Standards Based Grading... We already do that!

On the flight here I was reading from the scintillating text titled Grading Smarter Not Harder which was assigned to me by the ELA Supervisor from the district in order for her to come and train me in August on Standards Based Grading.  As the department chair for my school, it will then be my job to teach all 20 of the English teachers in my building about SBG.  I don't know about anyone else, but it seems to be a popular new technique that is surfacing in the world of education.  You can say a lot of things about our chosen profession, but the one thing that you can definitely count on is a new teaching method or practice.

So, the new "in" thing at my district seems to be SBG, and as I read the text and realized the concepts behind Myron Dueck's teaching strategies I realized that he is describing every single student journalism program in the country.  Our programs are naturally standards based.  Our classes epitomize the concepts he is teaching in his book.  

1.  Our homework is not busy work; instead it is part of a product students work toward completion.  While we do deal with deadlines, these are not due dates because they are not arbitrarily set by a teacher.  Our deadlines are "real" world and the impacts of missing a deadline reach beyond a grade.  

2.  Our tests are the publications of our newspaper, broadcast, yearbook.  Students are being tested daily, weekly, etc.  The evaluators are their peers and that is so much more important than any grade I could ever give them.

I think when I have my department training on SBG I will just tell all of the teachers in my English department to teach their classes like a scholastic newsroom!  We've been doing it for years!

Also, I think I am going to walk in on the first day of class and tell them they have an A and then ask if we can get past the stupid grade and get to the business of making news!!