Shifting Academic Behaviors

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Shifting Academic Behaviors

David J. Mroue
Oakland University

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South Lake Middle School Background

South Lake Middle School is located in the suburban community of St. Clair
Shores. The middle school has over 400 students in grades 6-8. The staff of the school
consists of one principal, a part-time dean of students, one guidance counselor, one
speech pathologist, one social worker, and twenty-five teachers. The school is primarily
made up of Caucasian (58%) and African American (38%) students. The economically
disadvantaged number of students has been on the rise within the past ten years and
has reached 55% of all students.
According to our 2012-13 MEAP results in our middle school 30% of all students
were proficient in math and 54.5% proficient in reading. When the data was analyzed
by demographic testing group we had 43% of Caucasian students proficient in
mathematics compared to only 10.2% of African American students. Likewise, 67.7% of
Caucasians students were proficient in reading compared to only 40% of African
American students. In science, 18.8% of Caucasian students were proficient compared
to only 1.9% of African American students. There is a definite concern in the
achievement gap between our Caucasian and African American students in all grades
and subject areas at South Lake Middle School. Likewise, we have 173 students in all
three grades that are on the honor roll which is 43% of the student population. We find
it to be concerning that despite our students poor performance on standardized
assessments we appear to have too many students on our school-wide honor roll.
There is an issue with accuracy of our current grades and their correlation to student
mastery of content.

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The Wondering
The focus of the inquiry is to make changes in our grading practices and work
with students and goal setting to improve academic behaviors in the middle school math
and science primarily with eighth grade students. Eighth grade math currently is
working on functions and solving linear equations. This content is rather difficult for
students and requires good academic behaviors to ensure sufficient practice with the
content to secure mastery. Eighth grade science curriculum has a strong emphasis on
both solid and fluid Earth systems. Science students struggle with this curriculum
because the course covers high school content and requires higher level
comprehension and prerequisite material that they are lacking.
South Lake Middle School students seems to have a disproportionate number of
the students doing well in their academic courses but this mastery is not evident when
analyzing their student achievement data on standardized tests such as the MEAP or
NWEA. This prompted us to question our grading practices and wonder how changes
in weighting of homework and assessments would impact student grades. Many staff
members refrain from properly assessing students and weighting assessments heavily
in fear that students will fail. It is our concern that our students must be challenged and
held to a higher standard to ensure they can be successful with rigorous coursework in
their futures. We worked with our classes to discuss the importance of positive
academic behaviors and changed our grading to a weighted grading scale for second
semester. The change in grading made our assessments 80% of students grades with
only 20% on homework and activities in class. We felt that the academic behaviors of

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our students were not where they needed to be to encourage mastery of content. We
want our students participating in the classroom and taking ownership in their learning.
Methodology or Procedures pursuing the inquiry:
We identified a concern within the grading practices within our building. The
concern was that students grades did not accurately reflect their overall mastery of the
content. This was evident based on the high percentage (40%) of students receiving
honor roll recognition within our building. This high success rate does not correlate with
our low achievement in all areas on standardized tests. We decided to change our
grading practices to shift from compliance grading to grading for understanding. We
created a student perception survey which enabled us to assess changes in academic
behaviors after shifting the grading culture of our classrooms. Students shared in
discussions about importance of homework and practice to ensure success on
assessments. At first, students were concerned that the increase emphasis on their
assessments would have a negative impact on their grade and feared losing the points
they were awarded for being compliant and doing their assignments. The students who
do not complete their assignments or engage themselves in the classroom really would
not be impacted by the change. There was strong emphasis placed on self-assessment
in the mathematics classroom to ensure that students know where they are in the
process of mastering the content. Our staff struggles with increased emphasis on
assessment because our students struggle on assessments and they worry it will
negatively impact their achievement data. Our wondering led us to analyze the effects
of our shift by looking at both unit assessments before and after the shift in addition to
overall class average grades. We will analyze the change in assessments from the

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2012-13 school year compared to the 2013-14 school year data. In addition, we will
look at class averages per card marking/semester before and after our shift in grading
practices.
Summary of principal findings or lessons learned from the inquiry:
Upon completion of our inquiry we found that our students academic behaviors
improved as seen in their self-assessment survey. We shifted our students to a culture
where their mastery of content determined their grade and they were not being graded
significantly for compliance within the classroom. We did not see a decline in course
grades with the increase in assessment weighting which showed that students will rise
to meet our expectations.
As we had hoped, we saw an increase in students average assessment grade
from last year to this year. The change in our grading practices and overall culture of
learning impacted the academic behaviors of students which made students more
accountable for their mastery of content in the unit of study during our inquiry project. In
mathematics, last years unit assessment average was 71% and this year with the shift
in grading culture we saw an increase of 5% to an average of 76%. Likewise, we saw
similar findings in our science unit where last years average was 72.7% and increase
4.1% to an average of 76.8%.
In a similar fashion, since the shift from total point grading to weighted grading
we saw an increase in assessment performance on all quizzes and tests from the
beginning of the year. In math, the assessment average in semester 1 was 73.6% and it
increased 2.2% to 75.8%. In science, there was an increase from 65% in semester 1 to

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76.2% in semester 2 which showed an overall increase of 11.2%. Since we saw such
improvements with their academic behaviors, but it was still early to analyze the effects
or the change in grading practices since the content is progressively getting more
difficult as the year has progressed.
There were many findings that we took away from our inquiry project through the
analysis of our student perception survey data. First, there was an increase of 14% of
students working on mathematics and 13% of students working on science outside of
the classroom. In math, 11% more students were coming to class prepared every day
and 12% more students sought extra help from their math teacher. In science, 6% more
students asked their science teacher for extra help, 10% more asked friends for help,
and 13% more students accessing their online study materials, In addition, the survey
found that 15% more students answered that they were doing their best in math class.
On the other hand, there is an increase of 5% of students who feel that they are no
longer struggling in science class and doing their best.
There is significant research that supports changes in grading practices to
ensure that students are assessed on their mastery of the content. Too often students
are given grades based on compliance and effort; however, it is essential to prepare
students for their future where it is necessary to meet rigorous demands and show
proficiency of skills. Wormeli stated, We can jump up and down, calling for higher
standards and rigid accountability while presenting overwhelming data on individual
students all we want, but it all means nothing- nothing unless the failing student
receives our assessments message constructively and he perceives that there is a
ladder extended to help crawl from the hole (Wormeli, 2006). It is essential that the

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students the students feel supported and that success is obtainable or they will shut
down and not put forth any effort to improve.
Conclusions, action plans, or additional inquiry:
We concluded that our changes in our grading practices had a positive impact on
students academic behaviors. Our students began to see the correlation between their
academic behavior and mastery of the content. The at-risk students that are not
intrinsically or extrinsically motivated were not impacted because they do not value their
education nor do we receive parental support to improve their academic success. The
changes in our grading practices and shifting the culture of the classroom to become
more growth-minded with a focus on goal setting impacted our students motivation to
remain engaged and take the initiative to make improvements. We felt it is essential for
the students to improve their academic behaviors to increase their mastery of math and
science content. Moving forward, we plan to continue looking at grading practices and
how we can increase student mastery of content. We feel that encouraging all students
to make positive changes with their academic behaviors had significant impact on their
increased mastery of content.

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Bibliography
Wormeli, R. (2006). ACCOUNTABILITY: TEACHING THROUGH ASSESSMENT AND
FEEDBACK, NOT GRADING. American Secondary Education, 34(3), 14-27.