Do your grades represent the learning at the present moment or student growth?

A speech teacher looks at the grades for her students on their speeches (a single standard). The students  do very poorly on the first speech as she assesses them against the speech rubric. For each speech the students self-assess, peer-assess and the teacher gives them suggestions for improvements. Their speeches become progressively and drastically  better, but their present cumulative grades are quite low. Their first grade is a 60, the next is a 70, and on their last speech, a 100 for an average of 76  (the total  of all the grades divided by the number of grades).  However, they have grown in the speech giving skill from a 60 to a 100. Should their grade be based on their average or be based on their now high achievement? Traditional grading goes for the average while a standards-based formative focus would go for their final height of learning.

Here are two possibilities for using standards-based formative grading:

1. Assign different grades different weights. Grades on the same standard  from the beginning of the project get a 10% weight, the middle get a 30% and the ending ones get a 60%. Therefore a grade of 60 (beginning), 70 (middle), and 100 (ending) results in a weighted 90, rather than the straight average of 76. Also, you can weight the level of their  thinking with lower-level thinking 10%, Application-Analysis 30%, and Synthesis-Evaluation 60%.
2. Do not give a  grade until the ending of the learning. Only give comments. If you use the same checklist/rubric scale to assess the students, they can see their progress each time without having to see a grade. The only grade you give is the final achieved growth goal.
   

Dr. Harry Grover Tuttle focuses on assessing and improving student learning through low- and high-tech tools.

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