Mastery Structure in a Factory Model?

[jonathan_cowan]

As the end of the year is approaching, I'm saddled with reconciling a mastery based course (through Canvas modules) with the factory model I'm--and I'd assume many, if not most of us here--are working in. Mastery instruction is based on the premise that all students can learn, but just not necessarily at the same speed. Therefore, time, not achievement, is the variable. Any ideas or best practices anyone has developed regarding how to reconcile a mastery system with a factory model that assumes two (limiting) factors: A specified end date for the year and the obligation to report everything a student has done in one letter grade?

[clong]

Great Question Jonathan!

Because there is no one right answer and you are looking to open up more of a discussion where we share our thoughts, ideas and practices I'm going to change this to a discussion.

I think the long term answer to this is redefining what school is by moving away from a school model that is setup on time (Carnegie Units) to a mastery level approach that is based on competency & achievement. My fear in doing this is that one standardized test, should not be used to define mastery and student's should have agency in how they demonstrate their mastery.

If you are stuck teaching inside a traditional (factory-based) system you will have to make some compromises. Yes there will be a hard start and end date. Yes you will have to report a grade. However, you and your students can define nearly everything in between so why not experiment a little and change things up? Canvas makes it easy for students to turn in nearly any piece of evidence that shows their mastery and you can use quiz banks/question groups (See: How do I create a Quiz with a Question Group to randomize quiz questions?) to allow students to retake quizzes until they are at the mastery level.

I'd love to hear more ideas on how teachers are transforming their classes from Carnegie to Mastery so let's keep sharing.

[pwalsh]

I teach my math classes using a mastery format and have to abide by the limits of our traditional school. We are the only course at our middle school doing it this way, but students come to us from the elementary schools used to being rated on a mastery scale rather than a grade for ELA and math. Unfortunately, we still have to provide a traditional letter grade for each of our 6 grading periods. Here's how we do it.

1) We only have 1 assessment grade for each grading period, though I put all the standards that were taught in the gradebook (we use Skyward for ours) at 0% of the grade just to make it available to parents. The assessment grade is the percent of standards taught that were mastered scaled up between 50 (F) and 100 (A+)*. So, if a student masters 2 out of 4 standards for that grading period it comes to about a C. I can share the formula we use, which we lifted from another school.

2) At the end of the year the letter grades get averaged for each semester. The gradebook does this and we have no control over it, so the final grade is the average of each of the 3 grades for that semester.

3) This kind of thing takes a lot of communication from you to parents. Most of them will get it and appreciate the extra feedback, particularly if you have a reassessment policy that allows students to attempt to demonstrate mastery multiple times.

4) We also have a homework/classwork component to the grade (20% homework, 80% assessments). It doesn't make a lot of sense for mastery learning, but I am picking my battles here.

I am limited by the grading period dates, though I will probably be making an argument to switch to semester-long grading for my math class. Our 6-week periods are technically "progress report" periods and the semester grade is what goes on the permanent record. Right now we have a lot of stress on what happens in each 6-week window and we're not supposed to change grades from previous grading periods, which makes it hard for kids to come back from a bad grading period if they end up learning something at a later date.  You mentioned this in your post and I'm still trying to find ways around it as a teacher.

* Another school in the district has a chart where 2.0 = B-, 2.5=B, 3=A- or some such. Since each standard is a separate thing, we don't think it makes sense to average them as a whole.  We report them individually and the assessment grade is a measure of how many things you mastered.

[jonathan_cowan]

I like the idea of clearly defining the standards that were met and giving them weight within the final grade. I'll try something similar when I start linking the modules in my course to mastery outcomes on Canvas.

Thanks for the idea! Here's to the day when we can scrap Skyward and just use Canvas to report student learning.