Grading Visible Learners: Learning with Fluidity, Not Finality

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Dave Nagel and Bruce Potter. Dave and Bruce are co-founders of the Center for Collaborative Expertise. Dave's work focuses on helping schools and districts implement visible learning research, assessment, and feedback, and effective grading reform at both the school and classroom levels. He's supported schools in building impactful PLCs and is a thought leader in the PLC Plus framework. Dave has authored seven books, four of which are bestsellers aligned to the PLC Plus suite of publications, and he's contributed to publications such as Principal Leadership, Educational Leadership, and The Learning Professional. and he presents regularly at national conferences.

[00:49]

Bruce Potter is a school administrator with over 30 years of experience. He began his career as a classroom teacher and has held leadership roles at the building level, as a principal, and at the district level as a superintendent for 11 years. Bruce brings a wealth of experience in implementing visible learning research, guiding districts, schools, and teachers in transforming their practices. His schools have earned national recognition for innovative approaches that redefine success for traditionally underserved students. And they are the authors together of Grading Visible Learners, Learning with Fluidity, Not Finality, which we're here to talk about today.

[01:22] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[01:24] SPEAKER_01:

Dave and Bruce, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thanks for having us.

[01:27] SPEAKER_00:

Really appreciate being here.

[01:28] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm excited to talk with you because we've talked on this show about many aspects of visible learning and the large body of research stretching across many researchers and experts over many years. And you've tackled a piece that often people have questions about and often is a little bit difficult to get our minds around, and that is grading. and grading for learning and that suite of issues. Talk to us a little bit about what work this came out of and what needs you saw in the field for a book focused specifically on grading visible learners.

[01:59] SPEAKER_02:

Super Justin, thanks for asking the question and thanks for also maybe being as kind as you could about this being a polarizing topic. Other than politics, I'm not quite sure sometimes what is, Bruce knows that as well. I've been passionate about grading for a very long time. I actually wrote a book on secondary grading practices back in 2015. But to your point around how we tie this to the visible learning work, myself, Bruce is also a consultant, but I've been working as a consultant full-time since 2008. And specifically with John Hattie's research since 2013.

[02:27]

I can think of countless schools who put in so much effort to developing quality learners, visible learners, helping kids develop the dispositions of grit, perseverance, resilience, curiosity, fill in the blank, and then have it get jammed up because our grading practices are not aligned to the research. And so I've kind of had a vision for this work for a long time. And then about a year and a half ago, Bruce and I have been colleagues and friends for over a decade. I kind of pulled him into the project and he has really helped me bring it to life, bring it to life for both of us. But I'll throw more thought out than let Bruce respond. We need to be very, very clear.

[02:59]

We want to be very clear in our messaging. We have to be honest and accurate in terms of how we assess any human being and where their abilities are to whatever standard goal expectation that is. But far too often in education, it's the only place where we disrupt everything else we know about quality feedback, about perseverance, about keeping engagement and motivation in place. And there are just some things related to grading that are not just archaic. They never worked. On the flip side, what we can't do is walk into any school or classroom and start telling teachers or educators, here's what you're doing wrong, so stop.

[03:31]

Without saying, is that giving you the desired impact? And could we align it to research with these other ideas? And so I'll let Bruce respond. But one of the things we're very proud of and very passionate about, and certainly the feedback so far on the book has been this. We try to provide very practical strategies and actions that are aligned to research that are adaptable. that teachers can use within their classroom, which is a very busy, what we call sometimes a very, they call it a wicked environment where there's so many things happening that don't have to disrupt and add unnecessary, copious amounts of extra work on their part, or have us feel like the kids don't have any accountability in this.

[04:07]

So Bruce, any other thoughts just to just the general framework when we put this together for the publication?

[04:13] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, just a couple points before we dive too deep. We really believe it's the primary job of teachers to develop talent, not just sort and select it out. And through John Hattie's research, he has clearly articulated what drives, what motivates and moves the needle is having a student who can drive their own learning. He's identified six characteristics of what is termed a visible learner. And the approach we took was Okay, how can we support each one of these characteristics through not only the title of the book is grading, but really we take an approach of how are we designing experiences that will then need to be assessed, given appropriate feedback, and then ultimately get a score. But with the whole purpose of promoting learning, not just giving them a score.

[05:07]

You know, Dave talks about the time and the rush and everything that classroom teachers have going on. And we've done so much work around visible learning and what works best. It's almost like, okay, I'm going to buy the best ingredients. I'm going to follow the recipe, but then I'm going to put it on 500 because I have to hurry up and get the meal done. And I've just ruined it. So everything that's done in classrooms to formulate great learning has to be complimented with an appropriate assessment and score.

[05:37] SPEAKER_01:

Well, take us into what those six traits of a visible learner are, just briefly, if you would.

[05:43] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So Doug Fisher and Nancy Fry, John Hattie, when they wrote Developing Assessment-Capable Visible Learners. And certainly you could kind of tweak, and I work with schools all the time that have maybe come up with slightly different versions of what a visible learner is. And one of the main things when I coach schools and administrators and teachers, a very fair question is to have your students be asked this question, what makes a good learner a good learner? And usually we get things like, you know, when you ask the kids those questions, sit up straight, speak when spoken to, raise your hand, keep your hands to yourself, et cetera. That's a good kid.

[06:13]

Don't get me wrong. I wish I had three better ones in my own house. Those are not the traits of what we want in terms of a learner. So knowing their current level of understanding, being able to gauge their level of understanding, being able to select tools for learning. What Bruce and I did is we took the six traits of a visible learner. And with a slightly, you know, a little bit of poetic freedom, we simply took an approach where we made it the acronym GRADES.

[06:35]

And what we did is we took each one of those traits and we applied them to the visible learning research and what were strategies and actions to be able to bring them to life. So know your current level of understanding, we turn it into gauge your current level of understanding, just so that way the acronym fit and it made it nice and neat and tidy in a book with X number of chapters. But then let's just break that first one down. If I want my students to gauge their level of understanding, which right after that is readiness to know when they're competent to take on the challenge, then there has to be teacher clarity. And as I mentioned earlier, and it's not a critique, I was a high school biology teacher that respectfully, I want to turn my head to some of the ways I instructed and graded, you know, back in the early 2000s, even in the late 90s, but we're smarter today than we were back then. Back in the late 90s, some schools might have even still had a smoking lounge.

[07:20]

We don't have those things anymore. So we can give ourselves some freedom to know that the research wasn't available. But when I have a large group of teachers in front of me, sometimes I'll say, so your average kiddo goes home, pick any of them. And their parents say, how did you get a grade or how did you get a C? What does the kid say? And I will hear a large group of the audience say, I don't know.

[07:39]

And then I immediately respond, they're not lying. And then I wait for the pause. They're not lying. And respectfully, that's our fault. So just kind of speaking very clearly to the visible learning research on not a simple but significant example, teacher clarity, for example, we know is a tremendously important influence. 0.85 and Hattie's effect sizes.

[07:58]

That means we have to have quality learning intentions and quality success criteria, which then means any assignment or task or quiz or discussion prompt or anything that you're going to do as a teacher to evaluate where that student is has to be aligned to that. And one of the simple metaphors that Bruce and I bring in, if we look at band, choir, orchestra, teachers, performing arts teachers, or athletic coaches, rarely is there anything they do in their practice or their classroom that is not directly aligned to gathering the evidence they need to be able to make the next decision. And so in and of itself, that alone can add a lot of efficiency into feedback and grading, and it also demystifies it. So one other thought, and then I'll let Bruce describe his ideas, but like, for example, when we dug into the trait, being able to evaluate your progress and adjust your learning. We certainly pulled in research for many others. And obviously, when it comes to the grading conversation, Tom Guskey is one that we will all in a respectful way and literal way and metaphoric way, genuflect to.

[08:52]

Tom is, in many opinions, the world's leading expert around the research. And so we took what he talked about with mastery learning and applied it to mastery grading. How there's that threshold, because what happens sometimes in many classrooms, and it's not the fault of a teacher. is a student hands in work and it is nowhere near up to a certain level of proficiency or even progress towards learning. And what have we done? We give them an indiscriminate number or let's just say 40% or some arbitrary number that kind of gets thrown into the pot.

[09:23]

And then eventually we want to throw more and more things in the pot, cross our fingers, make the sign of the cross, whatever it is, and hope that it eventually leads to something of quality as opposed to no. unless you can identify or do certain things related to our success criteria, unless you can cite one key idea and two key details, until you can at least do that, and that's just an example that came off the top of my head, there is no grades. there's feedback. And in many student information systems now, parents have immediate access to the report card. So the other thing that we talk about are maybe some traditions that don't make sense anymore. We don't need to worry about the last day of the nine weeks because it's not any different than the next day of the next nine weeks.

[10:02]

High school with semesters is a little bit different, but to help teachers get into more of a habit of looking at when students are giving any form of feedback in the form of a grade, it's because it aligns, for example, to certain success criteria. And then the other point, I know I've kind of got a little long-winded here, Bruce and I were very intentional to bring in the concept of clarity of scoring. And I don't know if you mentioned earlier when we started talking, you're not as big into sports maybe as some others, but I'll use a college football metaphor since I know you're from Arkansas. But if the Razorbacks happen to play at Alabama or at Georgia and lose in double overtime to the number one team in the country, they're not happy with it. They feel pretty good. If they were to beat a Division II team in double overtime, they're not going to be happy at all.

[10:44]

because the rigor of the task should have spoken more to where your level of mastery is. So how we score and grade students' work, whether it's on a standards-based system, a traditional point system, doesn't really matter, should be aligned to the rigor level and demonstration of evidence they provide, which allows them, when we get to the stage of determining what a student's mastery is, I think it's got a lot more relevance, a lot more application, and I think another point is it does then make it more accurate Not so we can say you're on the honor roll or not, but so we can determine what your next learning step is and whether or not you need some intervention. So, Bruce, I know I went a little long on that one, but your thoughts to how we take the traits of a visible learner and apply it to the concept with grading visible learners.

[11:26] SPEAKER_00:

Sure. I will just speak to one of those where we modified the trait to fit the D in grades, determine feedback, and recognize that errors are an opportunity to learn. So we have to be careful not to grade too early because we can't tell them that errors are opportunities to learn, but there's a 62 going in the grade book. Or if we were to put a pencil, a 62 in, because that's all they've demonstrated to this point, or only two of five success criteria, that's all well and good because we're keeping track of their progress. But to determine that as a grade, or then to do all this work And then, well, there were seven things we collected. So we added them all up and divided by seven.

[12:15]

And therefore, this is your grade. That's why one of the things we talk about is you need to eradicate the average because that goes against developing a visible learner. Otherwise, we're lying to them to say that errors are opportunities to learn. They just didn't do well the first time out or they haven't had enough practice. So it's not about not grading. It's not about unlimited chances.

[12:38]

It's about what are we trying to accomplish? We're trying to develop great learners. The goal of our field is learning. And what Dave referred to in the Collaborative Grading Scoring Guide for our clarity of scoring the rigor should matter. If someone did not do so well or rushed through some surface level items with vocabulary or some recall items and they got a low score, but by the time the unit progressed and they're at the deep and transfer level, they can analyze and they can apply, they've learned the material. They must've caught up on that vocabulary.

[13:19]

So whatever happened earlier doesn't matter as much. Now, again, We're not saying that those things need to be dismissed or should be eliminated, but they shouldn't be weighted as much. It's about progress. It's about feedback. It's about learning. And if we get focused, unfortunately, the more I did the research and put in the effort with work with Dave on this book, I realized back in the 90s when I was a classroom teacher, I didn't do things very well because I graded the way I was graded.

[13:54]

But that doesn't mean I had bad teachers. It doesn't mean I had bad intent. When we know better, we do better.

[14:02] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and Bruce, if I can build upon that, because it's staying within that same context. When you mentioned early grading, we can go back to Kluger and Dinesi's work, which was actually one of the things that Timperlian had to use in their feedback model, is that any learner, when they are assessed too early, can focus too much on that evaluation, whether it was good or bad, and away from the learning strategies. So that's just embedded in the very empirical research. How do we apply that to a practical day-to-day classroom teacher that either has 25 or 30 kids that they see all day for everything, and they have English, math, science, social studies, or a secondary teacher that has a similar challenge in terms of scope and depth, which is I only have my kids for 45 minutes, but I'm going to see 160 of them a day. The grade book needs to be a counselor. So if we want to develop a visible learner and we want them to learn from their mistakes, then we cannot count every single mistake in the grade book.

[14:53]

But I want to pause there for a second. I said we can't count every. It doesn't mean we're not counting any. There has to be some practicality for how teachers move through their units of instruction, et cetera. But if we have a focus on clarity, if we have a focus on rigor, if we have a focus on, for example, one of our simple strategies, simple but I like to call significant, is what we call make it happen. And that's a metaphor or an acronym for missing essential assignments, extended chance.

[15:23]

Nobody is saying that students should be able to thumb their nose to work. Nobody's saying that. But I would say it's insane if every student has the exact same assignments as all of their peers over the course of a semester. That's insane. For every kid to have a different set of assignments than their peers is 20,000 times more insane. It's gotta be somewhere in the middle.

[15:44]

My son plays college basketball at the University of Charlotte, mainly because he's 6'10". And when he left for Charlotte a couple of years ago, he was shooting 52% from the free throw line. Even if you don't know a lot about sports, that's bad. He probably got a heck of a lot more instruction on his free throw shooting than somebody else, but he didn't need anything on his dunks. And so when kids do miss assignments and tasks, et cetera, the first thing we have to ask ourselves is the purpose of them completing that task just to hand it in, because if it is, then that's what we like to call the culture of completion compliance, which is where we build in to our students the behaviors that we actually don't like, that they just put something on paper just to turn the damn thing in. So when we talk about missing an essential assignment, you get an extended chance.

[16:26]

Let's say, Justin, this is a semester, and in November, I'm just saying you didn't do something, whatever it was. And in December, you've missed that assignment, and there's an opportunity or what we call amnesty days or periods to make up work or whatever the heck we want to call it. do you really need to do that task? Or would it make more sense that you focus on something that we're working on now? So the point being is, yes, we should teach kids a level of responsibility. Where I always challenge is, I've never seen anybody with a degree from an accredited college in teaching responsibility.

[16:58]

So could we at least acknowledge nobody has the market cornered on that? But I do think students should know, including my own kids, that you don't just get to thumb your nose to things. But one of the other pieces that we built into the framework was what we call the assignment task grading matrix, which simply on a simple Johari's window on the vertical axis is where we talk about how low to high increases the grade and on the horizontal from left to right is it improves learning and achievement. And so anything that is left of center are things that do not improve learning. We have a lot of tasks that unnecessarily inflate grades because there's either no challenge, there's no rigor, or recalling bringing in tissue and sanitizer during flu season biology. No.

[17:41]

There's also tasks that go in there that the kids don't do them, and now we've lowered their grade, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Actually, in the bottom right quadrant, for those of you who jump into the book and are able to see it, or if you go to our website, we have an example there, is what we call tasks that are developing. things that will tell us in the moment where the student's learning is, but might not actually increase the grade. And like Bruce mentioned, one of our core concepts is to eradicate the average. We're not ignoring when kids haven't shown a consistent level of mastery and giving anybody who does not rightfully deserve the grade of A, not just for the A on the bumper sticker, but because the A conveys to his parents and subsequent teachers, there's a level of mastery that you should be able to demonstrate. where I think sometimes teachers struggle and it doesn't come from a bad place is what I do when they don't do well.

[18:26]

Because I've heard this comment countless times in the last decade. Well, I'm afraid if I give them that task before they're ready, because it's going to trap them. I don't think an athletic coach or a band director is going to say, I want you to try this free throw. I want you to try and play this note, but I'm worried if you get it wrong, I'm going to have to worry about it in the grade book, as opposed to, I want to know if you cannot do that skill because then I know how to react. And so kind of in a nutshell, everything that we try to design within the book are ways to have quality formative assessment tasks and ideas and strategies that still can be conveyed as part of the overall grade, because we should always be looking at the body of the student's evidence. So Bruce, any thought to that?

[19:07] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think the assignment task grading matrix is really going to be something that's popular because it walks through examples. And Dave talked about before, the challenges, the biggest challenge of time, the lack of it that the teacher has. So part of the assignment task grading matrix and the Collaborative Grading Scoring Guide because it walks our readers and anyone that would apply it through generative learning experiences. How do we know, what experiences are we creating at the surface, deep, and transfer level that the students are generating examples or evidence of their learning that we know of? Well, when we go ahead and do that, we're mapping success criteria. We're laying it out what it looks like.

[19:52]

That is naturally going to avoid some of the items that we have on that, you know, we call them coasting or losing assignments because they're busy sheets. They're nothing productive. It's a word search. It's we're up. So and so didn't do things. We're just throwing things at them so I can collect grades in a grade book.

[20:12]

So it all works hand in hand, but again, to promote learning and gather evidence of learning, and equally important is to give them feedback on that learning so they know their next step.

[20:26] SPEAKER_01:

So let's talk if we could about what some of roadblocks are to moving forward on these issues and some of the key actions for leaders to take. And then we already talked about that. Dave spoke to it before he had to go. And then Bruce, yeah, you want to jump in on that one too?

[20:42] SPEAKER_02:

So one other kind of piece related to Bruce, as you were sharing, what the visible learning research teaches us sometimes is what to do, but even more importantly, what not to do. And so we talk about what are just some natural roadblocks to barriers of developing visible learners. One of them is frustration, comes in at negative 0.04. And that's a blend of anger and disappointment. And it's usually a barrier to learning that often is aligned to what's called receiver apprehension.

[21:06]

And receiver apprehension is the science that was discovered back in the 70s where I do not know how to respond to messages sent to me psychologically, verbally, and print. My standing joke is when I read that, I don't know how to respond psychologically to messages from others, which is why I know I break out into a cold sweat when I ask my wife how she's doing and she says, I'm fine. A little scared there. So a little bit of levity, a little bit of joking, but we know what we're talking about. So back to what we were saying, there's some non-negotiables like we need to have clarity present. The other one that we really identified that's something that I would really want elementary teachers to consider, not that it's not applicable to secondary because it is what's called perfectionism.

[21:45]

which has an effect size of about 0.03. So it's almost at zero. And what we learned about perfectionism, what happens to students who determine and perceive that the only way I can be successful is if I overachieve compared to my peers, or for example, I always get 100%. And we need to stop over celebrating 100% with younger students. Because if you got 100%, that means one thing and one thing only.

[22:11]

The task was too easy. Kids shouldn't feel bad about themselves. So Bruce, you got 100%. That's awesome. What is your next learning step? That is great that you did that.

[22:20]

But what is the difference, for example, if a kid had 100 math problems and they got 99 right or 100 right? It doesn't matter. they're showing a level of mastery to move on. And so one of the things that we talk about back to the point about clarity of scoring, it's clear in the research when we look at David Lang and Cogner around why we would weigh, for example, AP and honors courses. Those are usually weighed with a higher GPA because the research is pretty clear that schools have a commitment to defining excellence. We wanna provide an extrinsic motivator for kids to take on more difficult tasks.

[22:56]

Why can't that same thing happen in a regular classroom where it's not what we would call extra credit? Sometimes extra credit gets a bad rap. If students complete very challenging math problems or social studies problems or fill in the blank, aren't they showing a level of mastery that's actually maybe above and beyond? Shouldn't that be part of the body of evidence that we bring in? And so how we weigh and score items could allow students to take risks in their learning, but still feel they can get the highest grade. And every once in a while, I'll get someone who pushes back and say, well, how many mistakes do you want your Delta pilot to make?

[23:27]

You know, because I fly Delta all the time. I'm like, did you really make it that easy? Because if you did, as many as he or she needed to in the simulator. And I bet they make mistakes from time to time of the year, and then they recover from them because they got some support and help from the computers. And isn't there a gap? between eighth grade math and Delta Airlines.

[23:45]

So let's be realistic there. The other thing I just want to speak to, and then Bruce, I'll have you jump on and kind of pick this up as we talk about core practices. And one of them is collaborating around grading. This needs to be conversations around all the things we're talking about within the PLC setting. And when we say collaborating around grading, what we don't mean is teachers sitting around grading papers. And besides, if you see a group of teachers grading papers, that is not a PLC meeting.

[24:10]

We usually call that a staff meeting. Those are different. Thank you for those of you in the audience listening to that laughing because it's true. But what we mean by that is we have conversations around alignment of tasks to our success criteria. Does that task even align? The level of rigor, how we're going to weigh it, what we do when students miss deadlines.

[24:27]

And one of the concepts we talk about are stipulated second chances. In life, we're full of those. What do you call somebody who passes the bar exam on the ninth try? I would call him my cousin Vinny, but we would call that person an attorney. We'd also call that person someone who was perseverant. But they actually had a penalty, didn't they?

[24:45]

They had to pay for the test nine times. They had to go back and take it. There was a stipulation. And so how we can work that concept in is something we talk a lot about to where we're not telling kids, you get to thumb your nose at tasks and assignments, but whether you put effort in and just couldn't get it done in time or you just...

[25:02]

got lazy and neglectful, there still is an opportunity, but there might be a stipulation that is unrelated to devaluing your grade.

[25:10] SPEAKER_00:

So we've identified five of them. Someone to speak to just quickly is traditions trumping evidence. This is the way we've always done it. And how can we get over those pieces in our field? Because truly they're obstacles to real learning. You know, valedictorian, salutatorian.

[25:31]

You know, we have to have this ranking, so it's got, you know, colleges focus on cum laude, summa cum laude, and things of that nature, where if you've met a mark, you've met a mark. With the valedictorian salutatorian argument, and I will throw this out there. I, superintendent in two different school districts, arrived at my second one, and I wasn't there long, and I was engaging in conversations. And the counselor was providing the reports for me for the advanced placement classes and of the more rigorous courses in high school. And I asked, why is enrollment so low? And the explanation to me was they weren't weighted.

[26:11]

And they used to have a top 10 or the top six. Excuse me, it wasn't a top 10. It was a top six dinner at the local Elks Club for grades 9 through 12 for all the kids who were in the top six of their class. And no one wanted to miss that spaghetti dinner and certificate. So why would they risk that honor by challenging themselves? So it's those traditions that really...

[26:37]

not to sound like a jerk, but what we're talking about. So they don't promote learning. They don't promote risk-taking. And that's in developing a visible learner, they know it's safe to take risks. Not that, again, we talked about it earlier. It's not that there's unlimited chances or things of that nature, but we should always focus on challenging ourselves to promote learning and having kids take those risks.

[27:03]

But we need to structure the experiences and the environment so that they can be supported. It's about supporting students through their learning. That's what a teacher does. We can't go through support and then just at the end say, well, this is what you got. And that's what happened. So we talked earlier, one of the things Dave referenced was make it happen or amnesty days.

[27:27]

The counter to that is a tradition. Well, that's not fair. Sally turned in all her work on time. It's not fair to have Billy get the extra couple days. Well, it's not about Sally versus Billy. Billy may have had to miss an event on a Saturday because he was making up those assignments that you gave him until Monday to do, where Sally had hers on time.

[27:52]

So we've instituted or implemented what we call the site model. And it's really all about support, but with an intervention. But how do we incentivize it? Sometimes the incentive is less work. You've demonstrated you've learned something. So we're not just giving kids more and more busy work.

[28:11]

So and we don't want to punish the proficient. So by just giving them more to do because, well. Everybody's sitting there and these other kids have work to do. And just because you finished fast, I want to get you. How do we create these systems in place where there's an incentive? to being proficient or mastering the learning.

[28:31]

The next piece is time. So we have the support, intervention, incentivize, time, that's the variable, and then we evaluate. But it's this constant construct where we're supporting kids throughout their learning journey, but ultimately with feedback, not just a number in a book or on a piece of paper. Because the feedback should be, how do they move their learning forward? not good job. You know, praise, nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't move learning forward and it can be a detractor.

[29:04]

And then honestly, you'll see some of those assignments that we focus too much on process that they have to follow. Like, okay, you have to have five PowerPoint slides and so many points for those slides. That's a process piece. So there's things that we do because we've always done them or it was done to us. And quite frankly, the more we take a look at the evidence through the research is it's really less is more, less is best. If we were mapping out the success criteria toward mastery learning, one of the other core actions that Dave mentioned was collaborative scoring.

[29:44]

Well, we can't collaboratively score if we haven't co-constructed or mapped out the success criteria because it shouldn't matter if a child is in my class or the room next door, the success bar is at the success bar. It's not... You'll hear people say, well, I'm a tough grader. So if so-and-so got an 85 in Mr. So-and-so's class, he did really well because he's a tough grader.

[30:06]

Honestly, that doesn't make any sense. And lastly, we have to consider the student's cognitive engagement. There's nine barriers to cognitive engagement. We need the learners in a position and ready to learn. So factoring in all these things. Again, there's no free pass.

[30:25]

We're holding them to the standards. But it's about coaching them and supporting them with feedback through their learning. Because ultimately, there's four components to have a visible learner. There's six traits that they demonstrate. But visible learners use learning dispositions. They're resilient.

[30:49]

They can work as a member of a team. They're motivated. Well, they also know what they're learning, why they're learning it, what success looks like, and their next learning step. That can only happen through teacher clarity. visible learners use metacognitive strategies. So we have to teach them these metacognitive strategies.

[31:07]

They don't necessarily show up having them. And then lastly, they seek, receive, and act on feedback. So that's the four components of a visible learner. In the book, we've Literally, each chapter builds off of the next on how we support through. Again, it's not just the finished product of this is the grade, but taking a look at how are we mapping out the success criteria? How do we assess that?

[31:36]

And then what is an appropriate score? And just like the Olympics, whether it's diving or figure skating, there's a degree of difficulty to some tasks or experiences over others. And that should be reflective of that. And that's why we talked earlier about we need to eradicate the average. You know, if I said to somebody, oh, geez, how far can you run? Well, I ran a marathon.

[31:56]

Well, really, you can only run 12.5 miles. Well, what do you mean? Well, you ran around the block and then you ran up a mile and then you did three miles. You know that when we think about it in those terms, it sounds ridiculous. So really, it's not about free passes for kids.

[32:11]

It's not about unlimited timelines. But we have to really focus on the ultimate goal, which is we're developing talent, not sorting and selecting it. because they need to matriculate to the next grade and they have to be able to demonstrate the skills and concepts of those priority standards. So it's really about just focusing on what's more important, not collecting a variety of pieces of paper so we can score them and put them in a book.

[32:38] SPEAKER_01:

Very well said. And I think many strong points in the ongoing debates about grading. And I appreciate the many connections to the large body of research that's out there. And I expect these debates will continue to rage for some time to come. But thank you for bringing your experience and the research together. So the book is Grading Visible Learning with Fluidity, Not Finality.

[33:01]

Dave Nagel and Bruce Potter, if people want to learn more about your work or get in touch with you, where's the best place for them to go online?

[33:07] SPEAKER_00:

That would be our website, Justin, www.centerforcollaborativeexpertise.com.

[33:14] SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure. Justin, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

[33:18] Announcer:

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