Today, I was a part of my first, formal professional development day. Since we are the only high school in the school district, these don't happen very often. Each department has PLCs every few weeks, but this has been the first time I've seen all of the faculty together and had conversations with people outside of Foreign Language.
The major topic of discussion today was formative assessment, and in particular, proficiency scales. The idea is to create levels by which you can classify students according to their skills. The teachers are using a four-point scale, with three being the goal for every student, and four, the above and beyond.
The proficiency scales have a positive connotation. They list skills students have already achieved at various levels and never state deficiencies. However, the student can look at the level beyond where they're at to see where they can go next.
Sounds like a good idea to me, in theory. Teachers benefit: they can use them to think critically about where their students are, where they want them to be, and how they have to adjust curriculum to get there. Students benefit: they know what they are capable of now, and they are given a goal to work towards. Parents benefit, too: they get more specific information about how their students are doing, and they know areas where they can help their students to develop. They are good ways to increase communication between parent/student/teacher and a way to get everyone on the same page.
However, as one teacher was presenting her example, she mentioned how she presented the scales to her class. She explained how they worked, and then told them that "four is similar to 100%, and 3 is about 91%," etc. And everyone started asking questions about whether these were grades, and if they needed to be aligned with the classroom grade, and how they translate to an A-F scale. And then we really lost sight of the goal of proficiency scales.
In one of our group discussions today, we considered this quote: "Learning stops as soon as the grade is given." It's counter-intuitive to make proficiency scales into grades. They'll take the grade, accept that that's their level, and be done with it. The students who won't will be the students already at the 3rd level.
Maybe the students shouldn't even be presented with a number; maybe they should just see the categories, or be given a list of strengths, and a list of areas of development. The numbers seem to be lending to a grade. It's always about a grade in school. Even some teachers struggle with the idea of an evaluation without a number value. While I believe in the idea of proficiency scales, I have my doubts about their practicality in the classroom. I really hope that they don't end up being another grading scale and can be used for their original purpose, but it's going to take a lot of thinking outside of the box.
