By Mark
Every grading period, I engage in an odd ritual. I look over all of my classes and tally how many of each letter grade I've posted on the progress reports. This year got me nervous, as there were an awful lot of A's and only about seven F's out of my five classes of freshmen.
I think this habit of mine emerged a few years ago when I was accused of "inflating" grades when too many of my students were successful (earning B's and A's) and not enough were failing. Ironically, that accusation of inflation occurred immediately after I had begun implementing classroom intervention strategies aimed at reducing the number of students failing my class (which had been the complaint the year before: too many D's and Fs).
This is one of the debates-that-never-end in education: what is the function of the grade? Is it to demonstrate accomplishment of a learning target? Is it to demonstrate compliance with deadlines and classroom expectations? What about the kid who bombs every chapter quiz when we read Animal Farm, but who spends every afternoon for two weeks with me after school preparing for the final test–which he aces? Should he still be penalized for ten abyssmal chapters of poor performance even though he was able to demonstrate his knowledge and understanding in the end? What about the student who bombs the homework assignments in Algebra, but comes in for extra help and ends up flying high on the unit test?
In a meeting recently, my building principal asked that we teachers consider whether our grades were measuring behavior or achievement.
Later that same day, a good friend and colleague of mine shared a revelation he discovered from a guest speaker who came to visit with his department. That guest speaker, Dr. Frank Wang, shared many worthwhile ideas, but the one which seemed to resonate with my colleague was the very example I mention above: what if a kid struggles during the unit, logs a few F's in the gradebook, but ends up showing mastery by the time the summative assessment rolls around? Dr. Wang suggested that the constant ongoing entering-of-grades in effect de-values the learning that is the ultimate goal of education but instead rewards kids who "get it" quickly and penalizes kids who "get it" a little later than others–even though they still eventually "get it."
I'm wondering: are the letters A, B, C, D, and F part of the problem in education today?
Thanks for the link, Jason. It reminds me of some of the writing assessment training I participated in as a grad student in Oregon. However, when I tried to use the standards-based assessment once I was finally employed, I found myself butting up against the ABCDF paradigm.
The other unfortunate and obvious side effect of giving grades is that kids and parents become obsessed with the grade…and in particular, some will adjust their effort based on the number of points possible. I almost never tell a kid how many points an assignment is worth until after it is graded. If they ask, I always tell them “ten million,” and after a few times hearing that response, they get the point that it isn’t about the grades. Man, have I irritated a few folks when I have the kids do a big project, but most don’t meet my learning targets so it doesn’t end up in the gradebook. Case in point, about three years ago, I asked my sophomores to write a synthesis essay blending elements of personal narrative and literary analysis of multiple short stories, centering on the idea of “identity.” In my little teacher brain, it was a freaking brilliant assignment, and it targeted a bunch of learning goals in writing, thinking, and reading, plus was thick with cultivation of writer’s voice. However, it was too ambitious a task, so I ended up basically just giving completion points (a behavior grade) because if I’d actually graded based on standards, kids would have be unduly punished because of my over-ambitiousness. There were some mighty unhappy parents and students–most of whom were quickly placated when I pointed out that if I had given a quality score, most kids’ class grades would have dropped (even those whose parents leave me early morning voicemails when their child’s grade drops from an A to an A-). When all they care about is the grade, all they care about is the grade.
I keep telling my principal that an integral part of every evaluation he does should be to have each teacher defend an A, C, and F grade in their class.
DrPezz: I was in middle school a long time ago, and my school gave a grade for academic, effort and citizenship. In 8th grade English I got a D-E-D, and that’s what I was when my dad saw those grades.
I have a colleague in the English department who uses points. In a semester a student can earn 20,000 points. It’s a little scary to watch people who went into language arts because they didn’t like math use numbers to assign their grades.
Sounds like you’re stumbling onto what Robert Marzano and Ken O’Connor has been going on and on about in PD sessions, books, and articles for years.
I really like what Grand Island is doing on this one. Check out their Guiding Documents:
http://www.gips.org/learning/Grading-and-Reporting
In my district, at the elementary level, we use a standards-based grading system. We are explicitly told to give a grade (1 through 4) according to the degree to which a student has met the academic standards for this subject at this grade level. There is no accumulation of points, no averaging of test scores and no consideration paid to effort or completed homework. (The assumption is that if the homework was worthwhile, it would have contributed to meeting the standards; if it didn’t, then it wasn’t, and that’s not the student’s fault.) At the end of the grading period, the teacher makes a determination as to whether or not the student’s current performance is at standard.
For some reason, Mark, the secondary teachers haven’t come on board. They still cling to points, averages and effort.
What I’m even questioning is the merit of “points” since those get translated to grades. If the focus is on the achievement of standards/learning targets, should that be tied to the “time frame” in which the learning happens? Let’s say I have a cumulative daily assessment where students identify grammatical errors in a sentence and correct the sentence on their own. In the first five, a student gets 0/10 points because they are unable to identify any of the errors. Student comes in for help, and on the next five gets 10/10 points on each because the student now possesses the learning, and even more, has mastered and internalized the skill. The cumulative points grade is 50/100 (an F) even though the target learning was actually achieved in the end. In some contexts, teachers do not have the freedom to go back and let the kid re-do those past tasks with the new knowledge. I hope this is making sense…
I do think the A-F is too ingrained–but it is a “TWWADI” (the way we’ve always done it) which ought to be seriously reconsidered.
I’m quite torn, because I do think that behavioral grading is important for keeping kids accountable for the small bites of learning which precede the major demonstrations of skills. I don’t have an answer for my own practice yet, but I’ve passed kids who did all their work but still lacked real mastery and I’ve failed kids who were brilliant readers and writers but who didn’t turn in enough work to earn the points to pass. I’m not sure how to reconcile all that.
What about a separate grade, maybe a citizenship grade, to accompany the academic grade?
This is a great topic. I give points, not grades, on assignments, activities, and tests. The school equates a certain percentage with a letter grade.
If I had a student master the content, I would give that child an A at the end of the grading period, regardless of the points entered through the quarter.
But I don’t know, Jennifer, about not penalizing late work. Teachers DO teach behavior. We ARE expected to create graduates who have learned good citizenship. A child who can write a brilliant essay but doesn’t think timelines refer to him is going to be in for a surprise in university or the workplace.
Do you have an alternative to help the students learn to be timely with their work, or do you just favor turning it in whenever?
I am an instructional coach and the teachers I work with have spent several years practicing standards-based/referenced strategies. It frustrates me to talk with a teacher (either in my school or of my own children) who clearly link behavior with achievement. Losing 20% because an assignment was a day late takes the achievement value away from the grade. I also appreciate teachers who spend time, verbally or in writing, to offer specific feedback to students relevant to their achievement. I wonder if the A-B-C-D is too ingrained in society and the lexicon of education to remove? I am in favor of working towards a more reliable and consistent system to talk about both achievement and behavior…in different marks, not the same one.