What Grading SHOULD Look like

What Grading SHOULD Look like…

Over the years I have found that talking about grading practices that need to be retired is not enough. Many have thought that Standards-based grading was the answer, but unfortunately too many outdated grading practices are carried over.

Conceptually, I have explained for years what a mastery-based system can look like, which includes teaching and grading practices we need to let go. I even created a couple videos to explain it. I found people still had trouble grasping what it could look like. On the one hand, I was intentional in not saying, “This is how you do it!” There are many ways to develop a new grading system, so I intentionally avoided proposing it as I wanted people to be flexible enough to make what works for them. That hasn’t worked. So what are the biggest barriers for educators to get past? First, how can you truly do this without averaging (or power law)? Second, how do you do this without graduated grading (letter grades or number scales)?

Those last two questions are the key. We tend to hang on to graduated grading in one form or another even when it is a hindrance to understanding learner growth, knowledge, and skill. Averaging, by its very nature, automatically labels students instead of the individual pieces of work. Both need to be retired.

When you think about it, we ask averaging to be the main single tool for four large levels of our content:

• a final grade for a course/content area,
• progress on that course over a semester, quarter, trimester,
• a grade for each learning target or unit within that course/content area, and
• grading for progress within that learning target, I.e. daily work.

All four levels have different needs, but we ignore those and shoehorn one tool (averaging) into all four levels. As one of my educator friends, Melissa, eloquently said in a video we made a few years back about grading:

“I don’t think grading works the way we’ve traditionally used it. It didn’t make sense to me when I was a student. It certainly doesn’t make sense to me as a teacher. I am giving a percentage over four different areas in language arts that have 40 standards. But I’m giving one grade? I mean, that math doesn’t work to me.” (TIE, 2018)

So I challenged myself to create the simplest system possible yet effective for mastery-based grading (no magical “black box” calculations that few understand). This last month I invested the time to create a spreadsheet as a proof-of-concept for what it could look like. Of course the spreadsheet cannot take the place of any student information system, it is just a communication tool for how it could look. It forced me to walk my talk, to think down to the detail of how it can work. No, let me rephrase that…how it should work.

At the daily work level, the assignments do not “count” toward the grade. They are self-contained as indicators of progress toward the learning target or unit. If the student is truly learning, we should see continual improvement as they work through the material and practice. The purpose of the daily work is to be the deciding factor whether learners are ready to test or demonstrate mastery, not feed a grade. I created charts that display the daily work as it compares to perfect mastery, so learners can see if they are getting closer to that goal with each assignment. It is significantly more useful than an average, to both the teacher and the learner (and the parents). When done correctly, it is way more motivating than grades.

Progress over the course/content area also is not averaged. Rather, you identify whether a learner has mastered each learning target for the course. To report progress, you say the learner has mastered 7 out of the 10 learning targets for this course. That is way more informational than the “C-“ you get from traditional grading. Again, more useful…no averaging.

I suspect others have come up with a similar system prior, but I have only found elements of it in my searches. So I created it and now offer it to the world. As I am writing my book about necessary changes for education, grading is a key piece but not the focal point. Rather it is a single example as to why we need to make broad institutional changes. Motivational theory plainly shows how demotivating the traditional grading system is to our students (see my previous posts). This change needs to happen sooner than later.

Resources:
Technology & Innovation in Education. (2018). Grades & Class Ranks. CustomizedU: Grades & Class Ranks. https://youtu.be/ezPb1G2XUY0?t=61