This workshop is focused on the practices and processes that will modernize grading and reporting systems to be more aligned to our standards-based instructional paradigm. By developing a standards-based mindset, participants will come to see how a seamless relationship between the formative and summative purposes of assessment will maximize the potential success of each and every learner. Rather than forcing grading reform through a new policy, grading program, or report card template, long-term grading reform begins on the inside—how we rethink grading practices and processes—and works its way out.

Participants are encouraged to attend as a team. Whether your purpose is to utilize sound grading practices in your own classroom, modernize grading practices across a grade level or within a department, or move to a standards-based grading model at the school or district level, this two-day training is for you. Over the course of the two days, the widely held traditional beliefs about grading will be challenged as participants come to know what it takes to ensure that teachers produce accurate grades and confident learners.

Team time will be made available to support collaborative action planning.

Participants will:

• Recognize why traditional grading practices are no longer relevant and how grading practices can be modernized in a standards-based instructional classroom
• Develop grading true north (accuracy and confidence), the essential overarching vision for sound assessment and grading practices
• Acquire a standards-based mindset and the specific strategies that begin to shape a rethinking of how grades are determined
• Gain protocols and practices to hold students more accountable for learning without compromising the accuracy of their proficiency grades
• Learn how to teach, assess, and report on student attributes, student growth, and cross-curricular competencies
• Understand why homework should be repurposed to be a formative assessment strategy, and obtain ways in which homework can become a more productive, learning-centered exercise
• Explore specific practices including reassessment, grade determination, the five myths of standards-based grading, and the differences between levels of profici