Sorry it took me so long to get back to this, Amy!! I stopped to think about examples that would make sense and never came back.

I think the best personal example from my classroom is the Writing Workshop I instituted with my fifth graders. They had daily, weekly, semi-quarterly and quarterly objectives they needed to meet, including expanding vocabulary, developing their writer’s notebook, obtaining feedback on their writing, initiating and participating in writing conferences with me, and submitting final written work (with all drafts, notes and other documentation)for my review – similar to what journalists do for their editors. The end result was to have 3-5 final pieces of writing a quarter that they would be willing for others to read (peers, parents, submit to the school newspaper, etc.). It wasn’t as simple as I’ve made it sound, and it was often messy and terribly disorganized looking. There were a few kids who failed to complete anything the first quarter, but by the end of the second, had at least two pieces done, and by the end of the year were writing proficiently, had a portfolio of 5-10 pieces of writing and could re-read their work and see their personal growth as writers. And, their year-end report card grade was based on their cumulative progress throughout the year, not on what they had received each quarter.
At the time I didn’t consider the workshop to be successful, overall, but with time and hindsight I realized that some of those kids are amazing writers now (not all attributable to my class, but it was the first time they had the opportunity to ‘act’ like real writers, so I feel like they identified with being one thereafter), and most were confident writers through high school. So, in the long run, I’d have to say that the writing workshop was a success.

I’m right there with you, pal.
It is terribly frustrating. And the crazy thing is, I think the professors that do it think they are doing us both a favor, most of the time!

Thanks for your comment, Nicole.

I think that there should be a process by which students can ‘report’ *teachers* who profess to be such and still expect a certain number of students to fail. Failure should not be an option in education, in my opinion. That’s not to say that doing quality work, meeting deadlines and demonstrating proficiency (or better) and not important, but this artificial process under which we’ve operated for so long that seems to think it is ‘producing’ quality, success, competency has failed time and time again to do so.

I believe we can (and do) develop competency/proficiency, even expertise without the threat of failure. I’ve luckily had a few professors here at VT that believe that, and thank goodness. There is movement on using standards-based evaluation systems in K-12 public schools where a student is evaluated based on their demonstrated proficiency based on proficiency expectations, rather than given a ‘grade’ for their effort/work. And there are colleges that don’t even give grades to their students.

Oh, yeah … I can totally relate, Jason.
I am trying to figure out an optimal learning schema where evaluation is about measuring growth and next steps, not about giving grades. It exists in portfolio learning communities (schools) and they are starting to develop studies of the students’ success in both managing their learning and what they learn.

Here are a couple of links to schools I think are on the right track:
Portfolio school, NY – https://www.portfolio-school.com/
SEEQS, HI – seeqs.org

Great to hear the 25% 25% 50% system in grads. I think the grad system need to basic on the discipline. There is a big difference between the lecture class and the studio class. If one day I will be a teacher and have rights to mark the grads then I will add the teaching section. it is the only available in the small class. After well organised, each student maybe has 20 minutes to do the presentation and teach others a skill relevant the class. It is my imagination. Students will learn more beyond the grads.

Thank you for such insightful post. Assessing students learning processes should not be in doubt, but the strategy to do it is.

Thank you for this posts. I agree, although we need to find ways to motivate students during their learning process, it it essential to find essential tools to assess their learning.

Thank you for this post. I agree, so many times we focus on what to achieve and why it is not important, but we don’t focus enough in how to do it. We should definitely find broader ways to keep students motivation how, and clarifying processes and techniques would definitely be helpful.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Different than your background, as a student in art and design, I also experience several exams. Is it ridiculous? Using the score to judge the drawing skills and the good or poor in art history. There is not a right or wrong answer for artworks, even not good or bad. Individuals appreciate the artworks in different aspect and have the various understandings. So, the challenge for the educators is how to guide and push the students explores in art kingdom and shows the effort in an ordinary ways, which all other would easily catch and accept it.

I really relate to your post. Grades always seem to be like something hovering over you at all times and rather than being motivated to learn, we are motivated to get good grades. This is how we have students who have 4.0 GPAs but do not understand the basics of their field.

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