In our last installment in this series, we discussed the universality of assessment, the history of grading, and who grades are for, concluding that systems of assessment which serve institutional aims do not best achieve our aims for the student. Our aims for your students are self-government, self-control, virtue, mastery of the material, love of the material, and a lifelong love of learning. Though the 4-point grade point average system and the A-F letter grade system are not inherently bad, these systems of assessment often reflect an institution-centric approach. We concluded that a good system for assessment will aim at the cultivation of moral and intellectual virtue in the student and provide opportunities for good conversation rather than provide a final unchangeable judgment about the student’s performance and aptitude.
Each quarter (which is about 9 weeks long, taking into account some partial weeks due to fall break or the first half-week of school), we issue quarterly assessments one week after the end of the quarter. Our first quarterly assessment is coming up at the end of October. In Part 1, we mentioned that a virtue-centered system of assessment will not be perfectly uniform between the Lower School (K-6) and the Upper School (7-12), so in this installment we want to help guide you through our different approaches in these two halves of our school.
To put these two different approaches into context, here is a quick review of the stages of learning in classical education:
Grammar School
In the Grammar stage, young children learn the “whats” of things and how to categorize the different subjects they’re learning. They learn lots of rules: spelling rules, multiplication tables, how to tie your shoes, how to wash your hands, the proper components of a sentence, how to classify a bug. They learn a lot of building blocks of subjects, without necessarily thoroughly applying them. For example, they learn how to sound out words in phonics, but they do not receive reading assignments for literature. They learn the moral landscape of the world around them through subjects like history and literature. Pedagogy (teaching technique) in the Grammar School classroom employs a lot of all-class recitation, call-and-answer, games, reading aloud, and drills. The following features are sparse in the Grammar classroom: discussion, debate, and self-expression in writing and speaking. Habit formation is king.
Logic School
In the Logic stage, middle school aged children learn the “whys” of things and how to argue well. History turns from a neat account of timelines with hand motions (though we still teach that) to the complicated world of primary documents. Science includes more experiments. Children begin to see how the building blocks of subjects work together. Spelling, grammar, and phonics are replaced with logic and higher expectations for composition. Students take notes in class, discuss and debate with one another, and begin training to form their own opinions about the ideas they study.
Rhetoric School
In the Rhetoric stage, high school aged children begin to dress their knowledge with wisdom and eloquence. Pedagogy in the Rhetoric School classroom employs a lot of oratory, debate, discussion, and more reading and homework preparation between classes.
Quarterly Assessments in the Grammar School
In the Grammar School, summative assessments do not really exist. There are no final exams, papers, and projects. What replaces summative assessments is class catechisms, which are call-and-answer summaries of the important information taught over the course of the year. These are not graded but are assessed; teachers expect joyful, competent participation in catechism recitations at the beginning of each class from each student.
Teachers do not return scores back to students after formative assessments in the Grammar School. While teachers do grade homework and may sometimes give back homework with indicators of the quality of the work—smiley faces, check marks, X’s, notes, even percentages—they do not provide students with a way to track their numerical progress in the subject. In subjects like math or spelling, where teachers frequently give tests and check homework, students always get the opportunity to fix their mistakes. The progressive mastery of material takes precedence over evaluating students’ incremental standing in each subject. And since habit formation is king, subject-by-subject numerical progress does not give a good picture of the student’s learning and virtue formation.
What to Expect from a Quarterly Assessment
If your child is in K-6, you will receive a 1- to 2-page narrative assessment about your child. It will begin with an overview of how your child is doing at school, paying equal attention to comprehension, retention, habits, literacy, reasoning, obedience, listening, wonder, and other personal qualities that would be poorly represented by a numerical measurement.
It will then describe your child’s learning progress in most subjects as compared to the quarterly milestones, or “standards,” that we have written for our scope and sequence for that subject. In Cedar’s first two years, we had yearly standards for each subject such as:
- End of Kindergarten: I can read one-vowel words.
- End of 3rd Grade: I can read and write in cursive.
- End of 6th Grade: I can write sentences that are grammatically correct, varied, and interesting.
Yearly standards are broken up into quarterly standards so that teachers can make more concrete plans to help students toward mastery and parents can have a better idea of how to support these plans at home. For example, the Kindergarten goal above is broken down into the following standards:
| 1st Quarter | 2nd Quarter | 3rd Quarter | Year |
| I can recite the 5 short vowel sounds. | I can recite the 5 long vowel sounds. | I can recite all the sounds each letter makes. | I can fluently read known and unfamiliar one-vowel words. |
| I can sound out consonant vowel blends with known consonants and short vowel sounds. | I can sound out word blend ladders. | I can proficiently read word blend ladders. | I can re-read and correctly recode a word after sounding it out. |
Your child’s assessment will conclude with a paragraph on specific areas of struggle, and the teacher’s plan to address those areas of struggle for the next quarter. One of our goals in achieving parental partnership is that quarterly assessments never contain any concerns that your child’s teacher has not already addressed with you. “No surprises,” we say. This ending section of the assessment is in keeping with Cedar’s overall approach to assessment as a coaching mechanism. No matter how your child did this quarter—whether in reading or in speaking respectfully to his teacher—we want your child to continue to grow and improve.
Quarterly Assessments in the Logic School
After reading many paragraphs from us on the dangers of numerical scores in academic assessment, buckle up: We’re about to talk about numbers.
In Part 1, we talked about the progression in classical education from external controls to self-control. Grades and assessment are a form of external controls; they provide feedback to teachers, parents, and students about a student’s progression in learning so that students continue to progress. Our goal is that self-control—rather than “good grades”—is the motivation for excellence, but teacher feedback given through grades is necessary for students to understand how they can improve. In Grammar School, as previously mentioned, assessments are chiefly a conversation between teachers and parents about teachers’ plans to address students’ areas of struggle. Quarterly standards help a teacher hold her 6-year-old student’s hand through a gradual progression of learning toward mastery. In Logic and Rhetoric School, a third partner enters a student’s learning process: the student himself. And to include the student in his own learning process, rather than just hold his hand in a quarterly progression toward mastery, we have sought to introduce a tool that communicates with the student himself how he can work toward the teacher’s expectations for mastery in any given subject.
When a student enters Logic School (7th Grade), pedagogy (teaching technique) shifts. Students no longer just defer to authority and take the teacher’s word for it when presented with facts and arguments; the teacher guides the students to the source of the information itself. Primary sourcework, scientific experiments, proofs for the algorithm, and logical proofs all begin to take the teacher’s place as the bedrock for knowledge. Logic School straddles between the childhood of Grammar School and the adulthood of Rhetoric School and higher learning; it is equal parts recitation and discussion. But as we seek to grow children toward mastery of the material, we see Logic School as the time to begin handing ownership to students over their own learning.
To that end, we have introduced each of your 7th and 8th Grade students to the following rubric for standards-based grading:
| I Can Teach Others
4 |
I’ve Got It!
3 |
Not There Yet
2 |
Just Starting
1 |
| Student demonstrates deep understanding of the concepts and procedures by mastery of almost all of the standard outlined in the summative assessment. All written work is neat, complete and almost all factually correct. All steps in reasoning are explained. All explanations are coherent and well organized. | Student demonstrates understanding of the concepts and procedures by mastery of the standard outlined in the summative assessment. All written work is neat, complete and mostly correct. All explanations are coherent and organized. | Student demonstrates partial understanding of the concepts and procedures by mastery of part of the standard outlined in the summative assessment. Written work is neat, somewhat complete and correct with most logical steps shown. Explanations contain some key elements but may omit some important information. | Student demonstrates little or no understanding of the concepts and procedures by mastery of little to none of the standard outlined in the summative assessment. Written work is neat, but contains many errors in reasoning. Explanations appear unrelated to the problems and have little to no relevant information. |
Teachers use this general rubric to write standards for each of their subjects. These standards are similar to the standards we have written for Grammar School, with that key difference of individual ownership. With time over the course of the year, most Grammar School students will meet their quarterly standards without extra effort on their part. Now, the teacher may have to work extra, in and out of class, to help certain Grammar School students achieve mastery of difficult concepts. But we do not necessarily assign extra work to a joyfully participating 6-year-old just because she struggles with a certain math concept.
Upper School is different. When a student enters 7th Grade, she is given the above rubric that defines precisely what her teacher is looking for when it comes to evaluating mastery of a topic. Every score she receives on work, whether formative or summative, will inform her where she is in the learning process on a particular standard. In Grammar School, this information mostly serves the teacher in guiding her own lessons and in partnering with parents; in Logic and Rhetoric School, the student becomes an active participant in her own goal of mastery. She has the opportunity to improve her work to meet this standard. As she progresses through a unit, she can take ownership of her own learning as she recognizes where she has met the standard, exceeded the standard, or where there is still room for growth.
You will notice that a score of 3 means “I’ve Got It!”. When you see a standard on a quarterly assessment, the wording will actually be that of a 3. This is the standard. A score of 4 means that the work goes above and beyond the standard; it is distinguished, complete, unparalleled excellence that exceeds the teacher’s expectations for a given concept or skill.
Here are some examples of Logic School standards. These are from history:
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As you can see, the standards—though all aimed at mastery—cover many facets of learning. Preparation for class (notes and tabs!), neatness of work (no doodles!), retention of basic facts (names of documents!), comprehension of content (why he wrote it!), and analysis (the main points!)—these all play into a teacher’s and a student’s evaluation of the student’s work.
What to Expect on a Quarterly Assessment
If your child is in 7th-12th Grade, you will receive a 1- to 2-page assessment that combines numerical scores reflective of the above approach (standards-based grading) and narrative assessment. It will begin with an overview of how your child is doing at school, paying equal attention to comprehension, retention, habits, literacy, reasoning, obedience, listening, wonder, preparation, attitude, leadership, and other personal qualities.
For some subjects, in which students have already received rubrics, teachers will provide a list of standards (like the list above) and a numerical score for each standard. We will not average rubric scores to give an overall score for each class, and we advise against doing this. Averaging scores would not be a good indicator of overall learning because it would muddy the information about mastery in each standard with mastery in other standards or with previous learning attempts on the standard. When a student leaves Cedar, rather than carrying around one number or one letter to describe the past six years of his performance at school, he will receive a portfolio of each class’s standards and his final rubric scores for each of those standards. Here’s an example of what that will look like:
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If your student receives a low score on a standard, he can talk to his teacher about opportunities to work toward improving his mastery of that standard. Students are encouraged to review, relearn, and retake any summative assessment that does not meet the appropriate rubric score. Summative assessments occur at the end of each unit or clear learning break. This is a big departure from modern grading systems in that no grade is final, and there is always an opportunity to pick yourself up and try again!
What we hope to convey here is that, numbers notwithstanding, our approach to assessment has the same heart behind it. As with Grammar School assessments, we intend Logic School assessments to serve as a coaching tool to give clear feedback and direction to students in their learning. It is meant to encourage mastery of the material and reinforce learning as a process. But by cluing students into the aim and mode of evaluation with a clear path forward from “Just Starting” to “I’ve Got It,” it draws students deeper into the learning process so that they can take ownership for themselves.
Don’t Expect Any 4s… or Many 3s
Here is an area where we ask you, parents, to show great restraint and far-sighted leadership. Particularly in this first quarter, do not expect to see any 4s or many 3s from your students. Your students, whether new to the school or not, have spent the past nine weeks adjusting to more homework, harder documents, and higher expectations. If you see a 2, 1, or even a 0 on your student’s assessment, please remember that this document is a coaching tool and not meant to be translated into a final judgment on your student, your student’s ability, or the subject matter itself. Even if they have low scores on their assessment, we may be very proud of their joyful effort—and we will tell you if we are! And if your student has not been joyfully making an effort, it is not too late to start. We need you, parents, to be ambassadors for our approach to assessment as a coaching tool toward mastery and virtue.
Types of Assessment in the Upper School
There are two main types of assessment used in Logic School: formative and summative. Formative assessments are given frequently throughout a unit and when scored using the rubric provide that coaching opportunity so the student knows what to continue working on so they can meet the standard. These include, but are not limited to the following: quizzes, writing prompts, worksheets, whiteboard practice during class, center work, and conversation.
Conclusion
Here at Cedar Classical Academy we desire to approach grading and assessment with the same excitement and vigor as planning a fun science unit or literature party. Clearly seeing where we are headed (yearly benchmarks or standards) and where we are on that journey (quarterly benchmarks or rubric) provides essential information to teachers, students, and parents as we all work toward equipping students to become self-governing men and women who joyfully serve God and their neighbor.