Maybe we need to be upfront with the judges before we send them out. If you get to a student product that you’re marking down, interview the student and ask the teacher if this is below typical, typical, or above the typical work for that particular student, i.e. Do they have a learning disability that made them have to work extra hard to come up with an “average” project? Teachers need to be honest with the judges, too. “This fourth grade child reads at a first grade level. You can tell those sentences are simple, but they would be considered a second grade level, so the child did a lot of revision and worked really hard on the reflection.”

In one case, a fifth grader’s reflection was pretty much unreadable. BUT he worked on it all by himself and did not want any help. He wrote the paragraph and typed it, and did his part of the group project. I think we just need the judges to ask more questions.

Otherwise, if we labeled, we would need to label all. Red dots are students identified as students allowed grade modifications and should be judged with effort in mind, blue dots are average non-optional and should be judged solely by the rubric, green are optional and should be judged with most rigor. Kind of lame.

Lisa Moore, Dylan’s Mama.