Better late than never, this is my contribution to the work of a dynamic duo of fellow bloggers taking up problems with grading. Sandy Merz set the bar pretty high right out the gate with “Dear A+ Student” – and then he added the wonderful post Jesse Pinkman’s Wooden Box (love the Breaking Bad reference!). Brianna Crowley was next, arguing that grading is A Duct-Taped System in Need of an Overhaul. I couldn’t agree more. I hope you’ll check out their posts, comment, share this one, comment, and more importantly, take steps to help us change the norms and assumptions around academic performance and success.
Considering the importance and consequences attached to student grades, in high schools especially, you’d think that we would have a broader professional understanding about what grades mean and how they work. Our consensus only goes as far as agreeing that grades usually represent some combination of knowledge, skills, and compliance. Beyond that, it’s a mess, and one that we ought to clean up.
Here are a few suggestions to improve grading practices. But even when we add them all up, I think we still have to consider whether or not we have a system worth saving.
Stop using the 100-point scale. Percents serve us well when we want to know relative quantities, and when the units themselves have a clear meaning. But using percentages for grading doesn’t pass that test. We think we understand the salient differences between students who post grades of 92% and 77%, but I’ve never met a teacher who could describe a meaningful difference between posting grades of 38% and 23%. What that indicates is that 15% doesn’t really have a consistent meaning in grades, in terms of the units making up the 15%, or the relationships among numbers in the lower half of the scale. In effect, we dedicate half of the 100-point grading scale to punishing children, creating mathematical levels of failure with no meaning in reality. An objective analyst would conclude that such a system is designed to make improving from a 20% to a 45% just as hard, and as significant, as moving from a C to an A+.
But – if your top grade must be 100, get rid of zeroes. Some teachers freak out when district mandates tell them they must use 50% as a floor and not assign grades below fifty. I totally get it. Teachers don’t want grades that seem to indicate “half” when the truth is less than that, or even “none”. (Briana Crowley’s blog post describes a conversation where teachers get caught up in that very issue). However, if we are committed to having zero mean zero, we still have no real assessment-related use for 10, 20, 30, or 40 out of 100. A grade scale of 0-50 would be more logical from a measurement standpoint, but then teachers would have to get over the idea that a grade of 25 on a 50-point scale would likely represent a grade of C. Of course, it all depends on what those numbers are counting and measuring. Suppose we ask students easy, medium, and difficult questions on a topic. If they answer all of the easy ones correctly and manage a portion of the more challenging questions, perhaps a grade of C would be appropriate. On the other hand, if we’re counting uses of welding equipment without injury, then even 45 out of 50 is unacceptable. We need to relinquish our preconceptions about the meanings of specific numbers and percents. Giving up the idea of points altogether would help; points are a convenient fiction, as long as you don’t think too hard about what they supposedly represent.
Convert grades to a different scale. Another way to look at it is this: we have five letter grades in a typical system (A, B, C, D, F), and in some cases, we use plus and minus signs to differentiate within those grades. Assuming you don’t have F+ or F- you’d end up with thirteen possible grades. Why do we need 100 points then? That’s a level of definition that has no meaning. It would be like having a weather report stating today’s high temperature was 58.3 degrees, or including cents in conversations about rents or mortgage payments. So, use points and percentages if you must for an individual assessment, but convert the assessment score to an appropriate scaled grade (like A-F, or a thirteen-point scale matching letter grades with plus/minus marks, or a 0-4 scale possibly using 0.5 increments).
Stop using averages that distort learning. If you studied music or martial arts in a system that averaged your assessment scores, you’d never be able to achieve musical commendations or a black belt in your sport! Averaging has the effect of penalizing students for early performance, before learning occurred. If a student couldn’t solve algebraic equations well in September but has mastered them in December, why are the September failures still worthy of grade consideration?
Try a standards-based approach. Standards-based grading encourages teachers to assess carefully, and encourages students to continue striving for mastery without the dead weight of prior struggles holding their grades down. Teachers have to know exactly what they’re assessing for this to work; instead of grading categories like tests, homework, and classwork, we need categories that fit standards in our curriculum. If you must assign a letter grade in the end, then take some kind of average of demonstrated skills across standards; at least then you’ll know that the grade is more of a reflection of eventual mastery rather than a muddled picture combining past and present.* To the extent that compliance does matter in student grades – turning work in on time, not cheating, etc. – but those grades in an appropriately identified category. I call mine, “Student Skills” – and since typical performance matters in student skills, I do average those grades throughout a grading term.
In practice, this means that complex assessments like essays and projects generate grades in multiple categories. It sounds confusing, but actually generates only an extra few marks and keystrokes for the teacher, and more importantly, it generates more thinking for students. Whereas my students used to have a single grade of A, or B, or C on an essay, they now receive separate marks for writing skills, reading skills, and student skills. Keeping the grade elements distinct means that students (and parents) can see at a glance which skills in particular are strongest or weakest. This approach also helps mitigate some of the complacency that occasionally accompanies an A or a B, or discouragement that comes with a C or lower.
Ready for a really bold change? How about throwing out grades? There are teachers out there doing it, and they offer some compelling reasons. Find them on Twitter (#TTOG for “teachers throwing out grades”); look at blog posts by Starr Sackstein, and the work of Mark Barnes. If you’re not ready to go that far, look up assessment and grading practices information Robert Marzano and Doug Reeves, and check out #SBG on Twitter. Whatever you do as a teacher, don’t shy away from the discussion.
* Sentence revised for clarity on 3/2/15.