Handling Late and Missing Assignments Within the Basic Tenets of a Standards-based Grading (SBG) System
A common source of struggle for all teachers, and perhaps particularly those who operate in a standards-based grading system, is how to handle late and missing assignments. If the primary purpose of grades is to accurately reflect student learning, it behooves us to think about the best way to do so and, therefore, how or even if late and missing work is part of the calculus.
Let’s consider how we handle late and missing assignments within the basic tenets of a standards-based grading system.
These can be found in JumpRope’s Core Values:
Clarity
We believe that students can achieve anything if they know what their learning goal is, how they are doing along the way, what they need to do next, and how they will be assessed.
Equity of Opportunity to Learn
We believe that all students deserve sufficient opportunity to acquire skills and knowledge.
Learner Agency
We believe that the ability to set goals and self-assess empowers students to become self-motivated learners.
Continuous Improvement
We believe that schools need to engage in a cycle of continuous improvement to ensure that curriculum and instruction truly meet students’ and society’s needs.
The two core values most salient to the discussion of late and missing work are clarity and equity of opportunity to learn:
- Clarity means we define targets and how to reach them and ensure students understand how specific and aggregate grades will be determined.
- Equity of opportunity to learn means we provide students with multiple opportunities to learn content and to pursue that learning through a variety of methods, provide feedback during the learning process that necessarily helps students improve their understanding of the material, and design valid and reliable assessment tools.
Putting these things in place requires significant up-front planning. If done well, that planning becomes the foundation for an equitable learning environment where the work assigned to students is purposeful and successful completion of it necessarily indicates progress toward proficiency as opposed to student compliance or fulfillment of some other motive.
Once these components are in place, and an assignment has been submitted late or has not been submitted at all, the teacher can ask, is the completion of that assignment by the assigned due date important to the current learning? Will late completion still benefit the learning? Does lateness make the fact that the work has been submitted irrelevant? In other words, does meeting the learning target (becoming proficient with it) depend on completing the assignment by its due date?
In 2019, Jennifer Gonzalez wrote A Few Ideas for Dealing with Late Work in the Cult of Pedagogy blog. She names three primary considerations where late work is concerned:
- Are your grades an indication of learning or compliance?
- Are you grading too many things?
- In your mind, what does it mean when a student doesn’t turn in an assignment?
The first consideration speaks to the JumpRope Core Values discussed above. The second speaks to some of the work teachers must do as we strive to create equitable learning environments and balance our own workloads. It’s important to distinguish between the tasks we ask students to complete that serve as part of their learning process and those we use to formatively assess their learning as it’s happening.
It’s easy to slide into thinking we should assess everything or even most things, but we get more traction with students and make ourselves less crazy with grading when we assess strategically. For the third consideration, if the answer is different from something like, “the student has missed an opportunity to learn” then we need to reconsider why we are assigning that work.
It’s easy to slide into thinking we should assess everything or even most things, but we get more traction with students and make ourselves less crazy with grading when we assess strategically.
The considerations are the philosophical underpinnings that motivate the choices we make in handling late work. Identifying and exploring those underpinnings is akin to establishing our norms or agreements with ourselves. The possible solutions listed below are akin to the rules we might post in our classroom. The rules help us keep things running smoothly, but it’s the considerations/underpinnings that encourage everyone, students included, to understand and ultimately buy into the rules. The rules are the WHAT (happens when…) and the considerations are the WHY (does that happen…)
Gonzalez’ possible solutions to late and missing assignments:
- Penalties (point deduction, phone call home, etc.)
- Separation of HOWL and academic grades so late/missing is reflected in HOWL grade only
- A “pass” system that allows students to skip or submit late a certain number of assignments
- A system for extension requests that works for you and for your students
- Flexible/floating deadlines that might incentivize “on time” submissions
- Submission of work in progress or partially completed work
- No penalty for late work submissions
Establishing a Policy for Late and Missing Work in Your Classroom
Ultimately, we each need to decide what our missing/late work policy is. Sometimes we find ourselves fortunate enough to work in a school that has created such policies for the whole school. Check out the Casco Bay High School Family Guide as one such example. For some broader context on a possible frame of mind to bring to the establishment of our own policies, I recommend this Rick Wormeli essay which reminds us that our students are actual people, just like us, and that late and missing work can be a symptom of a different problem.
A teacher’s position on late and missing work, like our positions on everything else we do with our students, should be founded in our beliefs about learning and teaching. If we are committed to creating clear expectations and providing equitable learning opportunities, and genuinely consider what those mean, we can create policies to address late and missing work that support student learning.
If you’d like to learn more about how JumpRope can assist you in implementing a standards-based grading system, reach out today for a discussion.
