May 27th, 2011
As a follow up to yesterday’s post, I had a really good, and I felt honest, talk with my Honors Precal kids about what they thought about the idea of eliminating grades.
Their main concern was a good one: they are going to be assigned a grade eventually (because they will need one on their transcript) and they do not want to be surprised with what that grade turns out to be. They feel like if they have grade markers along the way they will know whether or not they are on the trail. Without the markers they would feel lost.
In some ways, it comes down to a matter of trust. Can I convince them to trust me that if we focus on learning the mathematics they will get better and their grade will be what they want it to be? More directly to their concern, the feedback I give them on a regular basis should be the guidance they need to know whether or not they are on the trail. We’re on a different trail though: the mathematics trail, not the grade trail.
A second concern was that some students find grades motivating. They feel like if they see a B and they want to see an A, they know they have more work to do to get there, and have the motivation to do it. Contrary to Alfie Kohn, (and I am a Kohn disciple) there is some research that supports this idea. But if an arbitrary letter can motivate better results, then my feedback can do that as well. And so much better -right? My feedback not only can let them know where they stand (which is where the grade stops) but can continue on to suggest improvements and next steps.
More later…
May 26th, 2011
I think I’ve come to the point of no return in terms of grading and assessment. I gave up points 6 or 7 years ago, and since then have had various incarnations of a standards based grading (SBG) system.
The thing is, that no matter what system I use, the students can’t get past the idea of grades long enough to focus on learning. Not all students, but most of them. And I hate it. I hate feeling like the students are only interested in what we do in class because they want to “earn” a good grade for it. I hate that the system is set up so that the accumulation of credits is the end goal and not the accumulation of knowledge. It’s back-asswards. The credits should be the by-product of the learning. Right now the learning is the by-product of the credit accumulation. About 4 years ago I had a parent and school board member tell me (after looking over my SBG rubric) that “getting students to understand is great but here at ______________ we are more about class rank and grade point average.” I just threw up a little in my mouth.
I’m beginning to realize two things: 1. If I give grades, then I am complicit in this mockery of education. 2. I have to give grades. So what I’m toying with now is what Shawn Cornally writes about in this post. I may have to give grades, but what if I postponed them until I absolutely had to give them?
This leaves me with a list of questions that hopefully anyone who stumbles on this blog can contribute to.
- How do I introduce this idea to students?
- How do I explain this to parents?
- What does this idea look like on a day to day basis in the classroom?
- Can I keep up with the amount of feedback that will be needed in order to replace grades?
- How are the grades that I eventually have to give determined?
- Fill in the blank.
