For the past few months, I have been conducting research with more than 30 teachers to learn about their experiences giving up traditional grading practices. In our conversations, they've shared a wide range of interpretations about the "gradeless" concept. Some teachers simply calculate marks privately. Others have students who know exactly where they stand in their learning because of ongoing communication about their progress, even if they never see a mark. Every teacher I have met has told me that moving away from traditional grades is a path that has made them better teachers, that removing marks has improved their relationships with their students, and that their students are learning and achieving more.
The Madness Behind the Method
Do you have students who are ignoring your feedback? Are you tired of students "grubbing" for marks? Do you need more data to ensure that you are meeting all curriculum and policy requirements? Or maybe you'd just like to make your classroom the supportive, environment that you first imagined as a new teacher? I've heard from teachers that a shift away from marks addresses these concerns. Let's dig deeper into why you might be looking to change your grading practices.
Reason 1: Perhaps you have experienced that students who focus only on the mark and ignore the feedback. You'd really like your students to read, and act on, your responses to their work. Providing students with descriptive feedback is one of the top influences for student learning. When teachers provide concrete "next steps," grounded in student products, observations, or conversations, and allow for cycles of revision, they find that students continue their learning beyond the classroom and return to them with evidence of mastery. Students take ownership of both the learning and how they communicate the achievement. Teachers also don't have to create as many "re-tests" when they empower their students with clear criteria for success.
Reason 2: Maybe you are fed up with students who chase after that extra half mark on a test. 'If so, you might consider, deferring, hiding, or eliminating grades completely. You can begin by providing time for students to act on your feedback before revealing your evaluation. Or you can keep private evaluative records and use them only when your school or district policy requires that you determine a mark. Or, you might move to a completely gradeless classroom and determine a mark for reporting purposes by reviewing students' entire body of work at term's end.
Reason 3: Are you worried that your assessment doesn't match a curriculum's standards? This is one of the greatest challenges I see teachers face. We have few tools to provide us with feedback of our own. By using software that documents and reports student achievement, such as Sesame or Freshgrade, we can see whether or not students are completing tasks and if they are doing better in conversations than with projects to ensure our planning and instruction successfully addresses learning goals.
Reason 4: Perhaps you're looking to improve your classroom climate. In my conversations with teachers, this is the most valuable payoff to their shift away from marks. Teachers are finding that students' attendance, punctuality, and task completion are no longer concerns when the focus is squarely on learning. Providing student voice, choice, and agency makes your classroom a desired destination. And when students are not "let off the hook" by a firm mark at the end of a lesson or unit, they are empowered as learners to achieve to the best of their ability. When I asked teachers what they liked most about "going gradeless," they all cited improvements with student relationships.
Now that you've decided your reason for trying a new method for evaluation, here's how to make the process work in your classroom.
Begin with feedback. You can start by changing your levels and gradually shift to more descriptive and narrative feedback. The traditional marking system has 101 levels, so a first step might be to a four-level system of either numbers (1,2,3, and 4) or descriptors (Limited, Somewhat, Considerable, Thorough). Once you are comfortable without marks, you might then shift your feedback to indicate if the student has met the standard (or not) and provide specific suggestions. In order to measure growth and document learning, you will need a system that allows you to share feedback with students while still being able to review it throughout the course and retrieve the exchanges for final evaluation purposes—in other words, making sure it doesn't disappear into a student's binder or the trash can.
You want to provide ongoing feedback but only "mark" work that you and the student agree is the best evidence of learning. You can also empower your students to self-assess by using a co-constructed rubric. If policy requires, you'll need to decide if you are going to determine a mark through collaborative conferencing or online discussion with the student. This powerful cycle of learning and feedback should, with your professional judgment, generate a final mark that will satisfy students, parents, and administrators.
Choose a platform on which your students can begin to create a portfolio of their work. This can be as simple as a shared Google Drive or as sophisticated as Sesame, Seesaw, Freshgrade, or D2L Brightspace. You need a place to begin conversations with students as they curate, self-assess, and tag their work to curriculum expectations. At the very least, you'll need a filing system of folders or binders that give both of you easy access. If you still want to have a mark calculation for your own records or need one for a school or district at the end of the course, then look for a tool that allows you to export to a spreadsheet or marks program. Sesame and Freshgrade will export marks or levels that you can import into a marks management program or manipulate in a spreadsheet. Or, as many of my teachers have done, you can graph your data and look for the most consistent level of performance, with emphasis on most recent, to determine a mark to report.
Involve your students in the assessment process. Learners can help you co-construct rubrics, provide a range of choices for evidence of learning, and clarify success criteria. Look for ways to assess at the same time as the student is providing evidence of learning. I've seen teachers access Google Forms on their phones while a student is working through feedback, then use Doc Appender to send emails to students by the end of class, summarizing the feedback and communicating next steps. Look for face-to-face opportunities to assess knowledge through conversations and skills through observation, which will reduce the time you spend assessing outside of class.
As one of my teachers said, "You are a person, not a mark." When we are transparent in our process and specific in our feedback, we empower our students. Going gradeless is possible in every classroom, even where politics and policy appear to present roadblocks. You just have to stay honest, patient, and committed to the process.
