Being Fair: Teachers' Interpretations of Principles for Standards-Based Grading

Robin D. Tierney, Marielle Simon, Julie Charland
2011 The Educational Forum  
Knowing that grades can have long-term consequences for students, teachers voice concern about being fair in the grading process. However, their interpretations of fairness are varied and sometimes contradictory. This study looked at how teachers in one standards-based educational system determined secondary students' grades, focusing specifi cally on the extent to which they followed a specifi c set of principles for grading. The results support previous research, and suggest that a better
more » ... rstanding of essential principles is needed for grades to accurately refl ect students' achievement. Teachers' decisions can have long-lasting social, emotional, and academic consequences for students. The imperative that this provides for understanding teachers' assessment practices was repeatedly noted more than one decade ago (Stiggins, Frisbie, and Griswold 1989; Brookhart 1994; Delandshere and Jones 1999; Gipps 1999) . It is clear that teachers are concerned about making fair assessment decisions (Brookhart 1993; McMillan, 2003; Eggen 2004; Rex 2005; Yip and Cheung 2005) , but their interpretations of fairness vary greatly (Yung 2001; Zoeckler 2005) . However, policies relating to classroom assessment have been changing in many educational systems as a result of standards-based reform. As a result, ongoing inquiry is needed to understand classroom practices, and particularly the basis of teachers' assessment decisions in changing educational contexts. This study looked at how teachers determine students' grades in one standardsbased system. Standards-based educational systems usually have centrally developed
doi:10.1080/00131725.2011.577669 fatcat:fq6gmflpivbd5nr4bi7mjqoypm