Collaboration Promoting Equitable Grading Strategies in Math
The Cradle to Career Partnership is supporting a collaboration with the Tucson Regional Educators Collaborative (TREC) to promote student self-efficacy in mathematics in K-12 schools through an equitable grading approach as part of the Post-Secondary Completion Change Network efforts.
The Post-Secondary Completion Change Network prioritized strategies to support students in K-12 to avoid the need to take developmental courses in a post-secondary setting. Taking these developmental courses can affect students’ persistence and take a financial toll, increasing the likelihood that they will not complete their post-secondary degree.
In this project, TREC is working with teachers from the Sunnyside Unified School District and Tanque Verde Unified School District to implement equitable grading strategies in math, with the goal of developing a stronger student-teacher relationship and increase student engagement in the subject. This strategy uses a rubric-based grading system which moves the students from compliance to knowledge acquisition.
One of the teachers participating in this project, Justin Powell, a math teacher at Sunnyside High School, has already seen improvement in his students’ mindsets this semester.
“I am attempting to only have my grades in my class represent knowledge learned, in order to practically do this, I have had to reduce the number of assignments I am entering in the grade book and illustrate to students that the instruction and directions I give in the classroom are designed to lead them to mastery, allowing us to share power as partners working toward a common goal,” Powell said. “This is helping my students focus on their own learning and mastery rather than chasing points.”
Following this project, TREC and C2C with assess the strategy and compare students’ feelings and perceptions of math before and after, as well measure their outcomes prior to and post-implementation. To learn more about TREC, visit their website.
