The process of having the middle school shift to standards-based
assessment began at our end-of-year meeting after the second year of
the school (spring 2005). I had brought in photocopies (with written
permission from the author!) of parts of Rick Wormeli's excellent book
"Fair Is Not Always Equal," and by the end of the meeting we had
decided to forego letter grades and start making the transition,
assuming the approval of our next Head of School. During the next two
years, we began laying the groundwork among ourselves, with the
"simple" discussion around the design and layout of the actual
progress report forms provoking a lot of discussion about not just the
concrete wording used on the form but also ways to rethink our
teaching, link it more specifically to standards, ensure it's
developmentally appropriate, and more. It was hard for us to leave
behind the idea of giving some sort of global assessment for a given
project and really begin to see learning as a continuum in many
different areas, some of which would be explicitly noted and assessed
in a given project, others of which might have to wait. I think this
work was critical to our success - it meant when we threw the switch
sending letter grades onto the Siding of Oblivion, we all had a pretty
deep understanding of what exactly we were doing, and why. We also had
a progress report form about which we felt pretty good.
Last winter, our new Head of School courageously decided we would
throw that figurative switch this year, and it became time to involve
parents in the process. Since the birth of the middle school, we have
produced a regular newsletter that always includes some sort of essay
(currently a blog) on middle school kids, learning, life, that sort of
thing, and this provided a great forum to lay groundwork for the
announcement. We announced the change right before Spring Family
Weekend, and scheduled a meeting for parent reactions to the new
progress report forms; it went well. We wrote up this meeting for the
newsletter, got Board approval for the new practice, and went live at
midterms this fall. Again, we used the newsletter to lay groundwork
for the new practice. We do student-led conferences, so it was a great
way to integrate those and the progress report forms into a holistic
discussion of how and why we assess. Reactions were generally
positive, with the strongest resistance, such as it was, coming from
two students, both returning 8th graders who were very grade-focused
last year. We talked to them and other students about why we're doing
this, made a couple of much-needed improvements to the form, and
sighed in relief. By now, the new system has almost come to seem
routine.
Probably a longer discussion than this needed to be, but brevity is
not a strength of mine, and hopefully this was helpful at any rate. If
you have any questions, just let me know!
Take care,
Bill Ivey
Stoneleigh-Burnham School
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