Grades have been a deep, mysterious secret language, understood by only those who maintain them, yet used widely by parents, universities, scholarship committees and students as a sure indicator of what a student knows and can do. It has been only within the last decade that the foundation of the all-powerful grade has been questioned. In addition, student performance and particularly effort of learning has been placed under a microscope and observed by stakeholders at all levels, from classroom teachers to the President of the United States. In 2002, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, placing education on a course for reform. In 2009, President Obama issued a call to all
Americans to complete at least one year of post-secondary studies, and his Race to the Top legislation renewed the drive for further educational reform (Strauss, 2012). Students in American schools are performing at a much lower achievement level than their counterparts in other countries (Duncan, 2012), and state education leaders have been under pressure to show evidence of
…show more content…
For the first time in American history there is a sense of a national curriculum and an urgency to reach a level of proficiency. Across the nation public school educators have searched for new and better teaching methodologies, assessment methods, and instructional techniques to address the needs of a diverse student population in meeting these expectations. The creation and adoption of Common Core Standards (CCS) have caused many teachers to pause and consider the degree to which their instruction is aligned to these standards. For many, the thrust toward heightened alignment has provided an impetus to deliberate the instruction presented to students, the techniques of assessment used to determine student achievement, and the communication of student performance and