Originally Published: May 31, 2016 in ASCD Blogs Suppose during a physical examination, your doctor recorded data on your height, weight, blood pressure, and heart rate, and asked you a series of questions about your health. Then after gathering all this information, suppose the doctor had...
Originally Published: October 14, 2016 in Ed Week Educators have the odd habit of taking simple ideas and making them inexplicably complex. Granted, there are always subtleties and nuances in education related to the varied contexts in which teaching and learning occur. But adding complexity to...
Originally published: 06.25.13 Much ado has been made in recent years about the problem of zeros in grading. Some districts have responded by stipulating that the lowest grade teachers can assign students is 50% rather than a zero. Districts that enact such policies have no...
Educators today struggle in their efforts to change parents' and students' attitudes about grading. They want parents to see grades as a means of communication between teachers and families, and not as the currency students need to advance in school and life. They want students...
A few months ago, Peter wrote a blog suggesting that certain words in our educational vocabulary should be banished (read full blog here). It was inspired by the idea that people often use the same word, but the way they use it conveys a very...
Recent social media posts by standards-based advocates extol the virtues of failure: "Failure is success in progress." "Failure is an initial attempt at learning." "Failure is the best way to learn." Statements like these give the impression that failure is a good thing—maybe even an...
Thomas R. Guskey Rubrics have been a part of education for decades. Although the exact origin of rubrics is uncertain, it could be argued their theoretical roots stem from the seminal work of Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues in developing the Taxonomies of Educational Objectives (Bloom,...
Post written by Thomas R. Guskey Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Kentucky Rubrics help educators describe student performance at all levels of education. Recently, however, educators have come under fire for the way they translate rubric scores to grades on report cards. Although many believe...
Today's guest post is written by Thomas Guskey, Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Kentucky. Educators implementing standards-based approaches to grading and reporting often struggle with how to label different levels of students' performance. Four levels of performance is the most common number identified....