Assessment and Grading in Competency-Based Classrooms

Video Transcription

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you're having a wonderful day today. Today, we're going to look at assessment and grading within a competency-based classroom. And for today's lesson, I've chosen a quote by Ted Koppel which states, "And if periodically you fail, as surely you will, adjust your lives, not the standards."

By the end of the lesson today, you will be able to discuss the differences between competency-based assessment and grading and traditional assessment and grading practices. And you will be able to identify the specific assessment and grading practices that are commonly seen within competency-based classrooms.

So first and foremost, what I'd like to look at are some of those differences between competency-based classrooms and traditional classrooms when it comes to assessment and grading. For teachers that really want to implement a competency-based approach, the changes to assessment and grading are going to be absolutely necessary.

Now, when we look at CBE classrooms specifically according to Griffith and Lim in their 2014 [INAUDIBLE], they state that in CBE classrooms, a grade is given for each specific competency. Now, this is very different than traditional classrooms where the grade is given for each specific assignment. Depending on how long it takes a student to reach a competency or how big and broad you set them, this could mean more grades or less grades in your grade book.

Additionally, in a CBE classroom, standards are very often criterion based. And they are made known to the students at the beginning of the learning. What this does is it helps students clearly and confidently plan out what it is that they are going to be doing and take ownership over that learning, whereas in traditional classrooms, assessments are almost always based on the percentage system.

So students get an A, B, C, or D based on the percentage of what they've known and learned as opposed to meeting the criteria for various standards. In CBE classrooms, grades are measured by mastery only and mastery of those competencies, whereas you would notice in a traditional classroom, grades can be a mixture of how well the student meets a certain skill or competency, as well as how long they are in the classroom, or the effort that they put in, or their behavior when they're there, or the homework that they've done additionally.

And finally, in CBE classrooms, students only advance onto the next level when they've been able to demonstrate mastery as opposed to more traditional classrooms where all of the formative or summative assessments that are given help to make up that final grade regardless of when they are collected within a given class.

Next, what I'd like to do is go ahead and look at some of the common competency-based education grading practices, some of the approaches that you could use as you begin to incorporate this into your classroom.

So first and foremost, it's important to note that summative assessments should count for most of the grade. What we're looking at here is the idea that formative assessments can be used for learning, not as an indicator of what has been learned.

So formative assessments work to help tell the student as well as the teacher where that student is in terms of their progress towards meeting that competency. But then the summative assessment can be the assessment of the learning. And then you heavily weight that because the student should be able to enter into it confidently having seen the formative assessments along the way.

Also, grades are not defined by specific periods of time. There is no need for grading periods that contribute to the final semester grade or the yearly grade because the student's grade is calculated based on the level of mastery that they have received the competencies throughout the class so an easy way to help make that switch over.

Also, there should be multiple assessment opportunities given to the students. Because many different students learn at different rates and in different ways, they all need to be given the opportunity to have various chances to demonstrate that they have achieved mastery.

And if a student hasn't been able to demonstrate it the first time, there should be opportunities for them to go back and reach that again. And teachers need to be able to develop those reassessment plans for students who are continuing to show that they are working to achieve mastery within those formative assessments before they take that summative assessment.

Finally-- and this is the hardest, but it is the most important-- no zeros are awarded for noncompletion of work. So when we look at a CBE classroom, we note that zeros in traditional classrooms really skew the student's grade, specifically when we're looking at zeros for noncompletion, because it doesn't show accurately what the student knows and doesn't know. It's showing whether or not they've taken time to do the work.

There are other ways that that could work. Sometimes giving students an incomplete is a very common practice within competency-based classrooms, helping to show students that there is no option for you to not do the work. You either do it, and you are complete, and you have received that grade. Or you don't do it, and it's incomplete. And we will wait for you to complete it.

Making that plan to really focus in on helping the students produce that work, so conferencing with the student or making that plan with them, contacting the parents, can all help to make this workable within your classroom.

Now that we've reached the end of the lesson you have been able to discuss the differences between competency-based assessment and grading and the more traditional assessment and grading practices as well as you can now identify specific assessments and grading practices that are common within competency-based classrooms. I'd like you to take just a moment to reflect on what do you think would be the most difficult part of implementing some of these grading practices into your CBE classroom.

For more information on how to apply what you've learned in the video, please view the additional resources section that accompanies the video presentation. The additional resources section includes hyperlinks that can be useful for the application of the course material. Also included is a brief description of each resource for your benefit.