Week 11

Vignette 13 - Apples and Oranges

Ok, pardon the nonsensical statement that I am about to make, but we are beating a dead horse who just won't die.
Poor Mr. McIntyre! It seems like he set himself up pretty well in terms of assessing in a variety of ways, but the guy just cannot win for trying. Like Mr. McIntyre likely did as well, I thought that having this variety would protect a teacher against murky final grades. Maybe we were both wrong.

But we have already danced with arguments that there is always subjectivity in a grade. In many instances, a teacher has subjectively affected a student's grade before the two souls have even met! I think that Mr. McIntyre might have had less of a late-year issue with grades if he had weighted the group component (or had this component separate in the first place) within the (assignment) mark differently, but I believe that he still would have had discrepancies.

I know that there is a lot more to learn about both assessment, and also about professional judgement and it's relationship with ethical decision making. A quote from Marzano (2000) following the vignette says that "[i]n fact, a strong case will be made that there is no truly meaningful way to combine scores on various topics into an overall grade." I tend to agree with him. I know that there are a lot of cautions I can take into consideration when planning for assessment and ultimately grading, but beneath all of my planning will lay my own subjectiveness which will speak to the grade that I truly believe a student has earned. I am curious to hear more about how teachers in the field approach this issue in their own classrooms.