After 10 years of teaching, I left the classroom in 2023. I’ve earned an Ed.S. and passed comprehensive exams in the fall of 2025, making me a Candidate for a Ph.D. in Teacher Education. I research grading and classroom assessment, and work with pre-service educators. Here are my most up-to-date practices—frozen in time like Pompeii or Herculaneum right up to my last day in the classroom—that were fundamental to my teaching, making all the daily activities possible…
Continue readingCurrent Reading: Standards-based Grading (SBG)…Too Much Grading?
I’ve been sitting on this post for a very, very long time, perhaps because I hadn’t been entirely confident in my review of classroom assessment literature enough to make a claim about standards-based grading (SBG) that isn’t exactly positive. In short, the literature suggests that practices most likely to support learning are achieved by keeping graded summative assessments to a minimum.
SBG might not be doing this.
Continue readingClassroom Assessment & Grading Roadmap
I left my 2025 MTA Summer Conference workshop participants with a LOT of resources to read. After getting through all the recommended posts and maybe even books, however, they’ll probably still face the question of “what do I DO?!” The answer to that shouldn’t be a one-size-fits all panacea, but I can definitely offer some guidance since there are relatively few moves to make in the pursuit of grading less…
Continue readingREAD THIS(*): Feldman’s “Grading for Equity”
Back-to-back posts because I was playing a board game this weekend and forgot to post that night! I have a really hard time being critical of this book, considering in many ways it helped launch my classroom assessment and grading research. Granted, the more I learn, the more asterisks I attach to ideas in Grading for Equity, which is tough for me to admit. I simultaneously recommend that all educators read this to understand basic concepts, like standards, while I also acknowledge that it’s still a grade-focused, and possibly grade-heavy approach. That is, standards-based grading (SBG) is a lot closer to traditional grading than many might think, and has the potential to result in even more grades, just in new packaging (e.g., “Needs Improvement,” and “Proficient”). Therefore, here are my thoughts after my first rereading of this book since really diving deep into classroom assessment and grading literature.
Continue readingREAD THIS: Blum’s “UNgrading…”
Rereading the preface to this book was a little depressing. The first time I read it over three years ago, I had highlighted “but should we, assuming an end to the lockdown, just go back to business as usual? What if the usual is problematic?” (p. xxii). At the time, I was experiencing “business as usual” despite a glimmer of hope between spring 2020 and 2021 when it looked like grading practices were going to shift in a massive way. They did not.
Continue readingREAD THIS: Dylan Wiliam’s “Embedded Formative Assessment”
I had the opportunity to revisit Wiliams’ 2018 book, Embedded Formative Assessment, while looking for definitions of “formative assessment.” The first two chapters are simply priceless. Beyond those, the other chapters include a general problem to be solved, and then practical techniques on solving them. Here’s an overview of what I consider the best parts…
Continue readingREAD THIS: Mark Barnes’ “Assessment 3.0”
Even though I recommend Mark Barnes’ SE2R feedback model, and have written about that, here, there’s a bit more to his “Assessment 3.0” book than just the model. It warrants further reading…
Continue readingREAD THIS: Sackstein’s “Hacking Assessment” (2nd Ed.)
In getting ready for my 2025 MTA Summer Conference presentation on “Getting More from Your Formative Assessments and Grading,” I found a lot more missing blog posts than just Zerwin’s! For example, I never wrote about Starr Sackstein’s “Hacking Assessment…” years back; there’s good stuff in there, which means I need a record of that stuff here.
Continue readingREAD THIS: Zerwin’s “Point-Less…”
In cobbling together sources for my 2025 MTA Summer Conference presentation on “Getting More from Your Formative Assessments and Grading,” I searched my blog to link posts on books I consider foundational. Somehow, I never published the post I wrote after reading Zerwin’s “Point-less” years back. Her work deserves some attention…
Continue readingAmazon Novella Cost Increase :(
To clarify, Amazon isn’t increasing their cost to print books. They’re just decreasing royalties paid to authors (for books listed under $9.99), which means that unless many authors agree to earning quite a bit less per book (in my case it’s over 30%), there will be an increase to your cost of purchasing novellas. The good news? It’s only through Amazon purchases…
That is, I encourage teachers to buy directly from authors and novella distributors whenever possible (e.g., my square site, or Storybase Books) since printing costs are remaining the same; whatever deals authors and distributors have struck up aren’t affected by Amazon’s royalty decrease, so you can enjoy lower-cost novellas through them. See this tab on the crowd-sourced novella document on places to get books other than Amazon.
Is there a catch? Not really. Direct purchases tend to have lower list prices than Amazon, though shipping costs added to the order might come as a surprise since they’re hidden by Prime free shipping. For example, most of my books are increasing to $10 on Amazon, but my set of 12 favorite books is $70 plus shipping ($9), not the Amazon list of $120.
On a side note, I’m also taking this opportunity to switch my covers to the glossy format since I’ve heard that the matte versions can get a little grimy over the years, making that really nice original texture end up kind of gross (eww!). Sorry it’s taken so long, JP!
Achieving Consensus: A Key To Changing Teacher Practice
If I were ever asked to coordinate a schoolwide grading system change again, I would take a cue from the authors of Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning (2013). In Chapter 6, this gem of a statement reads…
Continue reading“It is easy to achieve consensus on solutions that do not require teachers to make changes in their day-to-day practice, even when data show that such practices are consistently ineffective.” (pp. 140-141)
Magister P. 