Sunday, July 18, 2010

#sbar to #fubar

Careful there, folks. Standards based grading isn't gonna fix everything. So before you go and throw yourself in front of the train, there's a few things you should know.

1. The ideas behind SBAR aren't new. Teachers were caring about student learning like 10, 20—3000 years ago. Back then, they called it "doing their job."

2. You're still going to have to distill all this learning into some sort of a letter grade thereby making it a shadow of the real thing.

3. All perfect assessments aren't. (see #3 here)

4. Don't overdefine this stuff. This will keep a good idea from becoming just another term in a long list of edujargon that forces people to earn a Master's Degree just so they can learn how to metacognate their pedagogical assessment practice and use it in a sentence.

5. I typed this on my phone with my right thumb during nap time.

Other than that, I like standards based grading. Just trying to keep it real.



7 comments:

Shawn Cornally said...

That's all we're trying to do here, right? Make teachers rethink what their assessment practices do to students' brains? No more acronyms.

Also, don't worry, the SBG Express checks to see if you have a philosophically valid ticket, I promise.

Surani said...

>>This will keep a good idea from becoming just another term in a long list of edujargon

Amen.

Matt Townsley said...

Surani and others - Any thoughts on how "we" stop SBG from becoming just another bit of edujargon? Should we call all publishing companies and request a twitter-#sbar-tagged peer review before selling it on Amazon? Flame blogs with comments when a writer steps outside the realm of pure #sbar?

If anything even remotely close to SBG (as written about on the blogs I read) spreads like wildfire across America, that's a good thing for our students. My guess is David's premise is by that time, it would turn into PLCs and the like - everybody's "doing it" but few agree on what "it" really is.

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure I agree with "don't overdefine this stuff", if I know what you mean.

On the other hand, is this something you'd consider "overdefining"? -> http://joshg.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/summa-wha-defining-our-assessment-buzzwords/

Anonymous said...

(ie. just checking if you're responding to what I wrote, or if it was just a coincidence.)

(ps. No need to admit if you've never read my blog before - what I don't know won't hurt me.) ;)

David Cox said...

David Cox said...
I'm not here to punch anyone's ticket, much less yours, Shawn; it's not my place. But I think we have to be careful on how we define sbg or sbar for others. We may never be able to nail down what exactly it is, as Matt suggests, but we have to be careful not to flame others for not being pure in their definition. However, I don't see anything wrong with us trying to define terms for ourselves (while looking to others to help sharpen those definitions) as joshghas done with his post.

Anonymous said...

I found SBG 2 years ago and love it. However, I've had to temper my enthusiasm so as not to convey to my fellow teachers that it is the magic wand that fixed my classroom. I think it is important to realize that SBG is tradionally implemented by teachers that evaluate their methodology for improvement. This in itself makes a good teacher. SBG is one tool in a list of what makes a teacher successful. My fear is that teachers who really aren't passionate are forced into SBG thus destroying what I believe to be a grass roots movement in education.