{"id":17747,"date":"2023-06-27T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/?post_type=cw_post&p=17747"},"modified":"2023-06-27T14:54:54","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T18:54:54","slug":"equitable-grading-at-sunnyside","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/equitable-grading-at-sunnyside\/","title":{"rendered":"Equitable Grading at Sunnyside"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog post was originally published<\/a> on June 14, 2023 as part of the storytelling series from the Assessment for Learning Project (ALP) Tucson convening. You can read more from the series and find future posts on the ALP blog<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Storytelling<\/a><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

In February, at the Assessment for Learning Convening in Tucson, AZ, Gary Chapin, and Laurie Gagnon climbed on a bus with sixteen other educators to go on an excursion to Sunnyside High School. The ALP Convening had partnered with<\/span><\/i> Sunnyside Unified School District<\/span><\/i><\/a> for this event and had planned five different excursions for ALP participants to go into Sunnyside schools. The excursion we went on was called \u201cEquitable Grading Practices,\u201d led by Matthew Craft and William Kotter. These two have been at the head of a process to make grading practices more equitable across the district.\"Teacher<\/a><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Gary: <\/b>Hello, Laurie! I\u2019m glad we can continue engaging on this, especially since the \u201cgrading practices\u201d discussion plays such a prominent part in your work and mine. I found the work at Sunnyside High School interesting for a few reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n

Laurie: <\/b>Hello, Gary! Likewise, it\u2019s important to reflect on our experiences and carry forward what we learn. Too often we are rushing to the next thing and miss the chance to synthesize our ideas and wonderings. I\u2019m eager to hear what you are thinking about our time at Sunnyside HS.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gary: <\/b>They\u2019ve based their work on the literature \u2013 specifically Joe Feldman\u2019s <\/span>Grading for Equity<\/span><\/i> \u2013 but they\u2019ve picked a few entry points, not trying to do everything at once. They\u2019re eighteen months into their process and, according to their documents, are working towards a system based on Feldman\u2019s three principles. 1) Grades accurately describe what the student knows; 2) Grading is resistant to instruction and implicit biases and actively counteracts historical inequities; and 3) Grading supports and draws upon students\u2019 intrinsic motivation. Specifically, this means they\u2019re developing policies around multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning,<\/span> the role of the ZERO<\/span><\/a>, eligibility, and work habits stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those four things would keep any school busy, and one of the charming bits of their presentation was a slide where they showed their goals and timeline. It showed them planning to be done with <\/span>all of that <\/span><\/i>by year one. Matthew Craft commented, \u201cThat\u2019s how naive we were.\u201d They\u2019ve revised their goals and timeline since. It was a nice moment, and the audience felt it because we\u2019ve all been there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Laurie:<\/b> I remember that moment, too! It brought home that the work is ongoing and usually takes more time than we anticipate. One of the big mindset shifts in this work lies in accepting that it is fundamentally about adaptive change to our culture of school and learning. It takes time. We need to be attuned and responsive to the needs of the people enacting and experiencing the change. I appreciated their candid vulnerability about their journey.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gary: <\/b>I want to comment on one thing, but I don\u2019t quite know how to express it. Craft, Kotter, and all the presenters, including kids and teachers, seemed a little worn down by the change process. I hesitate to say, \u201cbeaten up.\u201d The conversations for the past eighteen months were designed to create an inclusive and transparent process, but they also seem to have been hard. I identify with this because, in my own past, I once facilitated a grade book change process that, by December, had taken a toll. It was hard! Which is what I\u2019m saying: Craft, Kotter and the others at Sunnyside High School are doing a hard thing, and right now they are at a very hard point in the conversation. But they are persevering.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that something is hard \u2013 and the fact that something is especially hard <\/span>right now<\/span><\/i> \u2013 is not evidence that you should do something different or that you should change course. The naive part of me wishes there was a way for SHS to go over, around, or under the hard part, rather than having to go through it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Laurie: <\/b>While we might tell ourselves the goal is for everything to go smoothly, I think the real goal in making a hard, but worthwhile change, is that we support people through the challenges of change to get to the celebrations of success. It\u2019s also notable that the equitable grading changes are happening across the whole district. It made me think about scale and how to bring a thoughtful urgency to the pace of change. On one hand, I worry about the capacity of different building-level leaders \u2013 and their teachers \u2013 to implement a change that could feel top down, especially if the leaders are in progress on their own understanding and mindset shifts. On the other hand, I admire the district\u2019s<\/span> coherence framework<\/span><\/a> and their leadership\u2019s commitment to equity across all of the schools in SUSD. Leadership is situating the change within a larger effort sparked by their formative assessment journey.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gary:<\/b> Is it possible to have a district-wide change, in a district of around 14,000, without it feeling top down? This is one of the things about scale that\u2019s hard to work with. I have heard of districts bringing teachers around. <\/span>Hall-Dale Schools<\/span><\/i>, in Maine, had a five-year plan during which every teacher went through a series of three PD cycles to be introduced to and gain proficiency in competency-based practices (this was 2006). Over that five years, they also did innumerable book groups. Their PLCs (K-12 content area teams) focused on the change. The school board did learning retreats so that they\u2019d truly understand and support what was going on. Essentially, the only pedagogical conversation happening in the district at that time was about competency-based practices, and because it took place over five years, teachers who didn\u2019t want to work that way tended to leave. If someone were still there after the five-year process, then they had, <\/span>de facto<\/span><\/i>, opted in.<\/span><\/p>\n

The leadership challenge there was maintaining a consistent level of urgency and vision over time. This is hard since, as we both know, new ideas sometimes die in education not because they fail, but because they become boring. The attention wanders.<\/span><\/p>\n

Laurie:<\/b> One thing that has been on my mind about the visit is how to balance staging the change process so you meet people where they are and also getting to some sort of inflection point where the change is making a clear difference in moving towards an equitable learning system. Feldman\u2019s work is really helpful in laying out the three pillars of accurate, unbiased, and motivating grades with concrete, practical moves to make. There are also a lot of needed changes to instruction and assessment to support those moves. It\u2019s impossible to do it all at once, and yet you want to keep some level of awareness that there is more work to be done to get to your goals without it becoming overwhelming. There will inevitably be bumps along the way with lessons to learn and adjustments to make.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gary<\/b>: Along with the theory of change, and the content of the change \u2013 which leaders a SHS seem to have in hand \u2013 there\u2019s the <\/span>experience <\/span><\/i>of change. I don\u2019t know that a lot of people have gone through an experience of intentionally changing an organization in some fundamental, values-based way. We have experience starting organizations, and we have experience ending organizations, but the experience of changing organizations in an important way <\/span>and succeeding<\/span><\/i> is not one that most people have. It can be surprising, fascinating, and distressing when you wade into it for the first time, especially if the organization is successful at some level (but needs to be more successful at more levels). Helping face this experience is the value behind works like,<\/span> Leadership Without Easy Answers<\/span><\/i><\/a>, by Ronald Hiefetz. It\u2019s also the value of what we saw at Sunnyside High School. I am grateful to Matthew Craft and William Kotter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Laurie:<\/b> That\u2019s a lot of change, Gary! Kidding aside, I am also grateful to our hosts, the teachers, and students who joined us for a panel discussion, and to Sunnyside Unified, for opening up their doors to us. I hope we get to hear more as their story unfolds and that the next chapters include continued and deepening support for educator learning, moments to celebrate as the culture shifts to a greater focus on learning rather than grades, and new insights into where this work leads SUSD next.<\/span><\/p>\n

Learn More<\/span><\/h2>\n