For educators to design instruction that advances all their students’
achievement, they must be able to design assessments that fully illuminate what their students are
learning. To grade their students fairly and productively, educators also need to know how to track
student progress through detailed descriptors of the essential skills and knowledge their students
must learn. Most educators struggle with these issues, however; grades can be inconsistent from
teacher to teacher, department to department, or student to student and teachers cannot always
adequately communicate to parents how their children’s grades are determined. Marzano Research
Lab’s expert presenters cofounder and CEO Dr. Robert J. Marzano and Vice President Dr.
Tammy Heflebower walk course participants through the research and theories that support what
kind of feedback, assessment, and grading students need to help them learn; how to construct
those assessments; how to create rubric-based scales to inform both formative and summative
assessments; and how to monitor and affect their students’ progress. Interviews with teachers and
students, classroom footage, workshop activities, presentation, and the accompanying text bring to
life this critical subject for educators who aspire to provide the kind of responses and guidance to
their students that keep them highly engaged in their learning and making steady progress toward
meaningful and purposeful achievement. Less