Rick Wormeli Summary/Response

The school I teach at recently attended a 1 day conference to listen to one of the current gurus in the field of education, Rick Wormeli. Rick is a phenomenal presenter and will keep viewers engaged throughout his whole day seminar though his quick wit, humor, references to movies/songs, dance moves, and his constant movement up front and in the crowd. This keeps those viewing watching intently and waiting to hear the next words to come out of his mouth. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that he is extremely passionate and about what he is talking about!

The following is a snapshot of some of a couple topics he talked about: Homework and Assessment.

Standards Based Grading

Homework

Homework is a time for students to practice the learned material. If students do not know how to do the homework, they should not have to do it because “practice makes permanent.” In addition, because it is a time for students to be practicing, homework should not be graded. Homework will will include multiple attempts and failures before it is learned well. This is one aspect I really like. I believe each students is unique and made in God's image, therefore they will not all learn at the same rate. We differentiate the content, product, and process, but why should we still think that all students will learn it at the same speed. Students are not all the same, so why should they be expected to learn it at the same rate?

Assessing

Wormeli’s overall purpose of assessing students is a way for teachers to provide communication to them about where they are in terms of where they are going. Rick stresses that schools should be assessing based on the standard the work is connected to. This way there is no false reporting of a grade, and it can be easily seen how well a student has learned a specific standard. Because of this, schools need to shift their focus to be criterion referenced, not norm-referenced. Basing a student on where he/she is at in comparison to other students does not necessarily show how well material is learned, instead it shows how well material was learned compared to how well everyone else learned it. By assessing based on a set criteria, the standards, all students are compared to a set standard and measured by it, not each other.

Averaging grades to calculate a final grade really does not make sense in Standards-Based Grading. If, again, we see that homework is used to practice and we do not expect every student to learn the concept at the exact same time (they are all unique, made in God’s image, and not 100% alike, correct) then why penalize them for not knowing it as well at the beginning of the year if now, towards the end, they do know it well?