Day 44 -I guess I would be worried if everyone scored 100%

I am still confused by some of the choices students make.  I often give my students their test (summative necessary Unit tests), like an on line copy of it, a week before we take it.  The tests are usually 50% multiple choice and 50% writing with evidence.  Some students excel at memorizing things and some need more time to process and understand deeper questions- along with need more time to read documents.  If they only google and memorize the multiple choice they will still fail, so I am not really worried about cheating and all of that.  But one would assume that every student would get 100% or close.  I have been doing this give the test first for three years and without fail, at least half of the students haven't even looked at the test before the day.   The others do okay.  The A students do well, the less motivated students don't do well.  So my strategy is not working.   For a few kids, especially process or newcomers-- its fabulous; but very little impact on the others. Maybe they don't believe me when I say "the test is online if you want to practice it or ask me questions or see what you know and don't know".

I also gave them a choice of a different assessment, which was an argumentative essay about a US Supreme Court case- only 3 out of 105 students opted for this.  Most of my feedback through out the unit had to do with similar cases and writing arguments, so I assumed(again) many students would choose this option. 

 I have proven one thing in these few years; my students are not very driven to cheat. I guess I should be worried if everyone scored 100%.

A-ha: 

Standards based grading would improve student self direction and motivation.

Reminder:

Go play around with Jumprope (on line standards based grading program) and see if it will work for me.