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Introduction

The Case for Evidence-Based Grading

We are believers in evidence-based grading, and we are not alone. Our students need a new, more effective grading system. We must rethink our traditional grading practices and build a new grading model that clarifies and communicates about student learning. When we take this step, we will engage in more effective conversations about teaching and learning, demonstrate evidence of learning for every student, drive innovative revisions to instructional practices, and gain more equitable consistency in our schools. Overall, we will build a clear working relationship among curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

This means hard work. This means getting specific about three things: (1) what we want students to know, understand, and do; (2) how we clearly state our performance expectations of students; and (3) why we must gather visible evidence of student learning so we can address the gaps in student achievement, build higher-quality instruction, and extend mastery over learning.

Past grading practices do not communicate specifically about learning. For this reason, educators struggle to engage in meaningful conversations that develop coherence around curriculum, instruction, and assessment. As a result, we often fumble over how to open crucial dialogue about what students know and what they do not know. Likewise, students sit through their classes unsure of expectations, and parents remain unclear about what their children need to do to succeed in school. Our work around evidence-based grading is focused on unifying the relationship among curriculum, instruction, and assessment so teachers and students can work together more explicitly on what student learning growth looks like.

Many of our best educators and researchers are working to improve discussions that confirm learning is taking place and all students are succeeding. These educators recognize the potential of grading practices to foster dialogue about teaching and learning and how that dialogue can help students progress in their learning. The following are a few headline statements that express the need to approach grading differently. In Ahead of the Curve, Ken O’Connor (2007a) says:

Grading as it has been done traditionally promotes a culture of point accumulation, not learning. It encourages competition rather than collaboration. It often focuses on activities instead of results. It makes all assessment summative because everything students do gets a score, and every score ends up in the grade book. In many schools, grades have achieved “cult-like status” (Olson, 1995) where the grade is more important than whether or not students have learned anything. (pp. 127–128)

Douglas Reeves (2008) shares:

The difference between failure and the honor roll often depends on the grading policies of the teacher. To reduce the failure rate, schools don’t need a new curriculum, a new principal, new teachers, or new technology. They just need a better grading system. (p. 85)

The overriding desire for change is clear. We believe that we must create and support grading practices that reflect how well our students demonstrate what we want them to know, understand, and do. More important, we need students to know how to discuss learning expectations with their teachers, how to reflect on growth, and how to reach greater levels of proficiency and mastery.

This call for change is easier said than done. Shifting away from traditional grading practices is no easy task. Traditional grading practices have been around a long time—generations have been herded through schools branding students with grades that say very little about what they learned. Moving away from these grading practices will take thoughtful conversations, reflective revisions, and hard work.

In our own district, we have spent the better part of four years moving away from a grading model that went virtually unchanged from our school’s opening in 1965. For nearly fifty years, we stuck with traditional grading practices that are most familiar to everyone in high schools and colleges—a model of counting points and percentages and putting a letter stamp on the student—A, B, C, D, or F.

For decades, we have agreed that these letters actually stand for something. We are here to question that long-standing agreement and share how we are working to clearly articulate what we expect students to know, understand, and do; how well we expect students to perform; and how we expect students to prove what they’ve learned with clear, explicit evidence.

Like most educators, we rarely questioned traditional practices despite what we know about growth in learning. These deeply embedded traditional practices continue to live in schools as they generalize descriptions of student performance and lump students into letter groups. “He’s an ‘A student’” and “She’s a ‘C student’” are comments that seem to have meaning in our schools, to our families, and in our judgments about what students know, understand, and do. These letter stamps operate like distinctions or labels. For better or worse, they denote each student’s capacity and predict potential for success.

The truth is no one can really state what these letters stand for from classroom to classroom, school to school, or state to state. An A from Mr. Smith’s classroom might be very different from an A in Ms. Garcia’s classroom. An A in Mr. Smith’s classroom might actually be a C in Ms. Garcia’s classroom. Not to mention how an A in ninth-grade English in New York City might represent learning that is vastly different from an A in ninth-grade English in rural Alabama.

As we move forward in our efforts to change grading practices, we try to revise these long-standing generalities about how we grade and report student learning and, instead, report what our students know, understand, and are able to do. Breaking out of traditional grading practices that perpetuate generalities requires intentional conversations about teaching and learning. These conversations require meaningful changes in how we unify and articulate curriculum, instruction, and assessment. More important, these conversations are changing how teachers and students approach the learning process.

While we continue to implement a more effective grading model, two adages ring true: No one size fits all and go slow to go fast. In other words, when building a change in our grading practices, we believe (1) our teaching teams must collaborate and decide how best to implement shifts toward more communicative grading practices and (2) what is best for teaching and learning takes time to process.

For these reasons, we are not in a rush to make these changes overnight. Instead, we would rather have teachers unpack the value of these shifts in ways that support productive conversations with students and teams about curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Upending ineffective traditional grading is our goal. To do it, we’ve chosen to work mindfully and intentionally with teachers to support this change, answering their questions and developing their insights about teaching and learning.

A New Language: Evidence-Based Grading

In our own work and in the work we’ve observed in other schools, implementing either traditional grading or what is called standards-based grading often stalls the changes we need to make. While standards-based grading models have good intentions, many lead teachers back to ineffective traditions or grading practices that do little to open up the conversations we need to have about teaching and learning.

We propose shifting toward grading practices that focus on the evidence that students produce. As we emphasize in the book Proficiency-Based Assessment (Gobble, Onuscheck, Reibel, & Twadell, 2016), we must change the language we use for grading. We should grade the evidence students create to demonstrate what they know, understand, and can do. This is important as we change our approach to grading practices that reflect school shifts in curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

In this book, we assert that evidence of student learning must be the starting point of change. The evidence that students produce shows the relationship between their work and expected levels of proficiency. The conversations about teaching and learning then become much more dynamic and formative—every student gains clarity and perspective about how he or she can improve.

Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines evidence as “something which shows that something else exists or is true” (Evidence, n.d.). This is the same way we look at grading student performance. We must examine the available body of facts and information to determine whether it proves student learning.

When curriculum teams make collaborative decisions about student evidence that demonstrate learning growth, we support more equitable learning environments across different classrooms. When these same teams calibrate and interpret evidence based on agreed-upon expectations, we guarantee accurate and consistent feedback across these classrooms. These two changes can remedy the often random, subjective, and arbitrary elements used to determine grades in traditional grading systems.

In order to implement evidence-based grading in their classrooms, teachers should focus on the elements we discuss in the following sections.

Curriculum Focuses on Proficiency-Based, Student-Friendly Learning Targets

Students should have access to a thoughtfully considered, well-designed, high-quality curriculum. While it is important that the curriculum has meaningful and relevant standards, it is just as important that it is written with student-friendly learning targets that challenge students daily. Students must be able to state what teachers are asking them to know, understand, and do. However, even clear learning targets are not enough. For those targets to be meaningful and useful learning tools, they must be scaled for proficiency expectations—in other words, we must be able to describe what proficiency looks like in terms of mastery and needs improvement.

In an evidence-based grading model, proficiency-based learning targets describe expectations for learning. They unpack standards for learning into specific, well-described statements of learning that make sense to students. In an evidence-based grading model, these descriptions then become a tool for learning; they state what students must learn and define what it means to reach or exceed learning proficiency. A well-written learning target makes sense to the student, and it clearly states performance expectations. Nothing is hidden about what a student must learn. We encourage teachers to use these learning targets as tools for growth and reflection. They help state the gradation of learning that a student must attain (Gobble et al., 2016).

Learning should be placed on a continuum of proficiency, not viewed as a scaffolded progression. Consider table which highlights the differences between a scaffolded learning progression and a proficiency-based gradation. Scaffolded learning identifies different skills students should learn in sequence, but it does not state an expectation for learning. However, proficiency-based gradation states what skills students are developing and how well they are meeting expectations.

Table I.1: Scaffolded Learning Progression Versus Proficiency-Based Gradation

Scaffolded Learning Progression	Proficiency-Based Gradation
The student can identify vocabulary terms.	The student can appropriately explain vocabulary terms in a written analysis using simple stated details from class.
The student can define vocabulary terms.	The student can accurately explain vocabulary terms in a written format using simple stated details from class.
The student can explain vocabulary terms.	The student can accurately explain vocabulary terms in a written format using complex stated details from class.
The student can analyze vocabulary terms.	The student can accurately explain vocabulary terms in a written format using creative and unique details.

A scaffolded learning process for students includes different skills: identify, define, explain, and analyze. A well-written learning target offers a gradation of learning within one directed skill—in this case, the ability to explain. The learning verb is fixed in proficiency-based gradations for learning; the verb does not change, but the degree to which the student is successful does.

In an evidence-based grading model, we know that the proficiency expectation is the most critical component of being able to classify student performance and ultimately give a grade. In Proficiency-Based Assessment (Gobble et al., 2016), we offer the following example of how a proficiency-based learning target is used for evidence-based grading. This example is a proficiency-based expectation for a unit of study on World War I:

If we develop a gradation of learning and proficiency for our World War I target, it may look something like the following.

4—Using unique examples and opinions, students will be able to effectively explain the main political, economic, and social causes of World War I in a written analysis.

3—Using examples from class, students will be able to effectively explain the main political, economic, and social causes of World War I in a written analysis.

2—Using given definitions and terms, students will be able to effectively explain the main political, economic, and social causes of World War I in a written analysis.

1—Using a text, students will be able to effectively explain the main political, economic, and social causes of World War I in a written analysis. (pp. 19–20, emphasis added)

This particular proficiency scale pertains to a written analysis of WWI’s causes and breaks down the expectations for learning. A learning gradation like this positions proficiency as a 3, which helps both the teacher and student develop a better picture of the student’s growth and achievement in relation to a stated level of proficiency. Proficiency-based learning targets clarify the differences in student growth, providing students with clear descriptions of a learning destination: proficiency or mastery. This articulates how students are performing and where they have room for growth. A curriculum that supports evidence-based grading provides proficiency-based learning targets that clearly outline the intended competency or learning progression for students.

Instruction Focuses on Teacher and Student Reactions to Student-Produced Evidence

Teachers tend to intentionally plan traditional instructional sequences, deliver them in scaffolded segments, and verify their efficacy with either a formative or summative assessment. Evidence-based instruction is much different. It demands evidence. So, teachers must work with students to see the evidence of learning before they plan what direction the instruction takes from that point forward. In evidence-based grading, the sequence looks more like this: (1) observe and collect evidence of learning through formative assessment, (2) intentionally react by deploying instruction and engagement strategies, and (3) reflect on the state of learning and the potential for growth.

As we know from experience, traditional instructional techniques often promote shallow retention of material and can actually slow down the learning process for students. Figure I.1 shows the traditional instructional sequence: each small circle represents an instance of teaching and assessing a small component of what teachers ultimately expect of the student. The teacher moves deliberately from one small component to another before ultimately teaching and assessing students on the learning target. The larger circle at the end of the line represents this assessment.

Source: Gobble et al., 2016.

Figure I.1: Traditional sequence of instruction and assessment.

Evidence-based instruction focuses on the student’s reaction instead of the teacher’s delivery, so teachers must direct the lesson while learning is happening and determine the direction to take based on student-produced evidence, as figure I.2 (page 8) illustrates. The small dots in figure I.2 represent students, and the big circles represent what the teacher expects students to ultimately know or do (learning target or desired level of proficiency). Notice that students move closer and closer to desired levels of proficiency. They do this by recalling, reflecting on, applying, and reapplying the small components of a given learning target.

Figure I.2: Evidence-based sequence of instruction and assessment.

Think about it this way: figure I.1 is like teaching a child how to ride a bike by making sure he or she knows all the bike parts (pedals, handlebars, and so on) and how they function. Figure I.2 represents how you would actually teach a child to ride the bike. You let the child get on the bike right away, and he or she learns to ride while simultaneously making sense of the bike parts.

In evidence-based grading, teachers must remember that instruction has no shape or size. The first step is to realize that lessons are not small, systematic increments to success, but rather arbitrary reactions to student input and output. Evidence-based instruction promotes self-reflective interaction with expectations. Subsequently, evidence-based instruction manages and supports a space for learning to occur.

When instruction focuses on reaction, the lesson centers less on the teacher. Students become more involved in their own learning. However, this only happens when teachers use proficiency-based learning targets. Proficiency-based learning targets are defined states of competency that act as learning outcomes (Gobble et al., 2016). In Proficiency-Based Assessment, Gobble et al. (2016) state that proficiency-based learning targets have three components.

1. Proficiency language outlines the intended state of competency. Examples of this language include words such as effectively, main, appropriate, all, and creatively. These words are important because they contextualize the state of competency for students as well as allow students to accurately perceive their own state of competency. Moreover, these words create the reflective foundation for learners to gain appropriate perspective and prevent them from becoming overconfident in their skills or knowledge.

2. Measurable language outlines how students show the extent of their competency. Examples of this language include phrases such as in writing, with sufficient detail, in order, and with personal connection. These phrases are important because they state the framework through which we evaluate competency. For example, if the proficiency-based learning target has the measurable language in writing, learners know that teachers will evaluate their competency via what they write.

3. Gradations of competency are essential for self-reflection and growth. According to Gobble et al. (2016), gradations properly contextualize proficiency, create purpose for instructional activities, make student-produced evidence growth driven, and provide a script for quality feedback. Evidence-based grading is a method for learning, not just a way to determine a grade.

Evidence-based instruction means that learning targets are active learning tools for students. Teachers and students use feedback related to the target to help students grow, reflect on learning, organize their thoughts, review work, self-assess, and revise learning to demonstrate growth in a skill area. Clear feedback helps students relate the target to the evidence they create, which is at the center of the learning process. This is similar to backward design, in which the value lies in students knowing expectations for outcomes prior to starting the learning process.

Incorporating reflective and reaction-based instructional practices makes it more likely that students achieve an intended level of mastery. By continuously reflecting and revising, students consistently examine how well they are performing and work to make continuous improvements. This approach asks students to communicate clearly about how they evaluate their learning. Ultimately, by focusing our instruction on reflection and reaction, we give students the structural guidance they need to reach proficiency expectations through proficiency-based targets.

Assessment Gives Students Opportunities for Reflection and Feedback

Asking students to interact reflectively with assessments as often as possible creates a learning environment that fosters continual growth. In evidence-based grading, assessment is a reflective interaction with one’s own current state of learning. This essentially means that assessments are events that ask students to assess their own learning regarding who they are now and who they are becoming in relation to an expectation: the proficiency-based learning target.

For this to happen, students must have the opportunity to distinguish between the targeted proficiency level and their ongoing, developing performance. Evidence-based grading is based primarily on quality proficiency-based assessment practices: “the process of creating, supporting, and monitoring student reflection and thought patterns to achieve an intended state of competency” (Gobble et al., 2016, p. 15).

As evidence-based teachers, we want students to prepare for and summarize their learning reflectively. We want them to be mindful and observant of their progress. In contrast to traditional assessment, evidence-based assessments ask students to be aware of how they are producing the evidence of their learning rather than what they produce.

Gobble et al. (2016) refer to this concept as proficiency-based reflection—examining one’s current state of competency and considering potential next steps to further understanding. These opportunities involve several critical facts.

• Assessments are reflective events.

• Students must be aware of their proficiency level.

• Students must accept feedback.

Assessments Are Reflective Events

If an assessment promotes reflection, efficacy, and self-questioning, then it is more personalized and meaningful for the learner. When teachers approach assessment from the reflection angle, it can guide their instruction and simultaneously provide students with growth feedback tied to clear proficiency-based targets (Chappuis, 2009; Gobble et al., 2016).

Students Must Be Aware of Their Proficiency Level

Proficiency-based reflection helps students become aware of questions that emerge from their interaction with the proficiency-based target. In order for students to answer these questions, we must help them develop proficiency awareness—a personal interpretation of their gradation of competency (Gobble et al., 2016). By being attentive to the state of competency, students not only become more active in their learning but also begin to trust their own self-assessments.

Students Must Accept Feedback

When teachers create assessments that help students reflect and develop proficiency awareness, students more easily understand the relationship between the feedback they receive and their learning. Students will understand that their own learning and development are directly tied to feedback’s frequency and quality. And when this happens, students more easily accept even critical feedback.

Teachers should create the following conditions in their classrooms to help students accept and react to feedback (Gobble et al., 2016).

• A learning culture that asks students to make connections, not just produce correct answers

• Events that promote an active search for meaning

• A culture focused on growth and development, not fixed ability

• Thinking activities that require collaboration and deliberation

When teachers and students are mindful of the reflection process, they engage in ongoing dialogue about student learning and begin to develop behaviors that promote and encourage improvement.

Teachers Determine Grades With a Calibrated Interpretation of Student Evidence

When examining the evidence of a student’s work, the teacher decides whether he or she has achieved an expectation. No matter the algorithm or formula, determining proficiency is never as precise as simply reviewing the evidence against expectations. By shifting the grade determination away from mathematical formulas, some teachers continue to think that grading becomes more subjective and less valid. However, evidence-based grading should reduce subjectivity. In an evidence-based model, teachers collaboratively:

• Vet learning targets and gradations of learning

• Create formative assessments

• Review student work to calibrate interpretations

When we make calibrated and common decisions about student evidence to interpret their proficiency, we provide a fair and accurate learning environment superior to one with arbitrary cutoffs or thresholds.

Unlike standards-based grading, which tends to focus on the quantity of standards achieved, evidence-based grading focuses on the student’s evidence of proficiency. In essence, the teacher focuses on the growth within a student’s body of work to determine the student’s performance. The teacher uses formative assessments to evaluate each student’s growth and final grade.

In Elements of Grading: A Guide to Effective Practice, Douglas Reeves (2016a) states, “What we ascribe to students must be a matter of judgment as well as the consequence of evidence and reason” (p. 1). Traditional arguments force logical consequence and reason out of the grading conversation and replace them with arguments about accumulating points or other external rewards. Standards-based grading attempts to bring the discussion back to evidence, but it tends to fall short because it relies on the quantity of standards achieved—often appearing more like an achievement checklist than a discussion about learning development.

Evidence-based grading promotes dialogue between teachers and students about how students demonstrate learning and how they actually prove what they know, what they understand, and what they can do. This level of discussion encourages a fundamentally different instructional framework for teaching and learning. In this instructional framework, we must engage students in how they talk about learning, how they demonstrate learning, and how they produce evidence that demonstrates learning. This differs from traditional grading discussions that revolve around points earned, letter grades, or percent averages. Those types of discussions are not about the learning; they are about grades.

In evidence-based grading, the student and teacher discuss the skills achieved and evidence skills were developed. When teacher teams calibrate their expectations, create common assessments to capture evidence of those expectations, and distinguish whether the evidence shows patterns that meet those expectations, we have a process that is more precise than a mathematical formula because we’re talking about learning and communicating about growth and gaps.

Schools might struggle in their effort to make changes to grading practices if they continue to focus on standards, topical units, task-based curriculum, rote and short-term memory learning, and mathematical averages. Their conversations can be far more successful with evidence-based grading, which centers on a proficiency-based curriculum, reflective interaction with students, and collaborative and communal discussions about evidence. It is important that the discussions about learning and the evidence of learning remain the focus—be very careful not to fall back into old habits and old arguments about point gathering or worse, grade grubbing.

Five Phases of Implementing Evidence-Based Grading

Schools should not do the work of changing grading practices from the top down. The best chance for making lasting and significant changes in grading practices is through thoughtful and challenging professional development and the creative insights of teachers who are experts in their discipline. Change does not come easily through a sit-and-get, stand-alone professional development day or through a one-size-fits-all model. Instead, professional development must recognize that individual teachers and collaborative teams vary in expertise, knowledge, skill, and perspective. Any school change needs input from these diverse perspectives. This takes time, but when schools implement positive change with thoughtful deliberation and smart intentions, this change can last.

Every teacher brings different strengths and capabilities to work each day. We must value these viewpoints and consider them during the decision-making process. By providing more focused, worthwhile professional experiences for teachers, we can all make sense of best research practices to guide change in our schools.

We rely on long-standing research grounded in the creative process to create individualized, effective professional development experiences. Psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) presents this process in five interconnected and overlapping stages, which inspired our five-phase process: (1) preparation, (2) incubation, (3) insight, (4) evaluation, and (5) elaboration. Summarizing the creative process based on previous work around the development of change, Csikszentmihalyi (1990) provides a better framework for professional learning among educators.

Many professional learning experiences we have observed tend to be lecture based and noncollaborative. Expert educators collaborate in five very different ways during the decision-making process toward change. As we’ve found, this allows us to create different forms of professional learning experiences that help us evolve change—by considering what we know, what we think, what we discover, how we evaluate, and why we build change. We believe this is a much more intentional way of approaching change, and we find that it helps us collaborate more effectively among teachers who might have varying thoughts or opinions about what is best for students.

For the purpose of simplicity, this book shows how effective education teams work through these five interconnected phases of the creative process. The phases first appear as separate events, but eventually all phases begin to interact with one another.

Csikszentmihalyi (1990) outlines the five phases of the creative process:

1. Preparation is becoming immersed in problematic issues that are interesting and arouse curiosity. Preparation is the term that psychologists apply to the first [phase] of the creative process when individuals are starting out and struggling to perfect their craft. Inspiration is what drives the curiosity of both great artists and scientists to persevere through their years of hard work.

2. Incubation refers to the period during which ideas churn around below the threshold of consciousness. After an individual has started working on a solution to a problem or has had an idea leading to a novel approach to an effort, the individual enters the incubation stage. According to research psychologists, this stage can last hours, days, months, or years. When individuals try to solve problems consciously, it becomes a linear process, but when problems are left to incubate or simmer, unexpected combinations occur. And it’s these unexpected combinations that form domain-changing breakthroughs.

3. Insight is the “Aha!” moment when the puzzle starts to come together. The insight stage is also called the eureka experience. Some psychologists call it illumination. It’s the exact moment in time when a problem that an individual has been trying to solve—for days, months, or years—comes together in his or her mind to form a clear resolution. This resolution only emerges after a complex and lengthy process.

4. Evaluation occurs when deciding if the insight is valuable and worth pursuing. During the fourth phase of the creative process, individuals must decide if their insights are novel and make sense. In other words, they must analyze the insights to determine if they’re truly worth pursuing. If the insight continues to excite and motivate the individual to go forward, then the hard work of turning the creation into a reality begins. Some creativity researchers, such as Harvard University’s Teresa M. Amabile (1983), cite motivation as the key factor in the creative process. Regardless of the ingenuity, novelty, or originality of an idea, artwork, or scientific invention, if the creator is unmotivated, the work will never become a reality.

5. Elaboration is translating the insight into its final work and constantly nuancing or revising. Throughout the creativity literature, many who have created products that literally changed their domains or disciplines state the necessity of hard work and revision. Yet at the same time, they also state that it doesn’t seem like work at all but seems more like play. Additionally, the opinions of others, great awards, and fame mean very little in the end. It’s the process of creating that drives them forward toward continuous growth and improvement. (pp. 5–6)

The five phases are crucial to changing mindsets toward an evidence-based grading model—mainly because the change involves not only the way teachers grade students but also the way students and families approach evidence-based grading as part of the learning process of continuous growth. They must be prepared for this shift and understand its purpose and value. Likewise, they will go through a period of wondering if it is working or not—and how. From that point, as we’ve found, many students and families gain greater insight into how to approach learning as a discussion about skills and not points and percentages or grades.

As we work through this discussion, we strive to share the thinking, debate, and reflections of teacher teams that work to make this shift; likewise, we will share how they engage in important conversations with students and families regarding the shift and its value toward building a clearer, more coherent, and more unified understanding of learning growth.

As you read, consider why each phase fosters greater collaboration between teachers, and how it promotes thoughtful, new conversations with students and families about learning. More specifically, we hope to provide you with a pathway to implementing evidence-based grading—a change we think is significant as schools work to address student growth and learning.

The Structure of This Book

This book outlines one curriculum team’s journey to implement evidence-based grading and features a powerful model of professional learning. Team members will navigate challenges, pitfalls, and successes as they engage in each phase of the professional learning process. Along the way, they collaborate, debate ideas, and work to build consensus as they reach toward a new approach to grading grounded in better teaching and learning practices.

In each chapter, we explain a phase, demonstrate change through our team members’ points of view, and identify key strategies to support change during the phase. As you’ll see, each phase fosters powerful discussions about teaching and student learning.

It’s important to note that this is only one way of separating these phases of progression. They are recursive and often overlapping. No one phase is better than another. Professionals always gain insight and go back to prepare, think, or evaluate. Individual educators and teams of educators will move in and among these phases of the creative process—they will revisit, question, react to, and think about them at different times. This allows professionals to reflect, learn, develop new ideas, and build on those ideas.

Chapter 1 examines the preparation phase, comparing evidence-based grading with past grading systems. During this phase, team members are educated about why the shift to evidence-based grading is significant, how and why it is different from past practices, and how it will develop authentic conversations about learning. The team asks questions and begins to grapple with student reflection as a powerful learning experience. Most important, team members will begin to create a shared understanding of what evidence-based grading can do for student achievement in their own subject areas.

Chapters 2 and 3 are about the incubation and insight phases. At these points, the team is really thinking about how to scale learning targets and communicate expectations. The team debates about past grading practices that make sense and question the amount of time the shift might take. The team also wonders about the worth of such a big change, but as insights emerge, the team realizes the value of an evidence-based learning model. Team members are able to see direct relationships between teaching and learning, and they begin to generate collaborative agreements that support student success.

In chapter 4, the team enters the evaluation phase. During this phase, the team examines how well the change is working and critiques its implementation of an evidence-based grading model. Team members evaluate the way students communicate about learning and the clarity and coherence an evidence-based grading model brings to curricular, instructional, and assessment practices. Likewise, they evaluate how well students and parents understand the value of the change—which is equally crucial to its successes. By the end of this journey, the team takes responsibility for further revision and continuous improvement. Through each phase, you will notice team members reflecting on teaching and learning, realizing they need to develop growth-minded students who make learning visible.

Finally, in chapter 5, team members arrive at the elaboration phase with a clear connection between their work and a newfound purpose and a commitment to student learning. With fully developed experiences implementing evidence-based grading, the team works to implement more reflective learning strategies—pushing all students to greater levels of achievement. The team members also emphasize effective feedback and instruction that create a perpetually dynamic learning process. The team embraces change through more accurate reflection practices, revisions to instruction, and instruction-aligned assessment. Ultimately, the team’s patterns of teaching merge to unify its shared curriculum, instruction, and assessment into a singular process with a mindset for continuous improvement.

Taking the time to work through these phases of professional development sustains a culture of innovation and continuous improvement—an engaging collaborative discussion where curriculum, instruction, and assessment work together as one. After you implement evidence-based grading practices, we are confident that you will create smarter conversations about teaching and learning that will have lasting effects on students.