Kevin's 9th grade math teacher calculates the semester grades based only on the final exam.
Rebecca's teacher explains that she purposely gives every student a low grade for the first marking period to motivate them to work hard.
Deshawn's teacher averages his homework and test scores, as well as his effort and work habits scores, to determine his grade.
Tomo's parents request conferences after each report card is issued because they want to know "how she is really doing."
Mario has stopped caring about his grades and decided he is "dumb" and school is worthless.
These examples illustrate some of our problematic grading practices. Grades are typically summative, overly simplistic, and subjective. They have been misused as punishments or motivators and assigned inconsistently. It's little wonder that grading has prompted angst for decades.
We have taken a look at the current debate in education about grading practices and created what we believe to be a more moderate, systematic solution with its own benefits and challenges.
The Current Debate
For more than two decades, Alfie Kohn has argued against the use of grades, citing its negative relationship to intrinsic motivation for learning, self-esteem, and higher-level thinking. On the other hand, Grant Wiggins suggests that we need more grades and evidence to provide parents and students with a comprehensive picture of learning progress. Other authors and researchers (like Sue Brookhart, Thomas Guskey, and Robert Marzano) advocate for replacing subjectively determined letter grades with standards-based grading. Can these varied perspectives be resolved?
Reporting academic progress to parents, students, and other stakeholders in a clear and succinct manner is important. At the same time, we recognize the necessity for valid evidence and sampling methods, research-based practices, and objective measurement. Student motivation, agency, and a growth mindset should also be a top priority.
Instead of viewing grading as an all-or-nothing proposition, we believe a better solution is to honor the need for measurement and communication and address the importance of student motivation and ownership. To accomplish both ends, we need a systematic, comprehensive, formative assessment system.
Here's why:
- The effective use of formative assessment allows for feedback, intervention, enrichment, and a revision and upgrading of the assessment evidence, thereby supporting a growth mindset and focused effort.
- The use of common standards, learning targets, and success criteria enhance both the validity of the graded content and reliability of the process.
- The inclusion of user-friendly learning goals and criteria, student-to-teacher feedback, and student self-evaluation enhances student agency and ownership for the entire learning journey.
- The use of open-access records supports parent and child communication and additional opportunities for reteaching and revision. As a result, the use of formative assessment and user-friendly reporting formats mitigate many of the issues that, made the traditional grading process problematic.
The system contains interrelated components:
- Content standards explain the essential concepts, skills, applications, and dispositions students are expected to learn within each academic area. They define and focus the learning goals for all lessons and curriculum. Examples include the Common Core language arts and math standards, the Next Generation Science Standards, the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Social Studies Framework, and/or many of the states' variations on the Common Core Standards.
- Learning targets are standards-based statements that focus on one essential concept, skill, application, or disposition within a given standard. Student-friendly language targets describe what learners are expected to understand or be able to do over the course of a lesson (e.g. "I can use transition sentences to link the main ideas in my writing.").
- Success criteria are the indicators used to evaluate, grade, and scale any evidence related to the learning target and its mastery. Typical examples include criteria such as: accuracy, clarity, or relevance. Students and teachers use the criteria during formative assessment conferences to measure progress toward the target. When students are involved in setting these criteria and using them for self-evaluation and revision, they share ownership in the formative assessment, feedback, and grading process.
- Performance tasks are the products, assignments, and demonstrations that serve as evidence of a student's current proficiency with the learning target. Students and educators use performance task evidence and the target's success criteria to measure progress, as the foundation for formative feedback, and—quite possibly—as the opportunity for resubmissions.
- Record keeping is an essential aspect of grading and formative assessment. Each student's entries should identify the child's current proficiency level with each target and its criteria. A consistent record keeping system is essential for grading reliability. Parents and students should be able to access these records at all times.
- Feedback provides a written or oral evaluation of the performance task and its process. The most effective feedback involves student self-report and includes a description of the learning target, its criteria, and an appraisal of the extent to which the evidence aligns with the success criteria. Within a formative assessment system, feedback IS the grading process, with the expectation of shared ownership of the process between teacher and student.
- Resubmission opportunities result from formative assessment and feedback and a teacher's willingness to support continuous learning and revision. It is easy to see how the inclusion of resubmission opportunities with the formative assessment cycle fosters intrinsic motivation for learning, effort and agency.
Benefits and Challenges
This alternative approach has many benefits and avoids the pitfalls of traditional methods. The proposed formative assessment system:
- Is qualitative and more precise.
- Has—at its heart—feedback, which John Hattie's research highly correlated with student achievement.
- Promotes learning for learning's sake, countering the grade-chasing syndrome.
- Ends the "goal-line" approach to grading and learning. That is, once the assignment/quarter/semester/year is complete, no further learning is required.
- Requires shared ownership with students.
- Is more equitable and does not penalize some students over others.
The two challenges associated with a shift of this magnitude loom large.
- Changing the mindsets of each key stakeholder (e.g., students, teachers, administrators, high education personnel, employers) regarding the need to change the traditional A–F system;
- The unfathomable infrastructure and systemic changes, K–22, that will be required. Education Week contributor Lynn Olsen referred to the America grading system as "one of the <LINK URL="https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1995/06/14/38report.h14.html" LINKTARGET="_blank">most sacred traditions</LINK> in all of education."
Why Wait?
Quite simply, we are better than the polarized positions that currently fracture the field. We have the knowledge and the power to begin transforming grading practices now and without trashing grades entirely. Traditional grading can be used for the imperatives of ranking and be supplemented with more robust, nuanced ways of evaluating student progress. This middle-of-the road, more comprehensive approach would begin to address the failings of the current grading system, begin to minimize that harm that the current system perpetuates, and buy time to begin changing the mindsets of stakeholders and the infinitely complex infrastructure.