E11-Matt Townsley, Grading-"The Way, the Truth and the Life"

NewTech High Podcast
November 12, 2025

Good afternoon, 

Dr. Matt Townsley Podcast

As you can see from the title, it is almost impossible to consider how to change major elements of a high school without considering whether you are going to make big changes with your assessment practices. 

This afternoon, we had a leading expert on standards-based grading reform, Dr. Matt Townsley of the University of Northern Iowa, as our guest. Dr. Townsley impressed us with his enthusiastic delivery and easy to follow tools to improve your school through standards-based grading. It seems that we have a podcast crowd that wants to watch on their own more than watching live, so I do appreciate the small audience that we get for the sessions. You can watch tonight's podcast here. 

Dr. Townsley talked about the 4 P's of developing standards-based grading in your school, an order of operations if you will. He started by talking about developing a purpose of grading statement. Why do we grade? What is our purpose of the feedback we give? Next, he stated that you have to develop the policies that support this type of change in your school and district. When you have developed these things, and you have your standards unpacked, mapped and aligned, perhaps this is the opportunity to begin pilots. You can do those by grade level, department, or just those that are ready. Finally, when these pilots have proved success that can be disseminated on a wider range, you then have to consider those probes that will measure and assess your process. This is when you edit your rubrics, develop grading audits and assure your alignment/fidelity throughout the system. This is just one excerpt from the video. Please watch this to get the full flavor and effect of Matt's presentation! 

Standards-based grading is one area that you can definitely improve your school, but the task is not for the faint-hearted. I like Matt's steps to follow on this journey if you want to have success. This is a situation where you have to learn practices of push, pull and hold on. Some of your teachers will need to be pushed, some will have to be pulled and others you may have to say "Hold your horses!" 

Northern Lights

I am a big star-gazer and have been since I was a young boy. Last night, my wife and I through multiple trips outside and into the country for better viewing of aurora borealis. The pictures were awesome. Apparently, there was another large coronal mass ejection (CME) this afternoon that could pump as much as four times even more energy tonight! Get out there if you didn't make it out last night! 

Next Podcasts

This is list of future futureNewTech podcasts: 

November 19, 9:00am               Randy Fielding, Classrooms Reimagined

December 3, 4:30pm                 Anne Soto, World Savvy

December 10, 4:30pm               To Be Determined

December 17, 4:30pm                Jay Haugen, former Superintendent, Farmington

    Note the special time of next week's podcast! In addition, there will be no podcast on Wednesday, November 26, as well as over the Christmas Holiday. I will be blogging during that time, but will have no podcasts. 


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