Collaborative Scoring

April 1, 2022

Lessons from High Poverty, High Success Schools:

It's not all about talent. It's about dependability, consistency, and being able to improve. If you work hard and you're coachable, and you understand what you need to do, you can improve. – Bill Belichick

Since January, we’ve identified best practices in closing achievement gaps and maintaining equity in high poverty schools. The primary source is the research cited by Doug Reeves (2020), and today’s article is focused on the practice of collaborative scoring.

Being Fair

We love football in Stark County, so imagine the McKinley Bulldogs showing up in Massillon for the annual rivalry game and finding the shape of the football has changed, the dimensions of the field are different, and the rules have been altered to favor Massillon’s type of offense. It would be very difficult to consider that as “fair”.

This is similar to what happens to students when their standards for success, criteria for evaluation, and methods of grading change with each and every period of the day, even within the same subject area. In research conducted between 2005 and 2019, Reeves found that when teachers were provided anonymous samples of student work with a scoring rubric, if teachers scored the rubrics independently, there was just over 20% agreement. However, when they collaborated with colleagues, the level of agreement substantially rose to above 90%.

Effective Assessments

While it seems obvious, it is critical to note that effective assessment begins with a clear set of learning expectations that are then translated into performance tasks, and finally those tasks are linked to levels of performance (Marzano, Norford, & Ruyle, 2019). A performance continuum should be developed that provides explicit descriptions of student work along the following ranges of performance:

Not meeting standards: the student is not ready to approach the task
Progressing: student has a grasp of the task, but is not proficient
Proficient: student performance meets all requirements of the standard
Exemplary: student work is different in both rigor and complexity.

Design & Scoring

Reeves states the most important step happens before students are given an assessment, wherein teachers actually take the assessment first, checking for clarity of directions and that the rubric accurately reflects the performance task. Thus, prior to collaborative scoring of student assessments, there is first collaborative design of the tasks and rubrics.

Collaborative scoring improves both the quality of feedback from teachers to students and saves teachers time. Reeves has found in his research that the more frequently teachers collaborate on scoring, the faster they are able to grade assignments.

One of the most insightful practices of high equity, high excellence schools is that teachers are willing to collaborate on design and scoring. So, since we began the article with a football comparison, we argue along with Reeves that the research presented requests, perhaps demands, that the same care be given to our students in schools that we expect on the football field – both fairness and consistency.

Marzano, R.J., Norford, J.S., & Ruyle, M. (2019). The New Art and Science of Classroom Assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Reeves, D. (2020). Achieving Equity & Excellence: Immediate Results from the Lessons of HighPoverty, High-Success Schools. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

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