For 16 years, Leaders High School in New York City has relied on JumpRope to ensure that grading is a tool for learning. The principal says that JumpRope empowers students and helps teachers plan their instruction with greater purpose and clarity.
Challenge
School Wanted a True Standards-Based Gradebook
Back in 2009, Leaders High School began looking for an online gradebook that supported standards-based grading. “We wanted to evaluate students based on the specific skills and knowledge they’d developed, not just an arbitrary score based on an average of quizzes, tests, and homework,” said Tom Mullen, Principal of Leaders High School.
After seeing a demo of JumpRope, the Leaders team knew right away that the platform was a great fit. “Other gradebooks just weren’t set up for standards-based grading the way JumpRope is,” said Mullen.
Solution
JumpRope Helped the School Deepen Their Standards-Based Grading Practice
Leaders High School became JumpRope’s first customer. And JumpRope quickly became an integral part of Leaders’ planning and grading process.
Every semester, Leaders teachers determine what they want students to learn, and those learning targets inform their assessments and instruction. JumpRope guides teachers through this backwards planning framework step by step. “The planning process that JumpRope facilitates helps ensure that teachers are purposeful and intentional about their teaching,” said Mullen.
“Using JumpRope makes teachers more intentional about their teaching.”
As teachers grade assignments and assessments, they enter data on each learning target into JumpRope. Students and families can log into JumpRope to check student progress at any time. “Students are pretty fluent with how to check their grades, and it makes them aware of their progress as they go,” said Mullen. Twice per semester, Leaders shares printed progress reports with families.
In 2022, Mullen noticed that some inconsistencies had gradually developed in how teachers used JumpRope. “Everyone still deeply believed in standards-based grading, but there were certain things that weren’t being implemented consistently, like how to handle late assignments,” he said. “We also wanted to revisit the calculations we had chosen.”
Mullen asked the JumpRope team to help the school review their JumpRope settings and recommit to consistent grading practices. JumpRope met with the leadership team virtually and then led an in-person training with teachers. As a result, Leaders created a new grading handbook, which lays out their grading philosophy and connects that to how they use JumpRope.
“This process gave us clarity and reduced stress for everyone,” said Mullen. “It made sure that we’re all on the same page regarding how we think about and implement standards-based grading in JumpRope.”
Results
16 Years of Making Assessment and Grading Part of the Learning Experience
JumpRope has supported Leaders High School for 16 years. Mullen sees many benefits of this long partnership for both teachers and students.
He credits JumpRope with encouraging teachers to be more purposeful in how they plan, teach, and assess: “Using JumpRope makes teachers more intentional about their teaching. It focuses them on what they want the outcomes to be and ensures that instruction is not just a series of engaging activities. By asking teachers to lay out their learning targets and assess them throughout the semester, JumpRope makes teachers carefully plan their assessments and instruction.”
He also values how JumpRope puts students at the center of the assessment process: “JumpRope empowers students. We think grading should be something you do for students, not something you do to them. JumpRope makes the whole assessment process more of a learning experience rather than a game that students are trying to win.”
By supporting teachers and empowering students, JumpRope has played an important role in shaping the learning culture at Leaders High School.
