Assessment for High School

Assess­ment, as you can imag­ine, is dif­fer­ent for each stu­dent and each class. An ele­men­tary stu­dent is assessed for mas­tery in dif­fer­ent ways than a high school stu­dent. We assess a student’s mas­tery of wood­work­ing dif­fer­ent­ly than we do his mas­tery of chem­istry. These obser­va­tions leave us no assis­tance in grad­ing our high school lev­el math­e­mat­ics students.

Here’s some things to con­sid­er when assign­ing a grade to your math student:

1. Why am I assign­ing a grade? For a tran­script? To com­pare him to oth­er students?
2. What fac­tors into a student’s grade?
   • • • Par­tic­i­pa­tion (atti­tude is a big deal for pubes­cent boys)
       • Home­work (is it com­plete? Does she show her work?)
       • Com­pe­ten­cy (does he remem­ber the material?)
3.  How do I mea­sure mas­tery of a subject?

A math­e­mat­ics stu­dent wants to excel in all three of the areas. He should be able to deci­pher and solve prob­lems, do hard things with­out com­plain­ing, and show how he worked toward a solu­tion. This leads us to the three actions to take for assess­ing a student’s math­e­mat­ics mastery.

1. Speak to your child about the study of math­e­mat­ics. It’s hard. We expect them to strug­gle some. Striv­ing to com­plete an assign­ment with­out com­plain­ing, whin­ing, or being dis­re­spect­ful gives the stu­dent good marks in assessment.
   • • • • I’d weigh the par­tic­i­pa­tion aspect of math­e­mat­ics at 20–30% of the total grade. Work eth­ic and atti­tude is very important.
2. Check your child’s math home­work week­ly. Ask ques­tions to see if she is remem­ber­ing some of the mate­r­i­al. Is she show­ing her work and cir­cling her answers? Is she get­ting most of the answers correct?
   • • • • I’d weigh the home­work por­tion of the class­work at a full 50% of the final grade. Home­work is the vast major­i­ty of the work, and since we teach to mas­tery, if he needs more time to com­plete the home­work, take it. Unless your child refus­es to do a job well done, home­work is almost always an A.
3. Each semes­ter admin­is­ter one tra­di­tion­al test. That’s it. Just one per semes­ter. This is to give your stu­dent a chance to show how much of the dif­fi­cult mate­r­i­al he under­stands. This test can be open or closed book. If you are a math mas­ter, we have semes­ter finals for you for your course — they are post­ed after Thanks­giv­ing and after May 10^th each year.
   • • • • This for­mal assess­ment should com­plete the final grade for the class. If your stu­dent is ner­vous about tests, con­sid­er hav­ing him do prac­tice tests with the chap­ter reviews, or give him midterms as well as finals.

Remem­ber, assess­ment is a tool. which you yield for the ben­e­fit of you and your stu­dent. Use assess­ment to work for you and your fam­i­ly, don’t bend your home­school around an assess­ment plan. 

Need more struc­ture to track­ing grades? Our email sub­scribers this week are receiv­ing an assess­ment spread­sheet for this very pur­pose. Signup to get yours too!