I've said multiple times that I don't believe in "Best Practices." I believe there are practices that can be strong when employed in specific situations.

I was reminded of this when I saw a reddit thread yesterday where teachers were sharing "best practices" that were forced on them by their administrators or districts, usually due to "the research" that just didn't work for them.

One in particular that stood out to me was Proficiency Grading, also known as Standards Based Grading, Mastery Grading, Competency Based Grading, Everybody gets A's, and probably other monikers.

This stood out to me because from a philosophical point of view, I agree with a good deal of what the Proficiency Grading crew are selling. Instead of high stakes testing, students take a test or assessment and then they can retake it again and again and as long as they "master" the topics by the end of the term, they get "A" grade level credit. Similarly, projects have loose deadlines and can be resubmitted as needed.

I like the idea of removing letter grades and having everyone strive to "know the material" and I love that it can reduce the pressure on students. I really love removing high stakes exams.

I'm sure the research will say, if it doesn't already that it's the true way and we should all be using it and if we aren't we're bad teachers.

That's the usual M.O. of research to district to classroom. Had my chairpeople not ignored central dictates early in my career, I would have been a bad teacher because I didn't strictly follow the cooperative learning model.

Later, I would have been bad because I didn't do everything with discovery learning. Finally, I was bad because I actually used, shock, direct instruction.

My observers knew better. That said, I know plenty of other teachers who had to kowtow to Danielson or wahtever the flavor du jour was in order to get their satisfactory rating.

In fact, I'll share one brief story, I was chatting with my principal at the time at Stuy and we were talking about a certain teacher that both of us admire very much. This teacher taught both of our children (4 in total) and we knew this person was the best. The principal told me that they would have to be careful and never swing by this teachers class when people from central were visiting since the educrats from central would certainly frown on the way this teacher taught even though we all knew otherwise.

Back to Proficiency Grading. In the reddit forum, a teacher was complaining that this was being forced on them in their school and it just didn't work. In practice, at that school, students would basically intentionally bomb or not take the exams with the intent of seeing what was on them and then taking "make ups" later. The class, however, would move along. Frequently the students wouldn't follow up in a timely matter and then didn't remember anything anyway. The whole thing was a mess.

I heard similar things about new policies from Stuyvesant. Not mastery grading but that if a student missed an exam, it would have to be administered upon the students return - no penalties and no questions asked.

Since then, there's been a subset of students who would intentionally cut exams, find out the content from their friends, and then take the makeup. The policy, as implemented was both lazily and poorly thought out.

Now, again I'll say that there's a lot I like about Proficiency Grading but the people who can use it whole hog are in very specific circumstances. Maybe their in a college elective where students opt in and are more mature. Maybe they have small class sizes so the extra grading isn't a burden. Maybe the culture of their school plays well with this particular reform. This is all great but when "the research" comes down to the general public schools, it isn't pick and chose what works. It's do it or else.

I implemented Proficiency Grading in my teacher ed program this last cycle for the summer classes and it overall, I think was a benefit for the students who approached the class the right way. That said, I know a couple, well, let's say, cut corners. It really aggravated me but it was better to do good by the majority. It'll eventually come clean to those who didn't do it right. It did force me, unfortunately, to make policy changes for the school year portion of the program.

This is to say that it wasn't a best practice in that circumstance. It was a practice I wanted to employ but it turned out I couldn't without modifications.

And that's the truth about all practices. As a teacher, you have to build as robust a toolbox as you can but then, it should be up to you to decide what tool to use, how to use it and when to use it. You'll go with the subject, you'll see what your student's need and you'll account for your own strengths. That way all your practices will be best practices, at least for that instance.