Ken O'Connor

Ken O’Connor is an independent consultant who specializes in issues relating to communicating student achievement, specifically grading and reporting. He is a strong advocate for standards-based teaching, grading and reporting.

A graduate of the University of Melbourne (B.A. Hon) and the University of Toronto (M. Ed), he has been a staff development presenter and facilitator in 47 states in the USA, 10 provinces and two territories in Canada, and in 35 countries outside North America. He also served on the Academic Advisory Board for PowerSchool and consults with PowerSchool on aligning the relevant parts of their product with best parctices in assessment, grading and reporting.

His twenty-three year teaching career included experience as a geography teacher and department head at 6 schools in Toronto and Melbourne (Grades 7-12) starting in 1967.

Ken was a Curriculum Coordinator responsible for Student Assessment and Evaluation and Geography for the Scarborough Board of Education (and then the Toronto District School Board) from March 1990 to June 1999. He also worked (half time) as a consultant on Secondary Assessment at the Ontario Ministry of Education from November 1998 to December 1999.

He is the author of How to Grade for Learning: Linking Grades to Standards, Fourth Edition. Corwin, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2018, The School Leaders Guide to Grading, Solution Tree, Bloomington, IN, 2013, A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades. Second Edition, Pearson, Boston, MA, 2011, and Fifteen Fixes for Broken Grades: A Repair Kit, Pearson, Toronto, 2012. Articles written by Ken have appeared in the NASSP Bulletin, Educational Leadership andSchool Administrator.