Hacking Assessment by Starr Sackstein

Hacking Assessment by Starr Sackstein

How to Go Gradeless -- Assessment That Makes Learning Visible

What's my grade? What's it worth? Is there extra credit? Is this for a mark? It's time to shift the conversation and make learning visible. Now, you can easily stop reducing students to a number, letter, or any label that misrepresents learning. Now, you can help children see the value in every single assignment. Today, you can make assessment a rich, ongoing conversation that inspires learning for the sake of learning, rather than as a punishment or a reward. All you have to do is go gradeless.

Throw out your grade book tomorrow

In Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School, award-winning teacher and world-renowned formative assessment expert Starr Sackstein unravels one of education's oldest mysteries: how to assess learning without grades -- even in a school that uses numbers, letters, GPAs, and report cards. While many educators can only muse about the possibility of a world without grades, teachers like Sackstein are reimagining education. In this unique, eagerly-anticipated book, Sackstein shows you exactly how to create a remarkable no-grades classroom like hers, a vibrant place where students grow, share, thrive, and become independent learners who never ask, What's this worth?

Learn what formative assessment really looks like.

Summative assessment is typically an end-of-unit exam or standardized test, but what is formative assessment? Many teachers struggle with the concept. Hacking Assessment not only explains what formative assessment is, it provides blueprints for implementation and examples from educators around the world, who use this strategy successfully every day.

Read It and You Can Take These Actions Immediately:

• Shift everyone's mindset away from grades
• Track student progress without a grade book
• Communicate learning to all stakeholders in real time
• Maximize time while providing meaningful feedback
• Teach students to reflect and self-grade
• Deliver feedback in a digital world
• Create cloud-based learning archives
• Inspire Students to share their work openly

This is not your average assessment book

Hacking Assessment won't bore you with outdated research or unrealistic strategies. In her captivating, conversational style, Sackstein provides practical ideas woven into a user-friendly success guide with actionable steps for creating an amazing conversation about learning that does not require a traditional grade. Each chapter is neatly wrapped in this simple Hack Learning Series formula:

• The Problem (an assessment issue that plagues education)
• The Hack (a ridiculously easy solution that you've likely never considered)
• What You Can Do Tomorrow (no waiting necessary)
• Blueprint for Full Implementation (a step-by-step action plan for capacity building)
• The Hack in Action (yes, someone has actually done this)

Teachers around the world are going gradeless, and you can too

Scroll up and click the Buy Now or Add to Cart button; read Hacking Assessment now, and go gradeless tomorrow.

Starr Sackstein is a high school English and journalism instructor at Global Journalism Preparatory School in Flushing, NY, and the author of Teaching Mythology Exposed: Helping Teachers Develop Visionary Classroom Viewpoint. In addition to her personal site StarrSackstein.com, where she addresses many areas of teaching, she will start a new blog with Education Week Teacher called Work in Progress this year. Sackstein contributes to #NYedChat and co-moderates #jerdchat and #sunchat. She reached the finals of the Bammy Awards for Secondary High School Educator this year. Sackstein speaks on blogging, journalism education, and BYOD at events, demonstrating that technology does not have to be feared.