Multi-point rubrics fail students because students learn to get the grade they want with minimum effort. They also discourage risk taking and hinder student agency. Chris Sarkonak explains how the single-point rubric puts students on equal footing, promotes agency, and boosts engagement.

Personalization is not the same as individualization. Teacher-driven individualization requires creating as many activities in the classroom as there are learners, while personalization requires partnering with learners to make learning meaningful and relevant to each individual child. This reframing of personalization creates a path to sustainability, reminding us that teachers’ workloads matter: if teachers are depleting their energy reserves, then they won’t have the energy to actually implement instruction.

Dr. David E. Kirkland discusses the Multi-Tier System of Sustaining Strengths and Support (MT4S) model, which underscores a critical shift from remediation to celebration, from merely navigating learning barriers to paving pathways for success. This is how equity and justice in education really looks.

Empire State University is no longer the gradeless institution it was at its founding in the 70s. But as teacher education professor, Karis Jones discovered, the infrastructure for gradelessness was still there. Despite encountering some resistance, Jones shares way she has built on these infrastructures to apply ungrading practices in thoughtful ways that address tensions that the school had experienced in the past.

Exploring alternatives to grading often means experimenting within one’s own classroom, while translating the outcomes to comply with the larger institution’s reporting requirements. It is rarer to encounter explorations of alternative grading at the level of a program, school, or institution. However, thinking systemically is crucial for creating change that lives beyond the efforts of single heroic instructors.

Learning doesn't progress linearly but evolves through cycles, spirals, or starbursts, but certainly not straight lines. This fact prompts the question: What does learning truly look like? Can it be neatly categorized or quantified? Does learning elude simple definition, unfolding instead as a deeply personal journey best articulated by the learners themselves?

In quantum physics, the uncertainty principle states that one can’t know both the speed and position of a particle. David Frangiosa considers how th concept might have parallels in pedagogy and the parallels. The more accurately we can define what we do in the classroom, the less accurately we can anticipate its potential impact. A Pedagogical Uncertainty Principle.

One of the hardest things for students to develop are the skills of thinking about their thinking and learning about how they learn. High school Spanish teacher, Rhonda Higgins, shows how a system of portfolios, reflection, and student-led conferences not only allows students to grasp the content but also to practice and develop these metacognitive mindsets.

Studies have consistently shown how Student Evaluations of Teaching are biased, harmful for faculty diversity, and thus, for students and universities. In addition to these issues, the data say less about teacher quality and more about the students themselves, especially about those from privileged backgrounds.

There is no shortage of teacher evaluation horror stories. In her role as Georgia Teacher of the Year Runner-up, Vanessa Ellis serves on the State Superintendent’s Advisory Committee, informing the development of Georgia’s teacher evaluation pilot, GaLEADS. Although the reform introduces several promising improvements, they are ultimately—and unfortunately—still bound by numbers, data points, and test scores.

Teachers tend to have strong feelings about being evaluated, and it is no wonder. School leaders may unintentionally make it difficult for teachers to understand what it means to be successful. To close the loop and ensure that teachers understand exactly what the evaluation process should look like, a “no secrets” approach from leaders is of utmost importance. 

The goals for rubrics are laudable. Who can argue with more transparency, clarity, and uniformity in assessment? Joining a long line of critics of rubrics, Northwestern Computer Science professor, Christopher Riesbeck, shares the ways in which rubrics have failed him, and how a better approach is always less, not more.