3663.Resource, Edutopia, Transitioning to Evidence Based Grading (Nov. 2023)

This was copied directly from the website:  " A desire for fairness and uniformity in grading prompted one district to make a big change. Districts across the country have made strides toward grading reform, often landing on some version of standards-based grading. Naysayers claim it’s just a trend in education, proponents say it’s an innovation, but both are left with the question: How do we actually implement a new system and make meaningful changes? It’s simple—you’ve got to start with the root of the problem. Dive into grade books, and it won’t take you long to uncover the discrepancies among teachers who teach the exact same course. Grading is uniformly an inconsistent practice, which can be radically different from teacher to teacher. For example, we easily uncovered grade book inequities such as a student in teacher A’s class performing identically to a student in teacher B’s class on tests measuring standards. However, the students’ grades differed from a C to an A because of how categories were weighted and how the points were arbitrarily assigned. When you cannot stand by grading practices such as these, you can begin the process of justifying the Herculean task of altering them.

Fargo Public Schools in North Dakota set out to find a practical model and implement it. The district established a strategic plan with an initiative to create a guaranteed and viable curriculum that is both comprehensive and equitable."