The Grading Podcast

110 – NEIA w:Camp

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Camp: So the way the system works is we have any, any competency, actually any class, any teacher at any grade level can use it. But we have four, what we call foundational competencies. We have now nine, ’cause we added an AI related one, we have nine, what we call pillar competencies. So they somehow could connect to the pillars of our school. And then each subject area has two to three competencies.

But the foundational ones as a school that’s rooted in innovation, we require a course called Innovation Studio, which is sort of a design making, a human-centered design course program, I should say. You have to take it throughout your whole time at NEIA and entrepreneurship. So you can use any one of those competencies at any time, at any assessment. But the foundational ones are rooted in presentation skills visual design skills, writing and revising. ’cause obviously, as a school rooted in innovation, entrepreneurship, we believe strongly in failing forward.

Boz: Welcome to the Grading podcast, where we’ll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students’, learning from traditional grading to alternative methods of grading. We’ll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our student success. I’m Robert Bosley, a high school math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist and instructional designer in the Los Angeles Unified School District and with Cal State LA.

Sharona: And I’m Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor at Cal State Los Angeles, faculty coach and instructional designer. Whether you work in higher ed or K 12, whatever your discipline is, whether you are a teacher, a coach, or an administrator, this podcast is for you. Each week you will get the practical, detailed information you need to be able to actually implement effective grading practices in your class and at your institution.

Boz: Hello and welcome to the grading podcast. I’m Robert Bosley, one of your two co-hosts, and with me as always, Sharona Krinsky. How are you doing today, Sharona?

Sharona: I am doing quite well. I am still riding high from the incredible experience that was Math Fest. We got back recently and listeners of the pod have probably heard our live session that we recorded there. But there just were so many amazing things. I would go into a session that had nothing to do about grading, and someone would say, so I’m gonna be talking about problem based learning, so let me tell you about the course. I use standards-based grading and therefore team-based learning does whatever, whatever, whatever. And it was just like a throwaway line. It wasn’t the point, but it was everywhere and that was amazing.

Boz: Yeah, and I think you said it really well on that last episode that you shot on location at Math Fest was, it’s almost surprising that it’s only been like seven years since we really started this journey and how far things have come at Math Fest. Like you said, those, those conversations that used to be what do you mean alternative grading? What is this, what is this to it? It’s, it’s just so common. It doesn’t even have to be explained anymore at some of the sessions. That’s amazing.

Sharona: That being said, we still have challenges because.

Boz: Oh, absolutely.

Sharona: We were listening to one talk at Math Fest and they were saying the whole time that they do specifications grading, and the more I listened and I’m like, no, no, no, you’re doing standards based. That’s not specs, but whatever . How about you? How are you doing Boz?

Boz: You know doing well. My high school job has already started, but not with kids. But by the time this comes out, we would’ve just gotten started. So always a fun and yet nerve wracking and all kinds of mixed emotions. The beginning of this will be the beginning of my 21st year in L-A-U-S-D.

Camp: Thanks Sharona and Boz, it’s great to be here. I’m always excited about talking about grading. I was actually at a family event right before this and I was talking about coming on your pod tonight and they were like, what’s it about? I was like, grading reform, and there were no follow up questions. So I was miserable. So I’m pumped to be here, right?

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: So you have found your people.

Boz: Most of my family is not education related and they’re like, yeah, we’ve heard you talk about it. We don’t get it. We don’t, yeah, just whatever do, we don’t wanna hear anymore about it. But do wanna welcome you and one of the things that we always like to ask our new guest is just how did you get into this world of grading and assessment reform?

Camp: Yeah. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for having me. And overall this, I’m starting my 31st year, so I’m kind of in between you two and your years banter that you had going on there. But throughout my career, literally from when I started, and I, I can’t say why this happened, but I’ve always been arguably the most progressive teacher at whatever school I’ve been at. And very early on doing very traditional grading with points and letter grades. I just realized that there has to be a better way. And although I’m a public school kid and my children go to public school, I’ve only taught in independent schools, which has given me a lot of liberty to explore a lot of the things that I’ve done. Particularly at the school I’m at right now. And so in terms of the origin story, I feel like it’s, it’s going to be forever story because grading is broken, as we all know. And it’s up to people like us to just keep working on it and keep bringing more people into the circle to reform this very important part of a student’s experience.

Boz: Absolutely.

Sharona: Do you have any particular story or moment where you really kind of flipped the switch and said, that’s it, I can’t do this anymore or was it just really super gradual throughout your career?

Camp: I would say like when I was a student in school I didn’t really care about grades, but you know, everybody is really wants to know what they got for grades. And then when I was a teacher, being on the other side of that really for the first time at like whatever, 23 or 24, I remember thinking like, whoa, there’s so much power in this thing that I’m about to do. And, and really feel like that there was a disconnect between the traditional system that I had been brought up with and that I was laying out here to how to sort of very credibly and with an equity focus deliver grades that I thought were fair. And so from there on out though it’s been adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, making, like having the courage to make decisions along the way within school systems. ’cause as we all know, they can be sometimes tough to move.

Boz: Absolutely. That’s actually something we’ve talked quite a bit on this podcast is about how difficult those are to move and part of it is because most of us came up in a traditional system. And when we are the ones that succeeded in that system, it’s kind of hard to get a lot of people to wanna change a system they were successful in.

Sharona: So now you’re at New England Innovation Academy. How long have you been there?

Camp: So we’re, I’m starting my fifth year there, and it’s the fifth year of the school. It’s a startup school. We don’t call ourselves a startup anymore. We say we’re a young school. But yeah, so I was a founding member. And to get the opportunity to help start a school was phenomenal. I couldn’t pass that up. I left a very awesome job that I have with a lot of success and experience to do it. And one of the major joys of it has been able to work on the assessment system that we do have, that everybody at my school uses, which is also super refreshing.

Boz: So was that part of like the DNA of the school from the very beginning, like when you got, ’cause , I get the pleasure of helping open a school. When I started in ’05, that was the first year that high school was open. But none of the reforms, none of the things that I, I did there, or since then, were started then. Like, so when this school opened, was that one of the focuses of opening that school is to do it in a non-traditional assessment and grading format?

Camp: No, not, not at all. Actually. It needed me to sort of be courageous in bold to bring it up. It was the head of school at the time in the summer leading into opening up. And I said I had been working on a very heavily standards-based system for a few years. And I was like, we have an opportunity here at a school called New England Innovation Academy to be like, yes, we wanna be innovative in all ways, and one of the ways we can do that is through grading and assessment. And we had a very small staff at the beginning, probably like seven teachers. And so it was easy to get everyone on board. ’cause if you’re joining a startup school and you’re interested in innovation those were the people. Like talk about the amazing clientele I had to work with to do that. And so that’s one of those things too that I realize a lot of your listeners right now are in big districts or big schools or in long traditional schools. And sometimes it’s hard to get some of those people to even listen to the conversation. And so we were very fortunate in terms of the DNA of the school being rooted in innovation to be able to be like, let’s do this. We can do this. And it was really important for us to do it.

Boz: So it didn’t start off as part of the DNA, but because of what was in the DNA, it was an easy thing to do, it sounds like.

Camp: Correct. Yeah, exactly.

Sharona: Or at least easy thing to sell. Might not have been easy to do. Yeah.

Boz: Yeah. Good point.

Camp: So a little bit, a little bit harder to sell to the families and students as I’m sure, as I’m sure we can relate to. But, but again, having everyone on board to be able to do the group sale was important.

Sharona: So. I really wanna dive into what you do with assessment, but I’d like to ground it. If you could explain how do your students get grades and if so, based on what?

Camp: Sure, so we do give out grades , we give out course grades. So if you take math, you’re gonna have a, a letter grade. So our transcript looks like every other transcript ever. It has course listings in letter grades, but how we get to that letter grade is unique. It’s a, I call our system, we call our system competency based because we have a list of competencies or skills that we have as an institution and but it, and, but we call it a mashup because it’s got roots of mastery-based, standards-based traditional, no grade system and traditional competency based system. So we were able to put our heads together and take the best parts of all those systems and sort of make our own. So, ’cause somebody might look at it and be like, oh, that’s standards based. Or somebody might look at it and be like, oh, that’s very mastery based. And I’d say yes, but not exactly.

So because we’re a mashup, the way it works is on any assessment and the assessments can be whatever you want. We give free autonomy to teachers. It can be a quiz, it can be a project, it can be a speech, it can be a poster, whatever you want, whatever’s necessary for the learning goals. And then a teacher will tag that assessment with competencies. You know, average is three, could be five, sometimes it can be one. And then the students assessed on each one of those individual competencies. So on the assessment they get we call it surface, immersed, deep and deeper, those, that’s how we measure it. So say you had four competencies, you would get one of those measures for each one of those four competencies in those four, let’s see if I can explain this properly. Each, each competency is weighted as itself. So each competency goes into the sum of the course grade, not the total of them on that assessment. So even though there were four competencies on that assessment, you could do the math actually, you could figure it out and be like, oh, I got a whatever on this assessment. But we don’t talk about it that way. We don’t do it that way because it doesn’t matter In our system, our system is each competency is assessed and that’s what funnels into your course grade.

Sharona: So in a sense, that’s the standards based piece, right? Like

Camp: Correct.

Sharona: Structurally is that across assessments, you’re checking for these competencies, which is what I would call a standards based design as far as a grading architecturally.

Camp: Correct, yes.

Sharona: Now I was looking at your competencies and I am just like in love with many of them. But could you please explain the big groupings you have and maybe talk a little bit about how you got to some of these.

Camp: Sure. So we have four. So the way the system works is we have , any competency, actually any class, any teacher at any grade level can use it. But we have four, what we call foundational competencies. We have now nine, ’cause we added an AI related one. We have nine, what we call pillar competencies. So they somehow could connect to the pillars of our school. And then each subject area has two to three competencies. So, but the foundational ones as a school that’s rooted in innovation, we require a course called Innovation Studio, which is sort of a design making human-centered design course program, I should say. You have to take it throughout your whole time at NEIA and entrepreneurship.

So you can use any one of those competencies at any time in any assessment. But the foundational ones are rooted in presentation skills visual design skills, writing and revising. ’cause obviously as a school rooted in innovation, entrepreneurship, we believe strongly in failing forward. And so revision, how somebody revises the skill of revision is very important to our school. So those four are foundational. Does that mean like, we don’t tell any teacher you need to have, you know, five. Revise competencies in the course. Like we don’t say that. We say you understand the ethos of the school, you understand the students who are in front of you, which might be different today than it is tomorrow, and how your, whatever your learning goals are, you wanna take from our pool of competencies to best assess their learning and help them learn how they learn best.

Boz: All right. So let me make sure I’m getting this correct. I’m a student, I’m doing some sort of assessment, say it’s a project, and I’ve got five different competencies that’s being measured. Those could be two from the foundational, two from the pillar and one from the subject specific.

Camp: Yep. Okay. And correct.

Boz: I have not ever seen this as a fundamental competency, but the fact that you guys have “I revise my work after seeing and receiving feedback” as one of your, I absolutely love that competency.

Sharona: Yeah. I’m the same place. When we talk about the four pillars of alternative grading, one of the pillars is that helpful feedback and feedback loops is a pillar of alternative grading. I don’t recall ever hearing someone present a standard or a competency that says, I can revise my work based on feedback, and I’m like, Hmm, maybe if we put that standard into statistics, maybe they’d actually use the feedback because using the feedback would get them a grade on these.

Boz: Well, Joe, some of his are kind of, but it’s on the reverse end. Like he’s got some of his English learning targets is about giving peer feedback. But yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one about how the student receives and uses that feedback. Like I said, I read that. I was like, oh, that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

Camp: Yeah. And obviously, like you said, in any type of alternative assessment system, feedback is the key. So we use a single panel rubric for any of our assessments. So if you’re assessed, you have to use a single panel rubric in the middle of the single panel rubric are the competencies. So the, the language of the competencies is the same. No matter what grade you are, no matter what course you’re in, however, and those are I statements.

So we put those in the rubric, and then underneath that in the rubric, the teacher creates a u statement for how that competency should be performed on this assessment. So even though I might use, I revise five different times over a few months. The nuance of what I’m asking them to do is tweet with that you statement. So it’s the same skill, but the teacher’s responsible for one, making it relevant to the particular assessment the student is doing. And two, also making sure that the student understands how they are to perform it. And so, and then on both sides of the single panel rubric, which is what it’s based on, is on one side you have what we call exemplary feedback. On the left side you have developing feedback, and inside those boxes are the feedback for each one of those competencies. So, a student could look at it, could pull out all of their I revised competencies and see that feedback and know that they always will have feedback. They would never, ever at NEIA get an assessment back without feedback not allowed.

Boz: So if you’ve got exemplary and developing feedback, like, could I get feedback on both sides of a, of a competency? Yes. Okay.

Camp: Yeah. So the way we assess the competencies is on a four point scale. And one of the basic ways you can think about it, and this is super basic, it doesn’t, it doesn’t address nuance or anything like that, but in the single panel rubric, say for I revise, I had a few bullet points over on the exemplary side and a couple on the developing side. Just looking at it visually, that would be the middle of the assessment, which we call immerse. Like that would be like the middle because there’s feedback on both sides. If you only add feedback on the exemplary side, that’s probably gonna be the highest because there isn’t even anything on the developing side and vice versa. So the single panel rubric in and of itself helps the teacher assess fairly and with equity.

Boz: Oh, so kind of if I’ve gotten more feedback that’s going on the exemplary side, my likely that score for that competency is gonna be a three or a four or, correct. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. Let’s see.

Camp: It, it helps the, the students like under can understand that, you know, one of my biggest, maybe back to Sharona, back to your question you asked earlier about like, did I have a moment. As a teacher, I think earlier in my career, I remember listening to some students, you know how they come into a room and be like, oh, I got a C on this. And I was like, well, like how? What happened? They’re like, I don’t know. I just get, I was like, that always bothered me that a student didn’t know why they got a grade that they got. And feedback is the answer to that. And what I believe in the way that we’ve built our system is the competency itself, the you statement about performing the competency and then the feedback. Those all put make the very sort of subjective aspect of grading as close to an objective thing as you can, you can get in this world.

Boz: So just outta curiosity, if you would be willing to, I’ve. I’ve never heard this, like, I mean the I statements obviously, but the you statements, which is just really explaining how they’re going to do that on a particular assessment. But, would you be willing to share one of those that we could put up in our show notes just to kind of show Sure. People that are listening? ’cause that’s, that sounds, I, I like the way I’m picturing that in my head, so I’m really curious as to what that actually looks like.

Camp: Yeah. And the way Absolutely. I, I’d be happy to share, like when I, when we have new teachers to our school, I have examples of those that I show to explain how it works. And the way I word it is the competency, which is the I statement is what the students will perform in the you statement is what the teacher should be teaching. So those two things come together on the assessment in the system. Because I’m a big believer that, teaching and learning students and teachers are definitely, it’s a yin yang together situation. It’s not just one doing one thing and me giving a grade to a student or vice versa. So yeah, I think that and you know, I’m sure some listeners will think like, that seems like a lot of work. But, I would argue actually that it’s less work.

I teach humanities and so I’m a traditional English teacher. So when I’m teaching writing, now I write less of those margin comments on a doc, and more very targeted feedback in the rubric that the students can connect that skill to the comment that I’m making. So I find it actually easier to do my assessing with our system.

Boz: Yeah. That’s one of the discussions that I’ve had, ever since I left traditional grading, is it might sound like it’s a lot more and there is more things that I am grading, but it doesn’t take me as long. And, I know, especially on my old assessments, because, I’ve always had, you know, a wanting to be a, an equitable educator. I would go through and then have to, once I finished, like take the last three or four and go back to the first three or four and kind of double check to make sure that I wasn’t giving, you know, six outta 10 on one student for the same mistake that I was giving four or eight outta 10 on the, on another student. Just because of, you know, I did it three hours ago.

Sharona: So I have a, a question, because I am having trouble picturing the you statements a little bit, but if we could bring, like, I know you’re a humanities teacher, so maybe you can do it humanities, or maybe you can do it even in math, you know, what happens to the assessments in a system like that? Like, you know, if you’re trying to, for example, I’m looking at the math subject area competencies, and they’re very much similar to the mathematical practice standards. But what does a math test look like? I mean, how are you developing these assessments given that your target is these competencies?

Camp: So the assessments can look however they need to look from a teacher standpoint. So you might, you might look at it and be, look at, it’s a quiz with 10 problems. That might be how the math assessment looks. But differently than a traditional system where if you get seven out of 10, it’s a 70 or whatever, two or three or four competencies are tagged to that. So then your, a student is going to get assessed in how they attend, right? Their, the attend competency, for example, how they attend a precision in their actual mathematical computation, say. So it, it then can help in the you statement would help direct the student to make sure that they are doing whatever the, I’m a humanities teacher, so you are gonna help me out with the math, but like on like whatever the computation is that the teacher would like to see, would like the student to do the whole like show, show your work concept. The teacher could be very specific about what that looks like. Whether it is 10 questions or. A project of some sort or standing up at a board doing a presentation where you’re doing out a problem. Something like that.

Sharona: I think I’m starting to get it sort of

Boz: Well, yeah, but imagine Sharona, let’s take your linear algebra something that I, I know you see this all the time where the student is demonstrating that they clearly understand the process of doing something, so that might be tagged under, I can justify my mathematical thinking clearly, but they’re making all of those silly arithmetic and algebraic mistakes, so they’re, they’re not, you know, showing the precision of the

Sharona: Right. So I, I can certainly see, because I do this. How to use my assessments to get to these competencies where I’m struggling a little bit. And I think a lot of other math instructors particularly, ’cause this is the pushback I get all the time, is how do you know that they actually know the, how do you track that? They know the math content? Because one of the arguments we constantly hear, particularly in math and science is that it, they are disciplines that build over time. Whereas the argument, which I’m, I’m just making the argument, not saying I agree with it. If you take something like history, you can study a time period or a geographic area in history and you don’t need the facts and figures of another time period or history. So if you do world history and then you do American history, like if you don’t remember specific facts in world history, you’re possibly okay to do American history. But the argument is if you don’t know your algebra, you’re not gonna be able to do your calculus. And so how does that feed into the assessment structure? What do, what do teachers do so that they’re hitting the competencies, but they also are hitting the content beyond just the practice standards or the practice competencies?

Camp: Yeah, I think and it’s interesting having this conversation. ’cause our math teachers they love their math competencies. Actually , I have to remind them like, Hey, make sure you think about some of the other competencies, et cetera. But it’s the way, the way you use the competencies actually helps you identify when a student is, does have gaps in, say, the algebraic knowledge or, or content or something like that. It help, it gives a teacher an easier lens into identifying where a student’s strengths and areas for improvement might be. So, however, the teacher creates the assessment, they should be creating it so that they can ascertain like, okay, this is what is needed maybe I need to go back and recover some things. Or maybe this student needs to come to what I need block or something like that. So I think it’s the way that it’s a little bit where the system works that I’ve definitely seen it a benefit to it this way is you can be like, especially like as a humanities teacher, I to, to equate to that. Like somebody might be like a phenomenal reader. Like they get everything, they get the content. That’s a difficult thing, right? But, oh, it’s really interesting that they have trouble connecting. So we, one of our competencies, like connect new ideas to previous learning. So if you can tell me what’s happening, you know, you, you understand, you can comprehend this part of the book great, but I am going to create questions or activities in the assessment where I wanna see them connect that to previous learning in some way.

So it comes back to sort of one of the things we started talking about for this, our discussion tonight was thinking about designing your assessments through the lens of the competencies that you want to see them understand. Because actually your, your world history and American history one is really interesting. We could be like, oh yeah, you, that content from world history and that content from American history doesn’t necessarily need to match up or they can feel very distinct. Okay. But we believe in the reason why we have that competency. I connect new ideas to previous learning. You could be like, oh, remember in September we covered you know, this aspect of, I’m gonna think of like, I teach a little unit on Haitian history. So then now later on I’m teaching Henrietta Lacks and we’re talking about civil rights in the United States, and I’m gonna ask the student to connect that, what they learned back with Haiti into this in some way. And I’m gonna create some sort of prompt or some sort of question where I’m looking for them to dig, dig back into that, to do that type of thinking, that type of critical thinking to satisfy that competency. We, but so here’s the, here’s the thing. Say in that assessment, right? I have, I connect to new ideas, to previous learning. And I also have the, I comprehend abstract and concrete information from our humanities. They might, they might get deeper, they might totally get like all the content, but are they able to connect it? Are they able to bring back some of those things in whatever the task that’s being asked of them to do? And that’s where like the learning happens the way we see it.

Sharona: So I think what I was missing when I was just looking at those, ’cause in my world I have the math content standards, the mathematical practice standards, that’s about as far as I go. But those pillars and those foundationals may be the piece that I have been missing in some of this.

Camp: Yeah. So for example, like our math teachers they’re always on the move. Like in a class, they’re kids are on whiteboards, little whiteboards they’re, the teachers are moving around. It’s like a, like a, almost like a, almost like a workshop. Right? And they’re off always, you know, very commonly, like most math classes teach kids are up at the board and we do a lot of presenting all over the school as entrepreneurship classes, innovation classes, and I, so the teacher’s, like, you should definitely be using the I present competency, right? So let’s just say a student had some, had some gaps in their computation, right? And they’re up at the board and that was part of the assessment. So the teacher can identify those gaps with the, I attend competency. But the student might have done an amazing job of presentation skills. So they get nice positive feedback on the presentation skills and get that necessary feedback on the math skill. And overall, it doesn’t feel like, oh, I get a C.

So we are hitting on different skills, back to the point where each competency is weighted as itself. Like, so in other words, if you quote, quote bomb a quiz like in the traditional system, right? Like, oh my God, I got a 60 that’s gonna, you know, I’m in trouble for the quarter. Whatever you, if you do poorly on one competency, it’s one single data point out of what will be like, you know, 150 points of competency points by the end of the year. So there’s plenty of room for improvement. And it definitely, like, we believe it de-emphasizes the feeling about grade and emphasizes the learning of the skills that we’re asking them to do.

Sharona: Okay, so I have a burning question now. Mm-hmm. If, if the teachers are doing one of the foundational or the pillars, does the competencies in different classes, I mean do the, you said each competencies, it’s evaluated across all the classes. So I could get an I reflect in English and an I reflect in math and they both count towards a single I reflect competency.

Camp: No, no, no, no. Okay, good. Good question. Very good question. They both count towards, so I, the I reflect competency equal in math. Right. Would equal the I 10 competency in math.

Sharona: Mm-hmm.

Camp: Just funneling in. But we use an incredible, grade book system called Otus. And what their system does is it, it’s tailored to us. So it was just on the phone with them today. And we, all of our competencies are in there. When we assess, it computes it all very easily the way we want to. But you could click on I reflect, right? You could look at a student’s, I reflect, like you just described, Sharona across their experience and see how that student is doing with, I reflect a across the curriculum. And that’s amazing. When we can really harness that. That’s my big vision to get to that where it won’t affect their grade in like, there won’t be an, I reflect grade on their transcript, but it will be about us. Being cognizant of what their skills are. ’cause it, wouldn’t it be fascinating if a student got a bunch of immersed in, I reflect in science, but all deeper than I reflect in innovation studio and be like, oh, what, what’s going on there? Let’s look at how you’re reflecting. What, what, what’s happening there? How can we help you take the strengths you’re doing in this one area and apply it to the other area?

And that’s the one of the reasons why our competencies do go across the whole school is ’cause we don’t believe that any single skill is isolated in a silo that I connect new ideas to previous learning is a skill I’m gonna need for life when I’m a parent. Like, you know, something I learned with my oldest child when I have a, my youngest child is doing something I’m drawing. I’m connecting what I learned before and hopefully doing it better now. That sort of thing. So it’s like that type of skill that we believe not only matters in math and science, it also matters in life.

Boz: Okay. So, and you kind of alluded to this, but, so if I’m a math teacher and I, I’ve got, you know, Sharona is, is my student and I’m noticing that she is, she is not doing really well in the, let’s say I collaborate yeah. Which is one of the pillar competencies. Yeah. But I can actually go into your LMS system, Otus, and I can look at how she’s doing on, I collaborate in her other classes and say, oh, correct. Wow. She’s doing this really well in these other two classes. So as an educator, maybe I can go to those teachers or I could even go to Sharona and we can have a conversation and I can actually see how I could help her improve her collaboration in my class.

Camp: Correct. Exactly. And that’s one of the things about like in the way that like in a single course, it’s very easy to see. I, like in my humanities class, I can click on in my grade book, I collaborate and see the bar graph, like see the graph

Boz: mm-hmm.

Camp: Of the student’s performance. So I can see, and what I love about that is Otus is also awesome in that like I can, anytime that competency was assessed, I can click on a little dot that will show me what that assessment was. So say a student had like a couple surfaces on, I collaborate in a couple of deeper on, I collaborate and I could look and be like, oh, interesting. This one was about, you know this, this collaborative work was on creating a visual project and this collaborative work was on, you know, some sort of like written assignment or something. Oh, you struggle with collaborating in this way. See what I mean? Like it’s super fascinating that you can think about, it gives you an easy way to like see where on what particular assessment a student might have did great on or struggled on.

That helps you just understand the student better and ’cause think about it, like, as we all know, like you schools go a million miles an hour, right? So, you’re in class all day and all these students, you’re giving feedback, you’re doing all this stuff. You can’t necessarily remember exactly what happened as one student three weeks ago. But the way this is broken down is that the competencies can show you that actually.

Sharona: Yeah. I am so distracted now by this Otus grade book because one of the biggest conversations we had at Math Fest is how the lack of support for proper grade tracking. Is one of the biggest barriers to using alternative grading at the university level because we don’t have other, literally everybody disses on Canvas ’cause it is the worst LMS for this except every other one. So it’s actually technically the best, but everyone’s like, oh my God, it’s so bad, it’s so constraining. And we were speaking with some ed tech folks and, and folks who were in that space and they were asking, and they were really listening about the challenges that we’re having with grade tracking. And I know you had mentioned Otus when we did our prep thing, but I hadn’t had a chance to look at it. Now I’m like looking at it as we speak in real time and going, Damn.

Camp: Yeah. And the other thing that Otus does is they, they tie in a, a ton, of third party data. And like that’s something where as a, a public school will definitely need a lot of that, like statistics. We don’t, we don’t necessarily need that. So every, like, again, I was talking to my rapid artist today and she was like, oh, what 33rd party data do you wanna curate this year? And I was like, oh, you know, I still need to think about it. I talk to some people, but like, it has the best customer support I’ve ever experienced in my life. And so but again, like you Sharona like you said, I remember I used Canvas at my old school and like, oh yeah, mastery grade book is great, but it’s not, it’s terrible.

Sharona: And, and I have version two coming out, which is kind of exciting. Yeah.

Camp: And my current school, we have Blackbaud is our like SIS and I had a lot of people saying can we not go with the other system? Can we just do it in Blackboard? And I was like, they can pitch it to me. And they, they, they were so confident, like, oh yeah, we can pitch it to you. And they were trying to, I was like, Nope, absolutely not that you cannot do what we need. Like I’m, I’m very I understand that our system is niche, but I’m not gonna like, let technology keep me from developing the best system that we have. And Otus is an incredible partner in being able to do that. We don’t, they don’t, they don’t add, they don’t say no. They say, how can we figure this out for you?

Boz: Yeah, i’ve had the pleasure of being able to utilize Otus before, not as an LMS system, just as a data platform. Mm-hmm. So I, I have some experience and with them not at not using their gradebook, I would love to have been able to do that. But you’re right, they, they are. Which. Part of, probably one of the reasons I’ll never actually get to use the LMS system is ’cause I work in the second biggest district in the nation and not a lot of LMS systems that are, that like customizable for their, for their customers, want a customer as big as L-A-U-S-D because to try to do that. But kind of going back to what we were talking about before with the way that your LMS system supports this, being able to look at those competencies, not just in my class, but across the board. Have you ever read or heard of the Opportunity Makers?

Camp: No.

Boz: So it’s, it, it was it’s about a 58 page report that came out. It. I believe it was either a follow up to or by some of the same people that did another article that about the opportunity gaps instead of achievement gaps. They called them opportunity gaps, but two of their three opportunity makers, like their drivers are consistency and coherence and what you’re just describing, I mean, talk about consistency. If, if we’re all using these same, you know, the same pillar competencies and, foundation, the consistency. If I am doing my assessments and I’m looking at, you know, these same things that as you’re doing in your, in your humanities class or your histories class, and we’re, both of us are putting this emphasis on things like being able to present or like being able to take feedback and revise. I mean, how powerful that, that’s just incredible.

Camp: Yeah, and I, you know, I, again, just listening to our conversation right now, I’m sure many people hate me because again, I, I like full disclosure. Like I, I know I can do, I’m able to do things at a startup school where everybody’s doing the same system. So I’m very aware of that because that consistency is amazing. To be able to talk to another teacher about I revise or I collaborate, it’s phenomenal. The more teachers in your school or your district that you can get doing this type of work together. It’s so galvanizing and incredible. And yeah. ’cause there that consistency and cohesion, and again, like it’s about, all of this is about students, right? So that it’s better for students that there’s this consistency and cohesion.

Boz: Exactly. And that isn’t that kind of what we’re supposed to be in this business for.

Sharona: I, I agree that many people can’t do what you’re doing, but I think there’s some important lessons that even an individual instructor could take away. We’re often preaching about really capturing everything you want a student to learn in a learning outcome, even if you’re doing specifications grading or whatever else. And the part that’s really hitting home for me right now is. If you have converted to standards-based grading and you’re still feeling like the students are missing something, maybe you can look at some of these other skills that maybe aren’t even just the mathematical practice skills, something like the I connect and the more opportunity you have to be intentional with your assessment design and weaving a story through, like we’ve talked to lots of people, for example, that you don’t always have to reassess a specific quiz. Like if you’re trying to check today, know if they know linear equations. There might be other places in your curriculum that don’t seem like they’re checking linear, but that you could get linear information from. And so the more opportunity that you have to be intentional and sophisticated in your design of your assessments, the more authentic, quite frankly, those assessments could become. And the more that you can get it, more information from a smaller quantity of student work.

Camp: Yeah. And I think, so connecting that to what you just said, Sharona, to what Boz said about like, we’re in it for the students in designing more intentionally and in looking at your design of your assessments like you just said, is that’s how you make the difference. That’s how you do it. To, because we, we also are big believers in UDL at my school and we want teachers to be, to be thinking about designing for all students. And so that’s another, so when you were talking about the linear algebra thing and made me think like, yep, one way doesn’t work with this student, come up with other ways to design it with that, that were good for all students. They should be trying all different ways to demonstrate their understanding of linear algebra, that sort of thing. So those, all the, so many things we’ve been talking about tonight are just all like coalescing around sort of the same concepts.

Sharona: We’ve gotten a couple of questions recently from school districts that we’ve talked to that have said, can this be done at a school wide level? And, and Bosley and I at at the time were like, well, you know, these subject areas are so different. I, I feel that you guys have come to a compromise level. So we’ve, we’ve talked now to a couple schools that are like, Nope, we’re a hundred percent consistent across all subject areas. And then you guys are like, we’re consistent across all the foundational and the pillars, but then we do have one or two subject areas. So I kind of like that too.

Camp: And, and so can I tell you, in my development, the development of the, originally we did not have subject area competencies in our first year, and we got some good feedback. We’re like, okay, what, how, how, if a student loves science, how can we show their science acumen? We’re like, oh, that’s interesting. Thank you for that feedback. And then we’re like, you know what we need, we said we needed like two to three subject area competencies. So say a student really wanted to be an engineer and a school, we really was interested in their science performance. So yes, their letter grade and science comes from all the different competencies, but we could zero in, we could go into Otus and pull out just their science competencies and be like, here you go. Right? So there, that shows their, their skill in that particular subject area as well as across the other skills. So I’m glad you brought that up ’cause that that was an iteration for us to do so that we could do that. So, our competencies are a combination of ones that go across the curriculum and individual subject area competencies.

Boz: And it, it also sounds, ’cause going back to what Sharona was saying about, you know, some of these schools that we’ve been working with, trying to get some school-wide agreements, mainly to make it, you know, easier for students and their parents to understand because that is a really big potential barrier to any group trying to really, you know, design more than just a classroom is really making sure the under the students understand and buy in and making sure the parents do. But it sounds like you guys have got these, it’s still, it still sounds like your teachers have a lot of freedom with how exactly, you know, they’re putting these different competencies and how many of them, so if I, if I’m teaching math. I might be heavier with, with the math subject one than another math teacher might be.

Sharona: Mm-hmm.

Boz: So it does sound like you guys still have quite a bit of freedom when it comes to those individual teachers. Is that correct?

Camp: Correct. And we’ll use that data actually for good conversations between teachers of the same subject and across the curriculum. So for example, I, I mentioned earlier, I’ve spoken to the math teachers sometimes, like, Hey, you guys are doing great with your math competencies, see if you can weave in some of the other skills, that sort of thing. ’cause at the midyear I’ll do a big, like comprehensive pi pie charts and things like that about the different competencies people have used. So just so they can look like, oh, we we’re very consistent, or Oh wow, how come this teacher’s doing it has this many and this teacher doesn’t, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s just good for conversations. But again, back to the consistency and the cohesion, it’s all the same language. ’cause everyone’s using the same system. That’s a, that’s a game changer to honestly like that you know, I used to be blown away that I could walk down the hallway and one teacher’s using 10 points and another teacher’s using a hundred points and another teacher’s using four points. And so there’s no cohesion at all in the conversation where we’re able to have the conversation because we’re all using the same systems. And so, that’s a big game changer for us. And that I, again, I know that like on a big district level or in a school level, that can be difficult, but I, I’m a big believer in being courageous, starting small steps get groups together to try it. And then spread it that way. That the biggest thing is to have the courage to, to, to make some movement because we all we’re, the reason the three of us are on here right now is ’cause the movement is needed.

Boz: Absolutely. I know we’re starting to run close on time. I did have one more question I wanted to ask. ‘Cause you had mentioned, you know, that was one of your early changes to your system was adding these subject-based competencies.

Sharona: Mm-hmm.

Boz: Has there been any other kind of. Major adjustment or refinement? ’cause you know, you guys are still pretty new. I mean, we’re talking

Camp: Yeah.

Boz: Are you going into your fifth year or is this, you’ve got five years going into the sixth?

Camp: We are going into year five.

Boz: Okay.

Camp: So, yes. But again as a school that’s rooted in innovation, we are unabashed about saying, Nope, we’re iterating this because we think it needs to be iterated because of student feedback or, or things like that. So we’ve, we’ve had some competencies that we’ve taken out because they weren’t used enough and then we’ve had, well, why weren’t those used? Like, should we be thinking about these? Or are they not measurable enough? Right. Because if it’s not measurable, you can’t have it. Right. So so yeah, so there there’ve been some that have come and gone. Probably the biggest iteration we did was in I might have said this in our, our screening call that we started out with our system without grades. So you, we had the competencies and you had just the measures, just how you get measured surface immer deep on each one. And it was year one of our school and people thought it was cool and innovative, but they’re like, what the hell is this? Like, what is this thing you’re try, like, how do you report this? And so at the time I said the, the one traditional thing we should do is figure out how to make this into a letter grade. And, so about five of us met math teachers thinkers, and we got in a room for several times thinking about how do we keep the integrity of our system but still make the surface immersed deep measures into numbers, into a grading system.

And we literally did that by March of the first year. During the year, probably one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, to be totally honest. I can’t believe we pulled it off. So yeah. But point being I will ne I’m a big fan of like no grades and so, you know, five years down the road, maybe our system won’t have grades. I don’t know. But like, one of the reasons that we do have the grades is we want our, our transcript to look like everyone else’s transcripts. How we get to that is obviously different, but we don’t wanna prevent our students from getting a fair shake at the college level because we have graphs and pie charts in our transcript. ‘Cause we want them to see the transcript with the letter grades. And the way I call it is we want the admission people to turn the page. Yeah. See the transcript. Be like, oh, that’s interesting. Turn the page and then get into all the cool things they’ve done at the school.

Sharona: So I don’t remember if we talked about the Mastery Transcript Consortium or not and whether or not you’ve talked to them, but there are definitely people out there that are trying to get the colleges to take a more holistic approach, a more narrative approach to college admissions. So we’ll see where that goes. And then there’s those of us at the college. I, I like to say that I’m not in the Burn it All Down Camp. Mostly ’cause I’m standing behind the person with the match and I’ve got the can of gasoline. So I’m not technically in the burn it All Down Camp. And I teach as if. You know, let multilevel letter grades are given. But I’m perfectly happy pouring gasoline on the fire of getting rid of grades. So that’s where I stand.

Camp: Yeah,

Sharona: yeah, yeah he definitely has the lighter.

Boz: I am in the burden. The burden.

Sharona: I’m absolutely there with the hose of the gasoline. So I’m just, I’m standing a little further back so it’ll get burned. But,

Camp: For mastery transcript, I had several meetings with them in year one to think about, okay, this is our system how can, if we went with it mastery based to, because their transcript is cool, I think it’s super cool as somebody who’s innovative and progressive, and I think what they’re doing is really great for what we do. Like I said, ours is a mashup system. It does have some mastery elements and standards based elements. It, it, we’re not a strictly mastery system, so it didn’t work for us. So I think it’s great for the schools that can do that, and I hope the master transcript, great gains, a lot more traction. Because then maybe 10 years down the line, my system could be sort of like that. But, but anyway, like, I think, but again, I love that the schools that use it, like I I’m for anybody thinking about how they’re assessing and grading in a better way than we’ve had for a hundred years.

Boz: Yep.

Sharona: So before we sign off, is there anything you wanted to talk about that we didn’t ask you about?

Camp: No. I would say actually like I said, one, gonna be huge followers of you two, and hopefully we can interact a lot more in terms of like my journey Ken O’Connor’s work was a huge factor in getting me to think about grades differently. Star sax Dean as well, particularly in like the hacking assessment, getting rid of grades thing Mark Barnes. So, and, and obviously like Alfie Cone and some of the classic people too. I think if anybody’s thinking about, changing up the system. Like, I’ve read so much and studied so much because so that’s my recommendation. Like dive into as many different things. ’cause some of you’re gonna be like, that’s crazy. I’m sure people sit listening to this right now and be like, that guy’s nuts. But but the more you could tap into that and build your knowledge outside of the box, ’cause we’re all in the box about the way we’ve always been brought up with grades and we have to break out of it. And so my other, my, so my biggest point is like, read up on as many different things as you can get, get in conversations with like us we’re having right now. And have the courage to, to do something.

Boz: Yeah. And I, I know Ken O’Connor was one of my earlier books that I read. It definitely wasn’t my first, ’cause my journey really started with the DeFours and PLC work and then in into like Guskey and Feldman, but when it came to practical ways of, of doing it, and some more concrete reasons of why we shouldn’t do traditional Ken O’Connor and really Robert Talbert’s Grading for Growth . Those, those are two of the best books that you know you can really get for looking at the technical pieces. And like I said, I, I probably. Sold or converted more of my colleagues using some of the stuff from Ken’s materials in the what’s the title of that book? Like 15 Things that We Do Wrong in the Grade Book and How to Fix ’em. I, I, I converted more people with things that I took from there than probably anyone else.

Camp: Yeah, fantastic.

Sharona: How about you, Boz? Any last comments before we.

Boz: I just really wanna th thank you for coming on. Whether we do it on the, on the podcast or just some other time, I would love to really get into the weeds with you on the grading architecture, like how this all does wrap up into final grades. You know, we, we talked a little bit about it, but we didn’t go into huge detail. Just for my own curiosity. I really would love to see how that actually works. So I don’t know if we wanna try to do it on another podcast episode or just some other time where we, we can have a little bit of free time, which for educators is usually not very often.

Camp: Yeah, true. But I I could, as you can tell, I could talk about this forever. So anytime, name it I’m there.

Boz: Sharona, any last minute things from you?

Sharona: Just, so happy to have this community because this is absolutely the highlight of my week and year when I, and I wanna see everyone at Math Fest next year if you’re a math teacher. So that’s my only statement there.

Boz: All right, well, you have been listening to the Grading podcast with Sharona and Boz, and we’ll see you next week.

Sharona: Please share your thoughts and comments about this episode by commenting on this episode’s page on our website, http://www.thegradingpod.com. Or you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. If you would like to suggest a future topic for the show or would like to be considered as a potential guest for the show, please use the Contact us form on our website. The Grading podcast is created and produced by Robert Bosley and Sharona Krinsky. The full transcript of this episode is available on our website.

Boz: The views expressed here are those of the host and our guest. These views are not necessarily endorsed by the Cal State System or by the Los Angeles Unified School District.