Newsflash: SBG Does Not Improve Student Learning

Standards-based grading isn’t the answer. It will not boost our students’ achievement. It will not increase our students’ engagement. It will not raise the rigor of our classrooms.

But standards-based learning (SBL) will do all of these things.

SBG without SBL won't work. These terms and initials are often used interchangeably, but the distinction is critical. We would like to argue here that schools and teachers must understand and embrace changes in learning before attempting changes in grading. We must transform our instructional practices if we want our grading practices to reflect learning.

While mandating changes in grading can force teachers to make changes more quickly, these changes will not produce the desired results if teachers continue to approach class in the same way we always have. Here are some examples of what can happen when teachers move to SBG before fully understanding SBL:

• SBG says we shouldn’t grade homework, so I stopped grading homework and the students stopped doing homework.
• SBG says I can’t count habits, so my students’ grades went down.
• SBG says I need to grade using a 1-4 scale, but kids still convert to A-F in their heads, so it’s all just semantics.

When the only thing we change is how and what we grade, SBG will be confusing at best and inaccurate at worst. All of the above may very well happen if we keep teaching as we always have, so when teachers and parents and students say, “SBG doesn’t work,” they may very well be right. Because SBG does not work with traditional teaching practices.

It is vital that we transform our teaching practices to support what we know about learning. After 5 years teaching in standards-based classroom, we can honestly say that class looks entirely different than it used to. Here are some of the main ways our teaching has changed:

• Targets, not content, drive instruction: I used to decide what to teach based on content. For example, if I was about to teach the Mongols, I would think of all the things I wanted them to know about the Mongols. Then I would try to come up with engaging ways to deliver that content. Now that I am standards-based, I start with the target instead of the content. If my target is about choosing valid evidence to support a thesis, then I design instruction that uses the Mongols to have students practice choosing evidence. This does not mean that content isn’t important; it means that content now serves skill rather than the other way around (see: A Standards-based Lesson Start to Finish). As Tony Wagner says, “The world no longer cares what our kids know..., what the world cares about is what kids can do with what they know.”
• Teachers plan in response to data from formative assessments: One of the biggest shifts in SBL is that the majority of a teacher’s time goes into planning for class, not grading.  Once we are aware of where a student is in relation to the target (think the blue dot on a GPS) we must adjust instruction to help them reach and exceed their goal. For example, once we know that groups of kids are at different places on a scale, we must adjust instruction accordingly.  I will very likely be using the same content with everyone, for instance photosynthesis; however, if I know that kids are at different places with understanding cause/effect and relationships, I will have three groups doing different things with it.  The goal is to make sure that I am pushing each student to improve at the given skill, all while grappling with the rigorous content.

• Students spend the majority of every class practicing and playing and thinking and trying: I used to think about class in terms of what I was going to do. First, I’m going to tell them...then I’m going to show them...then I’m going to have them...This meant that I spent a lot of time in front of the room delivering content which I then hoped they would internalize and give back to me a few weeks later. Class discussions involved me asking questions and facilitating participation. Overall, the majority of the class was about me doing and them sitting and listening or sitting and following directions. When class is planned based on targets, this has to change. Now I start by thinking about what they are going to do. We know that doing is learning and that listening is not learning (Dr. Duke); so in order to learn, students need to be getting messy with the skills in class.
• Groupings, furniture set-up, and classroom structures change constantly based on the learning needs: Just as we intentionally alter our instruction to match the needs of the students and the class, we also need to make sure that the class set up matches our needs. Depending on the purpose of the class and the activities planned, the class set-up must be intentional and support the learning.  A socratic discussion, peer editing, a small group activity, and practicing speeches all require different set ups and needs.  Creating the perfect learning environment for the day can be the most important part of an effective lesson and is worth the time it will take to set it up.

• Students track their own learning and take control over the paths they take to that learning: The ultimate goal of any standards-based class is to create an environment in which students can have more control of their own learning. This does not mean that the teacher is off the hook--in fact, it’s the opposite. Designing opportunities, instruction, and assessment that allow students to navigate their learning is much more difficult than traditional teaching. If we are doing our job right in a standards-based class, students will know what their targets are, will know where they are in relation to their targets, and will know how to close the gap (DuFour). This clarity and self-awareness will open up so many possibilities for student interest and choice, and ultimately increase engagement and learning.

Once our learning is driven by mastery and not content or seat time, and once these instructional changes are part of our routine, we will need a grading system that can communicate learning. And that’s when SBG not only makes sense, but becomes necessary.

Without significantly changing what learning looks like, SBG won’t work any better than the current broken system. But when we do change instruction and assessment based on what we know about the brain and learning, then SBG becomes not only logical, but essential.

Five don’ts that might just lead to better learning

Habits take time to form...that’s how they become habits. And if  we don’t start to form new habits immediately, the old ones will take over because life will get complicated and we will fall back to our defaults to survive. So this month, for one full month, be bold and vocally and publicly declare new (soon-to-be) habits. Here are 5 suggestions for the first month:

1. Don’t assign homework. Here’s what this will do: you will be forced to use your class time differently right away, demanding high-quality, rigorous, focused work during class. You will need to talk less (see #3) and let them do more. Students will learn what it means to work hard while you are there to guide, redirect, and watch their learning. You will have more time outside of class for high-quality, substantive feedback based on the work you watched them do in class. Ultimately, you will learn more about your students more quickly when you are present during their learning. When the month is up, decide if you want to start giving homework…but you may see you don’t want or need to. If you do decide to give homework, here’s a link to a helpful infographic called “Homework in a Standards-Based Class.”
2. Don’t grade anything. Grades cause anxiety and anxiety leads to a variety of behaviors, all detrimental to learning. Some students will give up when graded, some will become obsessed with the grades (not the learning—big difference), and some will stop taking intellectual or creative risks. Allow students to learn safely for the first month, providing feedback, but no grades. Show the students where they are in relation to your targets, show them benchmarks, celebrate risk taking, and encourage redos and retries and retakes. After a month, if you must, grade away…but again, you may find you don’t need or want to. Curious about grading changes? Join #sblchat on Wednesday nights at 9pm ET.
3. Don’t hog the learning. Limit yourself to 5 minutes of talking (to the whole class) in a 90 minute block. Why? Because the one doing is the one learning. If our goal is to have students learn and make meaning, then we need to make sure that we are setting them up to learn. And as the wonderful Dr Duke reminds us (see amazing video here), “Listening isn’t learning.”  Brain research has clearly shown that people need to play with content in order to learn content in a way they can use beyond simple recall. They need time to talk and to experiment and to write and to chart and to explore--all things they aren’t doing if they are listening to us. So rather than telling them about supply and demand or the functions of a cell or the themes of Macbeth, allow them to discover these things. It’s a lot harder to plan for what they will do than to plan for what we will do, but the learning (theirs!) will be worth it.
4. Don’t focus on the wrong things. The more we focus on what we don’t want students to do, the less we focus on what we do want them to do. When we spend lots of time and energy making detailed rules about hats and gum and food and bra straps and cellphones in class, you know what’s going to happen? We’re going to spend lots of time and energy enforcing rules about hats and gum and food and bra straps and cellphones in class...time and energy we could be spending on learning. This does not mean allowing class to be a free-for-all; it just means being thoughtful about what really matters to us and to our ultimate goal: to improve learning.
5. Don’t stand at the front of the room. In fact, don’t have a front of the room (this will help with #3 as well!). That means being really intentional about how we set the room up each class. Yes, this takes time, and yes, it may be a bit loud. But how we set up the room can make a huge difference in learning, attention, and engagement. So think about the purpose of each class, the tasks you are having students do, and then determine the BEST setup possible for that purpose.

These suggestions may seem extreme, but think about the underlying premise of each “Don’t”. Our goal as teachers is to maximize learning for all students, and so many of our teaching defaults get in the way of this goal. By being more intentional about daily decisions and structures and policies, and by doing these class after class after class, we can start to build practices and systems that become...well...habits.

Thank You, Grant Wiggins

The first real education book I actually read was Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design. It was 1998 or 99, shortly after it was first published, and our principal bought the book for the entire faculty to read over the summer. I had read parts of education texts in the past, of course, but all seemed so theoretical or irrelevant or merely a means to credit in my teacher prep classes. But UbD was different. It made so much sense. It was so intuitive. It was so practical. As a new teacher, backward design was just what I needed to help me make sense of a profession that seemed so confusing and arbitrary.

Over the next decade and a half, I devoured education books, continuously searching for better ways to improve learning. I read about multiple intelligences, differentiation, personalization, standards-based grading, mindset, grit, habits of mind, performance assessments, and every book I could find about the brain and learning. At the beginning of this school year a colleague said to me about our school’s move towards standards-based learning, “I’m just going to buckle down and wait this initiative out like all the others. Believe me, it will go away.” She then cited many of the above as evidence. I didn’t say anything, but here’s what I should have said. For good educators, nothing we learn about improving learning goes away. As new research about the brain and teaching emerges, we have a professional responsibility to incorporate the new into the old, to take the parts that work, tweak the parts that should work but don’t, and think critically about what we are doing and why. The connections between and among “initiatives” are clear when we look for them—when differentiation became big, it didn’t replace earlier knowledge we had about learning, it built upon it. And everything I have learned about education has built upon the idea of backward design.

Here’s the point. Understanding by Design was foundational. All of my professional learning seems to stem in some way from the ideas in that book, ideas that are just as relevant and effective as when they were first written down. In fact, I would argue that they are even more powerful today when combined each successive “initiative” and what we know about the brain and learning.

A few years ago, some colleagues and I were lucky enough to see Grant Wiggins present. We were at the edge of a transition in our school, and we had been asked to grapple with some big ideas about vision. After our first day listening, we became more confused than ever. Grant recognized this (Adam Bunting doesn’t have much of a poker-face) and approached us. He listened attentively, asked a few really pointed questions, and then sent us out into the hallway for the rest of the conference to work out our ideas. With the help of his colleague Allison Zmuda, we crafted what became known as our “napkin vision,” lots of notes actually written on a napkin. There were hundreds of teachers at that presentation, but at the end of the day, Grant asked us what we had come up with. He asked if he could take it back to his hotel to look at it more closely. He didn’t need to do that. And he certainly didn’t need to give us the incredible feedback he gave us the next morning. The questions he asked and the suggestions he made are a large part of why we are where we are today as a school.

In the past few years, I have followed @grantwiggins on Twitter and have read every blog post on his incredible blog “Granted, and…” at www.grantwiggins.wordpress.com. His January posts about differentiated instruction were some of the most powerful and important to our current work, and came at a time when we needed some intellectual weight to support the hard work our teachers were doing. And his recent posts, including his last, on reading strategies, will be powerful for years to come. There are so many times in the last few years when I have envied Grant his direct approach to critics and his candid opinions about the moral necessity of good teaching.

Today, we lost one of the most influential thinkers of our time.  I did not know Grant Wiggins personally, but I can only imagine that he was as good a man as he was an educator. His work has and will continue to inspire teachers, and I am grateful that I was able to be one of them. Thank you, Grant, for such important work. You will be missed.

Standards vs. Learning Targets: Training for the Marathon

One of the core components of SBL is the articulation of clear standards.  These standards help us design curriculum, instruction, and assessment within our courses.  Within a unit, however, students need to have more specific targets for their learning than the course or school or national standards. While the standards can provide our ultimate destination (looking at a body of work over time), they are often not very helpful (for us or for students) when it comes to specific instructional design and assessment.

Unit level targets, in contrast, are precise and specific, and provide interim destinations--where students should be along the way in order to be prepared to meet the year-long standards. They are smaller, more achievable goals that help build to the larger goal.

One way to look at this is through the metaphor of running a marathon.   My course level standard would be running 26.2 miles.

 In order to be able to meet this target, I will need to train over time; nobody expects me to be able to go straight from the couch to finishing a marathon.  It is essential that I will have small, achievable goals that will provide me not only motivation, but also valuable feedback about my progress towards my overall goal.  These smaller goals are equivalent to unit level targets.  

For example, in order to be on track for completing the full marathon, by week seven (of a 16 week training plan) I should be able to have a long run of 12 miles.  During this time it would not be helpful if the only feedback I was getting was, “you haven’t run 26.2 miles yet.”…as a matter of fact, it would possibly make me give up, even if I was actually making the expected progress.

The same is true in the classroom. Yearlong (or even semester long) goals may not be able to provide the incremental progress feedback necessary for maintaining motivation and growth. Neurologist and teacher Judy Willis writes about the importance of setting incremental goals. "The fuel that motivates the brain to persevere through increasing challenge, even through failed attempts, is dopamine. This neurochemical produces the pleasure of intrinsic satisfaction, and increases motivation, curiosity, perseverance and memory. Dopamine is released when the brain makes a prediction or achieves a challenge and gets the feedback that it was correct" (Willis). When students experience frequent success and can visualize progress, they are more apt to learn efficiently and effectively.

So what does this look like for standards and targets? Here are some examples teachers in our school have created. These scales move from left to right, increasing in complexity. Notice how the unit level targets inform the larger course level targets; they break down the larger goal and isolate a single part of the standard to focus on during the specific unit of learning.

Course Level Target

Reading: Comprehension:

I understand the main and supporting ideas of the text and can provide a summary, but my summary may be overly general or too specific; I can identify how the author structured the text, including how information is organized and presented.

I understand main and supporting ideas of the text and can provide a succinct and objective summary that supports my purpose; I can explain how and why the author structured the text and presented information.

I can determine which information from the text best supports my purpose, and can adjust my summary based on that purpose; I can evaluate the author’s decisions around structure and presentation.

Unit Level Targets (supporting the above)

Reading: Comprehension:		I can determine important ideas within a text.	I can determine main and supporting ideas within a text.	I can show how supporting details support the main purpose of the text, and can determine which information from the text best supports my own purpose.
Reading: Comprehension:		I can provide an accurate summary, but my summary may be overly general or too specific.	I can provide a succinct and objective summary that supports my purpose and includes a relevant Big Idea.	I can provide a succinct and objective summary based on my purpose, which connects the details to the big ideas within the text.

Course Level Target

Writing: Purpose:

I have a clear thesis; my paragraphs have separate and distinct topics that match my thesis; my leads introduce new topics; my purpose matches my audience; most of my paper matches my thesis.

I have a clear thesis with organizer; my purpose is appropriate to my audience and to the assignment; my leads support my thesis and organizer, and introduce subtopics; my purpose stays consistent throughout my paper.

I have a clear and multi-faceted thesis that determines my organizational structure; my paper shows awareness of my audience; I manipulate language and techniques to communicate my purpose; my leads and finishers further the understanding of my thesis.

Unit Level Target (supporting the above)

Writing: Purpose:

I have a clear thesis which can be proven with limited evidence and analysis.

I have a clear, arguable thesis requiring multiple levels of proof.

I have a clear, complex, and multi-faceted arguable thesis.

We know that learners are motivated by feedback and growth; therefore, our unit level targets must allow this.  The course level targets are often less helpful in an instructional sense, so we need to shrink the grain size in order to articulate what learning looks like along the way. By creating these specific unit level targets, we can design better instruction, monitor learning, and communicate progress toward the end goal, thus ensuring that more of our students cross the finish line.

Willis, Judy. "How to Rewire Your Burned-Out Brain: Tips from a Neurologist." Edutopia. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Oct. 2014.

This SBL Thing is Freakin' Hard

We’re in the midst of a transition to standards-based learning at our school. Like any new learning, there are moments of clarity, but more often than not, the way is murky and clouded with doubt and uncertainty. Those of us who were excited and inspired in August, are now exhausted and questioning ourselves and our practices. Principles of learning that seemed clear and unassailable after reading Wormeli and Zull and Guskey and O’Connor now seem contradictory and unstable. Where we once felt so confident and competent, we are now feeling like first year teachers all over again.

Amazing things are happening in our classrooms. Students know their targets, talk about learning, and are taking ownership of their progress. Teachers are clearly articulating goals, providing low risk practice, responding to formative assessments, and communicating progress based on achievement. In other words, learning is happening for students.

But scary things are also happening in our classrooms. Students are asking about grading changes, challenging new practices, and misinterpreting our words. Teachers are struggling with new strategies, stumbling over explanations, and making mistakes with new technology. In other words, learning is happening for teachers.

We tell our students that we value risk-taking and that we want them to push themselves to work outside of their comfort zones. We know that learning only occurs in the Zone of Proximal Development, and we teach students how to work through challenges and persevere. We know that success is built on the back of failure. So if we truly believe what we tell students, then it’s time to hold ourselves to those same principles of learning.

•       Learning is not always comfortable: If you haven’t seen the Dr. Tae skateboarding TED Talk, take a look at it (great to show students as well). Through video of skateboarding practice, Dr. Tae illustrates just how painful the learning process can be. When learning to improve student learning we will fall, we will mess up, we will sometimes even get hurt. But then we will get a little better and little better and a little better.
•       Learning takes practice: We know that the one doing is the one learning. While we can certainly gain valuable insights and inspiration from reading and listening to the experts, we won’t actually learn how to improve learning for students until we practice it. And we’ll get it wrong (see #1), and we’ll practice it again and get it wrong again (and maybe again), but we keep practicing. And one day we’ll get it a little bit right. And then we’ll get it even more right (though by then we’ll be getting something else wrong).
•       Learning takes time: We can’t expect learning to come quickly, particularly when the new learning contradicts what we’ve experienced and practiced for years and decades. After we’ve practiced this unit we will head into next unit a little more confident; and then we’ll head into next semester feeling a little more competent; and then we’ll start next year feeling even more prepared. Or maybe it will take multiple years.

So why go through all of this change? How is it fair to our students to practice on them?

If we don’t respond to what we know about learning by making major changes in the way we teach and grade, then we have failed our students and ourselves. Maintaining the status quo is ethically questionable at best, and immoral at worst. Unlike doctors, we don’t have the luxury of practicing new techniques on cadavers, and unlike pilots, we don’t have access to a classroom simulation program. Our practice is on real, live students in real, live schools (with real, live parents). That makes it unbelievably challenging, yes, but all the more important.

So here it is in a nutshell: transitioning to SBL is not easy. We will screw up and say things we don’t really mean, we will try strategies that flop and waste time, we will have moments when we don’t know how to answer a question (maybe even in front of parents at Open House), and we will probably need to be more honest with ourselves and our students than we ever have been.  And just like we tell our students, we need to tell ourselves it's okay, that learning isn't easy. But it's better than the alternative. 

Shrinking the Field: The Importance of Targeted Practice

It seemed like an easy task. I wanted my soccer players to work on 1-on-1 defending.  We had struggled with it in the last game, and like a good coach, I was going to focus on our biggest need.  So I partnered my players up, started them at midfield, and said go. After only five minutes I was beyond frustrated. Though I had told them the purpose, they weren’t getting it.  Some attacking players simply drifted from side to side and some whacked the ball by the defender into the 50 yards of open space and made it a foot race. I had made my purpose clear and had designed the drill to address the purpose, so why weren’t they getting it? 

My problem? I hadn’t shrunk the field.   If I really wanted to work on 1-on-1 defending, I needed to make sure the space I was using matched my purpose.  Of course half of a soccer field was a disaster; there was too much room for kids to make other choices and in essence change the drill. I needed to shrink the field to a size that allowed my players to efficiently and precisely practice the skill I intended them to practice.

The same principle holds true when working on academic skills. Our “practice field” needs to match our purpose and allow for precision and efficiency. So often we assign tasks that are too big, tasks that are sure to provide too much open space in which students can get lost, get distracted, or change direction. By shrinking the field we can help isolate skills for students which will lead to more efficient and effective learning. (feedback gets distracted or off base too)

Here’s an example:

One of our learning targets this year is about supporting ideas with evidence. Our scale (see below) shows the progression of this skill, differentiating between evidence that relates to the purpose, evidence that supports the purpose, and evidence that helps prove the purpose. The distinction between levels is subtle, particularly between levels 3 and 4, and students were having trouble seeing how to improve. We had just done an activity where we had asked students to do some research and to decide whether aliens exist. They needed to develop their thesis and then find the best evidence to prove their position. They had a great time and came up with some good evidence on both sides of the argument…but overall, the activity did not help them improve with the skill. They were unable to see the difference between levels of evidence, and we were unable to determine whether they had stumbled upon good evidence by chance.  

		2	3 (target)	4
Writing: Evidence: (ESL 2.3e)		I can support my ideas with evidence that relates to my purpose.	I can support my ideas with multiple credible pieces of evidence that support my purpose.	I can support my ideas with varied, vivid pieces of evidence that work together to help prove my purpose.

While the alien activity was a fun way to introduce the importance of good evidence, it was not a good way to instruct or assess the target skill. It was clear that we were asking them to do too many things in the initial activity, so we (and they) were unable to isolate the skill we had meant to focus on. Some of them struggled to come up with a thesis, some got distracted by bad you tube videos, and some ran out of time and picked the first evidence they could find.

So we shrunk the field.

We provided students with a thesis, gathered the evidence they had collected in the initial activity, and created a chart with about 20 pieces of evidence.

The next day in class we asked them to evaluate each piece of evidence in relation to the thesis. For each piece they had to check whether it was “good” (related), “better” (supported), or “best” (helped prove), and then provide the rationale for their choice. Then they had to choose the three pieces of evidence they would use if they had to convince someone of their thesis, and explain why they chose these.

When we shrunk the field and narrowed the scope of the practice to focus precisely on the difference between good, better, and best evidence, students got it. And we were able to see—specifically and precisely—where they struggled with the skill, which allowed us to design more practice for some students.

A week later, we set them loose on the larger field again, asking them to research the Mongols, determine whether they were civilized innovators or savage barbarians, and support their thesis statements with the best evidence.  This time, they nailed the evidence. Shrinking the field during practice allowed us to target--and them to hone--the skills necessary for success in the big game.