Fearless Coaching: Resilience and Results from the Classroom to the Boardroom

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:14] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Dr. Douglas Reeves. Dr. Reeves is the founder of Creative Leadership Solutions and is well known as the author of more than 30 books and 80 articles about education, leadership, and organizational effectiveness. And we're here today to talk about the new second edition of his book, Elements of Grading, A Guide to Effective Practice.

[00:38] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:40] SPEAKER_01:

Dr. Reeves, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:42] SPEAKER_02:

Thanks very much. It's my pleasure.

[00:43] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm hearing a ton these days, particularly from our secondary schools, about interest in changing the way we look at grading. And I wonder if you could kind of summarize for us what has been the reason that people look to your book, Elements of Grading, and to the point that a second edition has really been demanded by the market. What are some of the things that you see happening within our profession that demands a new approach?

[01:13] SPEAKER_02:

Well, there's certainly broad recognition that our present grading systems are broken, that they're wildly inconsistent. You can have two students with identical performance get wildly different grades based upon the different grading systems of teachers. And it is not because there's any malice here. It's because traditionally, grading has been the exclusive province of the classroom teacher, and nobody really cared that there were differences from one class to another. But what I've done in the course of the research for this book is to work with quite a number of teachers, both in the United States and internationally, and found that although in their minds they believe that there is a consistent reason for the difference between students who receive high grades and those who receive low grades, the truth is quite the opposite. That you can have the same student with the same grades during the semester, the same performance, the same absences, the same parents, the same everything, and wind up with wildly different grades at the end of the semester.

[02:14]

Students, parents, and teachers know that that's fundamentally a flawed system. And that's why we've got to do things differently.

[02:20] SPEAKER_01:

Right. And I think as we've become more familiar with teaching to standards, as a class of professionals, we're starting to bring that to the student level and look at standards-based grading. And rather than, say, have a kind of arbitrary 100-point scale with letter grades, we're starting to look more at standards and saying, maybe these should actually be the basis for our grading system. And I know for many years, that's been the case in many elementary schools. But as you get up into the secondary level, that letter grade system, that 100-point system, that kind of arbitrary system still persists in probably the majority of places. What does standards-based grading look like to you as you characterize it in the book?

[03:02] SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So I think it's really important to separate two issues, and that is How do we make grades accurate, and that is they're based on the standards, what a student actually has achieved, but how do we also preserve what parents and students expect? That is a high school transcript, a GPA, academic honors, individualized education plans, and so on. So what I've tried to do in this book is not take the extreme view that says get rid of letter grades, get rid of scores, get rid of everything, and then a miracle happens. Because the truth is kids still need transcripts and they still need GPAs. So what I've tried to say is you can still have the things that you want, transcripts, academic honors, grade point averages, and so on, and also have standards-based grading.

[03:47]

Many people have thought that those are opposite ends of the continuum. In fact, you could have them all. Now, I would also just say that the essence of standards-based rating is deciding very much as we do in other aspects of student life, what do we expect a student to do? When they're playing basketball, we expect them to shoot it through the hoop and get one, two, or three points, depending upon whether it's a free throw, a layup, or a shot outside the three-point line. When they're playing football, we know exactly what points they'll achieve for the scores that they achieve. And that doesn't mean that the officials are perfect, but they're a whole lot more consistent than oftentimes classroom grades are.

[04:25]

So all I'm asking for when I say standards-based grading is not the abandonment of A, B, C, D, F gradings, but rather making them more accurate so that students, parents, and teachers know what they mean.

[04:36] SPEAKER_01:

Well, and I think that function of knowing what the grade means can be relevant not just to the student's level of effort. Obviously, if I'm getting a C, I know I could be doing better. I know that if I work harder, I might be able to pull that up to a B or an A. But let's talk about the idea of feedback and grades, because it almost seems like in our traditional practice, the feedback is kind of incidental to the grade, or it's almost as if those are two separate things.

[05:04] SPEAKER_02:

If I could highlight in one sentence the message of this book, it's that grading is feedback, and that is if it's done right. And we know that the characteristics of effective feedback is that it's accurate, it's specific, it's timely. That is, students can use feedback to get better. Whether you look at the research of John Hattie, Robert Marzano, myself, or many others, you find that feedback is a very powerful influence on improving student achievement and improving teaching if and only if that feedback is specific and accurate and timely. So I believe that grades can be feedback, but we've got to take some of the mystery out of them. I would also, Justin, just say when you said a minute ago that if I get a C, I know I need to work harder.

[05:49]

Honestly, I wish that were true, but here's the reality. Sometimes a kid gets a C. A C because they're great in algebra, but they've got a lousy attitude and their homework is late. Or they get a C in algebra because their math is terrible, but they have a cheerful attitude and a pleasant disposition and have earned extra credit. Nobody knows what a C means. And so I want to get back to a C meaning with accurate, specific, and timely feedback how I need to get better so I can proceed to a B or an A.

[06:21]

That's not the case right now in many classes.

[06:23] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because we've thrown so many other things besides mastery or besides understanding into that grade. We've thrown things like behavior and compliance, and as you said, attitude. How do you believe we should handle those kind of non-content or non-performance-based factors that do matter, that currently might be kind of lumped in with academic performance into that grade?

[06:48] SPEAKER_02:

So this is really important. And because our our listeners are largely going to be people who are involved in leadership conversations. We've got to start by saying, hey, we value good attitudes, work ethic, personal responsibility, time management. Nobody who's an advocate for improved grading systems is saying or should say that those things are unimportant. In fact, I would argue those things, attitude, behavior, time management, organization, respect for instructions, all those things, they're so important, we ought to call them what they are. Let's call time management time management and stop calling it history.

[07:26]

Let's call personal organization organization and stop calling it algebra. So I'm not saying that those things are unimportant, but I'm saying we if we believe in specificity of feedback, call them what they are, give kids feedback on that and then also give feedback on their proficiency. academically in math, history, and so on.

[07:46] SPEAKER_01:

I love that because it sounds like we would have more accountability for students on those non-academic or those more behavioral components like how organized they are, how productive they are, how well they manage their time. So they're more separately held accountable for that. And we can also see how we as adults could be more accountable for how we set students up for success in organization. For example, I've talked with a lot of people who use the organized binder system. and have a particular way of setting students up to keep track of their assignments, to keep track of their handouts, to keep track of their grades, and so on. And the students are very accountable.

[08:22]

The students are expected to follow through in a very specific way, but so are the adults. And I think that makes a huge difference when there's that separate but mutual accountability.

[08:31] SPEAKER_02:

That's a really great example, Justin, because what happens oftentimes is that when students get way behind in homework, way behind in a project, The consequence isn't let's identify what the cause was and get that assignment notebook under control, but rather nine weeks later, the consequence is a low grade. In the schools that I'm seeing that are really getting a handle on getting feedback and grading right, they've got every single week the opportunity for students to get better in personal organization and time management. And if they fail, we don't wait nine weeks or 18 weeks. Every Thursday, every Friday, there's an opportunity to say, Let's take a look at the assignment notebooks. Let's take a look at the backpack. Let's take a look at what is necessary to be successful in class and show up prepared.

[09:19]

Those sort of early and specific interventions really lead to much better performance and, frankly, less stress on the teachers at the end of the semester.

[09:26] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, if a school does want to make some changes to make grading more standards-based, to make it more effective as a form of feedback, and to kind of separate out some of those behavioral components to make it more accurate – to make it more useful. What are some things that leaders can do to avoid changing things so much that grades stop serving those traditional purposes that you mentioned earlier on, like giving a transcript that will be useful in applying for college and so on? How can we change things enough without kind of losing our anchoring in familiar systems that are still used and valued?

[10:05] SPEAKER_02:

Rule number one of change leadership is talking about what does not change. I think a lot of leaders miss this point when they go in and say, I'm the new sheriff in town and there's going to be a lot of changes around here. Wrong. What we ought to say is, I'm the new sheriff in town, but you've also done a lot of things right in terms of your traditions and your values, your philosophies, your love for students. And so let's talk about what's not going to change. And I begin with those values and principles that I think the vast majority of teachers hold.

[10:37]

And then I'd move on to things that parents find really important. What's not going to change? You'll still have transcripts. You'll still have ABCDF gradings. You'll still have GPAs. You'll still have academic honors.

[10:49]

I'm afraid that what's happened when people talk about grading reform is that all these rumors on the internet and elsewhere say, well, if we have grading reform, if we have standards-based grading, our kids can't get into college. And our kids won't have transcripts and our kids won't have grades. That's crazy. And I've seen superintendents lose their job over this. So let's be really clear. First, talk about what does not change.

[11:14]

Then let's talk about what we all can find in common. When I've been in parent meetings, for example, in meetings with really skeptical teachers, I don't start by trying to say, well, I'm Doug Reeves. Here's the research. And here's why I'm right and you're wrong. I start by saying, What do we all hold in common? Could everybody in the room, for example, agree that grades ought to be fair?

[11:35]

That is, that two kids who have the same performance ought to get the same grade? Everybody agrees with that. Could we agree that grades ought to be accurate if a student performs at this level, kind of like we expect accuracy and consistency in our athletic officials? Couldn't we expect that in the classroom? Everybody agrees with that. Should we agree that that feedback and grades ought to be specific so that you can know how to get better.

[12:01]

Exactly, Justin, as you said a few minutes ago, if I get a B-, if I get a C, if I get an A, what does that mean so that I can use that feedback to improve? And finally, can we all agree that feedback ought to be timely? In other words, I get the feedback in time to know better. One of the really interesting things about John Hattie's research is that the number one predictor of student achievement out of 150 different variables he looked at was a student's ability to predict his or her own grade. That'll only happen if you have timely feedback all through the semester, not a surprise at the end. I use the acronym FAST, F-A-S-T, for fair, accurate, specific, timely.

[12:45]

So when I'm talking to parents or teachers, You know, I start with, hey, you know, I know we can disagree on a bunch of stuff, and you've probably read things that I've written that you disagree with, and I respect that. But could we all agree about FAST, fair, accurate, specific, timely? And so sorry for the multi-paragraph answer to a simple question, but that's where I start. Let's find out where our common ground is.

[13:08] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I love that because everybody has things that they do care about, but also we find that we're committed to a lot of things that we don't actually care about all that much. If you say to me, I think we should separate out organization and study skills from education. the understanding that you've developed in your biology class. That doesn't violate any of my deeply held beliefs or commitments about grading, but as long as I can get the outcome that I wanted from that grade, as long as my kid can still get into college with the transcript that they get from the high school, we can look at some of those interests and not necessarily have to stick to our positions. I'm thinking about the negotiation literature and how sometimes we dig our heels into our position without really thinking about the outcome we want, without really thinking about the results that we share in common that we want to have for our students.

[14:07]

So I love that approach.

[14:08] SPEAKER_02:

Well, and let's also take into account some new news just in the last few weeks that has come out from 60 top colleges, including all eight of the Ivy League schools, because the challenge that I usually get, I was in Singapore a few weeks ago, and somebody had listened to me talk about this, and they said, yeah, that's great, Doug, but it's not going to get my kid into Harvard. Well, it turns out that the very day that I received that challenge, Harvard, the other Ivies, and 60 other high-level colleges said, wait a minute. It's not just about transcripts. It's not just about test scores. They're going to start a new common app that's going to include, for example, a creativity locker that students can start in ninth grade and include their creative writing, their poetry, their videos, their musical compositions, all manner of things. So the idea that all that matters is the transcript is just not true.

[15:02]

I can tell you that Harvard rejects thousands of students with 4.0s every year. So yes, grading is important. But the old saw that that's the only thing that colleges look at simply is not true. And part of this discussion should be how do we best represent all the things that our students do. So I know that grading is the focus here, but we have to be responsive to the reality of college admissions to recognize it's a lot more than grades and test scores.

[15:31] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Well, let's talk just briefly about fairness, accuracy, specificity, and timeliness, because I think that's such a clear and straightforward kind of rubric for whether grading is working. And I think back to one of the college classes that I had that I would consider not terribly memorable or inspiring. But I remember that we had to write a series of 10 papers based on different pieces of literature. And because there were so many papers and there was such kind of a regular cadence to the course, we would get our...

[16:03]

you know, our grades back quickly. So the timeliness thing was there, you know, I'd turn in the paper, I would get it back in the next class. I think the class just meant twice a week. So there was timeliness, absolutely. And it felt like maybe there was some accuracy. But what I remember happening was I would get a 97 on one paper, and then on the next paper, I would get a 94.

[16:24]

And then I You know, at first I thought, well, I'm just getting some specific feedback here that I didn't do as good a job on, you know, on that 94 paper as I did on the 97 paper. But then I realized after the 94, I'd get another 97 and then a 94 and a 97. And I compared notes with a few other students. And I realized that that was happening to just about everyone in the class that we were getting these alternating grades. So I think we as a profession, we have developed some habits that we need to unlearn that are going to be a little bit difficult if we're going to improve a little bit difficult to kind of unwind if we're going to improve our fairness, our accuracy, our specificity and our timeliness. So thinking in terms of the challenge-facing leaders who want to bring about change, where do you think the key sticking points are?

[17:11]

What is actually hard for teachers who want to improve their grading practices but really have been doing things a certain way for a long time? Once we agree on what needs to stay the same and what needs to change, what are the actually difficult parts to change when we adopt fair, accurate, specific, and timely grading practices?

[17:29] SPEAKER_02:

So I would start by saying this is not about taking away respect or judgment from teachers. It's actually about elevating it. For example, one of the first things that I always start with is replace the automaticity of most grading systems, for example, the use of the average, the arithmetic mean, with teacher judgment. Teachers know at the end of the semester who's performing well and who isn't on an ABCDF scale. The use of the average is exactly the opposite of teacher judgment. And the illustration that I would use is most people, you know, you mentioned your own college class, have been to a, maybe in their master's program, a stat and research class where if they're teaching social studies or third grade or they're a school administrator, they're thinking, why in the world do I need stat and research?

[18:17]

I'm going to be a principal. And they struggle in September, in October. And they don't like me and they don't like the dean and they don't like anybody else who's involved in the class, but they persist. Roundabout November and December, they achieve this now I get it epiphany. And they're in my office saying, what I want you to do, professor, is to grade me at the now I get it stage, not at the average between September when I don't like the professor and I don't like the dean and I don't know even why I'm doing this. And now I get it.

[18:50]

And you know what? They're right. They ought to be evaluated at the now I get it stage. But if that's true, For the administrator and teacher who's in my graduate stat and research class, it's also true for their own students. So number one, get rid of the average. Use real teacher judgment.

[19:06]

Number two, you mentioned the 94 versus 97. That's a classic mathematical error of a distinction without a difference. The 100-point scale is kind of a silly artifact of the 20th century. I've gone back several hundred years and looked at grade cards. going back to literally the 1600s. And, you know, we here in Boston, we have the oldest public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, founded in 1635.

[19:30]

And I got to tell you that whether you're looking at Boston Latin at Harvard or Yale, for the most part, from the 17th century through the 19th century, grades had a scale of between three and nine points. This hundred point scale is kind of an artifact to me of like the 1950s, where there was one computer and it was in the accounting department and everything was based on percentages with the illusion of precision, you can tell me with accuracy the difference between an A and a B, but I defy you to tell me the difference between a 94 and a 97 that really means anything. And so what I want to assure people of is keep the A, B, C, D, F system, but get rid of the 100 points. That's ridiculous. You can rescale grading systems, including computerized grading systems, to a 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, A, B, C, D, F, and everybody knows what that means.

[20:22]

In fact, we kind of have gone through this crazy machination of going from 100 points, and then when we have to calculate our GPA, we're back to the four-point scale. Why not just start and end with 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, A, B, C, D, F? Everybody understands it, and it's been good for 100 years, or hundreds of years. Anyway, those are a couple of places where I'd start. Get rid of the average, rescale to 43210. If we can just do those two simple things, that gets us way far along to...

[20:57]

improved grading systems.

[20:59] SPEAKER_01:

Well, that seems pretty doable. And you know, just when you said that, I was very surprised to hear that there's no necessary relationship between 100 point scale, and the ABCDF, because it's it's such a sacrosanct assumption that, you know, a D is, you know, somewhere in the 60s or 70s, and A is somewhere in the 90s, depending on you know, how quote unquote rigorous you are and where you make the cutoff score. But, you know, with that four point scale, I mean, that lends itself so much more directly to a rubric. Whereas if we have to work with 100 points, then I have to break that rubric down into, you know, this is worth this many points. And I have to kind of contrive the whole thing to make it add up to 100 if students do everything that they, you know, they possibly could write. This seems so much simpler.

[21:40] SPEAKER_02:

It really is. It's simple and clear. And it also avoids mathematical distortions. On a four to zero scale, A, B, C, D, F, there's one point difference between each major gradation. And that kind of makes sense. If you have a D, you're a one.

[21:56]

If you have an F, you're a zero, and so on. On the 100-point scale, by contrast, we have a D at a 60 and an F at a zero, which creates an enormous distortion. Like D, let's be frank, listeners, D is wretched work. When you give a student a D, they barely wrote their name on it, if that. It by no means means that they're ready for the next level. D is horrible, and F, perhaps by not turning it in, is zero.

[22:25]

Don't tell me that D is six times better than not doing it at all, which is what you're saying when the D is 60 and the F is zero. By going to the simple 4-3-2-1-0 system, students know exactly where they are, but we don't magnify

[22:41] SPEAKER_01:

the distortion between the F and the D. So Dr. Reeves, if you could leave school leaders with one action item or one key point of advice as we rethink grading, as we take the opportunity to kind of update our practices for the world we live in and for the world that our students will face, what's one thing that we should all be thinking about and potentially doing to make some progress in this area?

[23:06] SPEAKER_02:

Well, the first thing that I would do is to recognize that we've already got a lot of teachers doing things right. They're kind of under the radar. They've already done of their own volition grading reform. They've probably got rid of the average. They probably are not using a hundred point scale. So identify, document, and praise the daylights out of teachers who have already made some of these great changes.

[23:28]

Secondly, for people who are reluctant and skeptical, don't try to change things wholesale. I'm a big believer in pilot projects and and testing. So if you don't believe me, what I'd like to do is to say, could we have five volunteers who will go to a 4-3-2-1-0 scale for just one semester, and then let's compare the level of student achievement this semester to a year ago. Same semester, same kids, same classes. So my point for every leader is, You can look at my evidence, but what's going to be most persuasive is your evidence, what you develop in your pilot projects in your schools. And where I've had the greatest success in really making reforms happen isn't because I came in and said, well, I'm from out of town and I'm going to fix you guys.

[24:16]

It's rather saying, let me help you document your own successes and then spread those successes within the school. That's how leaders, I think, really make a lasting impact.

[24:25] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is the second edition of Elements of Grading, A Guide to Effective Practice. Dr. Reeves, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[24:34] SPEAKER_02:

It's my pleasure.

[24:34] SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much. And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[24:41] SPEAKER_01:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation about grading with Dr. Douglas Reeves? One thing that really struck me as we were talking was the degree to which it was surprising to me to realize that there's no inherent link between our 100-point grading system and our letter grading system. And I've been thinking about standardized grading for a while, hearing the discussion about standards-based grading that's been going on nationally. And it had always seemed to me that we have two different systems to choose from. We have the traditional 100-point letter grade system and the kind of rubric-based, standards-based system that a lot of places are thinking about switching to that maybe is causing some anxiety, as Dr. Reeves talked about.

[25:25]

And I'm really surprised at how surprised I was to realize how easy it was to separate tradition from actual effective practice. And what I mean by that is that when we take the elements that work, the elements that make sense, and we realize that, hey, these letter grades are actually pretty usable if we tie them not to a 100-point scale, but we tie them to a 43210 rubric, that works. That helps us achieve standards-based grading. That helps us produce transcripts that students can actually use to get into college. That keeps us anchored in things we care about, and yet it allows us to do new things that our old system didn't do. I just want to point out how closely we hold some of those untested assumptions and how powerful it is to break some of those unfounded assumptions and some of those unfounded links and really step into practice that's dramatically more effective.

[26:22]

So I just have to say I've had an unusual learning experience in conducting these interviews of realizing that some of my long-held beliefs... aren't necessarily as tightly connected as I thought they were. So as we think about any type of change, I want to challenge you to really break it down and really look at the theory of action behind a practice. Is our theory of action for grading that it is sacrosanct that we have a 100-point system, or is it that we want our grading to be fair, accurate, specific, and timely?

[26:53]

So I hope that's helpful. And if you are interested in learning more about the grading approach that Dr. Reeves is espousing here, check out Elements of Grading, Second Edition, A Guide to Effective Practice. And for more on thinking about your theory of action and managing the change process, keeping your organization moving in the right direction and keeping it flying while also rebuilding that plane and making the courageous changes that we need to make, I want to invite you to check out our flagship program at the Principal Center, the High Performance Instructional Leadership Network. You can learn more about what we offer in this program for school leaders at PrincipalCenter.com slash leadership.

[27:32] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at PrincipalCenter.com slash radio.