For more than two decades, Carla Meyrink, Head of School at The Community for Learning in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, has helped lead an ongoing effort to rethink assessment from the ground up. What began as a commitment to protecting curiosity and intrinsic motivation has evolved through experiments with standards-based grading, feedback, self-assessment, co-created success criteria, conferencing, portfolios, and student-led conversations about learning.
Along the way, Carla and her colleagues discovered something important: even well-designed assessment systems can still be something we do to students rather than with them.
At our next free online Community Gathering, Carla will join us to explore what it actually looks like to move assessment toward greater student ownership—not simply in an individual classroom, but across a school community.
Together, we’ll consider questions like:
What changes when students become genuine participants in assessment rather than recipients of grades?
How can school leaders help teachers question deeply embedded grading practices without simply replacing one mandated system with another?
What happens when an assessment reform that seemed like the solution—such as standards-based grading—reveals new problems of its own?
How do schools build a culture capable of continuing to question, experiment, and change?
Carla's journey is also featured in our forthcoming book, Beyond Grades, in her chapter “From Grades to Student Voice: One School’s Assessment Journey.” Her story offers a powerful example of what it means to move beyond grades not just in one classroom, but across an entire school. Her episode of the Grow Beyond Grades podcast will be released Sunday, October 18. We encourage you to listen before the gathering and bring your questions!
Please RSVP to let us know you are coming. And help us spread the word!