Meeting goals requires genuine feedback along the way and constant work from teacher and student. It would be easy to give a full scale score to an assignment that doesn't count, even if it doesn't meet criteria, because it doesn't count, but then why give the assignment. The point is to provide students opportunities to work with and learn from experiences. The teacher needs to work as hard as the student to make these experiences lessons towards building knowledge not just a hoop towards a standard in which the information is here today, gone tomorrow. If the assignment is worth completing, and worth being scored, then the score should be valid. Of course, not all assignments need to be scored.
Meeting goals is valuable when students see their progress and can state that they have acquired a skill. Students own their own learning when faced with a scale and the realization that it is their responsibility for achieving or not having achieved each understanding. Meeting goals takes time, developing true knowledge takes time, but hopefully this knowledge creates a system for the students to be developed learners with understanding that lasts beyond any test.
In my students, it has developed them as questioners and stakeholders. Students want to know when to apply skills they have learned and ask questions about specific tasks rather than general concepts. In myself, it has strengthened my collaboration, my incorporation of students' input in assessing student growth (grading), and it has forever changed my view of the grade book. You may not be ready for a sweeping change to join me in throwing out the traditional grade book, to grade just on standards at the point of meeting goals, but maybe you're ready to allow students a chance to be part of their own grading. It really opens their eyes to defend their own learning.
Meeting goals is valuable when students see their progress and can state that they have acquired a skill. Students own their own learning when faced with a scale and the realization that it is their responsibility for achieving or not having achieved each understanding. Meeting goals takes time, developing true knowledge takes time, but hopefully this knowledge creates a system for the students to be developed learners with understanding that lasts beyond any test.
In my students, it has developed them as questioners and stakeholders. Students want to know when to apply skills they have learned and ask questions about specific tasks rather than general concepts. In myself, it has strengthened my collaboration, my incorporation of students' input in assessing student growth (grading), and it has forever changed my view of the grade book. You may not be ready for a sweeping change to join me in throwing out the traditional grade book, to grade just on standards at the point of meeting goals, but maybe you're ready to allow students a chance to be part of their own grading. It really opens their eyes to defend their own learning.
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