CALM grading initiative spurs alterations to departmental late work policies
Students returned to school and found some new OASD guidelines: late work can not be penalized, no extra credit will be available, and summative assessments may be revised. The district has been implementing these policies in order to have a fair and equitable education for all students as a part of the district’s move towards C.A.L.M. grading: consistent, accurate, learning focused, and meaningful.
In order to ensure students have equitable opportunities, Jaquelyn Kiffmeyer, Director of Secondary Schools for the Oshkosh Area School District, presented department heads with certain guidelines to follow when applying the retake policy in their respective departments.
“Firstly, the retake policy only applies to summative assessments. Second, students will receive full credit on a reassessment,” she said. “Third, the retake must happen before the end of the next unit. Fourth, only assess students on standards or targets on which students are not proficient. Fifth a student can be assessed up to two times per standard. ”
As a part of these guidelines, students will not be allowed to retake before proving their efforts to do better.
“Reteaching or pre-work must be included before a reassessment, and any stipulations on a reassessment should be aligned to ensuring students learn the skills and concepts from unit targets prior to reassessments,” Kiffmeyer said. “Some examples of this would be preparing a toolkit, completing a review guide, or completing homework aligned to concepts missed on the assessment.”
Assistant Principal Aaron Herm believes that having retakes will ultimately be beneficial for students, and something that is already aligned with the school's goals.
“Allowing retakes on tests comes from our belief that assessment should focus on showing mastery of content rather than a one-time performance,” he said. “Hopefully, this will reduce stress and encourage students to be more persistent in their learning, knowing they have opportunities to improve their understanding.”
Kiffmeyer hopes these changes will lead students to better their learning, no matter the circumstance.
“Student's grades should mean the same for all students enrolled in the same course no matter who the instructor is,” she said. “It allows students an opportunity to show their understanding of learning after additional practice. This helps students, as we know students do not all learn at the same rate.”
Herm also believes the late work policy will greatly benefit students, as he feels that a student's grade should be more focused on how much of the course material they have learned, rather than if they can finish the assignment.
“When late work is penalized, it might lower a student’s grade, despite the fact that they demonstrate full understanding of the course material. Penalizing late work decreases the accuracy of the grade,” he said. “It also acknowledges that students may sometimes need more time to grasp concepts and complete their work. It encourages students to submit work, even if they initially struggle, promoting learning and growth, which is the whole point of school.”
For many departments at West, this is not that big of a change. According to Department Chair Trent Scott, the English Department has already been using these policies for a while.
“The only real penalty we have used in the past number of years is penalizing a student’s participation score for being late. We've now altered that, so now late work has no penalty on student final grades,” he said.. “The English department has always provided revision opportunities for students on submitted writing and project assessments, so that’s going to continue as normal.”
The science department under Sara Dobish had already implemented most of the policies as well.
“I've always been allowing late work in my regular bio class, so it doesn't bother me. As a teacher, I think it’s too hard to keep track of who was absent when and, as long as it’s done before the unit test, it’s fine,” she said. “For our retakes, we used to limit it to two retakes [a semester], but now every assessment has a retake.”
Dobish does, however, have enough stipulations put in place to make sure that everyone puts in the work for the first test, so that they aren’t looking over the material prior to it, solely because they have a retake.
“In science, in order to retake anything, except for our CAPP classes, which are exempt, students still have to have every single thing turned in. In my classes, we have an online learning log that has to be complete and up to date. Everything's got to be done. Then, they have to set up a conference with us during W hour,” she said. “So there's definitely things they have to do to explain how they prepared the first time, and how they're going to change and do better to prepare for the second time.”
For the math department, under Travis Miller, there is a bit of a worry that students may not get a chance to practice their math by not finishing homework on time, which could lead to a major struggle later on in the year.
“If students aren't practicing and doing their homework, they’re only getting half the curriculum. They're really not doing the practice that they should,” he said. “We rely on students actually doing the homework, so that when they come in, they are understanding some of the problems. Math is built upon previous knowledge and if you don't get those foundations, it’s really hard to go forward and move forward.”
Miller likes the idea of retakes, as he wants his students to prove their mastery of the content.
“I think it can be decent because we really want students to show that they understand the material,” he said. “With that being said, we still need students to be putting time and effort into homework, making a toolkit and doing those things.”
With this change, however, Miller also has stipulations before students can retake.
“If students haven’t done homework assignments, I may assign them those homework assignments to do before a retake. If you didn’t make a toolkit, you need to make a toolkit now. So those things are still going to have to be done for students to do a retake,” he said. “ It's not just going to be you can bomb the test and then come in without any consequences and retake it. We still are going to try doing things that hold students accountable.”
Senior Ethan Oey is critical of the no penalties on late work.
“I feel that this school policy is a terrible implementation that would only allow no accountability or responsibility for the students,” he said. “If there are no penalties for late work, there would be no point to have deadlines for assignments/projects in the first place.”
Miller also feels as though this policy promotes something that lessens learning in his classroom.
“I think that when students don't have it done the day that I do, they miss valuable discussion within the class period and being able to ask questions to either their team or the teacher,” he said. “So I think that having it done late, although you may get full credit for it, I don't think you get the full understanding out of it.”
Contrary to the district’s move to be more equitable, Oey also feels that this would make things less fair and cause a nuisance to teachers.
“Students who submit their work on time would actually be at a disadvantage as they would be given less time, compared to those who decide to turn in their work late in order to make more improvements or adjustments on their work,” he said. “In addition, teachers would also be negatively impacted because it would be more difficult to grade students' work when submissions are unpredictable. If the thought behind this implementation was to make classes, or even the school, as a joke, then they succeeded in it.”
Herm, however, assures that despite these changes, the school curriculum won’t be a walk in the park for students.
“Our school’s assessments and standards remain rigorous so that we are preparing students for life beyond high school,” he said. “The ultimate purpose of these changes is to ensure grades reflect actual learning and mastery of content. We expect that these policies, and a few more changes that we are still working on, will lead to more accurate and meaningful grades.”
With all these changes to policies, Scott feels as though some caution is necessary, and has hopes that students don’t take advantage.
“What this does is basically give more opportunities for students to have success, which I understand,” he said. “The downside would be students are really only hurting themselves with late work, because if, let's say, for example, you're in my class, you turn in an assignment a week late and it's not done very well and you just turn it in for the sake of turning it in. You get feedback on it and you want to revise, but how much are you really going to be able to improve if you haven't put forth your best effort?”
by Fahad Mian
Published October 2 2023
Oshkosh West Index Volume 120 Issue I