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In this episode, we speak with author and educator, Nicole Dimich, about the role of assessment and grading in education. 

She draws from insights in the second edition of her book, Design in Five, to encourage educators to shift how they view assessments. By focusing on students’ strengths and potential, we can create a culture of possibility where students are learning and growing according to their strengths. 


The Big Dream 

Nicole's big dream for education is to create a culture of possibility where students see themselves in terms of strengths and potential rather than deficits. 

She envisions a system where educators partner with students, allowing them to play an active role in their learning journey. Nicole's vision is rooted in her personal experiences, emphasizing the power of recognizing and nurturing potential in students.


Mindset Shifts Required

To realize this vision, educators must shift from quantity to quality. This moves us away from a system based on points and categories, and instead focuses on learning outcomes. Ultimately, we want to create an environment where students are partners in their learning and educators are empowered to feel joy, love, and confidence in what they do. 

Practically, this means connecting grades to descriptions of learning—the actual learning outcomes you want students to reach. This helps all students know where they are, what they’re doing well, and where they have an opportunity to grow. 

Action Steps  

As educators make the “quantity to quality” mindset shift, they can focus on taking these action steps: 

Step 1: Educators can move away from the idea of compliance and completion and embrace evidence of learning. Grades should be about communication, where students are at a point in time. Delaying grades and offering feedback instead are two ways to take the focus off of numbers and points.   

Step 2: Hold students accountable to a higher quality of work. It’s not just about getting work done, but showing the evidence of learning. This means going deeper and revising work to show learning over time. 

Step 3: Understand that formative and summative assessments are not methods, they’re about levels of understanding. It’s not just about whether something “counts” to the end grade, but showing mastery in their learning. 

Step 4: Educators can partner with students to co-create learning experiences that emphasize their strengths and potential, fostering a culture of possibility.


Challenges?

One of the challenges educators face is the complex relationship between grades, motivation, and accountability. Traditional grading practices often overshadow feedback, leading students to prioritize scores over actual learning. High-achieving students may also be reluctant to take risks, resulting in minimal learning gains. 

Additionally, educators struggle with turnaround time for providing meaningful feedback and aligning assessments with learning objectives.

One Step to Get Started 

The first step an educator can take is to start with just one unit or time frame and decide what they want kids to learn. Take whatever way you’re scoring and share it with students in a way that breaks down the learning, shifting from quantity to quality.

Stay Connected

You can find this week’s guest on LinkedIn or X at @NicoleDimich.

To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing Nicole’s Assessment Practices White Paper with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 210 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Quotes: 

• 1:55 “I think that’s the gift educators give young people—when you see possibility and help cultivate that strength.”
• 8:53 “Oftentimes, kids would rather do more assignments, do more things, and get more points rather than go deeper—and not because they don’t want quality work, but this is how the system has worked. So that shift from quantity to quality is a game changer.”
• 21:05 “When kids say, ‘Does this count?’ Then we say, ‘It counts if you show mastery.’ It’s not about a method, it’s about a level of understanding.”

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Nicole, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 

00:05 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. 

00:08 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm so excited I was just telling you I've been talking about this book to so many people so your second edition of Design in 5 is out. It is brilliant, and that's what's on my mind right now as we enter the conversation. Is there anything that you want the audience to know, either about you or to kind of keep in mind as we have that conversation today? 

00:27 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
Oh, yes, well, I guess the biggest thing for me is just this idea of creating a culture of possibility for young people and using assessments in ways that helps young people see themselves in possibility and see themselves in strength and not always deficit. So so much of the grounding of design and five, the assessment design the technical part, as well as the way we use it as a process is with in the service of like creating space where students can really grow in deep ways. 

00:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That definitely feels in line with the next question I was going to ask you so very, very freedom, dreaming of you and I know I always try to surface Dr Bettina Love's quote about freedom dreams, dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which I love. So I don't know if you want to name or elaborate on that big dream that you hold for education. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that beautiful quote as well, you know. 

01:22 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
I think it goes back to that sense of possibility. I mean, I was the little girl in Northwestern, northwestern, minnesota, where in kindergarten, first grade, I was the. The only way I got to school was because the bus driver got off the bus, grabbed my hand, got me on the bus and I was the last stop, so he like walked me into into school and it was a teacher in sixth grade who who looked at me and said, nicole, I think you've got something, I think you've got some leadership in you and like recognize possibility in me before I recognized it in myself. And so I think that's the gift that educators and others give young people and each other, like when you see possibility and you help cultivate that strength. So, and I think I also have a deep passion for partnering with students to say what is it like to be in school. So it's not just about the adults designing a system that really has not really worked for a lot of students, and even students who it's worked for potentially may or may not have transferable skills that are like OK, now it's not just a hoop to jump through. It's this meaningful experience that I'm learning really interesting things and I'm learning skills that are going to help me decide where I want to go and be, you know, really really feeling happy, successful, proud and confident. And so I think I have that dream of creating school where students are partners in their learning and that we empower educators to feel joy and love and confidence in how they are able to engage and facilitate and foster learning for students. 

02:58
So my pathway has been in lots of different spaces and assessment happens to be the central role and how I've really tried to figure out and tried to like facilitate and learn and then create space where assessment is about building relationships and assessment is about information and not so much evaluation, where we start to use it as a process. 

03:20
That's part of a culture of learning and so and I think there's really like practical ways we can do that so teachers workflow is doable, feasible, possible and and feels really like like what's what's happening is working and I can sustain it. 

03:38
And then, of course, having students just feel confident and feel and I think for me I was a pretty compliant kid, so I you know I was getting seen in my possibility a lot, but I also noticed that students who maybe didn't see school in terms of the process, didn't want to play the game or didn't see it as possible, were not getting seen in possibility. We're often getting seen in deficit, and so part of my journey has been to create space and I think we can do really innovative things in education. And if we don't transform, assessment and grading, all of that can increase pressure and stress and actually almost not necessarily negate, but also not have some of those innovative practices really realized in the potential that they have. So I think assessment and grading, but assessment in particular, sits at the center of us being able to create some of these big changes that will also result in big learning and big confidence for students. 

04:34 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love so much of that. I just I love the partnering with students. I love that you know you're kind of situating also in your own personal experience of people who found the possibility in you. I love that you know we're kind of thinking about shifting our understanding of our roles as educators in some ways right when we're thinking about partnering with students. It's not maybe how we were taught, right, but like that often that is like the shift we need to make to be able to do this. 

04:59
Well, your question of what is it like to kind of be you in school or experience school is brilliant and I love just the simplicity of it and just the importance and weight of it. So all the things I'm really excited about. And I want to ask you this next question around shifts, because I think you had so many things in this book that I read it and I was like that is totally blowing my mind and shifted everything I've thought about. And I'm often in conversations about equitable assessment and so I was like whoa, this is like an extra mindset shift that is so cool. And so I'm curious to know what is like the big one or one of the big ones that you've seen in terms of a teacher, like had this way of thinking about assessment, had this like nugget of information or thought change? And then was like oh, this has unlocked so many things for me. Is there one that sticks out for you? 

05:48 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
Yeah, well, and maybe two. I'll try to just keep it to one. They kind of bleed into one another. But one of the pieces that, as at right the teeth like a classroom piece, that so has kind of resonated is this shift from quantity to quality. So, as students are asking questions like how much is this worth? They're making decisions about how much effort they're going to put into something, by how many points it's worth, or how big it is, and so, or even we as educators will sometimes say well, this is worth this many points, so pay attention to it. So even we fall into that quantitative language. Or we categorize kids the high kids, the gifted kids, the low kids, and we it's these labels that are quantities of like. Okay, this is where you're at. 

06:35
And so when we so that shift to quality, when you take, I think one of the examples I use frequently that seems to resonate is let's take 67%. Let's say you get an assessment back and it's 67%. When you ask students, what does that mean? They often are like I don't know. Some kids are like I passed, they're so relieved and now they're done, and other students are like I failed, I'm stupid, and so why try next? And so I think, noticing the impact of those quantities on students, it really it really makes an educator's job much more difficult to help students engage when we, when they don't feel like anything they're going to do is going to make a difference, that it's going to help them learn more or even help their grade go up. So even that that in itself. So then, when we take 67% and we break it down by specific learning descriptions, so the 67% is okay. You know two of these things you know how to organize data, you know how to calculate and you need to work on interpreting data. That's the area you are struggling with. So, when people have shifted from quantity to quality, even like a rubric score of two, or if people are doing a standards-based reporting, a two can, if it's not connected to descriptions of learning, can be just as damaging as a quantitative or just as confusing for students, or they tie that quantity to their self-worth. So then, oh, this is about me instead of about my learning and what I know and what I still need to work on. 

08:06
And so that shift from quantity to quality is how do we share information around assessment so students understand what that 67% means, or understand what that two means and they're reflecting on each assessment that says okay, this means I understand these pieces and this is what I need to work on. And I think kids who do well over time like when kids do well over time and they make a mistake my experience is some students just get so freaked out or so stressed because they don't attach that mistake as an opportunity to grow. They think it's all about them and they'll do anything for points. So it appears that they're motivated by grades, but it really isn't about learning. Because you ask then, how will students revise their work? Are they interested in revising their work? Well, oftentimes kids would rather do more assignments, do more things, get more points than go deeper, and not because they don't want quality work. 

08:59
But this is just how the system has worked. 

09:02
So that shift from quantity to quality has been a game changer and, like practically just even in the last, we just, like you know, just take an assessment and put a cover page on it and break down, even if there's nothing initially attached. There's been some really not necessarily easy moves, but simple moves of just like take one assessment that you already have and break it down by learning and then see how students engage with it differently. I mean, and the cool part is for me is that when we start to do some of that, it also really eases the workflow for teachers, because now, if you know, this is what students need to work on and it's not just about, oh, they got a bad score or they got this score, so this means they need this. It's really about what is the learning they need to work on. So that's that quantity to quality shift is kind of foundational to changing from assessment being just about a grade or stop everything in assessment and really more feedback. That's helping us understand strengths and next steps. 

10:05 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that, and one of the things that you were kind of mentioning is like this idea of motivation, and so that's been such a huge piece of the conversation, right, I was just saying that. You know, last night I was in a conversation with teachers who are like we collectively agree in this virtual room that grades are not motivating and our policies are still. The things we fall back on are still that grades are motivating. So like how do we kind of parse apart that stuff and I know you cite research in the book around this and like what grades can do or not do to learning, and so yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts around like this idea that is kind of stuck in our brain sometimes that grades are motivating when actually maybe not. 

10:44 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
Yes, well, and ironically that leads to another shift in the book from really this idea of compliance and completion to this idea of evidence of learning. Because I think we have to and I've been influenced by so many great thinkers around grading Maria Ruiz Primo and Tom Guskey and James and I'm blanking get kids to do things, but as a way to say, this is where your proficiency is at this moment in time, and because it's very hard to get kids to do work when they don't feel compelled to do it. I mean, I'm seeing lots more need for students to see relevance in things, and so I think that notion of relevance is important. So, positioning grades as communication and then thinking about because, if we think about this, if we give kids I think it's Doug Reeves who talks about this experiment he says, okay, for all the students you gave zeros to one unit. If our theory is, if I give them a zero, it will motivate them to get more work done, let's track the students who got zeros, the next unit and the next unit, and if that list changed, then maybe it's working. But if that list stays the same, then we have to figure out something different, because just giving kids zeros isn't going to work. So I think there's like some I always tell people, you know, just pilot some things like create some space, and I you talked about this one study and there's some, of course, some challenges around the study itself, but essentially what happens is when you asked when you put a grade and I think this anecdotally, teachers tell me this all the time you put a grade on something and you put feedback. I mean, I was an English teacher, I used to put books on kids' papers and my deep insights they were not always taking me up on them and they were on the floor or in the trash. 

12:55
And it turns out like when you put a grade in a comment on, oftentimes students look at the grade and then they're not even looking at the comments. They'll look at their peer and say what did you get? And they're comparing numbers instead of comparing their work to a set of qualities and so delaying grades so that students pay attention to feedback and then requiring revision to kind of get through this idea. So I guess there's the focus of separating motivation from do grades motivate? They motivate some students who are really achievement driven, but they're motivating students to get more points, not to necessarily to create more quality work. So I think there's part of that. So really helping position grades as purpose. The other thing is is, or as communication of learning, and I think the other thing is we have this really this hard issue of combining everything together and averaging it and and then we don't really understand what the grade means. So a grade of C without any understanding of what goes into that can mean a myriad of things like that. Kids and kids did really well. They show evidence of academic achievement, but they had enough no homework in, and so we don't give feedback around behaviors versus, you know, academic achievement. But they handed no homework in, and so we don't give feedback around behaviors versus academic achievement. 

14:13
My son, when he was sophomore that was during COVID and he stopped doing anything and he didn't really love me asking if I could help. But he took an American Sign Language class and it was midterm and the teacher gave, of course, had to do an interview and he showed up for the Zoom, thank goodness. And at the end of the Zoom call she said Reese, you know everything you need to know. That's most essential in American Sign Language. So I'm going to exempt you from all of those other little assignments, because I have evidence that you understand. And he looked at me and he said Mom, I think I'm going to take ASL 2. I have evidence that you understand. And he looked at me and he said mom, I think I'm going to take ASL 2. And he took ASL 3 and ASL 4. And I think that teacher was so brilliant because in that moment she shifted from a focus on chasing him for getting work done, compliance and completion to really looking at evidence of learning, which saved her a ton of energy as well, because she's looking at I don't have to try to chase kids to get all these points in. Now I can look at okay, what do I have? 

15:15
And then there are some folks who'll say, well, where's the accountability? And I will say, like, was I not annoyed that he was not doing some of those things? Yes, and he did not have to do them to show mastery of the essentials. So I think we really need to explore not only motivation but accountability. What are we holding kids accountable to? Getting work done or getting to a higher quality of work? And so, yes, does Reese need feedback on the fact that there are times he's going to have to do something, some things that he doesn't want to do. But that's different feedback than the grade. So I think we have to really explore what do we talk about when we talk about accountability and how do we hold kids accountable and how do we reduce teachers stress of always trying to chase kids to get work done and really look more at evidence of learning and then our grades can really reflect learning at any given moment in time. And I think I mean that's the other issue. Of course, with all this is certainly things about if kids get it faster, do they get a better grade? There's, like some, there's lots of issues with some of those pieces that have to be explored in terms of what kind of create, what kind of culture do we want to create? But yeah, I think there's like lots of different places, but that idea of grading, of motivation, is super important. 

16:35
And then Tom Schimmer, my colleague also. He talks about giving kids credit for what they know. And so if they and I think that's where averaging becomes a really detrimental practice because if we are holding kids accountable to their initial tries at things and then we average the next try, and then we're not giving kids credit for what they know, and this is where kids will say how much is this worth? Oh, it's only going to be worth 10 percent. More than I'm not going to do it or I'm not going to put as much effort into it. More then I'm not going to do it or I'm not going to put as much effort into it. So we actually like, don't give ourselves credit as teachers. My colleague, cassie, used to say that, as we, when we inspire growth if we don't capture the most recent, the most frequent and the most consistent evidence in terms of kids learning. 

17:23 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
So yes, wow, there's so much good stuff. I love that you're weaving in like tools and mindset things and just all of this. I so love it and it's making me think actually about like the A students who actually are doing school quite well and work, you know, apparently like it seems as if they are doing well in the system, but they are so hesitant to take risks, they are so hesitant to push the boundaries of what they could do, that their learning gains each year is so small that it's like this is also harmful to them. Yes, 100%. 

17:59 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
In fact, I'm so glad you brought that up, because one of the things that I'm like you know what? Let's just take one unit and for one unit, don't grade a couple of the assignments and then see what happens. And I think people will say, well, if I don't grade it, they won't do it. And I'll say, yeah, if you don't grade it and you don't do anything with it, they absolutely won't do it. But if you don't grade it, and the next day you come in and you're like, okay, here's four ways you solve this problem. Or here's two examples of here's two examples of theme or claims, and okay, which one is yours? Okay, here we go. Let's let's revise. And if kids haven't done it, their consequence for not doing it is sitting down and doing it, so it holds us accountable to that kind of thing. Now, easier to say than do, but just the, the whole, like really thinking differently about our, our workflow is important and just like what we're choosing to do. 

18:53 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
So, yes, I love that. I mean one of the other things I we were just talking a lot about, like big, big kind of shifts and thoughts and and one of the things that is probably the most memorable from your book for me was this idea that it's an assignment can be formative and summative for different students like the same assignment. Do you mind talking through that idea, because I bet that will blow people's minds. 

19:16 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
No, I love it. We've been having so much fun talking about this because so many people are setting policies around. Formative is less percentage of the grade than summative and the theory is great, but the unintended consequences are that kids think that formative doesn't count as much, so they'll choose not to do some of the things because they again are thinking in terms of quantities. So we're messing with this notion of assessment and these are also my colleagues, tom and Cassie messing with this notion of formative. And summative is verb and action, not method. So no one can give anybody a formative assessment. There's, it's, it's has to be used by the teacher to reflect on what instruction worked, who understood, what were the misconceptions, and then it has to be used by students to say, okay, this means I know this, but this is my next step, so, so formative assessment has to be used in that way. Ok, this means I know this, but this is my next step, so, so formative assessment has to be used in that way. So then fast forward to your like, like your. That moment there is OK, so anything can be formative or summative, and teachers do this all the time if they give what they intended to be a summative. End of unit assessment and students don't do well, in that moment we're like, oh well, well, whoa, we've got to do another lesson, another instruction, a reteach and another opportunity. And in that same vein, if in a formative assessment, if, if, if we instead think about this when there's a quiz or there's some kind of assessment for the kids who show mastery, it is summative, it's evidence that helps us understand a level of proficiency. For students who don't show mastery on that assessment, it's formative because they're going to get some feedback and try again. And so if we remove these categories of formative and summative, we remove that. 

21:04
Like when kids say, does this count? Then we say, okay, it's counts if you show mastery. And again, then it's not about, it's not about a method, it's about a level of understanding, and that motivates kids to say, oh, the only way I can be done with this at the most rudimentary thing is if I show mastery, so I'm only going to get a grade when I show mastery. And when and when we do that, that alleviates the teacher's workflow too, because they're not scoring it two times. Or, and reassessment now isn't about oh, another like stop everything, have to figure this out. 

21:37
It's like, okay, more instruction and then, and then okay, when, when does it count? It counts when you show mastery, so you know whether you're using points or standards-based scoring. I mean, it works in both ways. But if we just think about it in terms of, yeah, mastery or levels of proficiency, that really helps kids who I don't know, I'm sure and I've experienced this too like kids who settle for so much less than what they can really do because it's enough for them and so on the most essential things. We're not going to do this on everything right. We're going to do this on essential skills and essential learning we want kids to have so that the workflow works. But for kids who settle when they don't get a grade, then it's like they're not going to settle for nothing, so it also pushes them to take that next level, that next step. 

22:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that language. I just wrote that down so right. Like the idea like it counts if you show mastery is such a wonderful way to kind of weave in the system of like we're working within this idea that we do have to input a grade and like this is how you still focus on the learning within that system. I feel like it's such a tough tension to kind of weave and I think that that phrase hits it. So teachers should write that down Nice. 

22:48 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
I'm wondering about oh, go ahead. Well, the only other thing I was going to say is, like people often ask me, how many formative assessments should we do, and if they're in collaboration sometimes they're using common formative or collaborative formative and I'll say only as many as you can respond to, Because that other shift of being over-tested and moving to balanced and informed is that sometimes we're collecting so much assessment information I did the formative assessment but I don't have time to respond. Well then, it's no longer formative. So I think that notion of the use of it as well as like that, helps teachers workflow and make sure that kids are getting targeted feedback that they can interpret and respond to. 

23:30 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
For sure, I know. I think about all of the people who have said like you know, there's like stacks of essays on my desk from like a month ago and it's like well, was that like maybe we shouldn't have given that assessment? 

23:40 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
Right, all of that. 

23:41 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Not helping anyone, including you. 

23:43 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
It's just adding to the pile. 

23:47 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm curious to know. We've talked through many challenges that teachers kind of grapple with around assessment. Is there any that we've missed, like another challenge that you've encountered teachers facing or kind of grappling with, and what might any advice around that challenge be for folks who are struggling with that challenge? 

24:07 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
Yeah, well, I think turnaround time to get kids feedback and information from the assessments is one and this is on a continuum, I would say in terms of making sure that the assessment design matches the learning to the cognitive assessment, to where people think students can achieve, and sometimes that's in direct alignment, but sometimes that's way below where we know that they can be. And it's all in good intentions. We don't want kids to struggle too much, but oftentimes that doesn't then push kids to really learn in deep and sustainable, transferable ways, sustainable, transferable ways, and so a lot of, I think, the idea around how do we design assessments that are really meaningful, engaging, but also really at grade level and allow kids to learn. That's been a challenge, and so sometimes I think we'll also say you don't have to assess anything below grade level when you get to that moment where you want kids to put everything together because you're doing all of those prerequisites and all of the other pieces along the way. So then you can create an assessment that's not so long because you're not having to see prerequisites alongside of the on-grade level pieces. And if you have a student doing something on grade level, whether it's a performance task or a multi-step problem or an essay. If they mess it up, you can see which prerequisite they don't understand. So you don't need to necessarily in most cases. There might be a few that you know. Of course that are exceptions, but so that helps, like save. And then the other thing or save time and save kids energy so that they're actually assessing at that piece, and I would say that that's also true for when we want to use something formatively. 

25:52
Sometimes people only assess the small pieces and so then kids will do really well, or the simple pieces or the things, the learning that we can get quick data back from. So kids will do well on the formative, but they get to the end of unit or the time when it's intended summative and they don't do as well. And so then often there's not a match there between you know kids aren't practicing the right skill to get to the end. So we kind of, I think those two challenges that's where the assessment plan has been really helpful and it's nothing new like people have done backwards design before. So this is not like something new. I'm not even suggesting that. However, I think sometimes it's become so complicated that it's hard to like just what's the simple way and a deep way. Not simple, not necessarily just, you know, surface level. It's simple and deep where you take the standards or the learning goals or descriptions of learning that you want kids to do and you match up items or you match up tasks and just that simple process. Because then if you're using another resource and you're or you're using something has been designed for you, you can match it up right away and say, oh, this doesn't do it. 

27:00
I recall a couple of weeks ago I was with a chemistry team and there was 50 questions and it was most of it like there's matching and all of this kind of matching terms and and it kind of built to a couple of the problems to solve. And they had listed the standards and they all were about describing. And we and so I'm like, okay, let's look at the item, so the first five are all matching items, and they're like, okay, that one goes to describe, and I'm like, but are kids actually describing? And he's like, oh, I get what you're saying. So there was just one and they completely changed the assessment and they've been giving this assessment for quite some time, and so it was just a very brief conversation that made that change, coupled with, I will say and I'm sure that this has been part of many of your conversations as well is just the role of AI, of your conversations as well, as just the role of AI. 

27:52
And so when we were able to say, to help lift some of the cognitive load of thinking, okay, if not matching what I've been doing for all these years, what's another opportunity, what's another way? And so using AI as a shoulder, partner or something, or you know ideas, we put it in and they came up with some beautiful scenarios and we had to tweak, of course, and you had to make sure that it aligned to that piece. But they walked up feeling pretty like, okay, I think this might be possible. And I wasn't sure because, if and now, that's a one situation. But that whole notion of designing, both at the cognitive level and then design, and then being able to shift from how we've always assessed to where we want to, that kind of piece has been good. 

28:35
And then when you put, when you are by learning goal and by standard, and you know exactly which items are lined up or what the criteria is for the task, you can more focus your feedback and you're not having to it's like, oh, I'm not going to score. 

28:51
I'm not going to comment on every little thing that annoys me. I'm going to like I shouldn't say that, but you know, you look at it and you're like, oh, or the opposite, which I should take a strength-based view of, that is, I want to make sure they know that they should do this instead of that. But that is so. So when I ask kids about feedback, that's one of the things they say is that I get so much feedback I don't know where to start. Or the teacher writes all over my work and I don't know how they got from my wrong answer or my not so quality answer to where they were. So, without seeing the process, so yeah, so I think and here I go again like assessment design, that assessment plan alleviates, helps, can help a little bit, and then, and then it feeds into all the other parts of assessment as a process, feedback that helps kids focus on learning. 

29:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
So oh, I love that. Thank you so much for going there, cause I think that really brought it home for people, too is like this is why we're doing this right, so we can give that feedback. Love the assessment plan approach, because I think that really brought it home for people, too is like this is why we're doing this right, so we can give that feedback. Love the assessment plan approach. I think that's super cool and and it's super practical. So thank you for giving so many tips throughout throughout this episode, and I and I kind of want to start to wrap us up by starting with like a kind of call to action, like a quick action step that people can do. Obviously, this work could be like incredibly transformative. People can be looking, looking at, like you know, assessment policy as a whole and, and all of that. I'm wondering if there's like a first step that you often suggest for people to to, to start with. 

30:16 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
Yeah, the the weird and messy thing about assessment is that you know everybody's on a little bit of a different journey, so there might be different first steps and that's the five phases. That's where they're in a cycle, because you can start at different places based on where you're at. But if you're in the beginning of the journey, a lot of times what I'll say is just take one unit or one time frame and decide what do you want kids to learn and really take whatever way you're scoring and share it with students in a way that breaks down the learning, so similar to what I shared in that shift from quantity to quality. So that's a first step. Another first step, if that feels too big, or, and I will say that shift of like, really communicating differently in terms of the assessment and sharing. 

31:02
Having a what I call a scoring scheme is coupled with, at the end of an assessment, asking students what their strengths are and their next steps. So what are their strengths and next steps based on that assessment information. And even young children can do this. I have a video of a student who had written a narrative on a turkey and he has a ladder of all the things to include in his narrative from events to temporal words, to theme, like he has the whole thing and he goes through and he's able to say this is what I have in place. This is my next step and I think that's what we want to do. So those scoring schemes and the self-reflection tools can be simple, but they really are a great first step to moving assessment to be more about the information, which also lays the groundwork for more meaningful and accurate grades. 

31:54
And then, I guess, the only other well, there's a few others, but the one thing I would say too, the other thing is, is this, just this idea of using assessment formatively and really exploring all the different strategies? And there's so many ways. I mean, certainly there's so many people who are focused on that notion of how do we use assessment in ways that provide formative feedback, and so I think that aspect of it and I have a design quality and that design quality of action and purpose really go into. What does that mean in exploring what our current understanding of formative uses of assessment are and then trying a few things. And there's some strategies in the book and, of course, there's strategies all over the place, so most of it is like really short, like digging into the formative practice, because we know that's where so much of the learning takes place for students. 

32:43 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love this encouragement to try something too, because it's sometimes that's what it takes to just unlock our brains from the way we've always done things. It's like let's just try, let's just see what happens, and like maybe our guesses would be proven wrong. Actually, this is really going to work very well for students. 

32:58 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
And then if we don't try to change, it's like not thinking about we're going to change the entire system. We don't have to change the entire system before we try one of those things or practice. Just try a practice and then notice what its impact is on kids learning and their confidence and the teacher workflow. That's what I like. Those are the lenses you're looking at when you try anything for just a little bit. 

33:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love those lenses. I'm going to make sure I note those. Thank you for that. So the final two questions, just to close. This one's for fun. It can be professional or personal. What is something that you've been learning about lately, ah? 

33:31 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
nice. Um well, I um I well like, totally personal, I love to sail so I am diving into and I've sailed as a little kid but I'm diving into sailing lessons and I'm going full on in my small little lakes in Minnesota and then maybe I'll transfer out there, out into, or maybe I'll transition to bigger places later. 

33:54 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
But I love that so much. Thank you for sharing that. That's incredible. I love it, and then that's awesome. I think we'll link to the book, of course, in the blog post, in the show notes, but I think a lot of listeners and audience folks will just be really eager to connect with you, follow your work and book and beyond, and so I'm curious where can people find you, or you have an online presence, or how could people get in touch with you? 

34:17 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
Absolutely so I am. I don't even know all the different names of all the things, but I'm at Nicole Dimich on all of them. So LinkedIn is probably where I'm most active right now. But of course there's there are other social media Instagram and X and all the things. So I haven't haven't ruled out anything yet, but I'm at. Linkedin is my primary piece. So Nicole Dimich at Nicole Dimich. 

34:44 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Awesome, and we'll link to that too in the blog post and everything. Thank you, nicole, this has been absolutely wonderful. I so appreciate this conversation. 

34:51 - Nicole Dimich (Guest)
I am so grateful for you and thank you so much. I'm um. Yeah, it was an honor to be here, thank you. 

Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

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In this episode, we talk to Dr. Asao B. Inoue, a researcher, writer, and professor committed to student-centered learning and innovative, antiracist grading practices. 

We explore dimension-based rubrics that focus on personalized feedback, encouraging students to engage critically with texts and their own writing processes. Additionally, the episode highlights labor-based grading systems in K-12 settings, which involve collaborative agreements with students and parents to foster a fairer and more engaging learning environment. 

The Big Dream 

Our guest's big dream for education—both K-12 and post-secondary education—is to let go of the standards that colonize us while maintaining high expectations that foster rigorous, meaningful, and joyful learning experiences. The aim is to create an educational landscape that prioritizes students' experiences and serves people rather than institutions. 

In Dr. Inoue’s words, “standards serve institutions, but expectations serve people.” So we can maintain expectations while releasing institutionalized standards, encouraging a world that is complex, diverse, and rich with different ways to understand and experience things.

Mindset Shifts Required

One key shift for educators is to move away from standardized American English as the gold standard, recognizing that while it may offer some advantages in our current racist and patriarchal world, it also carries limitations and perpetuates inequalities. Educators should interrogate these standards—how are they limiting us? What is it orienting us to in the world? 

Action Steps  

Educators can make the shift away from institutionalized standards by implementing these action steps: 

Step 1: Try dimension-based frameworks when it comes to providing feedback. Using writing about and understanding a text as an example, Dr. Inoue shares how dimension-based frameworks allow students to share their personal experiences. This is much richer to gauge their understanding than focusing on what’s “right” or “wrong.”

Step 2: Shift your perspective as an educator: it’s not your job to tell writers (students) what to do next, but allow students to receive information and make decisions. Foster a classroom community where students write from their experiences, listen to others, and offer feedback before moving forward. Use this to determine the next steps in your classroom setting from there, walking alongside your students in their journey. 

Step 3: Initiate labor-based grading in your classroom. This system is based on making a set of negotiated agreements with students (and perhaps their parents) regarding what labor will equal what grade. Collaborate with the students to create these standards and ensure everyone is on the same page. 

Step 4: Ensure you create space for self-reflection. They collect feedback from their teacher and peers, but it’s important for them to self-reflect independently on where they are and how they’re doing. This builds self-reliance in their own learning journey.

Challenges?

One challenge educators may face is student confusion when transitioning from traditional grading systems to new approaches like labor-based grading. Students are accustomed to receiving grades as indicators of their progress, so educators need to provide clear explanations and support as students adjust to these changes.

One Step to Get Started 

One step educators can take to get started is to prioritize a framing conversation at the beginning of class. Get clear, together, on this question: what are we really trying to learn in this class? Draw on your students’ lived experiences and knowledge, other fields of study, and interests in the class to map out where you are going with this class. 

Stay Connected

You can find more from Dr. Asao B. Inoue on his website. 

To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Staff Meeting Agenda series with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 209 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Quotes: 

• 3:21 “A lot of education, a lot of teaching, a lot of what we have to do because a school or a university or program requires it, confines learning and it confines students.”  
• 11:08 “When they [students] know and they feel that they are being institutionalized through things like standards and other practices in our classrooms, then they become less engaged.”
• 20:19 “All you’ve got to do is ask yourself, ‘How magical do I think my feedback is? Do I really think that what I tell my student is going to change their way of languaging that they’ve acquired over how many years from family members, loved ones, churches, the neighborhood? … I’m the one who’s going to save you from your language problems? Instead, I’d rather be another soul on the road of your language journey.’”
• 31:34 “The emotions and the feelings are wonderful to have, but they’re really not the main ingredient in a class for compassion. It is, ‘Let’s figure it out.’”

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
So welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 

00:05 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Thank you, great to be here, honored to be here, thanks. 

00:08 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm so incredibly excited for this conversation. I've been like telling everyone. I know that I get to talk to you today, so I'm curious to know you know, beyond the kind of professional bio, is there something you want listeners to either know about you or just kind of keep in mind as we enter our conversation today? 

00:27 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
I don't know. I mean knowing that your listeners are probably mostly K-12 or secondary educators. I mean, obviously, I'm a college professor and I don't teach in the public schools or in secondary. Of course, I've worked with lots of secondary teachers over the years and I have a really close affinity with that work, knowing that it's probably three times as hard as my work as a teacher. But anyway, I don't think so. 

00:57
I try very hard in all that I do in my scholarship and research and my teaching, to always try to be, as student centered and thinking about students experiences rather than thinking about and I know that this can be touchy rather than thinking about a teacher's labor and needs. That is important, it is absolutely important, but that's usually my priority. Important, but that's usually my priority. And it may come out in what we talk about, which is, I think, first, what are the students' experiences and how can I afford them as much rich experience as possible? And then, what does that mean in terms of my workload and my labor? And I'm fortunate in my profession that I don't have a heavy, heavy load of students to teach every semester and I have generous enough breaks in the academic year and year to be able to think and reflect upon my teaching and so forth. And I know not everybody gets that. In fact probably a lot of most teachers don't get that, those luxuries, so I know I'm very lucky to do that, have that. 

02:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That is really. That's very like self-aware as a college professor to name that, because that's not common. 

02:09
Thank you for proving that for us and I think so much of your work is going to. I'm really curious to hear your question here, but I think it comes through in your work. I mean your answer here is the idea of freedom dreaming. I love starting grounding conversations in this. So Dr Bettina Love describes freedom dreaming as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so, considering that, considering your work, considering all that you do, and what's that big dream that you hold for the field of education, If we're thinking about I'm gonna use the field of education really large, so not just secondary but post-secondary also. 

02:45 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
I kind of feel like there's, you know, brother and sister or something, siblings in a house, in an academic house, um, so I'm gonna think large. 

02:53
Um, I think my uh dream for education is that we is, that we somehow try to let go of the standards that colonize us, while hanging on to the expectations that teachers have and students have, that create rigor and meaningful and joyful learning experiences and make a world a bigger and better place. 

03:21
I think a lot of education, a lot of teaching, a lot of what we have to do or required to do because a school or a university or program requires it through outcomes and other things, confines learning and it confines students and relegates some students to certain places and others and really tries to create little cogs that all kind of look and sound and do the same things. That's really great for a corporate machine, it's really great for a society that has all these things neatly put out, but that's not the way the world really works and it's certainly not an interesting and joyful one. That's complex and offers lots of different ways to understand things, experience the world, et cetera, and language. So I think that's what I'd like to see. Is this letting go of institutionalized standards, that is, standards really serve institutions whereas expectations serve people, and I can have my expectations as a teacher. A student can have their expectations for their learning, but those are not necessarily the same things as institutional standards. 

04:28 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love this so much. Okay, thank you for this grounding. This is really helpful because it isn't just like we're releasing the challenge or we're releasing the expectations right, we're keeping those because the standards serve institutions. Okay, this is really helpful. This is really helpful. I am curious, I think, with often very, very common challenge for me in coaching around grading, assessment rubrics, any of the kind of assessments habitus. I guess, as you described right, it's like there are some mindset shifts that we have to overcome before we can even get to the thing of like how do we do the thing, and so I'm curious to know are there mindset shifts that you have either coached on, helped illuminate, had yourself? That's really like kind of a foundation for what you eventually like help people to do? 

05:20 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Well, I mean, of course, I'm a. My center, my research center, is language and teaching, writing and communication in the college setting. So of course, language is at the center of some of the mindset shifts that I would that I would call those things. So, for instance, when I'm working with teachers, college teachers or whatever, one mindset shift that we have to to to to try to figure out how to make that we have to try to figure out how to make and we each do it differently because we all have different relations to this is to that standardized, edited American English that tends to be like the gold standard. This is how you succeed, this is how you're going to get taken seriously, this is how you get your A's, this is how you get your scholarships. 

05:59
And all those things are not untrue. There's an element of truth to them. But, like all misinformation, that element of truth hides other stuff that is so untrue and so bad for us. And that's the shift that we have to make, which is that, just because we can have an element of truth to say, oh, standardized American English, there's some good things that that can offer somebody in a world that's racist and white supremacist, but that in alone should tell us that it carries with it a lot of bad stuff. So I'm not one to say, oh, we should never teach that it should not be in our classrooms. I don't think that's true. 

06:37
I think I get read that way a lot, but that's only because I'm critical of that and I'm not going to just simply let my students blindly reproduce it. 

06:47
I'm going to certainly ask them what their goals are around it and then we're going to interrogate those goals and that standard so that we can understand better where it comes from, who it benefits, what happens when we put other kinds of languaging next to it and try to figure out a wider sense of criticality. 

07:06
That is, I don't think you can be critical of a dominant English without some other kind of English next to it to help build criticality. That's how you create distance right. It's like trying to work on a ship out in the ocean while you're using it and while you're on the deck and the engines are pumping and you have to get off that ship and you have to look at it from another angle to see what is it really able to do? How is it limiting us? What is it orienting us in the world? To see and understand. And then we realize, oh, there's so much other stuff out there, so other ways to be oriented. Again, not to say it's bad, just to say that's a mindset shift that I think we can make. And then, once we start making that, all kinds of other ideas start to come up for teachers, I think pedagogy-wise as well as assessment-wise. 

08:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
You're naming what's happening in my brain right now, because I'm like, oh right, because if we need to create the distance and put things next to each other, how do we lift up student writing and like individual student voices in our classrooms, as well as things out in the world and bringing those in? There's so many pedagogical moves you can make. Once you oh gosh, this is so good. Okay, thank you for that. I really appreciate that. And then I also just love I wanted to just make sure listeners heard that the idea of asking your students what their goals are, because I've certainly had students the last four years I taught. I worked at an all. It was a newcomer school, so it was all students who are new to the country and new relatively new to the English language as high schoolers, and there were many students who were like I need to get into college. 

08:59 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
And so I need to write this way and I need to. You know what I mean, like all of these things. And I was like, okay, how do we do this? And be critical. And so I really appreciate that you can invite students to name the goals and then you can help interrogate the goals and create that space for the criticality. 

09:07
You mentioned that particular teaching context because you know most, I think I should say many students, depending on the group that we're talking about, like that group, very specialized kind of group, so they have touch or contact with only certain kinds of ideas about the English language. 

09:19
So that is going to limit in many ways what goals they might want to have or think they want to have, and so I think part of my job also is to help them explore what wider range of goals might they have. For instance, could we not investigate the history of the English that you think you want and whether how it gets read and understood in other parts of the world? How it gets read and understood in other parts of the world I mean most of the English spoken in the world today are not the standardized English that we speak in the United States or in Great Britain or in Australia or in other major English-speaking centers. They are other kinds of Englishes and they're being used quite communicatively and they have all their power and all the things they do and they're usually hybridized and multilingual in terms of like drawing on other linguistic resources. So and that makes them different in some interesting ways, and why would we not want to not look at those we can if that's available to us in a classroom? 

10:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Absolutely. I mean, I think that also speaks to the idea of engagement, right, when we say, oh, students are disengaged or whatever, like here's exactly how to bring in the engagement while doing critical thought and criticality and all of the things. I mean that it's like a twofer, like yes, let's do that. 

10:37 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
I'm glad you mentioned. I'm glad you mentioned engagement, because I feel like one element this is not the only thing I think, but about engagement, but I think one crucial or one, one dynamic I've noticed about student engagement, and this is granted, this is college students are not, so they've already gone through 12 years perhaps of of public schooling or some kind of schooling to before they get to me. So they're, they're indoctrinated in certain ways, um, but I ways. But I feel like from my observations that oftentimes students are, when they know and they feel that they are being institutionalized, that is, through things like standards and stuff like that and other practices in our classrooms, then they become less engaged because it feels panoptic, it feels like they're being manipulated, because they are, and it ceases to become about what is inside me that I want to learn about here, or what do I get energized about, or how do I grow and develop alongside my colleagues next to me? How do I help them in their learning? 

11:46
It's not about that. It's about follow this standard, achieve these things here that we've already listed for you, and that's the. And they what didn't require them to be there to figure those things out? And I think all learning requires students to be there to figure out what we're going to do and how we're going to, why we're going to accomplish it, and that's really hard, I know, to do in systems that have so many students and that you don't have a lot of time. But that in itself is an institutional problem that I think we could solve. But it's a problem created by institutions that have certain kinds of regulations on oh, here's when things start, here's when they end, and all of that stuff. 

12:21 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
So yeah, absolutely, and it makes me think about, like, the difference between standardized based grading and dimension based grading, which you I don't know if I can't know for sure if that's a term you coined, you can tell me. But I loved it because I was just like this. I've never been exposed to this language. This is exactly it, and it divorces kind of the things you've described. Right is like the standards for institutions and the idea that expectations served us and our students. I'm curious about kind of this idea of like what the difference is, but then also this idea of the reader-writer dynamic and the interplay that you describe. I think it speaks to kind of what you're saying. Right is like you have to be here and I as the reader am important and my understanding of the writing is important, and that makes kind of the dimension. I don't know if I understand that right. I'm gonna let you talk. 

13:16 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Yeah, no, you got it. So the biggest difference between, first of all, dimension-based rubrics and standards-based rubrics. So I got my. I didn't realize I was doing this for like about a decade until I turned around and realized, oh wait, my rubrics aren't rubrics. They're not the same as the rubrics that when I see in books or other places, a rubric or whatever, like a value rubric or you know, whatever they were dimension-based, whatever they were dimension-based, and that came out of naturally, out of my pedagogy, out of the work I'm doing. But so then I started to frame well, this is really, these are dimensions, they're not lists of expectations that a student has to meet like a little outcome, a tiny outcome. 

14:02
So I then, when I was doing that work, I found some work in secondary ed that looked at that coined single point rubrics I'm sure some of your rubrics. So it's kind of like a single point rubric, the dimension based rubric, but they're really dimensions that get readers to ask a question about some aspect or dimension of the writing in front of them, the languaging in front of them, as opposed to standards-based, which I'm sure everyone knows. They're often in grids, they often have points or letter grades attached to them. This is an A, here are the characters, here's a, b or whatever, and then they're going to be divided by the whatever dimensions that are being looked at decided upon. So I find that there's certainly some advantages to those two standards-based rubrics, but and I understand how some teachers may have to use them because of departmental or school requirements and such but there may be ways to critically analyze and critique them with students. That would be meaningful. 

15:09
You know academic and learning activities, but for me, dimension-based frameworks are much more powerful when it comes to providing feedback, because they stop judging students and their writing in the ways that students are used to, that is, you did this right or do this. Instead, instead, they ask for the reader's rich experience of the text. So what was my experience along this dimension? And now my feedback to the writer is much more about my languaging habits and how I'm interpreting this, what I'm bringing to this text and what I'm not, and what I expected and what I didn't get or what I did get, and so forth. So of course you're saying this is confusing, because I thought you were going to tell me this thing up front and you didn't tell that to me, but you told it to me on page 10 or seven or whatever. So those things come out in that. 

16:06
But really the main thrust of what I find useful for feedback from dimension-based rubrics is the reader's experience, that sort of rich, thick kind of commentary on it. And I do this through a kind of Lectio Divina kind of exercise with students where we read one or two pages depending on how long it is. Let's say it's a three-page piece that they're going to give feedback on. They read one page, they pause for five minutes and they write what did I just hear in that last page? What was the most salient or important things that I thought was in it? What am I confused by and why? And it's the whys in all those that really matter, because that's what pulls out the readers' habits of language, their training. And I tell them if you have a model in your head and mind, a particular author, a particular text, a particular lesson, say it. Don't hide it with abstract terms. Just tell us. 

17:04
I'm thinking about George Orwell here because I only read Animal Farm. That's all I know and this is what I'm looking at and this is what I'm comparing. That is really meaningful information to a writer. So it's that those things help bring out. And that's where I find the most important thing about judgment, which in classrooms, which is we got to find a way to divorce it from somehow this idea that assessing a piece of writing or giving it feedback whether it's peer or teacher is somehow this exercise in determining whether the student is right or wrong. 

17:36
And what does the student do next? That is not my job as a teacher, nor is it a peer's job to tell a writer what to do. Our job is to give them our responses, our reactions to their language. Their job is to figure out from that rich information what do I do next. Because only I know what my purposes are, only I know what I think I want to do, only I can feel oh, I learned something new from that reader. I want to do that now. I don't want to do my original thing. So I can't tell them what that is, even though I may have some ideas about it, but I don't. I don't know what it is and I don't want to know. I want them to tell me and show me what that stuff is. 

18:15
So for me, my first year writing classes, for instance, they always start with, like you know, a couple of truisms about the word, the writing and the feedback that we do, which is good. Writers don't take orders, they receive information and they make decisions. They don't take orders, they make decisions. So that means good readers who give feedback, good readers. They don't give orders, they provide a rich experience of the text. That's it. 

18:45
And once we can figure out how to do that better, then all of a sudden all kinds of magic happens and we get to take advantage of the Englishes and multilingual languages in the classroom and we get to have that critical distance that I was talking about. We get to see oh, look what the limitations of this is, look what the limitations that. Look at what this affords us, look what this one affords us. And then, what do you want to do? What's the next step for you? 

19:09
And this is where, if we have an institutional standard now, I got to say you got to do this, I don't want to do that. It's like putting a big juicy cake on the table and saying doesn't that look delicious? What do you think it tastes like? And then go. You can't have it. I'm going to eat this cake because I'm I'm the only one that can qualify to eat this cake. You can't eat the cake, but I can eat the cake. You can watch me eat the cake, you can appreciate how I eat the cake, but you don't get to have any cake yet. You guys couldn't take about five more years of schooling before you can have some cake. 

19:42 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Oh my gosh, this is mind blowing to me. This is so good. I'm like taking furious notes. This is the idea. I think the biggest aha for me in all of that is like that it is not our jobs to tell writers what to do next. It is that like made me pause and just rethink everything. I know that's the teacher, so thank you for that. I love that. I love that analogy to the cake too. 

20:08 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Yeah, and I think the best thing that a teacher can do is be really honest with themselves about their feedback, that they give and I'm not trying to criticize anyone because I put myself in the same category and I would say all you've got to do is ask yourself how magical do I think my feedback is? Do I really think that what I tell a student is going to change their way of languaging, that they've acquired over how many years from family members, loved ones, churches, other, the neighborhood? Why do I think I'm that? Now, I'm not saying I'm not powerful in many ways I certainly am as a professor or as a teacher, but I don't want that. I don't want to wield that kind of power Like I'm the one who's going to save you from your language problems, like, instead, I'd rather, I'd rather be another, another soul on the road of your language journey and you meet me and you can. You take what you can take today and you walk, continue to walk on that journey, on that road, and find out what else you can learn from the next person. 

21:09 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
So, yeah, I think it speaks to like such a like an inquiry based type of teaching. Like I mean just this idea that I mean I'm imagining, right, if I were to go back in the high school classroom, which now you're making me want to just like give me a class again. I want to try to be better as a teacher. This like journey is such a cool concept because I imagine you get the feedback from the rich reading experience. Right, and it's. It's. Here are the things that I have in my brain of things that I want to do based on what I already know, but then also maybe that I want to explore in other writers or people in my community. Like, oh, I really like how my mom has this like languaging around this like thing. I want to try to bring that in, or something right. Like I think there's avenues for further inquiry in the spaces that kids already inhabit, people already inhabit. I think that would be so fun to play with. 

21:57 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Yeah, I, for years I in first year writing courses, I would. I changed my practice from having a portfolio at the end of the semester where it was a combination, it was a compiling of their best stuff, and then a reflection on well, what did I, what did I learn here, what I still got to work on, what did, and all that, which is, I don't nothing wrong with that kind of a portfolio, it works very well. But I moved to let this portfolio be your illustration of your journey of learning in this class and then let the letter of reflection sort of help us understand what that journey is. Maybe you give us a metaphor for the journey, maybe you walk us through what that journey was. So I was really trying to get them to. 

22:41
I realized that the metaphors can be limiting for some students who don't think temporally, like day one, day two, et cetera, or spatially. For me, journey is a spatial metaphor more than a temporal one, although I know it's both of those things. But so for me, I like the idea of geography, topography, spaces, so that is what was interesting to me about it and that's what I share with my students. So I would get a lot of this and it was really actually kind of very meaningful and actually I enjoyed reading those portfolios more than I did reading the other ones that were more about okay, what did I learn? And here's my reflection on this class, which, again, not bad and there were certainly wonderful things there, but I just wanted to hear what they thought their journey was, and that was it was better for me. 

23:32 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That's awesome. I love that I do. I do totally think selfishly as teachers. It's like do the thing that you have fun engaging in, reacting to. 

23:40 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Right, that's a card. That's my cardinal rule. Like I'm not going to sign anything I don't want to read. That's my cardinal rule. 

23:45 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Like I'm not going to sign anything I don't want to read Totally, so I think switching gears a little bit here, I think all related. Of course, this idea of labor-based grading is one that was brand new to me when I read your work, and so I'm curious to know, like especially thinking about the K-12, like maybe it's completely the same in terms of the? I know you've worked with a lot of secondary teachers, and so I'm curious to know what that might look like in K-12 spaces, or secondary spaces particularly, and any advice you have for teachers who are interested in implementing something like this. 

24:18 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Yeah, I think it really depends on where you're at in that K-12 space. So I think so I've worked with middle school and high school teachers. Obviously, the farther in that journey you get, the older the students are, the more they're able to negotiate a little better, and so it's easier, I think, in that way from there Again, depends on your context. I think some schools have really engaged parents. 

24:45
And those parents have very particular ideas about what you're supposed to be doing with their students, with their students in your classrooms, despite the fact that probably most of them don't have any degrees in education or in college. But it's their students, I get it, it's their kids, they, they, they have a right to be a part of that. So I would say, like, so that caveated, I would say that Labor-based grading is really about making a set of negotiated agreements with students and perhaps with their parents, about what labor will equal what grade. So this can be done in a number of ways. I use a contract system where we get to use the contract as a way to sort of say here is what we're trying to do and why we're doing it, and then here's how the grade gets figured out. That has worked very well for me and it's only about labor. Now you can do hybrid contracts where up to a certain grade which in the past when I did them, it was up to a B and then after that it was determined by a collaborative agreement between the student, a few peers and myself about whether they exceeded expectations along several dimensions. That I found ultimately to be unfair to students, because I'm saying all the way up to this, do your thing, you don't need to please me. And in the end you kind of have to please me. End, you kind of have to please me. So in the end I moved to a pure labor base where the default grade is an A plus. It's the highest grade possible in whatever system you have. And then if you don't do work, if you turn stuff in late or whatever, then that starts to go down, based on what we've agreed or negotiated in the contract. 

26:33
Usually there's two points of negotiation one at the very beginning and one in the middle or near the, depending on how long the semester is. At the near the end or middle end of the semester, so that you know they get a second chance. They realize oh wait, now I know what this is about. Let's. Is this still fair enough for us? Okay. What do we need to do to make it fair? Let's. Is this still fair enough for us? Okay. What do we need to do to make it fair? Let's vote. All votes of any changes on my contracts are for a super majority, which means not one. One student can't dictate or determine the, the, the. You know the destiny of all the students in the class, so it's gotta be two thirds agree to it. 

27:10
I, at this point, in my classes, at least at the college level, we don't get a lot, hardly any changes, because my contract has been changed so much by students that it's kind of, at least right now at issue. It's settled a bit in the classes I teach and students are like I don't have anything I can change here. I like like it, let's try it. And then, um, the only thing that might that has like shifted a little bit, is like number of late things or something like that. Uh, uh, but hardly ever, like just so rare, and the movement is like okay, one more late, like for to get to get this grade, okay, and then we vote and then I change it and then we we move on and finish the semester. 

27:53
So so how that would look in a in a high school setting or in a middle school setting, for instance, I think I'm going to guess, given what I know about past teachers and also you know just my sense of things, and I could be completely wrong. I think that parents ought to be a part of the process if they want to be and if that's appropriate, for I think that there should be a very a period in the beginning. So if the teachers are gonna be a part of the process, then they ought to also be a part of the learning process too. That is, my students have to learn what grading is, the history of grading, why we're doing what we're doing, what things have been institutionalized in grading and how harmful they are. That's a little bit like two ounces of research and then they read that, reflect on it, and I would expect the parents to do the same. 

28:54
I would say there's just no way you can be a part of these negotiations if you're coming in with no knowledge of what we're negotiating. It doesn't make any sense. So you just gum up the works too much. You're just uninformed. So here's how to be informed. Here's the stuff we're looking at. Please look at it and then we you can engage also with it, and I would encourage you to do so. That's how I would do it if I were in in a, say, a high school or middle school, and I've had a few uh, uh teachers in the past who did that, who did that kind of stuff with with. Now I have, uh, you know, I put together on my website a number of resources that I ask students to look at that are student facing, and I think they probably would be appropriate for high school. I don't know about middle school. Maybe the teacher you know teachers would be more, um, uh, more apt to figure that out if that's, if it's uh, you know, doable, maybe walking through some of it, but they're like podcasts and blog posts that are that are the same, that so, and they sort of just walk through these things and then we, along with that. 

29:56
I think it is for me these days vital that my negotiations with students are also coupled with parallel activities in which we negotiate our charter for compassion, how we're going to work with each other on all the work in the class, including the contract, but also our feedback, also the activities in the class and outside the class, and it boils down to a set of practices compassion practices that we agree to try to do, and then we revisit those with every assignment and identify two that we're going to try to focus on in that assignment and then say a few words in each assignment about how well we thought we did when we did it, so that keeps reminding us structurally in the class. Oh, we're trying to be compassionate. I'm trying to find compassion in my practices and I try to really reinforce, with some literature from different disciplines on compassion, that compassion is not a feeling. Don't mistake thinking that you have to feel good to somebody or you have to feel empathetic towards someone to be compassionate. 

31:00
Compassion is an action. It's something you do. You end up feeling empathetic after you've done compassion for a while. So it's all mixed up, we get it all mixed up. So it's we. Just it's all mixed up. We get it all mixed up. 

31:17
Um, in some ways I'd say it's the same as love. 

31:18
We don't you. 

31:18
You can, we can have feelings of love towards somebody immediately for all kinds of biological reasons, but real, long-standing, sustainable love is something you build every day with somebody and it's through the experiences and the things you do and commit to each other, and that is actions. 

31:31
So for me, the emotions and the feelings are do and commit to each other, and that is actions. So for me, the emotions and the feelings are wonderful to have, but they're really not the main ingredient in a class for compassion. It is let's figure out, what can we do and notice in others when we can say oh, they're being trying to be compassionate. I'm trying to be compassionate regardless of how we feel about each other or what we feel about it. So that has been a really big game changer for me, because it means we get such a wide table to work on, because we're so generous with each other, because we know we're all trying to be compassionate and we're working on it with every assignment. So compassion practices, along with the contract itself, really work together in my classes, or with the contract itself really work together in my classes. 

32:13 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That's amazing and I can see the interplay between having the charter for compassion and the labor contract and the dimensions, like having a dimensions-based kind of system of feedback, because if the dimension system is clear, then people are able to put in the labor and see like my writing is growing, I'm doing the writing that I want, like I'm a richer writer and readers are having richer experiences and I'm not like fearful of the feedback and I'm leaning into the feedback because the charter for compassion is in place, right Like I can see all of those working together really nicely. 

32:49 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Yeah, and that you remind me one thing that that I do think is important for teachers, who who haven't done labor-based grading before but want to do it, and who haven't done, say, dimension-based rubrics but I've used standard ones but want to do it. When they do it, students will get confused. They're going to because they're the things that they are used to that tell them how well am I doing, am I on the right track? What's my grade? And they're gone, but they're replaced with other things. So one of the things I found has really helped, especially around that feedback thing, because they're still going to go like OK, so what grade would this get if I like? Wait, I don't know, I have no idea what I'm not thinking in those doors. We don't know. I have no idea what I that's I'm not thinking in those doors. We don't have a rubric, we don't. So I can't tell you that. And this sounds like I'm being evasive, right. So the best way I've found to to to uh allay a lot of those anxieties for students is to to include an activity at the end after feedback. They get all their feedback from peers and me and I want them now to send me a letter. All I want is this letter is going to be designed around, say, two, three or four, depending. You can decide what the capacity of your students are comments from all the feedback that tell them something about their writing. So I'm basically asking them tell me, describe these three, two or three, four things that you got from feedback, what they're telling you about your writing, what you think you want to do next, and then what does that tell you about how well you're doing and developing in this class as a writer? So what do you think you're? Where do you think you are now? So I'm really just trying to build some muscles for them to figure out on their own how well am I doing in this and be a little more self-reliant on themselves to figure that out. They get information from me and from their peers, so it's not like they're doing it by themselves. But they need to realize that they should have been doing this all along. They just didn't have any opportunities to do it right. 

34:52
Just because you get a grade from a teacher on a paper or whatever doesn't mean that you know how well you're doing on the learning. You know how well you're doing in the class, but that is not the learning right? That's not. You know, as I like to say. You know that don't build a good bridge. It's the learning in the class that may build that bridge, but it's not your A or your B. It's not going to build no bridge. So what is it? You tell me what you think you're learning, and then I get to have a conversation with them. I can respond because it's a letter, right? So I respond back oh, here's what you said, here's what I'm noticing. I don't try to tell them they're not. My point is not to correct them this is revolutionary. 

35:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love this. I love this concept. It's really good, and I think it almost is like a doubling down on self-assessment, like we, we ask students to self-assess, but we do it usually with like a standards-based rubric, and so it's like it's still in that vein, so this is so cool. Okay, I recognize our time is almost up, so we're going to shift to kind of some final questions and we'll just do kind of a lightning round, if that's okay with you, for sure. So this is all super big, transformative kind of practice that we've been talking about. I'm curious to know if someone's ending an episode like listening to this episode walking into a school building about to teach their high school class, right, what's something that they could maybe do, or start to do in a small way, like today, how do they get the ball rolling on some of this stuff? 

36:24 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Well, I think it depends on what they do. They want to try to transform their grading practices, if they can. Do they want to try to transform their feedback practices, if they can? Or do they want to try to transform the conversations they have about language and standards? So those things I've heard us talk about in this, you know, in the last 30 or so minutes. So I think it really depends on what those are. What is the lowest hanging fruit, do I think Again, I think it may depend, but I think that third one conversations about that is framing what it is that we're really trying to learn in this class. 

36:57
If it's a language class that standardized English, so the first thing that they should do is not go in there and start talking about what they think they know about it, especially if they haven't done any research on what it is and where it comes from and what. I think that's the first thing they should, folks should really do if they haven't already done that. I am still I've been doing it for like 25 years I'm still studying the English language, so so I think it's important that we can keep doing it, and because we can, we learn new, new stuff all the time and I think it's important to to get to draw on a number of fields. So not just education, not just linguistics, not just rhetoric and composition, not just those kinds of of things, but also history and sociology and psychology. Those are the places I draw on on a lot these days because they say so much about, about how we understand language and what language has been used for and what, what we know about it. So, so that's the first thing. 

37:55
I would say that if it's low-hanging fruit, if it's something that they're they're really unsure about, then maybe, um, they start by getting some information about what they, how they want to frame that standardized English, and then ask students about their experiences of it. That's where I always start. I just say, when I've set up on the first day, if I think that a class is going to be unsure, anxious about labor-based grading, my first activity, before we talk about the contract and look at the preamble of it, to talk about its philosophy, and then, before we look at those podcasts and stuff, I ask them to just do a little bit of writing about one experience that deals with grading that they've had in their schooling. What is it? Tell me about it. I say nothing more than that, and what I find is eight or nine times out of 10, it is a negative experience, it's not a good experience, and so I'm like interesting, hmm, why do you suppose? What do we think? So we just start making some pattern recognition in the class together. 

38:56
All we gotta do is look at four or five who are willing to share, and we find out that we're pretty, it's pretty common, and it doesn't matter if high performers, you know, people in the middle of the room or whatever you know, they're all they have. They all can share some similar similarities. And so then I share some of the research on grading and why you are not abnormal. This is absolutely the what, what happens in grading. This is what grading does to people. So I start with students, I ask them their experiences of language and grading, and that often gives us so much to work with, and all you've got to do is have some things in your back pocket to be able to pull out. Well, here's some research that shows this. Here's Paul Dietrich, and he talks about how unreliable grading is and all that stuff. So I think those, those kinds of things, can be really easy to do quickly. 

39:47
I mean, I'm always surprised by, not by what I learn about, what students know about language from their education, but what those experiences have been for them. That's what I'm surprised about that in this day and age we can still have the kinds of really negative and deeply problematic language-based experiences in schools. It shocks me. I'm just I'm shocked and I want to go. I'm so sorry that you've been treated this way and that your language has been treated this way. It should not be. Our language is one of the most precious things we have, and we get it from all the people who love us and even some of the people who don't, and so even the people who hate us or don't like us still give us these gifts of language. So I think it's a really wonderful, paradoxical thing that we ought to pay more attention to and be real tender with you know I mean it's, it's a, it's a, it's a careful thing. 

40:44 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love all of that so much, this idea of the language being so important, the grounding in students' experience and then having that research to be able to say you're not alone. Brilliant, I love that. Okay, two more really fast ones. One one thing you've been learning about lately or I know you're writing a new book, something that you've been like writing about lately feel free to answer. 

41:08 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
I've already mentioned one of the things I've been learning about recently, which is the, which is I go out in different fields to find stuff and and I I've only up until this last year and a half, two years I've only dipped my like two toes into racial linguistics, the literature and racial linguistics, and but I've done more so in the last two years and I'm not learning new things. I'm learning that the stuff I know from rhetoric and composition as a field, from educations that talk about how standards and such can be racist when used in assessment ecologies, match very tightly to racial linguistics, and so now they're not thinking in pedagogical terms, they're thinking just in linguistic terms and so forth and sociological terms. But it matches very tightly to that. So it's this cognate field that sort of is paralleling in many ways and we should know as writing teachers and so forth, we should, I think, know more about it, those things. But what I'm working on is actually just a guide for college and high school teachers who want to have anti-racist orientations to language in their teaching. So it is a monster book that I've been working on for over three years, four years now, really. 

42:21
That has currently 11 chapters. That's like, oh my God. It's like so big. None of those chapters are small chapters. I mean it's completed, but I'm working through it again, thinking did I do? Was I doing the right thing? It started. 

42:41
This started out as a book on anti-racist how to teach anti-racist grammar Cause I got that question so much like okay, so, but I have to teach grammar and I so how do I do it in a way that's anti-racist. And I started writing that book and a year and a half later I scrapped half of that draft and said I can't do this. This is not the thing I'm interested in. I can't, there's no. So I, and now that ended up being one chapter which I'm actually really, really proud of. 

43:07
It's it's anti-racist grammaring and it's a. It's a big, thick chapter. That ends the book, but it's not the heart of the book. The heart of the book is thinking about what is the? What does a teacher of language, whether they're high school or college, what do they need to know and consider in order to have an anti-racist orientation? To languaging and its teaching of it? And so it goes through theories about language and race and judgment and Marxist theory and the history of taxonomies of race and then the languaging of race from Black and Latin and Asian and Oriental and white, and then it looks at habits of white language and white language supremacy and then ends with anti-racist grammar. That's what I'm working on. 

43:54 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Oh my gosh, I cannot wait for that book to come out. Thank you for doing all of that work, and so, in addition to people looking that up when it comes out, where can people connect with you online or kind of follow your work? 

44:05 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Oh, my website has a lot of that stuff there and the podcast and things that a lot of information that supports teachers who use or trying to use and learn about labor based grading. So that's just my name, Asal B Inouye, at or dot com, and you'll find it right there. And then there's a whole page that that I you know build that gives resources for teachers and students around labor based grading template contract, as well as some the philosophy there is I'm only going to archive open source stuff that's free and available. So stuff that's in a journal that's got a paywall, I don't tend not to put up there, but things that are available, that are free, then I can put those up there and feel good about it. 

44:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Amazing. We'll link to that in the blog post and the show notes and everything so people can grab that link. Thank you so much. This has been such a wonderful time. Thank you for going over our time. 

45:08 - Asao Inoue (Guest)
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you, Lindsay, for asking me and for all of your good hard work, so thank you. 

​

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In this episode, we’re continuing to talk about transforming the systems that uphold inequity in our schools. Specifically in this episode, we’re addressing classroom, school, and district grading policies.   

Why? 

A-F, 0-100 grades work for a small number of students. Meta studies show that kids who get high grades are the ones that know how to do school, and these are often students who have inequitable access to that information. (Joy Nolan in a Competency Collaborative presentation). 

Averages penalize students who enter the class without already knowing the content and skills. A student who is struggling with a skill in the first month of school has a grade from when they were first practicing the skill count equally with a grade they received in the last month of the school year? That’s nuts when you think about it. 

0-100 scales seem to me to be based on the percentage of recall-based questions a student gets right or wrong on a test. We know from the research that tests are inequitable and not super effective at measuring transferable skills. Project-based assessments are much better, as students in PBL classrooms understand the content on a deeper level, retain content longer, and still perform as well or better on high-stakes tests than students in traditional settings (BIE research summary).


What?

Step 1: Discuss the why with staff

Share the research. Invite questions and concerns. Interrogate deficit language or harmful beliefs that arise in the discussion. Bring it back to equity, and ground it in your shared community values.  

Step 2: Discuss the why with families and students 

This is new for students and families too! Have conversations with families and students about the new practice, what it is and is not, and why you are making the shift. Use the same key ideas as listed in Step 1 above.  

Step 3: Learn from those who’ve done it

Competency Collaborative is an organization in NYC. They are an excellent resource for relevant research, examples, and stories of equitable grading shifts across many schools. Check them out! 

The Crescendo Ed Group developed guidelines that emerged from their research, which includes: 

• Use a 0-4 scale instead of a 0-100 point scale and avoid giving students scores of zero
• Weigh recent performance more heavily
• Grade content, not subjective ‘effort ́ like attendance or homework completion
• Allow retakes, and replace previous scores with current scores
• Grade based on standards-aligned rubrics that you share with students
• Use self-reflection, peer feedback, and support self-regulation to support independent learning skills, but don’t grade these.

Ashley, a teacher who worked with Competency Collaborative, discusses her shift to competency-based teaching and assessment in this video (from 34:41 to 37:00).

Step 4: Co-create an equitable grading policy

Create a policy that works for your community in partnership with students, families, and educators. Consider the why when making decisions, and be sure to leave with the structures that will need to be put in place to support implementation of the new policy. 

Step 5: Implement with solid systems for feedback and revision

Specific Skill-Based Rubrics: Embed specificity and feedback into the rubric with which you assess all of your students’ work. For more details, check out the previous episode) 

Resource Banks: When students receive feedback that they have not yet met the standard, give them a next step. Share with students: instructional videos or texts as well as activities or mini projects so they can improve specific skills. 

Workshop or “Upgrade” Days: Revision or feedback cycles are important and take the place of typical “grade inflation” practices such as homework or completion grades. 

Get Metacognitive: As you implement or after a specific amount of time, gather feedback from stakeholders on your new system of feedback and grading. Adapt as needed.  


Final Tip

If this is absolutely a no-go for you this year, try this as a stepping stone: All feedback, grading, and rubrics use competency-based categories, but the grades are translated at the end to correspond to a 0-100 scale. For one example of this, check out the “JumpRope to Transcript Grade Conversion” table on this webpage. 



To help you facilitate the adaptive conversations mentioned in steps 2 and 3 above, I’m sharing my Root Cause Analysis Worksheet with you for free. Use this strategy when you are digging into the beliefs around grading and the inequitable distribution of grades among your students. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 160 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

TRANSCRIPT
Educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for Teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to episode 160 of the time for teacher podcast. Today, we're continuing the conversation in our series about transforming the systems that uphold inequity in our schools and districts. And specifically in this episode, we're continuing a conversation from the previous episode, episode 159 on grading for equity. Today, we're talking about rethinking averages and 0 to 100 scales specifically.

00:01:03
So let's take a look at our grading policies together. Here we go. Before we jump into our conversation on grading for equity, rethinking averages and 0 to 100 scales I do want to go through the why as I usually do, I like to cite the research and think about like, why are we even doing this because it's going to be a hard shift. This is certainly as I talk about often an adaptive leadership challenge. So a through F 0 100 grades, they only work for a very small number of students. And these are the students that do well in school already. So we don't need in a conversation about equity and transforming systems to prioritize and center those students wellness, they are going to be just fine. I promise you. I was one of those students who did really well and meta studies back this up, they show that kids who get high grades are the ones that know how to do school. And these are often the students who have inequitable access to that information. I had access to that information because my parents were both teachers, right? I knew how to do school. Well, I was also just like I think skilled at specific things that made me do school. Well, I uh maybe surprisingly just I'm listening to the podcast.

00:02:07
I'm a rule follower in many aspects of my life. Of course, not all I push for justice and resist rules that, that contribute to injustice, but I just did school well because I was trained to do school. Well, I had access to that information. I had access to the cultural capital of having an educator in my school district. That was my mom and another educator, my dad in, in a, in a neighboring district. So that is first and foremost, right? Like we're privileging the students who already do well, if we use that as an excuse that like it's working for some kids, it's working for the kids who are already advantaged. The next thing is when we talk specifically about averages, averages penalize students who enter the class without already knowing the content and skills. Now, that's just silly. Right? If we think about a class, it is designed to teach something. So on the first day or the first month of that class, you do not expect the students to know all the things right?

00:03:10
When we think about and we talk about this in the previous episode, but this idea of competency based grading and grading for skills that are transferable and have a long duration. They last the whole year. We are consistently working on a handful of skills building those up the first time I tried that in September in United States schools anyways or the northeastern of the United States schools are usually in September. I am probably not going to be that good at it. That's an expectation that I should have as a teacher and as a student that should not be a surprise as a family member of that child, I should not be surprised. Right. This is the first time they're trying it. But a student who's struggling with that skill, of course, in the first month of school, they have a grade under an averaging system from that first practice, that assessment from quarter one month one that counts equally with the grade that they received an assessment in the last month of school. That is bananas like that is absolutely just confusing to my brain when I really break it down and think about it.

00:04:16
And I think most folks would agree. It's just that this is one of those systems and structures that we haven't questioned or maybe some folks have been questioning it, but we're fearful of maybe what other folks might think and we're fearful of disrupting the status quo. So I think this is a perfect topic for this podcast, which is why we're spending two episodes on it and probably will do more in the future. All right, one more piece on the research that I wanna share before we move on to. How do you actually address this? 0 to 100 scales seem to me to be based on the percentage of recall based questions that a student gets right or wrong on a multiple choice test. Like that's what 0 to 100 is right? It's like a percentage. I literally was just doing a coaching call with folks who were working on skill based rubrics and this is a new skill for these educators. So of course, there's going to be some questions, some confusion. And one of the things was kind of a default to that traditional mindset of like I am assessing not the skill but the content memorization.

00:05:19
And so this teacher was basically trying to put a 0 to 100 scale of like what's the percentage that I got correct? Or that a student got correct on a content based factual recall test and just kind of putting it into the competency category. So like three or four categories. So like the range of like 0 to 50 is here and the R 50 to 75 is here whatever. And so it it just, I think is very emblematic of like this traditional way of how we think of things and how it's easy for us to create percentages out of. OK. There is 10 questions on this test. You got eight, right? You got an 80. But what does that mean? Right. And what are we actually assessing? So tests are inequitable. We found this in the research, they're not super effective at measuring transferable skills, which is what we know we should be prioritizing. And we look at the research that specifically targets project based assessments and PB L classrooms versus traditional high stakes testing environments. Those students in the PV L classrooms, they understand the content on a deeper level, they actually retain the content longer.

00:06:24
And this is a great like punch line to this for people who are high stakes test advocates, which I don't honestly think there are many in terms of the educational world, but they still those students in PB L classrooms, they still perform as well or even better on the high stakes tests than students who have been educated in a traditional setting where they're like practicing a lot of multiple choice and things. So I think there is a lot to say for rethinking averages and 0 to 100 scales just based alone on the research. But now let's get to like, what do we do about this? So I think the first step is really to discuss the why with your staff. So share the research, share this podcast episode if that's helpful, but invite questions and concerns interrogate any sort of deficit language or harmful beliefs that arise in the discussion. So there might be a lot of, well, if I don't grade it this way, then students aren't going to do it or the student is highly motivated by being valedictorian. And what if this ruins their average? And I think these are all valid questions, right? I think we should, we should dig into them a little bit but interrogate kind of what underlies that so who are the folks that we're concerned about that are taking up space in our brain in these conversations that are making us hesitant to move forward?

00:07:38
Typically, in many conversations, not just conversations about rating anything that has to do with inequity, the resistance to change. And the folks in our heads as we're thinking about them and thinking about making the change. They are the folks who are currently benefiting from the system. And if we are bringing the conversation back to equity, if we're grounding in inequity, we are thinking about who is not benefiting from the system. And typically it's a much higher number of students than the students who are excelling under the current system, right? So even just in a numbers game, it's like, OK, this is like across the board, we need to have this conversation and we need to flip the script here. And I I do think it's really important here to ground this in your shared community values. If you do not have shared community values, go back and listen to an episode on that. It is really important to establish those in order to have these really critical conversations about adaptive challenges. Like that's at the heart of this and that's why today's free resource actually is going to be about adaptive challenges. I'm gonna link to you in the blog post version of this episode, you can grab it, but I'm gonna link my root cause analysis worksheet go through like the five wise, has a little bit of like data analysis, questions, different things that you can do.

00:08:48
I love it for strategic planning. And I do think this evolves into kind of a mini strategic planning session. When you talk with the staff, we're identifying a challenge, right? Our current grading system is inequitable. These are the students who are disservice, what's going on? How do we fix it? How do we make it better? Right. That's an adaptive challenge. We need to make sure that our values are central in that, right? If we value equity, well, then that that's going to inform our decision if we value humanity, right, that's going to impact our decision. I think there's all of those values that you have laid out and it's like now we really test them out. Now we see how they come to life. I think after you discuss with the staff or even parallel to or you know, you could flip the order of these. But I think you also want to discuss the why with families and students, this is going to be a shift for students and families too. There may be some students and families who are really interested in this idea of this shift. There are probably gonna be honestly most that are not interested because they probably don't know like the full extent of what you mean. So you need to communicate really clearly like what is this?

00:09:50
What is the research on this? And once they hear all of the information, we'll probably be excited. But initially, it's like, ok, this is something very different or maybe I heard things about this in the news and I am fearful for my child getting into college because like you grade on a different system or whatever, right? Like there's so many fears and they are grounded in like, I'm not quite sure about this, but my gut is to protect my child. And so I'm just gonna like share my initial gut reaction. So bring folks into a conversation again. Same thing you want to do with the staff. Invite questions, invite concerns, interrogate any of the beliefs that arise center it in your shared community values and by community, I mean, yes, you probably created staff values and school community values, like extend those and expand those to include the values of family and students as you discuss this. So you can discuss the students in like a a larger platform, you can discuss this with students in classroom size groups where they've already probably built shared community and community values.

00:10:53
You definitely want to um think about what clearly do we want? Why is it currently not working? What is the thing that we want and what is it not? So like, let's get clear about like it's not gonna be this, it is going to be this and why you're making that shift. And I think knowing and this is kind of step forward, I'll get to this in a minute but knowing that you have the opportunity to core what the new grading policy actually looks like with families, with educators with students like in partnership, there's going to be more ownership of the final product and also reduced hesitancy at the first kind of, hey, this is what we're thinking about doing because we want to pose it in a way that's like we're thinking about doing this together, not to you, right with you in community. I think also we wanna make sure that we learn from folks who have done this. There are many, many schools and districts who have done this work already. So let's learn from them so that, you know, they've already made the mistakes, they've already gone through the hard things.

00:11:57
Like let's learn from them. One huge resource that is really my go to helped me with this work when I was a teacher, helped the school I was in, we did really well with their guidance. But I also even as a coach, just go to them all the time. That is competency collaborative. I'll link to them in the blog post. They're an organization based in New York City. They're an excellent resource for all sorts of relevant research for leading to graded, for equity. They have a beautiful model. They have tons of examples of what is this rubric look like. What's a grading policy this school has. And also they have tons of stories of equitable grading shifts that schools or individual teachers have kind of gone on. And so they'll actually share stories of like here's where I started in year one. And this is the shift that we made first and then we got to the second year and then this is what we decided as a school community, right? It's it's super cool, especially if you're kind of hesitant or your stakeholders are kind of hesitant about this big shift, just look at what other folks have done and the journey they've gone on. And I believe competency collaborative will say this as well, but there is no one right, concrete path.

00:13:03
It is like let's have these underlying shared principles of grading for equity and assessing and feedback being prioritized over grading. And let's move forward with our community members to figure out what works best for us. There are guidelines from a crescendo ed group. I believe that basically are taken from this big study they did where they figured out that there are a couple different things to consider and I just want to name them here again, learning from those who have done it before. So in their research, they said use a 0 to 4 scale instead of a 0 to 100 point scale and avoid giving students any scores of zero, right? So a zero is like, I there is no effort made. Um And I think really important here too is like there were many, many opportunities to get it done. It wasn't like you miss the deadline, it's over, right? So we really decrease um the idea of giving a zero if any were is completed and we give multiple opportunities for that work to be completed, right? That's not to say that if a student is just not ever showing work that like you need to give a zero, this is for a student who is is trying um is putting in work.

00:14:13
And when I say trying, I mean, like at all ever after multiple opportunities not like, oh they didn't turn on the deadline, they're not trying, right? So I think, I think there's these are really important points to consider it. You wanna weigh recent performance more heavily. This is super important. What I was saying before month one very different from month nine in your school year. We want to we the month nine way heavier. Like if you still want to count the month one fine and there are actually models that are like we don't even count month one, right? We don't, we certainly don't count a practice time. Maybe we count the summit of assessment from quarter one. But we actually there are some extremes where it's like you don't even count anything aside from like what is done at the end the last summative project, right? I'm not necessarily advocating for that. I'm just saying like give it as a thought experiment, give it some thought, right? It makes sense theoretically. So wait the recent performance more heavily. I think this also gives students a chance if they're like sitting in December, like, wow, I'm still, like, not doing well in my grades. And certainly my students early on were thinking this like, ok, well, this is nuts.

00:15:17
I am sitting here at like a, a two out of four. This, like, I am a student who really typically does well and like our first year of doing this and I was like, ok, you need to know that the next few months are actually gonna count more. So I need you to keep on like you are doing great. You are on the path and I've seen the growth, you're only gonna grow more. You are gonna be pleased with the end of the year's final grade, the way that we average and wait more recent stuff and, and they were, but it was a conversation to certainly have in, you know, December, January and where there's usually at that low. Um there's that reset, right? Um Another, another thing to get back to their list is to grade content, not subjective effort, like attendance or homework, grading for completion is far more. Um kind of like fluffy grade inflation, uh grading for like efforts. Um Attendance is super inequitable, right? Because you can't like determine who had the success to be able to attend today. You don't know what's going on in their home, right? All these things, your grade should be emblematic of what they can do with the content and skills, right?

00:16:23
That's what the grade should be not like button seat time allow retakes. We talked about that replace previous scores with current scores, right. So if they did poorly in the first draft, second draft do better. Great that just completely replaces it, create effective grade based on standard aligned rubrics. So the grades are are based on standards aligned rubrics, excuse me. So that's what we talked about in the previous episode. 159 that you are sharing with students. So right up front, here's the assessment, here's how I'm going to grade you. And again, when you create a year long rubric, they already know what it is, especially when you're in uh like a grade team that really collaborates. Well, you might have an assessment and and the um competency collaborative has shared this before in a video which I can link to this episode. But they share an example of, I think it's the young Women's Leadership Academy of Astoria in New York that has like school wide standards, nine through 12th grade, regardless of subject area. And they are all content agnostic.

00:17:24
So they know, like argue as the standard is gonna look different in a math class than a social studies class. But like it's still the same like sentence that we recognize as like here's the standard. So I think there's a ton of cool stuff there um that you can do with that. I also think another thing they were saying, I think this is a really interesting one is using self reflection, peer feedback and supporting uh self regulation to support independent learning skills. So you don't want to necessarily in their, in their research, they found you don't necessarily want to grade the independent learning skills. I know competency collaborative does um say that's OK and they put it under like work habits, like a can't be more than 20% I think is typically um the advice but I could be wrong. But that is I think really important. And when we have that leverage of self reflection and pure feedback, we open up opportunities for teachers to then conference with students one on one and do a lot more of uh what I believe, competency collaborative calls the cognitive coaching, which I love um for students, step four is to co create an equitable grading policy.

00:18:29
So you have discussed with staff families and students you learn from who's already done it. Now you're co creating the policy, something that works for you. You're in partnership with all your stakeholders, you're considering the why of equity when making all of your decisions again, considering shared values, you're sure to leave the meeting or leave the whatever with the structures you need to put in place to make sure you're successful in implementation. There's a lot of structures. So actually, that's step five, I think you should implement with some solid systems and structures specifically around feedback and revision. So give departments and teams the time to create department wide or team wide skill based rubrics that could take an entire year but like just give them the time, right? And that way you have embedded specificity and effectively feedback into the rubrics with which your teachers are assessing all of your students work, right? These are year long rubrics. Awesome, less work for them, more consistency for the students, more reliability for tracking skill progression over time. Again, check out the previous episode for that.

00:19:31
If you're interested in some more information there, next, I would create resource banks. So each teacher should have or department or team again, you can kind of crowdsource these as a group if you'd like resource banks. So when students receive feedback, they have not yet met the standard, don't just leave them with that, right? Like what can they do to progress? Give them a next step. So you are going to want to share something with students, an instructional video list. You can even link those right into the rubrics themselves, which I love texts as well as activities or many projects. So they can improve their skills. But you wanna make sure that they have what they need to continue to progress. Not just leave them up now, you're not there yet that's going in the grade book, right? You can have like weekly or biweekly, whatever it would be for you, workshop or upgrade days that your teachers have put into place on their calendars, on their pacing calendars. And they say these are days for revision or, you know, taking that feedback I gave you on the last assessment and working on one of those many activities that's in the resource bank.

00:20:35
So this idea of giving revision opportunities, giving feedback and then giving something for the students to do and having time in class to do that work super important. And that's really making sure that you are not doing your typical grade inflation practices like the homework or completion grades, attendance effort grades because it's like you don't have to p you, you no longer see grades as penalizing students, right? It's just you will have as many chances as you can get every week, you will have a new chance to upgrade something to uh revise something based on feedback, right? So you no longer need the inflation practices like grading for effort for a kid who is putting in the effort, right? They're gonna get there because you've helped them build a scale. And finally, I would really get me meta cognitive years. So as you implement, you're asking for feedback on your feedback systems, right? Adapt as you need, but make sure maybe after a set amount of time, you're collecting the experiential data from students, families, educators, how is it going?

00:21:40
What can we shift if we need to shift something? And then my very final tip is that this is definitely like the dream we're creating here. I want you to have that dream grading policy that's rooted in equity if it is absolutely like a no, go for some reason this year, here's what I suggest. You try, whether you are leading a school where there's just a lot of resistance in some dimension, um resistance from above, like whatever what you can do, even as an individual classroom teacher who's like, ah, the school's not going with this. But I wanna try this. Maybe even as a leader, you can maybe have this piloted with a few teachers. I think that would be super cool and really by, have some quote unquote by and, or like a true ownership over the policy in, in that core group of teachers and like the belief really spreads itself out. Ok. So here's what you do. All feedback, grading and rubrics use the competency based categories. But at the end, if you have to convert it into a 0 to 100 scale, convert it, there are examples of this. And I actually, in the, the first couple of years we did this in one of the schools I worked at, that's what we had to do because the New York City rating system at that time, I think as of the school year 2324.

00:22:52
So this school year currently, as we're reporting, the doe in New York City has shifted to include the four point grading scale for competency categories as an option to put on report cards. But until then there had to be a conversion. So I'm gonna link on the blog post. Uh an example of what one school, not New York City, but one school um just as a web page up with that convergence, you can check out what it might look like, but that's a way to still kind of check the box. Yeah, we did 0 to 100 but really on the ground, super feedback driven super competency based um and all of the language that students and teachers and families are using is that language. So again, all the things, all the links to all the research that table I just talked about my root cause analysis worksheet all there for free for you on the blog post for this episode, which is located at Lindsay Bath, lions.com/blog/one 60. Thanks for tuning in. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan.

00:23:55
Talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now. Grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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