Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

Recently, The Atlantic ’s Jessica Lahey reported out on how the adoption of the Common Core could usher in a new era of standards-based grading. In her article Letter grades Deserve an F , Lahey went on to describe all the reasons why a traditional grading system is inherently flawed and how, when properly constructed and supported, a standards-based grading system is a more powerful, meaningful, and relevant way to measure student learning. If your school hasn’t started discussions on what it would take to move to a standards-based model, I hope this article will inspire you to finally start planning. My school made the switch five years ago and we haven’t looked back. On a weekly (sometimes daily) basis, administrators in my District are asked by educators from all over the country and the world how they can begin this process. I’ll share with you some of the advice our team gives them. Step 1: Educate yourself as an administrator on the standards-based grading philoso...

Press Release From the New Hampshire Department of Education:  Four Schools Selected to Represent New Hampshire at Regional Conference on Educational Innovation - The Schools Will Share Successful Strategies with Colleagues from Across New England Four New Hampshire schools—Hillsboro-Deering High School (Hillsboro), Making Community Connections (MC2) Charter School (Manchester), Sanborn Regional High School (Kingston), and Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (Exeter)—have been invited to represent New Hampshire at a regional conference on effective strategies for improving teaching and learning in the 21st century.   The conference, High School Redesign in Action ( newenglandssc.org ), will take place March 20–21, 2014, in Norwood, Massachusetts. It is sponsored by the New England Secondary School Consortium, a state-led regional partnership committed to high school innovation. All the selected schools have made significant progress raisin...

Amanda is a typical high school student who loves spending time with her friends, participating in a variety of clubs and activities, and doing well in school. Since a very young age, she has wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become an emergency room nurse. My school is preparing her for that demanding career with a competency-based model that has been designed to help her master a series of academic competencies, academic behaviors, and college and career-ready skills. Our competency-based model engages Amanda in her learning in ways that traditional high school models never could. Five years ago, the administrative team in my school district and I began suggesting that our school make the move to a competency-based grading and reporting system. We knew that was going to be a monumental shift for some of our elementary and secondary teachers, but that it wouldn’t be such a bold move for others. The career and technical education (CTE) teachers and administrat...

In a meeting at a highly-effective school near you, a group of math teachers are working as a Professional Learning Community (PLC) to analyze their students’ work on a recent performance assessment in their Algebra 1 classes. Through their conversations and dialog, they are attempting to use a commonly developed rubric to score the student work. By regularly collaborating in this way each week they are aligning, designing, and analyzing these performance assessments in an effort to increase student achievement and equity of outcomes. As school districts and states around our nation reflect on ways to strengthen their Common Core implementation, performance assessments are becoming a necessary component of classroom experiences. According to the Center for Collaborative Education , in their publication Quality Performance Assessment: A Guide for Schools and Districts , performance assessments are “multistep assignments with clear criteria, expectations, and processes that me...