Transforming Classroom Grading (Paperback)

by Robert J. Marzano (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Grading can be an invaluable tool for pinpointing strengths and weaknesses in students' understanding, provide a shared language for discussing learning, and help improve student performance over time. Unfortunately, current practices in classroom grading, such as the use of overall letter grades or percentage scores, are not amenable to this type of specific feedback. In fact, they do little more than label learning at periodic intervals. The antiquated grading system in use today has little or no research to support its continuation and is highly ineffective.

Transforming Classroom Grading presents viable alternatives. It is about designing grading systems that are both precise and efficient. Robert Marzano provides educators with a thorough grounding in grading research and theory. After clarifying the basic purposes of grades, he discusses what should be included in them, how to use a rubric-based approach to assessment and reporting, how to compute final topic scores and final grades, and how technology can streamline the grading process. He also addresses seven types of assessment, which, when coordinated, can provide a comprehensive view of student understanding and skill. Finally, he suggests alternatives to report cards with overall grades and ways to phase in their use.

The changes that Marzano recommends will require persistent--even courageous--educators, but those who systematically implement them will fundamentally change the way teachers, students, and parents think about and use grading. This book provides explicit guidance for those teachers, schools, and districts ready for true change.

Product Details

• Paperback: 147 pages
• Publisher: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Deve (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871203839
• ISBN-13: 978-0871203830
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #98,334 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Book, June 27, 2008

By	Alan Davis (Colorado, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm about to rave about this book, so let me say first that I'm not a friend of the author and I have no connection to the publisher. I'm a professor in a school of education with an interest in all sorts of assessment, but classroom assessment in particular. This is the best book on grading I've read yet.

Marzano first argues that grading is a very important matter, at the heart of the instructional process, but one that is also under-studied, generally poorly done, and very resistant to change.

Then he argues that grades should mainly reflect academic attainment of particular objectives, not the accumulation of points, and he proposes a gradebook organized as a table for each student, a matrix of objectives by demonstrations, scored through the use of rubrics. If teachers can get past the initial concern that this will require a lot of time up front to implement, the result could be a system that empowers students and focuses them on what they need to learn.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Future has arrived., December 22, 2008

By	Terry L. Loomis "Educator for the future" (Las Vegas, NV.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book helps you come to grips with what you have been thinking and what you know. Introducing new concepts to children and then grading them immediately on their grasp of the concept doesn't work. Students need time to learn, apply, and then utilize the information across curriculum. Grades for new concepts should be harvested along with evidence at the end of the quarter/trimester rather than the beginning of the quarter/trimester. This book argues that we should be utilizing grades for effort along with knowledge grades. It further argues for informative report card comments rather than just a grade. Comments need to include what evidence we found to indicate that the student has a grasp on the concept.