Ask The Grade Doctor

I am very pleased to have questions from an education professor. (I am spending the day
tomorrow with education students at York University in Toronto.)

Question 1. Probably the most important decision is the organizing structure for the
collection of evidence and grading and reporting; I believe for grading and reporting
purposes, the standards/learning goals in most middle and high school subjects/courses
can be organized into four to ten meaningful groups, e.g., for English - Reading, Writing,
Listening and Viewing, Language and Literature. Then teachers need to develop their own
recoding system (spreadsheet for a whole class or one page per student) or use a
computer grading program that they can control to do the things they need to do. The
scores from each assessment are then recoded by standard and you then have an efficient
system where curriculum, instruction, assessment and grading and reporting are aligned.
Other practical considerations were addressed in my response to Garry (see below second
response)
Question 2 By clearly communicating the content and performance standards in parent
(and student) friendly language and by providing information about achievement and
behaviour that gives parents a rich picture of their child as a learner. I prefer the use of
symbols other than A-F but if using a different symbol system is a problem use letter
grades but make sure they are defined relative to proficiency NOT percentages.