I was reading a book on school grading metrics, as one does on a Sunday. The book is “On Your Mark: Challenging the Conventions of Grading and Reporting” by Thomas Guskey. Warning to the reader: I read the book pretty quickly and this is some stream of consciousness on my part. So any mistakes are likely on my end and not on the author’s.
One issue is that the use of a single grade is often an amalgamation of potentially confounding variables that, ultimately, makes it difficult to tell what a grade represents. One example he gives is two “C” students. One is diligent, grinds away, participates in class, turns everything in on time but ultimately what the student produces is unremarkable. The other is not terribly diligent, turns work in late, has attendance problems, but what he does produce is excellent, demonstrating good understanding of the material and penetrating insights. These are very different students but the grade is the same. Some systems — I think Canada was referenced — deal with this by giving separate marks for product, process, and progress. In the example I gave, the first student would have a good process grade but a mediocre or poor product grade. The second student would be the reverse. Progress would tell you more about the impact the class had had on the student’s knowledge.
Another issue is a sort of illusory precision we give our grades that can have some pernicious effects. Categorizing student achievement in five broad categories has its challenges, but is doable. Something along the lines of excellent (A), decent (B), acceptable (C), poor (D), and unacceptable (F). The difference between 83% and 86% is going to be arbitrary, dependent on a bunch of variables and teacher idiosyncracies. There is really no foundation showing that these metrics are telling us what we want to know. The author points out that by making the scale 100 points and setting the “D”/”F” line at 60%, you’ve now created 60 points of failure on the scale with only 40 points of passing work. You’re using up a lot of real estate on the failing end of the scale that’s not really helping anyone. Combine that with the confounding process variable I mentioned above, and you potentially end up with something like a late assignment being given a 0 — more than half a grading scale away from a passing grade; you know nothing from this about the student’s substantive knowledge of the subject matter; and the student is in an academic hole that is a great deal deeper than it would be without this illusion of precision.
And maybe the biggest issue is that we have grades working at cross-purposes. What are we trying to do with these things? Is the purpose of our educational system to develop academic proficiency or to identify and select the best and the brightest? If you’re trying to develop academic proficiency, you will ideally develop a system that gets all of your students to the desired levels of proficiency. If that’s the case, you’ll end up with a bunch of kids at the highest end of the spectrum. On the other hand, if you’re looking to rank, filter, and sort the students, then you’ll implement a grading system that exaggerates the distinctions to make things easier for university admissions officers and whatnot. (Part of that “whatnot” includes a cultural sense that there can’t be meaningful success without the failure of others. This, in turn, I think comes from a sort of Manichean idea that there is no good without evil. But, I certainly digress.)
This final bit is more me than the author, but poking at our grading system and questioning why we do what we do, you can see some of the accretions from bygone years. There are echoes of the 19th century when education was more of an aristocratic thing, used to justify and entrench privilege. There are echoes of the industrial revolution where we tried to standardize and mechanize everything. There are echoes of the Progressive Era, seeking some kind of objective perfectability of people and the related drift into eugenics.
Our reaction to change is probably going to reflect some of that entrenched privilege as well. When a high socioeconomic status area embraces the idea of designing a system where almost everyone is able to attain the academic objectives, it seems plausible and everyone getting As and Bs doesn’t seem as objectionable. When this happens in a low socioeconomic school system, you’ll get more of the protests about grade inflation and participation trophies. The aristocracy is to be nurtured, enhanced, and preserved. The masses are to be goaded and culled for their own good.
Like I said, this was all a bit stream-of-consciousness for me. So, I don’t have any strongly held opinions here. I just thought there were some interesting ideas to chew on.
Dog, very insightful. Participation trophies are quite the social flash point. My best friend, who never got past pinch hitting in Half-Pints, rails against participation trophies, letting all kids play, and non-scored games. Even in the context of 8 year-old kids playing Tee Ball.
Just as an anecdote, when I was in the 6th grade, we were not given A-F grades. We were given numerical scores from .1-.5 for the improvement we made toward the “standard” level of learning in the respective subjects. I have never heard a reference to such a system.s
The participation trophy thing drives me nuts. I suppose it gets at something fundamental about one’s worldview and maybe even the meaning of life, but maybe I’m reading too much into it. If, as Jonathan Edwards put it, we’re sinners in the hands of an angry God, then participation trophies — like anything that brings joy — are suspect. If, as Monty Python put it, life’s just a game where we make up the rules while we’re searching for something to say, then give them participation trophies if it brings joy and doesn’t hurt anyone.
On the grades, I was at a seminar of sorts today where the author was speaking. Sounds like your 6th grade experience was part of a “standards based assessment.” From Wikipedia:
It sounded like Canada was pretty far along into using standards-based assessments rather than the traditional grading methods we’re used to.
Too bad we don’t listen to the subject matter experts (teachers and education researchers) about all sorts of things related to education.
We educate teachers in current methodologies and pedagogy in college and then unleash them into a system where they can’t do any of that because of the realities of the current system. Which has been setup by legislators and the lobbyists working to destroy what public education we have.
“We educate teachers in current methodologies and pedagogy in college and then unleash them into a system where they can’t do any of that because of the realities of the current system. ”
Back in the stone (1972) ages, no maybe I should the say the enlightened era of education. The English Dept. of Elwood High School decided that they needed to get the English grades up.They were stuck by state standards that Freshman and Sophomore curriculum could not be changed. But the Junior and Senior English curriculum’s could be changed, The English Dept and the Principal got together and came up with the following subjects:
Science Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Mythology, American Short Stories, European Short Stories Sports Special, Humor, American Short Stories, American Classics, European Classics, Religions of the World,New American Authors and New European Authors. I think there were two more but I can’t remember them.
The first thing that happened was the teachers started bickering over what subject they wanted to teach. So the Principal stepped in and decided it would done by seniority and the bottom up the next year etc Then it was decided that each student could only take 3 courses a year. If not enough students did not sign up for the class it wouldn’t be taught, Of course you had to read the material and take the quiz’s and tests. My Senior year I asked the head of the English Department if grades has gone up, he gave me a big smile and said yes and all his teachers teaching Juniors,Seniors were extremely happy . As I was about to leave he said ” In my entire teaching career I have never seen so many students excited about English”. He was in his 50’s and had only taught English all his teaching career.
Then the state moved in and standardized the English curriculum, So a experiment that a medium sized high school in the middle of Indiana created on their own was wiped out. A experiment that may have been pushed forward by the summer of love and the end the Vietnam war died a silent death.
I’m a psychometrician, working in certification and licensure testing. But my wife is a teacher (middle school math) and my kids are recent grads of the K-12 system with 2 years of college under their belts (note that University grades suffer many of the same problems you enumerate). Your post made me very happy (“This guy totally gets it!”) but also very frustrated, as I get any time I ponder our educational system. It’s so broken; I can’t imagine it ever getting fixed.
Don’t lose hope! As Mr. Cockburn said, you “got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.”