates how a student performed in his/her learning through skill items such as responsibility, work habits, effort, timeliness, participation, attendance, and homework completion.
Rubrics for each building are located in the chapter titled "Reporting."
What is Depth of Knowledge? This article is beneficial in explaining that Depth of Knowledge (DOK) isn't the type of thinking or kind of knowledge students are to demonstrate (Bloom's Taxonomy does this). "Webb's DOK establishes the context – the scenario, the setting, or the situation – which students will express and share the depth and extent of their learning" (para. 16).
"Bloom’s determines the cognition or thinking students are expected to demonstrate as part of a learning experience. That’s the verb that starts the educational objective or academic standard. Webb’s designates the context – the scenario, setting, and situation – students are expected to express and share what they are learning. To align Bloom’s and Webb’s, Hess, Carlock, Jones, and Walkup created the Cognitive Rigor Matrix / Hess Matrix to categorize educational objectives and questions based upon their cognitive complexity" (para. 19).
Burn This! Why the D.O.K. Wheel Does NOT Address Depth of Knowledge, Maverik Education
A Guide for Using Webb’s Depth of Knowledge with Common Core State Standards , by Karin Hess, Ed.D.