 Creating Essential Agreements  ISE’s Essential Agreements for Assessment:  The school will educate parents, teachers, students, and administrators to become assessment literate.  Teachers will actively involve students in the assessment process through self-reflection, goal setting, and peer collaboration.  Teachers will use a variety of assessment techniques and will include a balance between pre-assessment, formative and summative assessment.  Assessment should be aligned with the standards and outcomes as well as ESLRs.  Students should receive assessment criteria and rubrics for learning activities as well as exemplars where appropriate to ensure they understand the assessment expectations.  Major assessment tools should be determined before a unit of study and should follow the Understanding by Design process including the development of common assessments.  Assessment should be collected and analyzed to inform instruction.  Assessments should enhance student learning, be ongoing and feedback should be provided in a timely manner.

 Create or revise your assessment policy  Educate all faculty  Thomas Guskey  Alfie Kohn  Joe Bower –  Rick Wormeli  Talk to other schools  Look at sample report cards

 Administration  Faculty  Parents  Students

 Have a clear vision  Articulate what you want the faculty to be able to do  Be on the same page

 In-service days or time  Provide articles and reading on standards- based reporting and grading  Have discussions with faculty about the befits of moving to standards-based  Allow the staff to voice their concerns and give research-based evidence of why the shift

 Decide what the report cards will look like  How many standards will you have for each subject?  Where will you place the work habits and behaviors?  How will you phase out grades?  Major decisions need to be made before talking to parents and students

 Most important to get parents on-board  Create a parent focus group  Let them feel empowered – ask them their thoughts about the reports and listen  Hear their concerns  Share the research with them  Share examples from other schools  Offer all school parent workshops  Provide key information in mother tongue

 When transferring to another school, the school will not accept my child without a grade.  The kids won’t be motivated if they don’t get a grade.  Other countries don’t use standards.

 Survey students  Ask them what a B in one class and a B in another class means  Get their thoughts on receiving just grades, how do they feel when it is report card time  Have students educate parents at home

 What does the honor roll look like in a standards-based world? Is there a place for honor roll?  How does your grade book look?  How do you convert scale to a letter grade and ensure consistency?  What questions should we ask parents?

 December and June, semester report card goes home  Standards plus no grades in grade 6, standards and grades in 7 and 8, grades to be phased out each year  Progress report at conferences in October and March, progress report will contain ESLRs and comments  Tackle high school in

 Emphasize new reporting system at Open House  Have new report cards available to all at the beginning of the year  Translate as much as possible into home languages  Be transparent about the grading and what it will look like

 Dropbox  Share sample standards-based report cards  Articles  Videos  Presentations  EARCOS Admin job-a-like on standards-base reporting