Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School (Hack Learning Series)

Hacking Assessment really helped me to see how throwing out your grade book can be done. With practical "hacks" that you can begin implementing in your classroom today, author Starr Sackstein has helped me understand not only why grades are detrimental to student growth and learning, but how I can immediately make changes for the better. Her writing is straightforward, her advice sound. She understands the challenges because she experiences them in her own classroom daily -- she is not coming from a theoretical perch, she is in the trenches, teaching students to value learning above grades. Highly recommended for all teachers, especially those who have been exploring the idea of throwing out grades, but just don't know where to start.

I liked the ideas in this book, sometimes I wish it would be more specific.

This book is an amazing resource for educators to navigate the world of meaningful assessments as we move away from grades and focus more on student growth. It’s well written and informative with terrific examples and insights on different forms of assessments and strategies to implement them. As one of the most knowledgeable educators on the topic of assessments, Starr does a great job of sharing her expertise in a step by step approach that any teacher can understand and use.

At nearly every school, an incredible amount of time is spent assessing student learning. And it should be. But yhe feedback provided to students does not always help push student learning forward in the ways we would like.Starr Sackstein's "Hacking Education" provides teachers a number of entry points into a better way of assessment--one free from grades and full of meaningful feedback that pushes learning forward.If you're a teacher reading this, you've likely already had a knee jerk reaction to the notion of a classroom without grades. I did too, but "Hacking Assessment" was the right introduction to the conversation. I appreciate the way Sackstein includes typical push back and offers possible responses and solutions to those who are making the jump. She does so in a way that acknowledges the risks a teacher is taking in this effort but focuses on the rewards for all those involved if the transition is successful."Hacking Assessment" is a book that pushed my thinking and it's one that I am quick to hand to teachers to pique their interest or support them in their exploration of the gradeless classroom.

This Book was I wonderful resource of the overview and big picture of making the transition to standards-based grading. However what is special about this book as it breaks it down into bite-size pieces that teachers can start implementing in their classroom right away. The chapters are short, and bullet pointed with ideas and practical methods to start using soon. Full of examples and honest feedback about standards-based grading. A wonderful tool to have!

Though I am still not entirely sure where I fall on the grades vs. no grades issue, this book answered a lot of the questions I had regarding the practice of removing grades from the classroom. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, this is a great read containing several practical strategies for use in both traditional and non-traditional classrooms.

Many educators wonder why students are lacking in motivation; why they aren't engaged in their learning. A major part of this lack of engagement comes from the culture of compliance our schools are based around... and there is a major difference between compliance and engagement. Starr Sackstein's "Hacking Assessment" brings to life a world without grades, and shows how this construct of grading is based more on assumption and presumption than actual evidence. Further, it shines a light on the fact that grades are not motivators of learning; environments are. Grades aren't needed to measure learning; feedback and clear communication is. A great read for any educator or parent wondering why their student may not be "buying in" to what schools are selling.

As a first-time principal at a brand new charter school, I had about 1 week to put together a famoly handbook outlining all of our school's policies. The organization of the Hack Learning series and the clarity of Ms. Sackstein's writing made it so that all I had to do to create my school's assessment policies from scratch was zip through this book in about 1.5 hours! Thanks, Ms. Sackstein!

Macht Mut, einfach umzusetzen!

I have been wanting to go gradeless for a while now. Assigning numbers to students’ work has always felt very arbitrary. Even in a system as steeped in rubrics as Ontario’s, I still don’t have any confidence in marking work—particularly English, but also math—and giving it a number. Really, at the end of the day, what is the difference between an 82% and an 83%? Or an 85%? It’s so silly. And by putting a number on the student’s work, you are basically guaranteeing they won’t look at anything else, at any of the other meticulous, descriptive feedback you’ve put on there because your assessment standards tell you that you should be doing so.Fortunately there is a better way, and in Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School, Starr Sackstein provides ten practical suggestions to facilitate this process. This is a book I needed. I don’t need to be convinced of the benefits of going gradeless; I did need practical suggestions for what that actually looks like. We are programmed, during our training, to refer to everything in terms of grades and standards. What does gradeless feedback and assessment actually look like? More importantly, what do I do for that final grade we need to report at the end of the class?I’ll give a little context: I work in adult education right now. It’s a high school; we grant Ontario Secondary School Diplomas. But our students are adults who were not successful in regular high school, for whatever reason. Their ages vary greatly. Classes are mornings or afternoons, five days a week, for seven to eight weeks. So my teaching environment is somewhat different from your typical secondary school teacher. As such, some of Sackstein’s tips don’t directly apply—I don’t need, for instance, to get parents on my side. Most of Sackstein’s tips, however, remain relevant.I’m not going to go over all ten tips. Instead, I just want to highlight a couple of my favourites, and positive points about the book as a whole.Firstly, Hacking Assessment is short. It’s about 130 pages, and those pages are crammed full of practical advice. Teachers have a lot of demands on their time, and few of us want to give up some of our precious free time to reading a bulky book full of case studies and other “helpful” educational knowledge. I want to learn professionally, but I want to do it in a smart way. This was a good investment of my time.Secondly, the structure of every chapter makes it easy to read, absorb, and refer back to Sackstein’s tips. This is my first time reading a book in the Hack Learning series, but I’m given to understand this a staple of the series. The sections are as follows: The Problem, The Hack, What You Can Do Tomorrow, A Blueprint for Full Implementation, Overcoming Pushback, and The Hack in Action. I like it. It acknowledges so many of the realities of teaching: we need tips we can use tomorrow, not at some vague point in the future when we have time to revamp our entire course; we need help when people (colleagues, parents, students) push back at our experimentation; and we need success stories and reflection on failure too. The structure is so useful.Anyway, some of my favourite hacks?Hack 3: Rebrand Assignments as Learning Experiences resonated a lot with me, as a teacher of adult learners. So many learners come into class with an attitude that they just need to do some worksheets, get some marks, and move on. I understand where this attitude is coming from. But I want to help re-awaken their appreciation of education and lifelong learning; to do that, I need to deprogram them from what they learned in school was the only way to learn (and at which they were, ultimately, unsuccessful).Hack 4: Facilitate Student Partnerships is something I am struggling with in my environment and need to keep working at. We like to use the word “empowerment” often without thinking about what that looks like in our specific classroom situations. I know I’m not fully succeeding at this yet, but I want to get better at it. I want my adult learners to step up and take the driver’s seat more often and help each other with the learning, so I can truly step back to be that guide on the side.Hack 7: Track Progress Transparently is so important to me. I want to stop hiding behind a gradebook full of such arbitrary weights and numbers. I want my students to know, at any given moment, how they are doing a course because they themselves are the ones keeping track. Portfolios are an essential tool for this, and improving my portfolio-fu is one of my next, ongoing goals.Hacks 8 and 9, Teach Reflection and Teach Students to Self-Grade, are inter-related. I want to get better at teaching reflection, particularly in math, where the prevailing attitude is often one of “did I get the right answer?” instead of “oh, that’s an interesting problem, I wonder how I can solve it”. Similarly, in situations where evaluation based on a standard is necessary, I want to help students do this themselves. They are adults, after all; they’ll need to evaluate themselves constantly outside of the classroom.I ran two gradeless classes in May/June after reading this book, and my two summer classes are also gradeless. I’m not going back. I’ll work on a blog post at some point that goes into more detail about my experience so far; I’ll link that in this review when it’s out. For now, suffice it to say that nothing is ever perfect the first time, or the second time, or probably even the tenth time. This is a process and a journey, not a switch you can flip in your teaching.If you have seen the light, and you want to go gradeless too, Hacking Assessment will help you do that. Bottom line: it’s a worthwhile book.Creative Commons BY-NC LicenseOriginally posted on Goodreads

2.0! The first edition became one of my go-tos when starting my gradeless secondary English classroom. Now that I'm moving to middle school, I want to bring the second edition with me to planning with my teaching partners.How do we change the conversation for students and parents around what it means to learn? And how do we assess learning in the post-COVID reality where it can be demonstrated more fluidly? When universities are changing their entrance requirements to look less at grades and more at skill development?Thank you for pioneering the way forward for the gradeless classroom. A must-read!

This is my first 'hack' book and it definitely won't be my last. The format is great in how the hack is laid out, a blueprint provided, pushback addressed, and how the hack works in the real world. Some of the ten hacks may not work for you, but the overall mentality and strategy behind it are achievable. Recommended.

some great thoughts here to embrace the 21st century learner