Tracking Student Progress

Going Gradeless is out! I received my copy and honestly, it was surreal. I was expecting a pamphlet, not this weighty book. A real book! With pages! I know this sounds silly, but it’s quite a difference: reading the words on a pdf or word doc vs. printed and bound, with a cover, with my name imprinted on it! I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to share my ideas with a broader audience, but even more appreciative of the partnership that Dave and I have founded. It is a rare and beautiful thing to collaborate, and not just to agree on everything, but to debate robustly and honestly without fear or animosity? I have met few people who can truly do that, but Dave does. We’ve both got strong opinions, but a willingness to consider another perspective and to be flexible. In addition, we have completely different, and complimentary, strengths. Without Dave, this book would never have been produced. I am deeply grateful for the time and energy that he has devoted to outreach, something I would never have gotten around to.

The good news is that the strategies that we outline in Going Gradeless really do work. It’s not just that last year’s classes were good. Data continues to accumulate that supports our purpose. I am amazed at the continual learning progression of my students, even with the stresses and strains of remote learning. I’d like to continue from the previous post, in which I outlined how the 37 physics students did over the course of the year, unit 1 to unit 3. We have just finished unit 4 and here is the new graph.

What stands out to me? Significant improvements on Problem Solving, Graph Interpretation, Engaging with Content, and the Engineering Design Cycle. Some backsliding on Experimental Design, Creating Explanations, and Graph Creation. So I know what they have to work on in Unit 5, which will be our last unit of the year.

Not seen on the graph on the graph, and very importantly, I have seen the number of students with one or more scores of “Not Enough Evidence” fall steadily: from 24 in Unit 1, to 16 to 12 to 10. Earning Not Enough Evidence can mean one of two things: the student did not submit an assignment at all, or the performance on the assignment did not even meet Beginning criteria. Currently, there are only 2 students in the former category, and the rest fall into the latter. Not turning things in is becoming more and more rare. Why am I celebrating this achievement? The first step to success is DOING and SUBMITTING work consistently. If I can get kids to engage, then it is likely that they will see success. If they see success, they will continue to engage. This is why, in my opinion, the scores continue to improve. Not linearly, but they do improve over the course of the year, for the class as a whole as well as for individuals. Look at the graph to the right, which shows individual student progress. I used scores for all 10 standards to get an average for each student for each unit. Notice how the gray lines (representing unit 4) are almost uniformly bigger than previous units, and often greatly so.

Another way to look at it is with a line graph.

Each line represents a different student. Notice that there are only 5 that have decreased in this last unit, and two are minimal. Of the increases, some are huge! I am thrilled.

Many standards-based models use a simple rubric of “below expectations” and “above expectations”.  We began that way as well, but realized that there was simply not enough information there to be useful. In the class discussed above, the goal is to reach proficient in all standards, which will enable kids to earn a B+. In order to achieve an A, they have to have at least 3 Advanced scores. This presents some choice to the students: if they want to earn an A, they will have to push harder, produce at a level “above expectations”.  I set the benchmarks, where a B is what is “expected”. The learning progression outlines what that looks like for each standard… what is proficient, and therefore what is expected?  And in a different class, what is “expected” is changes… for striving students, maybe “Developing” is expected and proficient is above expectations. For AP students, proficient is below expectations… advanced is expected. So this is implicit in our model, and reinforced in our conversations, and really easy to adapt and adjust to different populations.

As we head into the last unit of the year, I am eager to see what the students do, what choices they make, and how they perform. For juniors in high school, this is the end of a pretty stressful time with SAT and ACT testing, rigorous classes, driving tests, proms and jobs, lots of things that have nothing at all to do with physics. Layer that on top of Covid-19 and remote learning, and it’s honestly amazing that they learn anything at all! I feel like I’d be happy with any evidence of progress, but what I’ve seen so far is beyond my expectations. I’ll let you know in the near future!