MeTA musings

Part five in the standards-based grading "how-to" crowdsourcing project.  Today, we're tackling the final grading guideline, the role of homework.

What practical applications have worked for you that are not included in this grading guideline document?  Comments are open.  

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Grading Guideline:  

Summary:
What it means....

• Homework or practice assignments should be purposefully utilized to enhance students’ understanding of classroom standards.
• Assignments which are designed for students to demonstrate their understanding at an early part of the learning cycle should not be counted towards the final grade.
• Opportunities (i.e. quiz, project or test) later on in the learning cycle that follow feedback on practice assignments should be considered for the grade book.  

What it doesn’t mean...

• Homework or practice assignments are no longer assigned or students are no longer asked to complete homework.  
• Students are not provided feedback on homework or practice assignments.
• Work completed outside of class (i.e. project, paper) cannot be entered into the gradebook by standard.  

Briefs from the literature:
“The belief that the carrot of a grade entices students to complete work is an illusion, one with roots in behaviorism and a negative view of learners (Vatterott, 2009). At its core, it negates students' intrinsic drive for mastery (Cushman, 2010; Pink, 2009) and implies that homework is inherently distasteful. As Daniel Pink (2009), puts it, "We're bribing students into compliance instead of challenging them into engagement" (p. 174). In addition, grades only motivate students who are motivated by grades—and some students couldn't care less” (Vatterott, 2011)

“...past experience has taught us that we are often too quick to assign homework before students have had an opportunity to learn the skills and strategies needed to successfully complete it” (Fishey and Frey, 2008)
     



Putting it into practice:



Suggested reading:

• Cushman, K. (2010, September). Show us what homework's for. Educational leadership, 68(1), 74-78.
• Vatterott, C. (2011, November). Making homework central to learning. Educational leadership, 69(3), 60-64. 

When talking about standards-based grading, I often hear the argument...

I agree with the standards-based grading philosophy, but I'm nervous about not grading homework and other practice assignments.  How do you motivate students to complete homework (or other non-graded assignments)?

My responses:

1. What do you do with students in the traditional system who don't do homework even when it is graded? 
   
2. Does the student need to complete the homework/practice assignment?  If he/she already understands the big ideas, doing the homework probably is not a good use of time. 
   
3. Engage in a conversation with your students that looks something like this...
   Teacher: "If homework was worth 3 points, how many of you would do it?"
   (Many hands go up)
   Teacher: "Okay, if homework was worth 2 points, how many of you would do it?"
   (Still lots of hands go up)
   Teacher: "If homework was worth 1 point per day, how many of you would do it?"
   (Several hands go up)
   Teacher: "If homework was not graded, how many of you would do it?"
   (A few hands go up)
   Teacher: "Johnny, why would you still do your homework?"
   Johnny: "My parents would still make me do it."
   Teacher: "Thanks for your honesty, Johnny.  Suzy, why would you still do your homework if it was worth zero points?"
   Suzy: "I love math class!"
   Teacher: "I do, too, Suzy.  Thanks for your enthusiasm.  Frank, why wouldn't you do your homework if it wasn't graded?"
   Frank: "If it's not graded, it would give me more time to play Playstation with my friends." 
   Teacher: "Frank, if you didn't do your homework for this unit, how well do you think you'd do on the test?"
   Frank: "I would probably fail the test or get a D."
   Teacher: "Thanks for your honesty, Frank.  If you didn't do your homework again for the next unit, how well do you think you'd do on the test?"
   Frank: "I would probably fail or get a D again." 
   Teacher: "Frank, how many tests do you think you'd have to fail before you realized that doing your homework is a good idea?" 
   Frank: "Probably two or three."
   Teacher: "Okay, now that you know that...why wouldn't you just do your homework?"

At one time in my teaching career, I "hid behind points."  Rather than having a discussion like the one above with students, I took the easy way out by giving students who didn't complete their homework a zero in the grade book.  My students didn't benefit.  It was the easy way out for them, too.  Confronting the reality that homework/practice/formative assignments and activities are important opportunities for feedback [not merely point accumulation exercises] is a classroom shift that requires ongoing discussion with students.  How do you accomplish this in your classroom?

In my statistics class, I didn't grade homework during the last chapter of the semester.  I had a few critical conversations with students about my philosophy on points, learning and homework.  Most of them knew it was coming. 

Later on, I asked them to journal about it.   The responses were generally in support of not grading homework.  I was delighted to read that so many of them "got it."  The picture below is one of the many responses that reassured me the message was being communicated clearly.

Many said that they were still going to do the homework so that they would later be successful on a quiz or test.  I incorporated a few mini formative assessments (quizzes) to provide written feedback and ensure that students were not all falling behind.

Yet another student said,

"I thought that it was OK.  I did all my homework but I think that if you understand it fine then you should only have to do 1 or 2 problems especially when its this long of problems.  I will still do my homework but it would be nice to get some credit for doing it."

For additional commentary and background on this subject, you may want to consider reading a few of my previous posts:

• "I just don't get it..."(why grading formative assessments doesn't make sense)
• "Getting past grading homework" (it's easier than you think)

I'm in the process of moving to standards-based grading in this course now, too.  More on that later. 

On the great homework grading debate, a teacher says:

"But I want to give them credit for doing it.  They did it, so they deserve something for it.  I don't think I would do it if I didn't get credit!"

How do you respond? 

"Can you believe Johnny cheated on his math homework for the second day in a row?  You'd think he would stop copying answers from his friends after I gave him a zero!  He's not learning anything and will surely fail the test."

Have you been in on one of those conversations?  Perhaps you've even been the one issuing the zeros.

Been there.  Done that.  Still working on it.

It hit me one day.  It wasn't rocket science though.  I need to talk to these students and ask them to change their behavior.  A few students actually admitted that they were lost.  My words to describe their situation - these students were too lost to even consider asking for help.  At the time, my classroom was run as if I was administering a test each and every day: points were awarded based on correct answers on homework.  Students want points.  Copying was worth the risk to them.  Things had to change.  I began what I now call "critical conversations" with these students.  When I sense a student is extremely lost, I will write a note on his/her paper asking if there is a way I can help and/or if he/she is willing to come in outside of class for remedial work.  If this does not solicit a response from the student, I will usually talk to him/her one-on-one during or right after class.  Finally, if the situation warrants, I will contact the student's parents to make them aware of the situation.  Most recently, I have seen a student every day after school for almost one week as a result of the parent communication.  Don't get me wrong, this is not a magic bullet solution to helping struggling students.  Some students never respond.  Some parents aren't as willing to help.  Creating this culture of caring is the piece of the puzzle I believe will yield the biggest results in the long haul.

I try to have these "critical conversations" with my entire class from time to time.  Speaking in transparent and direct terms to students is the biggest component of a critical conversation.  Sometimes they come in the form of a warm-up problem at the beginning of class:

"The person who does the work is the only one doing any learning!" (Harry Wong)

In my class, students have access to all of the answers in the problem sets.  I post them in the front of the room every day.

1. It gives me a quick idea of the ideas students are still struggling to understand.
2. Anonymous marks are the norm.  No single student stands out in the crowd for being the "dumb" one.

It did not take long to realize this is an imperfect system.  Time does not allow to go over every single problem students don't understand.  If only a few students wish to go over #15, is it worth the entire class' time to discuss it?  Time is a realistic factor that comes into play each and every day.  Students don't always have time to come in outside of class for help and we don't legitimately have time during class to answer all of their questions either.  What is the solution?

At the beginning of the year, I amended the process described above by adding one more step.  After I've finished answering several of the questions from the board and before students hand their papers in, I ask them to write one of the following words that best describes their current understanding of the problems: green, yellow or red.  Green means the student has a good idea of what's going on. Yellow means the student is a bit shaky on one or more ideas/problems.  Red means the student is really lost and hopefully plans on coming in outside of class to get extra help.  I also encourage students to write specific questions and/or problem numbers that they still do not understand on their papers.  I regularly vow to them that I will provide written feedback to their questions.  I feel like it's a natural extension of the question answering session at the beginning of class and at least in my mind, makes up for the fact that I can't answer all of the questions students are still unsure about.  A typical yellow paper looks like this:
Note at the top of the paper that Student A had questions about #s 3, 12, and 20.   Notice also that Student A did not attempt or give me any inclination of his/her misconception.  My notes are in red.  A few questions are running through my head...

Because Student A did not even attempt the problem, am I working harder than him/her by providing the first steps to each of the problems?  Am I encouraging this type of cop out behavior via the green, yellow, red and written feedback system?  Sometimes the system yields great questions with practical feedback as seen in Student B's paper below.







Is there a better system I could be piloting?  I have tried peer feedback in the place of my all-class remediation at the beginning of class based on the questions students ask.  It usually looks something like, "Who understands #5?  Okay, if you were one of the students that wrote #5 on the board, please see Suzie in a few moments.  Who understands #12? Okay, if you..." It usually works the first time or two, but eventually morphs into social time very quickly because so many high school students aren't mature enough get help from one friend for one problem and then move to another friend who can help with a second or third problem.  Is there an alternative I'm missing?

Does Student A REALLY want help or is he/she just going through the motions to please Mr. Townsley?  After all, if he/she had a strong desire to learn about these concepts, wouldn't he/she have put in more effort intially (a la Student B) and/or come in outside of class to virtually guarantee one-on-one instruction to remedy any misconceptions?  That's admittedly the old school teacher side of me coming out. 

Last, if Rick DuFour is right in saying that learning should be the constant while time and support are the variables, how does this play out in a high school classroom?   How much responsibility for taking the initiative to learn lies on me, the teacher and how much of it lies on the student?  Is it realistic to encourage students to come in outside of class or should my remediation take place solely between bells?

I'm just not sure how to help students who (sort of) want help.  Tweaks? Overhauling the system?  I'm willing to learn from your experience in the comments section.

The verdict is still out on the validity of grading homework in the eyes of many educators in my sphere of influence.  If the purpose of homework isn't to check for students' understanding, what activities do classroom teachers rely on figure out who "gets it" and who is still lost?  The next two diagrams summarize what I hear:

I regularly ask teachers I come in contact with to describe their formative assessment strategies.  Answers such as "think, pair share" and "observe the non-verbal cues of the students throughout the class period" come up quite frequently.  It's the stuff that often doesn't land on paper.  Great. Those are all examples of formative assessment that can drive future instruction.  Here lies the controversy:
 

A commenter named Carol recently raised a few questions that I felt warranted a more in-depth response.

I am really enjoying diving into this stuff... but I can't wrap my mind around the homework. How is it that you "require" them to do their homework, when it has no impact on their assessment? And, if a student never completes their homework, yet masters the standards - would they receive the same mark as the ones who do complete all the assignments? What becomes the point of having a deadline? Help!

It seems like the question of grading homework comes up quite often when discussing standards-based grading on this blog and in my face-to-face conversations with colleagues, too. 

It's easier than you think to 'require' students to continue to do their homework while not using it to impact their grade.  I conducted the following exercise with my Geometry students last year:

Me: "How many of you would still do the homework if it was worth 2 points rather than 3?"
(Most of the class raised their hand)
Me: "How many of you would still do the homework if it was only worth 1 point?"
(Fewer students raised their hands)
Me: "How many of you would still do the homework if it was worth zero points?" 
(Several students, but clearly a minority, raised their hand)
Me: "If you did not do the homework, how well do you think you would do on the test?"
(A few students chimed in saying they probably wouldn't do very well)
Me: "How many tests do you think you'd have to fail before you realized that you need to do the homework to be successful?"
(Some said one test while others said a few tests)
Me: "Okay, now that you know this about homework and tests...why would you stop doing your homework if it wasn't worth any points?"
(We then had a discussion about how homework is practice, answers are freely available so why NOT do it?! and that it is acts like "insurance.")  

In my standards-based grading system, students can be re-assessed for full credit on any learning target they'd like to improve on, but one pre-requisite for this second chance opportunity is that they put in the time in the first place.  By completing the homework, they have "purchased insurance" which gives them the right to cash in when a crisis hits.  If a student does not complete the homework, but masters the standard, then "insurance" wasn't needed on his/her end - shame on me for not catching this in a pre-test! Full disclosure: this scenario of students not completing their homework and mastering a learning target happens more often than I originally envisioned - I will be piloting a few tweaks to help alleviate this "problem" over the next few weeks.  Stay tuned for the results. 

For additional commentary on these subjects, you may want to consider reading a few of my previous posts:

• "Grading: Points vs. Learning" - de-emphasizing a culture of "points" in the classroom and how quizzes, homework and standards-based grading fit in.
• "Rethinking Homework: Best Practices that Support Diverse Needs" - a review of the ASCD book written by the Homework Lady, Cathy Vatterott
• "Standards-based grading & student information systems: the beginning" - making standards-based grading a reality in a system that still requires letter grades

Avid MeTA musings readers, how do you handle homework?  If you don't grade it, how do you get buy-in from students, parents and administration?  If you are currently grading homework, what's holding you back?

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague today that followed-up a heated discussion that took place yesterday among several staff members over lunch in the teachers' lounge.  Yesterday's ongoing question was, "Do our grading practices promote compliance or learning?"  For example, when a teacher continually awards five points for merely completing a homework assignment, we're sending a hidden message to parents that the way their student can raise their grade is to make sure that all of their assignments are turned in.  Consider the following fictitious email communication:

Dear Mr. Townsley,
I logged on to PowerSchool last night and saw that Johnny's grade dropped from a C to a D.  Is there any extra credit he can do to raise his grade?

I look forward to hearing back from you today!

Jane Doe

or I'm guessing any secondary teacher can relate to this one:

Dear Mr. Townsley,
Jessica told me that she has been turning in all of her work, but her grade is still an "F."  Could you send me a list of the assignments she is missing so that she can get her grade up?"

Thanks,
John Smith

How often does parent communication emphasize turning in assignments, late work and following directions?   These are all examples of compliance or "doing more work."  Wouldn't it be great if parent communication instead looked something like this?

Dear Mr. Townsley,

Suzie does not seem to have a passing grade right now.  Could you send me a list of the concepts and ideas that she still does not understand so that she and I can work on them together?

Thanks,
Sam Johnson

My colleague had a great "aha" moment as she thought about this conversation last night.  She agreed that traditional grading systems promote compliance and often report out responsibility rather than learning.  She challenged my thinking by suggesting that many parents are happy to ask about compliance and responsibility in relation to grades not only because it is what they were used to in school, but also because it is something they can control.  Parents can quickly and easily ensure that their children are completing assignments.  There is great satisfaction in holding homework completion up as bait for free time watching television or playing video games.  "Once you have your essay written, you may play Halo."  She went on to suggest that many parents might begin to feel helpless once they realized the reason their student was failing Algebra wasn't because he/she wasn't turning in their homework, but instead because he/she is unable to solve two-step linear equations.  Further evidence of this idea plays out when thinking about elementary report cards which tend to be descriptions of skills and abilities rather than letter grades.  These skills are typically less cognitive and presumably a larger portion of our society has mastered them, so parents may be willing to accept a skills-based report card at this age.  Parents are better able to control and teach those abilities at home, so there is more of a sense of ownership.  This sense of control seems to decrease as the content students are expected to know and apply becomes more complex and unfamiliar to the average citizen as students progress through the public school system.  Anatomy and calculus have a stigma attached to them that writing cursive and subtracting integers don't seem to possess.

Here lies a new reality in challenging system-wide change towards a more "standards-based" reporting method in our schools today: traditional grading schemes promote a "compliance" mentality and parents seem to be happy with it because they feel like they have more control.  "Un-schooling" both students and parents is a natural first step, but what does this look like?  As one of only two teachers in my building currently embracing standards-based reporting, I see a steep hill ahead. 
  
Is "parent control" a valid challenge to standards-based reporting?   If so, what can be done at a system-wide level to overcome this challenge?

I recently finished reading one of ASCD's 2009 Select Member publications, Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs.

Full disclosure: A big thanks goes out to Laura Berry, ASCD Communications Specialist, for sending me a complementary copy after I submitted an essay for consideration in one of their themed publications that never came to fruition. I have not received any compensation to write this review and did not receive the book under any obligation to write this post. Now, on to the review.

The author, Cathy Vatterott, is an academic at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and is commonly referred to as "The Homwork Lady." In this book, she breaks down homework research and paints a fairly objective picture of the limits of this research as well. In addition, Vatterott lays out the common objectives proposed by homework critics such as Alfie Kohn and attempts to create a practical spin on what this does and does not mean for the average classroom teacher. The third chapter is entitled, "Homework Research and Common Sense" and it lives up to its title from the get-go. Her objective approach is summed up in the following quote.

"...the gist of the research, then, is that a small amount of homework may be good for learning, but too much homework can actually be bad for learning." (p. 62)

With such a middle-of-the-road attitude, it's hard not to at least take her arguments seriously. Vatterott even asks some of the hard questions typically heard in faculty lounges during the lunch hour.

"What if more time spent grading homework equaled less time to plan quality classroom instruction, which could affect the quality and amount of learning that occurs in the classroom?" (p. 79)

Okay, maybe the question has never been posed that formally, but who hasn't heard the occasional griping about the usefulness of homework, particularly when students don't complete it and when grading it takes so much of an educator's time? My guess is that I'm not the only one who hears this sentiment from time to time.

Perhaps the most useful chapter is the fourth one focusing on effective homework practices. The author draws a line in the sand regarding homework and grading - an idea that took me years to agree with, but could cause some readers to immediately close the book and never pick it up again.

"Homework's role should be as formative assessment - assessment for learning that takes place during learning. Homework's role is not assessment of learning; therefore it should not be graded." (p. 112, emphasis mine)

Because I happen to believe that grading homework does indeed get in the way of learning and is counterproductive towards documenting understanding in a way that allows new evidence of achievement to replace old evidence, I continued reading with great enthusiasm.

I especially enjoyed a section describing how "grading homework" is different from "checking homework."

"The purpose of homework should be to provide feedback to the teacher and the student about how learning is progressing....Checking (providing feedback) is diagnostic - the teacher is working as an advocate for the student." (p. 112)

Rethinking Homework was well-written, provides many thought-provoking ideas related to homework, grading and formative assessment. Personally, I had already read several of the articles and books Vatterott quotes in her writing, so the underlying ideas often seemed like old hat. If you've read with great detail Marzano, O'Connor, Fisher & Frey, Stiggins, Guskey and even Robyn Jackson's latest ASCD book (which I recently reviewed as well here), this book may seem like a broken record. On the contrary, if you're looking for a single book to read that might might challenge the status quo in the way you and your colleagues view homework and more largely assessment, I highly recommend Rethinking Homework by Cathy Vatterott.

Lorna Earl's quote from the book, Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximize Student Learning rings true in the context of this review.

"...changing classroom assessment is the beginning of a revolution - a revolution in classroom practices of all kinds...Getting classroom assessment right is not a simplistic, either-or situation. It is a complex mix of challenging personal beliefs, rethinking instruction and learning new ways to assess for different purposes." (2003, pp. 15-16)

Perhaps this book will finally be the spark to unite a blaze of conversations in your school that change the way educators view teaching and learning. How do you think your colleagues would respond to this book's premises?

I used to penalize students who didn't complete their assignments by taking off a point or two. After several years, I finally realized it was not changing the behavior of my students. The easiest way out for students is to take a hit by missing a few points every once in a while. This year, I'm trying out an experiment in lieu of a different philosophy towards points, grading and late work. In the students' eyes, it might even be worse than taking off points.

I require students to finish work they do not complete the first time.
Here is my thought process:

If the assignment was important enough to complete the day I assigned it, why wouldn't it also be important enough to finish it, even if it's a day late?

I can foresee several rebuttals to this philosophy - many of which end in something like...

Aren't you teaching your students that it is okay to be irresponsible?

In my mind everything I do should revolve around helping students "learn." I will let the rest of the school "teach" responsibility by taking off points for incomplete assignments. In the meantime, I will require students to be responsible by completing the important math assignments I have carefully selected for them to conquer. By requiring them to do their assignments, I believe that I am helping them learn.

Note: This is the seventh post in a series based on the book Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn Jackson.

A colleague of mine used to take home 75+ math assignments every night to be graded. She would hand them back the next day with check marks and a score, all written in red. I grinned each day as she walked out my door for the evening after our almost daily conversation about how the day had gone in our respective classrooms. She would often end the conversation with comments like, "Wow, I only have one section of papers to check tonight!" or "Looks like I'll be grading papers while watching a movie tonight." The return on her efforts, she often lamented was rarely worth it based on the glances the students gave their graded papers. I don't think she would be upset at me for sharing this story, because she is now realizing that she has been doing more work than her students. The sheer number of problems she was assigning each evening became a numbers game - how many must they attempt and/or answer correctly to get "full credit."

Robyn Jackson says,

"Master teachers invest their time up front...They spend more time designing quality assignments and assessment than they do creating volumes of work for their students and themselves." (p. 156)

In my earlier years, I remember asking my mentor how many homework problems were reasonable to assign each day. We agreed that 10-12 seemed about right. I felt guilty the night I assigned one hundred (yes, 100!) problems to my Consumer Math students as a "discipline measure. " Nobody completed all one hundred problems, not even the hardest working students. I learned a lot from that day and the subsequent days when the majority of my students did not turn in completed homework assignments. Assigning more problems did not make my class more rigorous or challenging. The attitudes of my students towards homework - and "math" in general, I'm guessing - only decreased as I assigned more problems.

Jackson also suggests what now seems like a no-brainer. Homework needs to have a purpose and that purpose should be clearly communicated to students. This is a great reminder. As I started sifting through the first chapter of Geometry to get my brain back in "math mode," I tried to remember what the overarching theme of the chapter is supposed to be. The theme is the basics of Geometry. It seems so disconnected at times. I'll need to not only share that "the purpose of us going through all of these seemingly disconnected ideas now is to help us later" but also reiterate this time and time again when the practice problems (formerly known as "homework") are assigned.

Today, I started acting on one of the principles I previously blogged about, "Know where your students are going" by looking at the first chapter to eventually see if it matches my assessments. I think I'm going to practice what Jackson calls "curriculum flexibility" - sorting out the "need-to-know" vs. the "nice-to-know." This will also help me better decide which problems to assign and how many to assign that correspond with each learning target. To clearly communciate the purpose of the assignment, I will need to articulate how the problems match up with the specific learning targets. From the perspective of my colleage, the more problems assigned, the more that will need to be graded. I think I have an alternative approach on "grading homework," but I'll save that for another post. :)

What successes have you found when trying to focus on "quality rather than quantity" in your classroom? Feel free to share in the comments section below.

Related reading:

• The Quality School by William Glasser