Communicate
Ever since the first days of teaching I knew that the grading system that I had been a part of as a student and that I was now being asked to implement as a teacher was deeply flawed. The traditional A, B, C, or D, was meant to represent a whole lot of things that are impossible to boil down into one single symbol. In a single student, effort and engagement, improvement over time relative to both self as well as the standard, and overall academic achievement all were commonly used as a part of a letter grade, the purpose of which was to communicate to parents, teachers, colleges, and students. With all of the permutations that one could arrange from this smattering of purposes, it was always clear to me that essentially NOTHING was being accurately communicated. That is why I jumped at a chance to dissagregate the skills upon which I was attempting to provide feedback and separating the grades that I would name as “academic” from those which I would name as “habits of learning.” Grading still is a weird and broken beast, but at least we’re making progress in communicating real and meaningful feedback to those who need it most.
The Jumprope system is an interesting way of providing this feedback in a organized and easily manipulated set of categories that is based on standards over time, rather than based on the individual assignments. It may seem a small change, but “flipping” the grade book in this way completely redefines what feedback means. No longer will students need to sift through a ’98 for Chapter Test’ and a ‘16/20 for Homework 1’ and a ‘A- for Final Project,’ along with a whole lot of J J J, ✓+’s, ‘needs more work,’ and ‘good job!’s’ when trying to decipher their current level of achievement; instead consistent and meaningful feedback will be provided in a timely manner on the formative assessments that direct learning through practice and improvement, and the summative assessments that count as the sole “graded” (i.e., “counted”) evaluations of a student’s mastery at those points in the year when we will communicate a snapshot of achievement at that given time.