Grading Practices at Central Academy
Dear Central Academy Students and Families,
As a district, Des Moines Public Schools is working hard to improve the use of Infinite Campus as a reporting tool on student progress. As you may have noticed, progress reports are being automatically generated and sent out to parents via email that include Central Academy and Central Campus progress and attendance. This SRG Supporting Document lays out for students and families how the Standards Reference Grading System works in DMPS. It is worth the read.
Here at Central Academy, we have been working on our grading practices as part of our professional development. Our efforts over the years to clarify our learning topics and scales in each course have resulted in incredible gains in student growth and achievement. For example, last year we had more students enrolled in AP courses at Central Academy than ever before in our history. More students chose to take AP exams, and a record number earned scores of 3 or higher on those exams. Last year nearly 88% of all semester grades issued at Central Academy were a B or higher. And the differences in achievement between various demographic groups at Academy continued to shrink. Because of these successes, students choose to continue at Central Academy and enroll in Academy AP courses, many of which use modified curricula designed for advanced learners. When we speak with our alumni, many of them tell us that their Academy experience prepared them for collegiate success. They often report that the knowledge, skills, and strategies they learned at Central Academy made college courses easier.
This year we are continuing our professional development to improve how we provide clear information to families about student progress. Infinite Campus is an excellent data information system. It is not always easy to use as a communication tool. So, we are trying to clean up the differences and quirks in how information is entered between teacher gradebooks both here at Central Academy and across the district.
THE GRADING PROCESS:
Each course is divided into topics of learning and each topic has a set of learning targets (LT) that students must meet to demonstrate their mastery of the topic. The students’ scores on each topic are averaged by Infinite Campus to report an overall grade for the semester.
Students get a rating on each learning target. AT means “At Target”. PT is “Progressing toward Target”. ET is “Exceeding Target”. NM means the student has “Not Met” the target yet. And M means there is not enough evidence to give a grade—the evidence is incomplete or missing. As students develop skills in the learning targets their rating can change.
After the teacher has collected enough evidence on each learning target within a topic to provide a good assessment of student progress, they enter a Topic Score of 0 to 4, where a 3 means a student is demonstrating proficiency (AT) in all learning targets for the topic. An in-progress grade for the course will not appear until at least one topic score is entered.
WHEN WILL TOPIC SCORES BE ENTERED?
At Central Academy, our courses fall into one of three categories:
- those that work on one learning topic at a time (such as in Math or Science)
- those that work on all learning topics at the same time (such as Languages)
- those that are a hybrid of the other two (such as Social Sciences and Art).
Courses in mathematics or sciences do one learning topic at a time. When one topic is concluded the next one begins. Topic scores in these courses appear regularly throughout the semester as the class works through the targets and topics in sequence. Sometimes there are topics that draw on the previous topic and provide students opportunities to show mastery of an earlier topic within the new topic. But often, the new topic is distinct and separate from the previous topics.
In Language courses, such as English or French, students are working on all the topics simultaneously. It makes sense that students are working on both speaking and listening topics at the same time, for example. So, this early in the semester you’ll see target ratings in multiple topics. But it takes longer to generate topic scores—and therefore letter grades—because we need evidence in all targets before we can assign a topic score. Usually by mid-semester topic scores will appear all at once. Students will continue working on the targets in all topics all semester. And the targets will increase in cognitive complexity as the semester progresses. A student may be “At Target” at the start of the semester but change to “Progressing towards Target” later when the target increases in complexity. It is difficult to display this nuance in Infinite Campus. We are working on ways to improve how we describe student progress in clear and meaningful ways.
Hybrid courses such as in Social Sciences and Art have targets in one topic that are worked on sequentially but using skills assessed in other topics that are worked on all semester. For example, in Social Science most of the topics represent skills students work on all semester such as “Historical Reasoning”. But students will work on that skill while completing discrete key concepts, such as “The Pre-Modern Era”, that more closely resemble the serial units in math or science. In art courses they must learn how to make cylinders with clay before learning how to make bowls. But the “Creating” topic encompasses both cylinders and bowls. Students need more time to work through each of the target skills before a topic score can be accurately assessed.
PARENTS AS PARTNERS
Parents are important partners in the education of our students. Central Academy teachers are working on opening other avenues of communication with parents and families about student progress. For example, after the first month of school, teachers were required to spend some time outside of school hours to contact parents about student progress. Many chose to focus on students who were showing early warning signs of procrastination or inattention. Parent conferences this week are another opportunity to connect with parents about student progress. We will do another round of teacher-initiated contacts outside of school hours in December.
You will continue to get automated progress checks from the district every 2 weeks. As always, you can find teacher emails on our website if you have specific questions about your child’s progress.
Finally, as part of our professional development, our teachers are working collaboratively on other methods to keep our parents informed about what we’re working on with students. Some teachers are entering individual assignments that feed into the target score rating and marking them as “turned in” or “missing” so that parents know if students are taking advantage of opportunities to demonstrate skills. Some are adding comments on the target score or on assignments, so students and parents know what the next steps in learning are. Some teachers are having students complete assignment trackers, reflection sheets on their progress, or develop electronic or paper portfolios of their work.