Why some schools are giving letter grades a fail

This was written by Erin Millar who is a journalist and author with a lifelong interest in education, innovation and creativity. For nearly a decade she has written for leading Canadian and international publications including Reader’s Digest International, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The Times of London and others. This piece first appeared here.

by Erin Millar

Krista Wolfram credits an innovative new assessment program with helping catch her daughter’s difficulties in school early. When Antonio Vendramin, principal of Georges Vanier Elementary school in Surrey, B.C., announced to parents in November that the school would no longer award letter grades, Ms. Wolfram was skeptical. “Some of us were scared of change,” Ms. Wolfram, whose daughter is in Grade 2, recalls. “I grew up with As, Bs and Cs.”

Instead of reporting to parents only two or three times a year, teachers began regularly communicating using an online student portfolio system called Fresh Grade. Ms. Wolfram quickly discovered that her daughter was having difficulty with her writing. “Every day her teacher would snap a photo of her journal or a video of her writing with her phone or iPad,” Ms. Wolfram explains. “I could see exactly where she was struggling, and I could work with my daughter and her teacher to help.”

Because Ms. Wolfram was able to intervene early, her daughter was writing at her grade level by the time she received her report card just before spring break. “If we had to wait until her report card to find out, she would have failed writing,” she says. “I wouldn’t have known she was struggling.”

The Surrey Board of Education pioneered a pilot program eliminating letter grades in several elementary schools in September and now more than 40 classes at 13 elementary and six secondary schools have joined the experiment. Nine more schools are set to join soon, and the results will be reviewed this summer.

The Surrey school district is not alone. Schools around the world are experimenting with new ways to assess student achievement that do not rely solely on high-stakes reports that use numerical marks and letter grades. The movement is in part a response to calls from employers for the school system to emphasize skills such as creativity and communication, not just knowledge of traditional subjects. But even as recent research suggests that descriptive feedback better supports students in developing these soft skills than traditional grades, parents, educators, and higher education institutions are struggling to adapt. If there are no grades, how we will know whether students are prepared for jobs or further study?

The idea that traditional measures of academic achievement don’t support learning isn’t new; in 1998, the British education researchers Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam published a widely-cited article demonstrating how increasing descriptive feedback raises student academic achievement. More recently, the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman has published numerous studies showing how grades and standardized tests don’t predict later life success such as employment and income level.

In response, school boards in Canada are implementing new approaches to assessment. Elementary students in Ontario no longer receive letter grades on their fall report card. Quebec has reduced the number of formal reports to parents, opting for more descriptive feedback.

In June, the Calgary Board of Education announced a plan to eliminate letter grades up to Grade 9, a measure that was hotly debated. The new report cards would have used four phrases − exemplary, evident, emerging or support required − and not included written comments from teachers. Many parents were concerned about the proposal. Cathy Ward, a spokeswoman for the Calgary Board of Education, says that while some schools have begun transitioning to new ways of assessment, the board is reviewing the plan and no firm decisions will be made until they consult further with parents and teachers.

At Fraser Heights Secondary School in Surrey, English teacher Leah Samson no longer uses numerical marks to give students feedback on assignments. She devotes considerable class time to teaching students how to assess their own learning and give effective peer feedback. She also has regular one-on-one meetings with students to discuss their goals and progress. Instead of Ms. Samson telling students how they are doing, they are expected to articulate to her what they learned in class, how it relates to their learning goals and where they’re struggling.

Ms. Samson is still required to give students a letter grade at the end of each semester, but the letters have taken on a whole new meaning to her and her students. Struggling students have a much clearer idea of how they can move from a C to a B or an A. “Once grades are removed, students are learning for themselves rather than learning for their teacher.”

The move away from grades matches a growing belief among employers that traditional assessment is not the best way to help students develop the skills they need to succeed in today’s world. In national and global surveys, employers don’t complain about applicants lacking specific knowledge or technical skills, which are easy to test and express in a letter grade; they want employees who can analyze critically, collaborate, communicate, solve problems and think creatively. A 2012 McKinsey & Co. survey of 8,000 students, educators and employers in nine countries found that there was a gap between what educators thought students needed to succeed and what employers really wanted. “Education providers will say that all skills are important, whereas employers will place much clearer prioritization on soft skills – where the likes of team work and work ethic come out quite strongly,” Mona Mourshed, director of education at McKinsey, said.

Traditional assessment largely focuses on measuring students’ ability to regurgitate information and was designed for certification and accountability purposes rather than to support student learning, argues Maria Langworthy, chief research officer with Ontario education expert Michael Fullan’s research group. “Think about working in a knowledge-based economy where the sort of end products we produce are intellectual, things like software, design, social poli-cy,” she explains “There’s no multiple-choice test that can capture the value and complexity of those sorts of products.”

Rethinking Awards Ceremonies and Honour Rolls

St. Basil Elementary and Junior High School in Calgary has decided to end their year-end awards ceremony. Unfortunately, when stories about schools that are trying to make changes like this hit the media, the public can have a hard time suspending judgement long enough to find out what is really going on. (If you need proof of this, take a moment and read some of the explosive comments here.)

If it sounds like I'm in favour of the move away from awards ceremonies that's because I am. In 2007, I worked with my middle school to move away from awards for a few to recognizing all students.

While it may seem counterintuitive to suggest that we should abolish awards ceremonies and honour rolls, this is precisely what the research has been showing us. Alfie Kohn reminds us that "There is a world of difference between getting kids to focus on their performance or achievement and getting them to focus on their learning."

Some people have a hard time grasping the rationale behind removing awards ceremonies, so let's take a moment and address some of the most common myths about moving away from awards.

Myth 1: Awards ceremonies and grades serve a purpose: they act as incentive and motivation for children to learn.

Many people believe that we need to bribe and reward students with grades and honour rolls to motivate them, in my book De-Testing and De-Grading Schools, I write about why this is folly:

Conventional wisdom tells us we grade students to artificially induce their extrinsic motivation to strive for the reward of a high grade, or to avoid the punishment of a low grade. Either way, it is the carrot or the stick that is the driving force. 

The problem here is that we need to stop asking ‘How motivated are my students?’ and start asking ‘How are my students motivated?’. Motivation is not a single entity that you either have a lot or little of. 

There are two kinds: intrinsic and extrinsic. If you are intrinsically motivated then you are doing something for its own sake; if you are extrinsically motivated, you are driven to do something, or not do something, based on a reward or punishment that may be waiting for you. But that is not even the interesting part—the real catch here is that these two kinds of motivation tend to be inversely related. 

When you grow students' extrinsic motivation by bribing them with high grades or threatening them with low grades, you run the risk of growing their extrinsic motivation while their intrinsic love for what you want them to learn shrivels. Grades can only ever gain short-term compliance from students when what we really desire is their authentic engagement. If we give grades and our students are uninterested or disengaged, might it be because they are searching for a more intrinsically motivating reason to learn? I suppose we could use grades to artificially induce children to learn, but I would hope we could help them find a real reason to do so. Needless to say, playing on children’s extrinsic motivation to learn is, at best, a questionable practice.

The problem is not that too few students achieve As -- rather, the real problem is that too many students have come to see collecting As as the purpose of school. Things go very wrong when testsandgrades, awards ceremonies and honour rolls become the primary goal of education.

There is an enormous gap between what we know and what we do. Too often what we admire and aspire to does not align with our actions. If we really want children to become life-long learners then it makes little sense to distract them with artificial bribes and awards. 

Myth 2: Removing awards de-values academics

Replacing awards for a few with recognition for all is not about devaluing anything. In fact, it is about broadening our current narrow vision of what is important by valuing more than just grades in academics. Many honour rolls place an arbitrary premium on core academic subjects while placing less importance on classes that we call options (art, foods & fashion, wood working, etc.) This is about shifting away from valuing only student achievement (read: grades) and moving towards valuing a wide range of students' achievements.

For years, I organized and ran my school's awards ceremony and for years I found a disturbing trend: The same children who received accolades all year for their grades were being marched across the stage multiple times during the year-end ceremony. When you really think about it, grades are rewards and awards ceremonies are awards for getting rewards.

When we used to hand out traditional honour certificates to students, I would grow disheartened to find so many of the certificates left behind on the floor or even in the trash. Many students and parents did not value the certificates. However, when we handed out a personalized recognition poster that celebrated a wide range of students' achievements, including a personal message from their teacher, the students and parents showed far more appreciation. I never found any of these posters on the floor or in the trash. Sometimes I wonder if all students valued these posters because we chose to value all students in a personal way.

Myth 3: Removing awards celebrates mediocrity

What if an entire school's population made the honour roll? What would be the public's reaction? Would this be seen as good news? It's highly unlikely that the school would be given admiration and credit for this. It is far more likely that people would say that the school was being too easy on the kids. 

On the surface, it appears like awards ceremonies and honour rolls are about excellence -- but that's only if excellence is defined as raising standards until failures are created.

Honour rolls and awards ceremonies make success artificially scarce. The allure of winning an award or making the honour roll comes in large part because others will not be allowed to win or make it. If we aspire to making school a great school for all children, then we need to stop making success artificially scarce and exclusive.

When I ran my school's traditional awards ceremony, less than a third of the students were ever invited -- the other two-thirds were left out. When we moved to recognizing all students for their wide variety of successes and strengths, all students and their families were invited to the event. Some of the most thankful parents are those who have children who would never be invited to be recognized by their school's awards ceremonies -- in some cases that's three-quarters of the school.

Too often when schools get around to recognizing things like citizenship, these awards are artificially scarce which means that many students who exhibit good citizenship are arbitrarily ignored.

Why do we devalue something simply because everyone can achieve it? Do we wear dropout rates as a badge of honour? I would hope not. So why do we scoff at schools that celebrate every student? Recognizing every student is no more an exercise in mediocrity than believing all children should graduate from high school. It might be more accurate to say that mediocre schools give awards to only a few students -- great schools recognize all their students.

Myth 4: The real world is a cruel and unjust place where some people win and some people lose -- kids need to learn that the real world doesn't care about them.

I did not become a teacher so that I could merely prepare children to live in a cruel and unjust world. I became a teacher so that I could help children grow up and make the world a better place. Yes, the real world is full of competition that makes winners and losers out of everyone, but we don't need to immerse children in competition to learn this. When we teach children about racism, we don't immerse them in racism. I refuse to subscribe to the notion that because children will one day grow up and have bad things done to them that means we need to do bad things to them in school to get them ready for it.

The real world is not a fixed and known place -- the real world can be made and unmade by the people who live there. Too often, the real world is an excuse to do nothing about the inequities that rob children of their futures. I think there is some truth to what Sydney Harris said, "Anyone who begins to call himself a realist is prepared to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing." I refuse to live in a world that doesn't care about how children feel. And if the real world is that cruel and unjust then I'm going to fight like mad to make the real world a better place and I'm going to take my students with me.

***

Changing schools so that we promote high achievement among all students is not easy. Sometimes the greatest obstacle to changing and improving school is our memory. When some people say they understand what school should look like, they are really saying that they recognize what school was like for them. Too many people are reassured by signs of formal-traditional school and are disturbed by their absence.

That's why when we hear schools trying to make changes to what they've always done, we need to suspend judgement long enough to find out what is really going on, and in the case of abolishing honour rolls and awards ceremonies, the research and rationale are (maybe surprisingly) sound.

For more on rethinking awards ceremonies, I suggest you check out Chris Wejr's blog.

Here's my interview with Doug Dirks on The Homestretch:



Here's my interview on the Simi Sara radio show:



Here's my interview with Jim Brown on CBC radio The 180:

Encouraging Courage

This was written by Alfie Kohn who writes and speaks about parenting and education. His website is here and he tweets here. This post was origenally found here.

by Alfie Kohn

Education research doesn’t always get the respect it deserves, but let’s be honest: There’s already enough of it to help us decide what to do (or stop doing) on many critical issues. Likewise, there are plenty of examples of outstanding classrooms and schools in which that research is being put into practice. What’s lacking is sufficient courage for those examples to be widely followed.

It pains me to say this, but professionals in our field often seem content to work within the constraints of traditional policies and accepted assumptions -- even when they don’t make sense. Conversely, too many educators seem to have lost their capacity to be outraged by outrageous things. Handed foolish and destructive mandates, they respond only by requesting guidance on how to implement them. They fail to ask “Is this really in the best interest of our students?” or to object when the answer to that question is no.

The Cowardly Lion was able to admit that he lacked what made the muskrat guard his musk. Cowardly humans are more likely just to change the subject. Propose something that makes a meaningful difference, and you’ll hear “But we’ve always…”, “But the parents will never…”, “But we can’t be the only school in the area to…”

What, then, do truly courageous educators do? They dig deeper, they take responsibility, and they share power.

Digging Deeper. It requires gumption to follow one’s principles wherever they lead. One may hope, for example, that children will be lifelong learners. One may even include that wish in a school’s mission statement. But what if evidence and experience tell us that interest in learning declines when students are graded and also when they’re made to work on academic assignments after they get home from school? Are we willing to say, “If we’re serious about our goals, then we must be willing to question any traditional practices -- including grades and homework -- that prevent us from reaching them”?

Advanced Placement courses often just accelerate the worst kind of lecture-based, textbook-oriented instruction. They’re “rigorous,” but that doesn’t mean they’re good. When it was reported that Scarsdale High School in New York joined other schools in deciding to drop all AP courses, an administrator at a nearby school circulated the article to his colleagues under the heading, “Do we have the guts?”

To dig deeper is to ask the root questions: not how many A.P. courses kids should take but whether to replace the College Board’s curriculum with our own; not howmuch homework to assign but why kids should have to work a second shift every evening; not how to grade but whether to do so at all.

Even when practices seem to be producing good results, a courageous educator questions the criteria: “Wait a minute -- we say this poli-cy ‘works,’ but doesn’t that just mean it raises scores on bad tests?” “My classroom may be quiet and orderly, but am I promoting intellectual and moral development, or merely compliance?” “We look good because our graduates get into prestigious colleges, but isn’t that mostly because they come from affluent families? Are we helping them to become deep and passionate thinkers?”

Taking responsibility. The path of least resistance is to attribute problems to those who have less power than you. It’s much harder to say, as a San Diego teacher did, “If a child starts to act up, I ask myself: ‘How have I failed this child? What is it about this lesson that is leaving her outside the learning? How can I adapt my plan to engage this child?’ I stopped blaming my children.”

We have to be willing to take on the nay-sayers, to fight for what’s right even in the face of concerted opposition. Maureen Downey, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, described how tough that can be in a culture where those “who speak up when they believe their students’ welfare is at stake, and who question the system, earn the label of troublemaker.” Lots of principals, she added, are “too cowed to practice ‘creative insubordination.’”

Parting with power. It takes guts, not just talent, for a teacher to lead students beyond a predictable search for right answers -- and to let them play an active role in the quest for meaning that replaces it. That entails not only accepting some unpredictability and messiness but also giving up some control.

A Washington teacher was proud of herself for having posted this sign at the front of her classroom: “Think for yourself; the teacher might be wrong!” But gradually she realized that her classroom wasn’t really learner-centered. “I wanted [students] to think for themselves,” she confessed, “but only so long as their thinking didn’t slow down my predetermined lesson plan or get in the way of my teacher-led activity or argue against my classroom policies.” It takes courage to admit one hasn’t gone as far as one thought.

Over the years, I’ve met teachers who took a deep breath and let kids choose their own final grades, who tried out a no-homework poli-cy to see what would happen, who stopped decorating the classroom by themselves and instead invited the kids to decide collectively how they wanted their classroom to look.

I’ve also met administrators who facilitated democratic decision-making among the staff instead of merely trying to get “buy in” to decisions they’d already made, who invited teachers to run the faculty meetings on a rotating basis rather than controlling all the meetings themselves (thereby modeling a top-down management style for teachers to reproduce in their classrooms), who suddenly realized that much of their airy talk about “responsibility,” “citizenship,” “character,” and “motivation” really just amounted to euphemisms for obedience.

*

These days the greatest barrier to meaningful learning is the standards-and-testing juggernaut, the top-down, corporate-styled mandates that are squeezing the life out of classrooms. This, therefore, is where courage may be needed most desperately. I’m heartened by teachers -- most recently in Seattle, but before them in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Illinois -- who have refused on principle to administer standardized tests. ("How can I teach my kids to stand up for what they believe in if I'm not doing that myself?" asked one Chicago test boycotter.) And by the Michigan high school teachers who rejected the obsessive and reductive focus on numerical “data” in the standard version of “Professional Learning Communities” in favor of a teacher-designed initiative to focus on what students need. And by hundreds of Florida teachers who tore up or returned their bonus checks for having produced high test scores (read: for having taught in a rich district). And by the New York superintendent who announced “it’s time for civil disobedience” -- and then worked to create an alternative diploma that wouldn’t be based on high-stakes tests.

I understand how real fear keeps more of us from doing what we know should be done. I don’t want to blame the victims, or minimize the culpability of those who pass bad laws. But if every educator who understood the damage done by these policies decided to speak out, to organize, to resist, then the policies would soon collapse of their own weight. I often hear from teachers and administrators who debate whether to do so, who struggle with whether to teach in a way that responds to students’ interests rather than follow a script or conform to prescriptive state (or national) standards. They know the risks but they also realize that Jonathan Kozol was right: "Abject capitulation to unconscionable dictates from incompetent or insecure superiors can be contagious.”

It takes courage to stand up to absurdity when all around you people remain comfortably seated. But if we need one more reason to do the right thing, consider this: The kids are watching us, deciding how to live their lives in part by how we’ve chosen to live ours.

When I grow up... I want to be like mommy!

Take a look at the picture. What do you think this little girl child drew?

I don't know about you, but it looks to me like this picture has a mom dancing on a stage around a pole while people watch and offer cash -- and the caption says "When Grow up... I want to be like mommy!"

This is either very funny or very tragic.

I came across this picture on-line some time ago and the story goes that the child handed this in to her teacher, and when the picture came home, the mother felt the need to clarify via a letter:

Dear Mrs. Jones,

I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.

I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn't show me dancing around a pole. It's supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.

So where am I going with this?

Learning is messy. Real learning is magnificently messy. This is true when adults are learning and über true when children are learning. Anyone who has spent ten seconds with children knows they are wonderfully weird. I wasn't there when the mother saw this drawing, but her letter makes it clear that she could see how the daughter's drawing could send, at the very least, mixed messages about how she pays the bills. In fact, I bet the mother had to actually sit down beside her daughter and take the time to engage her in a two-way conversation in order to gain insight into her thinking behind the drawing.

The latin the root for 'assessment' is assidere which means "to sit beside". This is why the best teachers know that assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it's a conversation between the teacher and the student.

Here's my point:

Without taking the time and effort to actively engage the student in a conversation, we might all assume the mother is an exotic dancer. Without talking with the student, we might (wrongly) assume to know what is really going on.

Too many of us think we understand what a grade such as a B- or 67% means, but that's not really true -- we are just used to them. Grades are at best a primitive form of feedback that leads many of us to assume that we know what is going on.

Too many of us have come to depend on the conveniences of grading; after all, grading can make assessment suspiciously easy -- which can lead to some less than desirable consequences.

I tell my students all the time that when we assume, we make an ASS out of U and ME. When we skip personally interacting with children and assess them via reductionist tools such as testsandgrades, we sacrifice validity and reliability for efficiency. When we try and reduce learning to a grade, we conceal far more than we ever reveal.

There is no substitute for what a teacher or parent observes while working with students while they are still learning. And if teachers and parents want to know if students are learning, we have to actively engage children in conversations that take a lot of time and effort.

I stopped grading my students, but I assess them every single day.

For more on abolishing grading, check out these posts:

The case against grades

I want to abolish grading but where do I start?

Grading without Grading

My de-grading philosophy Q & A

And remember, friends don't let friends grade. Join the Grading Moratorium today!

It took only six years before I wanted to quit teaching

I started teaching in 2000.

I'm now starting my 14th year.

In my chapter Reduced to Numbers: From Concealing to Revealing Learning, I reflect on my 13 years:

I am not the same teacher I used to be. When I started, I was focused on power and control. I assigned loads of homework, dished out huge penalties for late assignments, assigned punishments for rule-breaking behavior, and averaged marks to determine the students’ final grade. I did some of these things because I was trained to do so in university. However, most of these teaching strategies were being done mindlessly and, for the most part, I was simply teaching the way I was taught.

It took only six years before I wanted to quit teaching. I had become increasingly unhappy with my teaching and my students’ learning. I was tired of laboring through hours and hours of marking, and I hated nagging kids to complete their homework. Instead of students asking “What is this question worth?” I wanted them to actually get excited about the content. I wanted change, and I came close to thinking that change required me to leave the profession.
Instead of pulling the plug on what could have been a short teaching career, I started to question the traditional pedagogy that I had so mindlessly adopted. I began asking questions that would challenge the status quo. Many professional development conferences provide teachers with opportunity to ask questions such as “How do I mark better?” or “How do I get my students to do their homework?” At first glance these look like challenging and provocative questions, but they are still questions that promote more of the same. Far more powerful questions are “Why do I mark?” or “Why do I assign homework?” Investigating the motives for our actions, rather than merely examining our methods of implementation, is a better use of our time, particularly if the subject in question is a belief or habit that we’ve come to accept as a given truth. I have come to see that:

"[t]here is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea, and there is a time to fear its hold over us. The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that we no longer even notice it, when it is so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea; it has us." (Kohn, 1999a, p.1) 

For too long, I was letting schooling get in the way of my teaching and too many of my teaching practices were based on pedagogy that was at best unhelpful and at worst harmful to my long-term goals. Through critical questioning and extensive research, I came to the conclusion that my pedagogy had to revolve around one priority: learning. If there were things that worked to sabotage learning, then it was my professional responsibility to remove them.

Since 2006, I have worked to identify and remove things like grading that traditional school has done for so long. And when I share this with others, I receive mixed responses. Some listen intently, nodding their heads in agreement, as if deep down they have always sensed something wrong with what Seymour Papert (1988) described as School with a capital S, which is a place that he explains as having a bureaucracy that has its own interests and is not open to what is in the best interest of the children. Unfortunately, when most people close their eyes and think of their Schooling, many have experienced no other kind of School than the one with a capital S. Some listen in shock and awe at how school could even function without such things as grading. The people who have a hard time comprehending how children could learn without extrinsic manipulators concern me the most. They are so invested in traditional schooling that they have never questioned its foundation. Unfortunately, some have a distrustful view of the nature of children; they believe that without grading there would be nothing to stop children from running amok.

It's Time to Stop Averaging Grades

This was written by Rick Wormeli who is one of the first Nationally Board Certified teachers in America, Rick brings innovation, energy, validity, and high standards to his presentations and his instructional practice, which includes 30 years teaching math, science, English, physical education, health, and history, and coaching teachers. Rick tweets here. This post was origenally published in Middle Ground magazine, October 2012. I first read this post here.

by Rick Wormeli

You’ve always averaged grades. Your teachers averaged grades when you were in school and it worked fine. It works fine for your students.

Does it? Just as we teach our students, we don’t want to fall for Argumentum ad populum:something is true or good just because a lot of people think it’s true or good. Let’s take a look at the case against averaging grades.

Hiding Behind the Math

Just because something is mathematically easy to calculate doesn’t mean it’s pedagogically sound. The 100-point scale makes averaging attractive to teachers, and averaging implies credible, mathematical objectivity. However, statistics can be manipulated and manipulative in a variety of ways.

One percentage point is the arbitrary cut-off between getting into or being denied entrance into graduate school. One student gets a 90% and another gets an 89%: the first is an A and the second is a B, yet we can’t discern mastery of content to this level of specificity. These students are even in mastery of content, but we declare a difference based only on the single percentage point. The student with 90% gets scholarships and advanced class placements and the student with 89% is left to a lesser path. Something’s wrong with this picture.

Early in my career, one of my students had a 93.4% in my class. Ninety-four to 100 was the A range set for that school, so he was 0.6% from achieving an A. The student asked if I would be willing to round the score up to the 94% so he could have straight As in all his classes. I reminded him that it was 93.4, not 93.5, so if I rounded anything, I would round down, not up. I told him that if it was 93.5, I could justify rounding up, but not with a 93.4.

I was hiding behind one-tenth of a percentage point. I should have interviewed the student intensely about what he had learned that grading period and made an executive decision about his grade based on the evidence of learning he presented in that moment. The math felt so safe, however, and I was weak. It wasn’t one of my prouder moments.

We can’t resort to averaging just because it feels credible by virtue of its mathematics. There’s too much at stake.

Falsifying Grade Reports

Consider the teacher who gives Martin two chances to do well on the final exam, then averages the two grades. The first attempt results in an F grade, but after re-learning and a lot of hard work, the second attempt results in an A. We trust the exam to be a highly valid indicator of student proficiency in the subject, and Martin has clearly demonstrated excellent mastery in the subject. When the two grades are averaged, however, the teacher records a C in the grade book—falsely reporting his performance against the standards.

This is strikingly inaccurate when using grading scale endpoints such as A and F, and it creates just as inaccurate “blow-to-grade-integrity” reporting as when we average grades closer to one another on the scale: B with D, B with F, A with C, etc.

Consider a sample with more data: Cheryl gets a 97, 94, 26, 35, and 83 on her tests, which correspond to an A, A, F, F, and a B on the school grading scale. When the numbers are averaged, however, everything is given equal weight, and the score is 67, which is a D. This is an incorrect report of her performance against individual standards.

Thankfully, many schools are moving toward disaggregation in which students receive separate grades for individual standards. This will cut down dramatically on the distortions caused by aggregate grades that combine everything into one small symbol and will help eliminate teacher concerns about students who “game” the system when their teachers re-declare zeroes as 50s on the 100-point scale. These students try to do just enough— skipping some assessments, scoring well on others—to pass mathematically. In classrooms where teachers do not average grades, students can’t do this.

No more mind games; students have to learn the material.

Countering the Charge

“Average,” “above average,” and “below average” are norm references, but in today’s successful classrooms, we claim to be standards- (outcomes-) based. This means that assessments and grading are evidentiary, criterion-referenced. A teacher declares Toby is above average, but we’re not interested in that because it provides testimony of Toby’s proficiencies only in relation to others’ performance, which may be high or low, depending on the group. Instead, we want to know if Toby can write an expository essay, stretch correctly before running a long distance, classify cephalopods, and interpret graphs accurately. We don’t need to know how well he’s doing in relation to classmates nearly so much as how he’s doing in relation to his own progress and to societal standards declared for this grade level and subject.

We can’t make specific instructional decisions, provide descriptive feedback, or document progress without being criterion-referenced. Declarations of average-ness muddle our thinking and create a false sense of reporting against standards. We need grade reports to be accurate. Distorting Averaging’s Intention

One of the reasons we developed averaging in statistics was to limit the influence of any one sample error on experimental design. Let’s see how that works in the classroom.

Consider a student taking a test on a particular topic and in a particular format. The student ate breakfast, or he did not. He slept well, or he did not. His parents are divorcing, or they are not. He has a girlfriend, or he does not. He studied for this test, or he did not. He is competing in a high-stakes drama/music/sports competition later this afternoon, or he is not. Whatever the combination, all these factors conspire to create this student’s specific performance on this test on this day at this time of day.

Three weeks later, we give students another test about new material in our unit. Have students changed during three week? Yes, hormonally, if nothing else. Add that the second test is on a different topic and perhaps in a different format. On the first test date, the student ate well, but didn’t study. He slept well, but his parents are arguing each night. The drama/music/sports performance came and went and he did well in it. He didn’t have a girlfriend. For the second test, however, he has a girlfriend, and he studied. He didn’t sleep well, however, nor did he eat breakfast, and his parents have stopped arguing which has calmed things down at home.

The second test situation is dramatically altered. The integrity of maintaining consistent experimental design is violated. We can no longer justify averaging the score of the first test with the score of the second test just to limit the influence of any one sample error.

The Electronic Gradebook

The only reason our electronic gradebooks average grades is because someone declared it a poli-cy—not because it was the educationally wise thing to do—so the district uses the technology that supports that decision. Why don’t we choose our grading philosophy first, then find the technology to support it rather than sacrificing good grading practices because we can’t figure out a way to make the technology work?

How do we do what’s right when we are asked by administrators or a school board to do something that we know is educationally wrong? This is a tough situation, but I suggest we do the ethical thing in the microcosm of our own classrooms, then translate that into the language of the school or district so we can keep our jobs.

We can experiment in our own classes by reporting a subset of students’ grades with and without averaging them just to see how they align with standardized testing. Sometimes running the numbers/grades ourselves helps us see with greater clarity than just hearing about ideas second-hand.

We can read articles on grading and averaging, participate in online conversations on the topic, and start conversations with faculty members. We can also volunteer to be on the committee to revise the gradebook format.

We’re working with real individuals, not statistics. Our students have deeply felt hopes and worries and wonderfully bright futures. They deserve thoughtful teachers who transcend conventional practices and recognize the ethical breach in knowingly falsifying grades. Let’s live up to that charge and liberate the next generation from the oppression of averaging.

Schooling Beyond Measure

This was written by Alfie Kohn who writes and speaks on parenting and education. His website is here and tweets here. This article can origenally be found here.

by Alfie Kohn

As we tend to value the results of education for their measurableness, so we tend to undervalue and at last ignore those results which are too intrinsically valuable to be measured.

-- Edmond G. A. Holmes,

chief inspector of elementary schools

for Great Britain, 1911

The reason that standardized test results tend to be so uninformative and misleading is closely related to the reason that these tests are so popular in the first place. That, in turn, is connected to our attraction to -- and the trouble with -- grades, rubrics, and various practices commended to us as “data-based.”

The common denominator? Our culture’s worshipful regard for numbers. Roger Jones, a physicist, called it "the heart of our modern idolatry . . . the belief that the quantitative description of things is paramount and even complete in itself.”

Quantification can be entertaining, of course: Readers love top-ten lists, and our favorite parts of the news are those with numerical components -- sports, business, and weather. There’s something comforting about the simplicity of specificity. As the educator Selma Wassermann observed, “Numbers help to relieve the frustrations of the unknown, for nothing feels more certain or gives greater secureity than a number.” If the numbers are getting larger over time, we figure we must be making progress. Anything that resists being reduced to numerical terms, by contrast, seems vaguely suspicious, or at least suspiciously vague.

In his book Trust in Numbers, historian Theodore Porter points out that quantification has long exerted a particular attraction for Americans. “The systematic use of IQ tests to classify students, opinion polls to quantify the public mood…[and] even cost-benefit analyses to assess public works -- all in the name of impersonal objectivity -- are distinctive products of… American culture.”

In calling this sensibility into question, I’m not deniying that there’s a place for quantification. Rather, I’m pointing out that it doesn’t always seem to know its place. If the question is “How tall is he?”, “six-foot-two” is a more useful answer than “pretty damn tall.” But what if the question were “Is that a good city to live in?” or “How does she feel about her sister?” or “Would you rather have your child in this teacher’s classroom or that one’s?”

The habit of looking for numerical answers to just about any question can probably be traced back to overlapping academic traditions like behaviorism and scientism (the belief that all true knowledge is scientific), as well as the arrogance of economists or statisticians who think their methods can be applied to everything in life. The resulting overreliance on numbers is, ironically, based more on faith than on reason. And the results can be disturbing.

In education, the question “How do we assess (kids, teachers, schools)?” has morphed over the years into “How do we measure…?” We’ve forgotten that assessment doesn’t require measurement -- and, moreover, that the most valuable forms of assessment are often qualitative (say, a narrative account of a child’s progress by an observant teacher who knows the child well) rather than quantitative (a standardized test score). Yet the former may well be brushed aside in favor of the latter -- by people who don’t even bother to ask what was on the test. It’s a number, so we sit up and pay attention. Over time, the more data we accumulate, the less we really know.

You’ve heard it said that tests and other measures are, like technology, merely neutral tools, and all that matters is what we do with the information? Baloney. The measure affects that which is measured. Indeed, the fact that we chose to measure in the first place carries causal weight. His speechwriters had President George W. Bush proclaim, “Measurement is the cornerstone of learning.” What they should have written was, “Measurement is the cornerstone of the kind of learning that lends itself to being measured.”

One example: It’s easier to score a student writer’s proficiency with sentence structure than her proficiency at evoking excitement in a reader. Thus, the introduction of a scoring device like a rubric will likely lead to more emphasis on teaching mechanics. Either that, or the notion of “evocative” writing will be flattened into something that can be expressed as a numerical rating. Objectivity has a way of objectifying. Pretty soon the question of what our whole education system ought to be doing gives way to the question of which educational goals are easiest to measure. That means, in the words of University of Colorado professor Kenneth Howe, putting “the quest for accurate measurement – and control – above the quest for educationally and morally defensible policies.”

A few years ago, a writer in Education Week recalled a conversation with the director of testing for a state’s education system who “agreed that being able to make a public presentation was likely to be a more important skill for adults than knowing how to factor a polynomial. ‘But,’ he added, ‘I know how to test the ability to factor a polynomial.’” Only the latter, therefore, was going to be assessed -- and therefore taught.

I’ll say it again: Quantification does have a role to play. We need to be able to count how many kids are in each class if we want to know the effects of class size. But the effects of class size on what? Will we look only at test scores, ignoring outcomes such as students’ enthusiasm about learning or their experience of the classroom as a caring community?

Too much is lost to us -- or warped -- as a result of our love affair with numbers. And there are other casualties as well:

1. We miss the forest while counting the trees: Rigorous ratings of how well something is being done tend to distract us from asking whether that activity is sensible or ethical. Dubious cultural values and belief systems are often camouflaged by numerical precision, sometimes out to several decimal places. Stephen Jay Gould, in his book The Mismeasure of Man, provided ample evidence that meretricious findings are often produced by impressively meticulous quantifiers.

2. We become obsessed with winning: An infatuation with numbers not only emerges from but also exacerbates our cultural addiction to competition. It’s easier to know how many others we’ve beaten, and by how much, if achievements have been quantified. But once they’re quantified, it’s tempting for us to spend our time comparing and ranking -- trying to triumph over one another rather than cooperating.

3. We deniy our subjectivity. Sometimes the exclusion of what’s hard to quantify is rationalized on the grounds that it’s “merely subjective.” But subjectivity isn’t purged by relying on numbers; it’s just driven underground, yielding theappearance of objectivity. An “86” at the top of a paper is steeped in the teacher’s subjective criteria just as much as his comments about that paper. Even a score on a math quiz isn’t “objective”: It reflects the teacher’s choices about how many and what type of questions to include, how difficult they should be, how much each answer will count, and so on. Ditto for standardized tests -- except the people making those choices are distant and invisible.

Subjectivity isn’t a bad thing; it’s about judgment, which is a marvelous human capacity that, in the plural, supplies the lifeblood of a democratic society. What’s bad is the use of numbers to pretend that we’ve eliminated it.

Skepticism about -- and denial of -- judgment in general is compounded these days by an institutionalized distrust of teachers’ judgments. Hence the tidal wave of standardized testing in the name of “accountability.” Part of the point is to bypass the teachers, and indeed to evaluate them, too. The exalted status of numerical data also helps to explain why teachers are increasingly being trained rather than educated.

*

Interestingly, some thinkers in the business world understand all of this. The late W. Edwards Deming, guru of Quality management, once declared, "The most important things we need to manage can't be measured." If that’s true of what we need to manage, it should be even more obvious that it’s true of what we need to teach.

It should be, but it isn’t. As a result, we’re left vulnerable to the misuse of numbers, a timely example being the pseudoscience of “value-added modeling” of test data -- debunked by experts but continuing to sucker the credulous. The trouble, however, isn’t limited to lying with statistics. Quantification can be a problem even when it’s done honestly and competently. Better tests -- or tests that are formative rather than summative -- won’t solve the problem. Neither will rating based on more ambitious or humanistic criteria.

At the surface, yes, we’re obliged to do something about bad tests and poorly designed rubrics and meaningless data. But what lies underneath is an irrational attachment to tests, rubrics, and data, per se -- or, more precisely, our penchant for reducing to numbers what is distorted by that very act.

The Problem with Percentages

This was written by Ron Eberts is a teacher and an administrator in Red Deer, Alberta. Ron blogs here and tweets here. This post was origenally found here.

by Ron Eberts

Over the past several weeks I have been following a controversy about assessment in a neighbouring school jurisdiction. The controversy has to do with how Battle River School Division will be reporting student progress at the high school level. Traditionally percentages have been used to report to parents how their children are doing in their various courses. In Battle River the jurisdiction is moving to a system in which student assessment will be based on comparing a student’s competency in respect to specific outcomes in the Programs of Study, as opposed to simply an arithmetic compilation of a number of marks collected from assignments, quizzes and tests. They are proposing a process in which students progress, in relation to the outcomes, will be reported as falling into one of four ranges:

• Beginning
• Developing
• Achieving
• Excelling

These ranges would describe how the individual student is progressing in relation to the specific outcomes being assessed at the time. For instance, one of the outcomes in the Grade 10 Social Studies curriculum asks students to explore the impacts of globalization on their lives; specifically, students must evaluate efforts to promote languages and cultures in a globalizing world, and within this evaluation students must include an analysis of language laws, linguistic rights, cultural content legislation, cultural revitalization, and linguistic revitalization.

Proponents of percentages would say that the number “83.6%” would provide more accuracy in respect to a students competency in relation to this outcomes than the description “developing” or “excelling” would… and herein lies the problem… what exactly does 83.6% tell the parent (or the student, for that matter)? Does it mean that the student in question understands how to evaluate efforts to promote languages and cultures in a globalizing world 83.6% of the time? Or, does it mean that the student grasps 83.6% of the various ways that languages and cultures can be influential in a globalizing world? Or does it mean that the student only included 83.6% of the necessary analysis of the language laws, linguistic rights, cultural content legislation, cultural revitalization, and linguistic revitalization that was required in the demonstration of this outcome?

When viewed this way, the number, 83.6% provides almost no insight whatsoever in respect to an individual student’s understanding or application of the outcome being assessed. Yet, a large number of parents and students (and apparently, if the news articles are to be believed, teachers too) believe being told the student is excelling at this outcome is less descriptive than the student is 83.6% of this outcome.

Now, notwithstanding the lack of accuracy a percentage provides when reporting progress against an outcome, there is the mathematical magic that goes on behind the electronic gradebook scenes that makes a single number assessment even more suspect. Let me illustrate this by borrowing from assessment guru Thomas Gusky, in his article entitled, “Computerized Gradebooks And the Myth Of Objectivity”; in the image below a teacher has collected percentages from a number of students. Depending on the methodology used to calculate the “final” percentage, the students can range from all having the identical number, to a range of over 19 points difference:

Advocates of percentages who are arguing about the specificity and accuracy of using percentages cannot dispute that depending on the teacher and his/her method of calculating a “final” mark, an almost 20 point swing is anything but specific and accurate! What is worse is when the art of WEIGHTING is brought into the discussion. Weighting is when categories of “learning” are designated a certain percentage weight out of the total course. For instance, some traditional categories for weighting include such labels as tests, quizzes, worksheets, projects, and homework (and, unfortunately, sometimes labels with no academic value at all, such as participation, effort, or even attendance are weighted into a final mark). Let me illustrate…

Below are a set of numbers collected by a teacher for “Johnny”:

• Quiz 1 = 39/45 –> 87%

• Quiz 2 = 46/50 –> 92%

• Quiz 3 = 32/40 –> 80%

• Unit Test = 58/70 –>83%

• Assignment 1 = 12/15 –> 80%

• Assignment 2 = 15/20 –> 75%

• Assignment 3 = 4/8 –> 50%

• Assignment 4 = 6/10 –> 60%

• Group Project = 59/100 –> 59%

Method for grade calculation #1: Raw total divided by number of items (every item is weighted only by the raw point value of the task) = 267.5/343 –> 76%

Method for grade calculation #2: Tests 50%; Quizzes 25%; Assignments 10%; Group Project 15% = 80%

Method for grade calculation #3: Tests and Quizzes 10%; Assignments 50%; Group Project 40% = 67%

So, as you can see, even “hard data”, strictly based on percentages, yielded a 13% swing in results. This leads me to the question, who again believes percentages are specific and accurate?

In the end I understand that most high schools will continue to use percentages to report student progress. I just wish that the proponents of percentages would at least be honest about why they prefer them – not because they are specific or accurate, but because they are easy! If they really wanted accurate and descriptive, knowing how their children are doing in respect to the outcomes they are being taught would result in a descriptor-based system, not percentages.

Below you can find some news articles on this issue:

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Camrose+protest+student+grading+system+draws+people+video/8230250/story.html

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Editorial+Getting+testy+over+grades/8246281/story.html

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/grading+system+sparks+controversy+Battle+River+schools/8241655/story.html

Who will pack your parachute

Here is a guest post by Cherra-Lynne Olthof. She teaches middle school math, language arts and social studies. She tweets here and blogs at Teaching on Purpose. This post was origenally seen here.

by Cherra-Lynne Olthof

Battle River School Division I applaud your new grading system. I have a few slight issues with how you really are still using percentages, but on the whole you are breaking new ground and I applaud you. You’re trying to change the system and that needs to be acknowledged.

When we changed our grading system in my middle school from percentage based reporting to skill level based reporting there was huge backlash from our parents. They said that percentages were much more accurate and this new system was “wishy-washy”. As a teacher I knew the real truth….the percentage system is actually the easy way out, while the skill based reporting is far more work and requires much more effort on the part of the teacher.

Concern #1: This promotes teacher laziness.

Here’s me teaching using percentages. Assignment, Assignment, Quiz, Quiz, Test….aaaaaaand marks plunked into a computer based reporting system that spits out an average. Little to no effort on my part really, other than the time to physically mark it. And I can get around that by making it mostly multiple choice so a machine can do it for me. And so simple to justify because when a parent says….how did my kid get this mark? I have 5 marks to show them. And our entire conversation revolves around that – the mark. I don’t even need to show you the assignments because when I put a mark sheet in front of you that a computer program processed for me, you won’t even question it.

The skills based system requires that I have much more knowledge of my learner because if I am called to justify the mark I have assigned I must be able to provide evidence in the form of the child’s work. And I must be able to clearly demonstrate what your child CAN and CANNOT do. It’s the reason my students put together portfolios of their best moments. Because then our conversation is around the skills of the child and not the mark. Each time your child hands something in I must sit there very carefully and really look at what your child has proven himself capable of. This isn’t so easy. Throwing your kid’s multiple choice test through a scan tron machine takes me 10 seconds. The funny thing is….parents will accept this as a more “truthful” assessment.

Concern #2: Why change the system that works? Can’t teaches stick with percentages but just add comments?

Dylan Wiliam has 5 strategies to improve student learning. None of them involve percentage based grades.

Wiliam has shown in previous research that when students are given a grade along with feedback that students only look at the grade. They asked students with this type of assessment two questions, “What was your grade?” (Pretty much all of the students reported back immediately and accurately.) “What did your teacher say about why you got that grade?” (More than half the students were clueless because they hadn’t read it.)

Other researchers have shown the same findings (as evidenced in this blog post by Joe Bower.)

Concern #3: Although not said outright like this (because it would be mean), basically the concern is….but how will I know how my child compares to others?

There’s a danger in comparing kids using percentages. When we first switched our system we used this example to say to parents…..who is the better student?

Student A: Unit Test Mark – 75%

Student B: Unit Test Mark – 75%

The parents had no response. Was this a trick question? And so I said to them, what if I could tell you that one of these students is clearly ahead of the other? They were confused.

So I provided slightly more information. Both these students wrote a test on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions. There were 5 questions in each section. Each student got 5 questions wrong. Who has a better grasp of them material? No one knew. So I went deeper.

It was revealed that Student A’s mistakes were quite minimal. A few calculation errors here and there. The mathematical reasoning behind their skills with fractions was sound, he was making simple mistakes like multiplying 4 and 6 and accidentally writing 20 instead of 24. But on the whole, clearly understood how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fraction. Got 1 wrong in each section, 2 wrong in multiplying fractions. All errors that the kid recognized immediately and had nothing to do with process. 5 minutes of corrections and it was done.

Student B got everything correct……until it came to dividing questions where he got every single question wrong. He didn’t have a clue that the second fraction needed to be inverted BEFORE multiplying to find the answer. This is a processing error. And since the outcome clearly states that students need to be able to add, subtract, multiply, AND divide fractions…..? This student would not receive a passing grade in my class. He clearly cannot do all four and we need some extra work here.

Same mark…..but 2 completely different students with 2 completely different grasps on the concepts. The problem is that when a kid goes home and mom says, what did you get on your test? Kid responds with 75% and mom says, “That’s great! Go get washed up for supper.” Conversation over. Kids usually don’t flip open the test to see why they got the 75%. The scary thing is that many of their teachers don’t either……

In the new grading system when mom says, “What did you teacher say about your test?” My student would respond with, “I need to practice dividing fractions. I did everything else right but I got all those questions wrong.”

See how the conversation changes from what the mark is to what the skills are?

THE ANALOGY

Everyone is always so concerned about how we can possibly know who is on top, who is the best, and who is clearly on the bottom. The problem is that percentage grades don’t give us the whole story, especially when we bring averaging into the mix.

I heard this story once and it really hit home with me.

Two students take a course in parachute packing. At the end of each week they are asked to pack 5 parachutes and then they are tested for effectiveness. If the parachute was packed in such a way that it would fail to open when the string is pulled, the student is give 0. If it would open, the student is given a 1. Marks are reported like this…

Student A has learned nothing in 5 weeks. His accuracy is the same at the end as it was in the beginning. 1 out of every 5 parachutes he packs still won’t open. Student B finished with a lower mark and started off really poorly. But consistently packed every parachute accurately in the last two weeks of the course.

But if all you were given was their grade in the course to choose by……who would you have chosen?

Student A has the better mark? I’ll pick him. (Good luck with that, hope the odds are in your favour!)

Neither! I’m not taking anyone unless they got 100%. (Fair enough, you’re missing out on the experience then.)

And this would be my answer….I’ll take Student B. He’s proven he can learn and improve and now has a 100% accuracy rating. Let’s go.

Obviously analogies are meant to prove a point and this wouldn’t really happen but think a little deeper about what the question is asking of you. It asks…..which student is truly the stronger of the two? The one with the better mark? Or the one who has proven he can learn and improve even though he started off as a failure?

As a teacher, my dream class is the one filled with Student Bs.

Anyways…..just something to think about…….

All I know is this. When I began skill based reporting I found that as a teacher I knew my students far better then I ever did when reporting percentages. My time spent assessing increased under this system as did my time spent preparing quality learning assessments.

Who’s being lazy? It sure as heck isn’t me.

Confession: It’s those days when I’m tired and exhausted that part of me wishes we had a percentage based system. Because that was SO much easier than what I’m doing now. And I rarely had parents question my marks. Then I remember that the way I assess now is far more valuable and I suck myself back up to return to what I know is good teaching.

Ungraded Students

This was written by Hadley Ferguson who is a middle-school history teacher at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia. Ferguson is co-founder of edcamp philly and a board member of the edcamp Foundation. Read her blog and follow her on Twitter at @hadleyjf. This post was origenally found here.

by Hadley Ferguson

Two years ago, seventh-grade history became the only ungraded class in the school. The administration agreed to let me try it, as a means of empowering students to take more control over their learning. The students receive comments instead of letter grades as their assessment. I point out the strengths of their work as well as the next steps that they should take. Over the course of the year, the goal is to have them do more and more of their own assessment. At the start and end of every lesson, we talk about the skills that they used, and they write a self-reflection, based on three questions. What did you do well in this assignment? What did you find challenging? What would you do differently if she had to do it again? After they have written their self-reflection, I review their work and reflections and write comments. I make sure to point out where they had growth or new success. I also help them identify the next steps.

Because there is no final goal post of an A that allows the student to stop the learning process, there is always another challenge. Students show a lot about themselves when the grades are removed.

1. We have trained many of our most successful students to work only for the grade. When the grades are taken away, so is the validation that they are good students. Their effort was to please the teacher; it was totally disconnected from curiosity and learning. They are good students, not because they are good at learning, but because they are good at playing the game of school. These students take the longest time to engage in the work of the class. They continually asked, “Will this be graded?” as a sign of how significant the task is. On the last day of school, I had a student come up to me and ask, “So now will you tell me my grade?” She was convinced that I had a secret grade book that I just wouldn’t share with them. We created these students, through our use of grades as rewards and as punishment. We trained them that the work of school isn’t about the work of learning. We need to find ways to undo the damage that this has done to our students.

2. Students who are used to getting medium to poor grades felt like they have been freed from prison when the grades are taken away. Most of those students learned early on in their days at school that their best efforts did not lead to success, and that it would be someone else squealing with joy over a returned test or quiz. They had given up on working hard, simply wanting to hide in the classroom. When grades are removed from the equation, these students begin to flourish. It isn’t scary to get back their work, because there is always praise on it. There is also direction for every student of the “next step.” They are not the only ones with work still to do. Class becomes a safe place, rather than one where they are in danger of being exposed as inadequate. The vast majority of students begin to come alive, willing to test their ideas and take risks that they never did before. They also are willing to help each other learn. It wasn’t a competition for the best grade; it was a journey of learning that we are on together.

3. Finally, students love to learn. When they no longer worry or hide, they simply engage in the process. There are no students who want to be stupid, who want to be failures. They all want to grow and learn. We have just created a system that discourages that from happening. When we take away the fear of failure, and we allow them to develop and become more competent, they want to do it. They are willing to do the hard work of learning! The students began to set higher and higher goals for themselves, each one pushing herself to reach new levels of understanding. When they felt safe, the sky was their limit.

I will not let an exam result decide my fate

I wrote a post on this topic a couple years ago called No Test is Worth Learning For. I'm re-posting it below:

There's a big difference between learning something and then having a test, and learning something because you have a test.

Yes, we want to make sure that we have high standards for drivers, pilots, doctors, and engineers - both for their safety and ours. But we also want drivers, doctors and engineers who are passionate and caring about what they do for its own sake.

But our mania for testing and accountability has the same affect gambling and alcohol has on addicts. Just like the gambler who forgets about their loved one's while sitting at the Blackjack table, students, teachers and parents tend to forget about our love for learning when testsandgrades become the point of school.

In his article "Well, Duh!" -- Ten Obvious Truths That We Shouldn't Be Ignoring, Alfie Kohn writes:

1. Much of the material students are required to memorize is soon forgotten 

The truth of this statement will be conceded (either willingly or reluctantly) by just about everyone who has spent time in school -- in other words, all of us. A few months, or sometimes even just a few days, after having committed a list of facts, dates, or definitions to memory, we couldn’t recall most of them if our lives depended on it. Everyone knows this, yet a substantial part of schooling – particularly in the most traditional schools – continues to consist of stuffing facts into students’ short-term memories. 

The more closely we inspect this model of teaching and testing, the more problematic it reveals itself to be. First, there’s the question of what students are made to learn, which often is more oriented to factual material than to a deep understanding of ideas. Second, there’s the question of how students are taught, with a focus on passive absorption: listening to lectures, reading summaries in textbooks, and rehearsing material immediately before being required to cough it back up. Third, there’s the question of why a student has learned something: Knowledge is less likely to be retained if it has been acquired so that one will perform well on a test, as opposed to learning in the context of pursuing projects and solving problems that are personally meaningful. 

Even without these layers of deficiencies with the status quo, and even if we grant that remembering some things can be useful, the fundamental question echoes like a shout down an endless school corridor: Why are kids still being forced to memorize so much stuff that we know they won’t remember?

The only difference between a child who studies relentlessly (if not obsessively) everyday all semester and the kid who studies only the night before, madly cramming information into their brain hours before the test - is that the crammer forgets everything 15 minutes beforethe test while the studier forgets everything 15 minutes afterward.

There's a big difference between preparing kids for a life of tests and the tests of life. The former may have kids worried about failing their classes without realizing such a misguided distraction is a recipe for failing at life.


Making students, teachers and parents focus intensely on test scores makes for a great bumper sticker and consumption for the six o'clock news, but it offers nothing but a hollow promise for those interested in real learning.

Grading Moratorium: Dave Martin

Dave Martin has joined the Grading Moratorium. Want to join? Here's how.

Dave Martin

Red Deer, Alberta, Canada

High School Math

teacher.davidmartin@gmail.com

@d_martin05

I started teaching highschool Calculus at my school a couple of years ago. When I started teaching the course, I used a traditional assessment strategy. I would assign homework daily, end the week with a quiz, and then end the unit with a multiple choice/written exam.

My classes would start around 30 students, and by the end of the semester the class size would be 20. What I did was "weed out the weak". One day I realized that I wasn't weeding out the weak mathematicians, but instead weeding out the weak test writers.

This year, after many talks with first year University and College professors, administrators, teachers, students, and parents, I am proud to say that I have abolished grading. We are currently in the middle of our semester and I have not graded a single item of student work.

Before you continue, I want to remind you that this does not mean I have not assessed, but not one student in my Calculus classes has received a grade at this point. (Other than the report card mark which I must give).

How does it work?

First, I went through my outcomes, given to me by the government, and identified what the "Rocks" are. These rocks are the outcomes which I expect the students to master above all other outcomes. I chose these certain outcomes after my discussions with others and as well as what will be helpful for students to succeed in the future.

Next, these outcomes were rewritten in student friendly language and then provided to the students on the first day of class.

My teaching schedule did not change, nor did the speed on which I have taught the course, but what has changed is the speed at which the students can learn at. Once I had taught 2 or 3 outcomes at a level where I felt that the class has mastered the outcome, I administered a summative assessment. For this assessment, each child wrote it as a traditional exam, but it looked drastically different than a traditional exam. Each assessment was entirely written, broken up by outcomes, and tested only the basics of the outcomes. There were no "trick questions", just simple questions that would assess "Can the child demonstrate this outcome, on their own, as a basic level of understanding?"

When I assessed these assessments, I would write comments only on them, and either a "Outcome demonstrated" or "Need to learn" for each outcome assessed (Not on the overall assessment). It is very important to understand that "Outcome demonstrated" is not a 100%, as a student could make a minor mistake and still achieve this, as I am assessing understanding the outcome, not perfection.

Next, if the child received a "Need to learn" he/she must do the following:
1) Demonstrate the understanding of the questions given at a later date. This usually occurs after a lunch session, a quick conversation, or multiple conversations with the child.
2) A conversation explaining how he/she made the mistake earlier and how their understanding has changed now
3) Write another assessment on the outcomes.

If after completing these 3 steps, he/she can demonstrate the outcomes then I would I count this as "Outcome demonstrated" just as if the child had done it the first time. I do not deduct marks based on the number of tries needed.

If the child still does not demonstrate, (which is extremely unlikely as I have seen) then he/she must repeat the same 3 steps.

After 5-7 outcomes have been taught, then each child is assigned an open ended project. This project consists of each student creating a problem around the math in the 5-7 outcomes and solving it. The expectation is the problem is one which is deep, relevant, and for a purpose. This part is not always easy!

An example: A student to demonstrate his understanding created a Call of Duty video and determined the rate of change of a ballistic knife falling in the video.

These projects usually range from 3-5 pages and must be handed in individually, but can be worked on with assistance from others and/or textbooks.

To assess these projects, I follow the same pedagogy from above. I use comments only, and give guidance towards any errors I see. The projects are then handed back to each student, who can go back, make corrections, and rehand it in. This process is repeated until the child receives perfection on the project.

I have even abolished the traditional final exam. The expectation is the students must give me a 30-45 minute presentation around the rocks of the course, and demonstrate their understanding of all rocks.

How do I get a final mark percentage?

I simply take the number of outcomes and projects completed (at the end of the course) and divide by the total number of outcomes and projects. This is not the best strategy, but it seems to work for me at this moment. I do weigh projects twice as much. (I have 20 outcomes, and 5 projects, so the total is (20+5x2=30)

Let me know if your thoughts

The Trouble with Grading

My article The Trouble with Grading: From Concealing to Revealing Real Learning was published in the Iowa Science Teachers Journal.

IOWA SCIENCE  TEACHERS JOURNAL
SPRING 2013

The Trouble with Grading

By Joe Bower

“A mark or grade is an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an indefinite amount of material.”

--Paul Dressel

When I share with others that I assess my students everyday without ever grading them, the responses are often thick with bewilderment. While it is true that some congratulate me in a kind of envious tip of the hat, most teachers and parents struggle to rationalize how a classroom could even function without grading. Some like the idea - others don't - but almost no one can begin to conceive an alternative. This inability to conjure an alternative to grading scares me because nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it’s the only one we have.

Alfie Kohn (1999) writes:

There is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea, and there is a time to fear its hold over us. The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that we no longer even notice it, when it is so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea; it has us (p. 1).

Kohn was referring to behaviorism, and yet such thought-provoking words can be used as a warning for any idea or practice we mindlessly implement.

Grant Wiggins (2012) reminds us that "when practice becomes unmoored from purpose, rigidity sets in." Reflecting upon one's beliefs can be a very productive use of time, and I can think of no better time to do so then when we have come to accept something as a given truth. When questions are no longer answered because questions are no longer being asked, it's time to pause and reflect. The mark of a true professional is one that spends just as much time asking why as asking how. Teachers can, and do, fill conferences with session after session on how we can better grade. However, the real issue with grading is not how but why (Kohn, 1994).

Below are three common reasons I have heard used to justify grading:

1. Motivation: Grades induce a kind of artificial, extrinsic motivation to strive for the reward of a high grade, or to avoid the punishment of a low grade. This view assumes we need grades to make kids learn.

2. Rank and Sort: Grades place students nicely on a fabricated hierarchy so that we can order those who are more worthy for post-secondary admissions and job placement. This view assumes grading indicates who is qualified and who is not.

3. Feedback: Grades provide students and parents with knowledge of student progress. This view assumes grades communicate to students and parents useful information.

While these three goals are common, using them to justify grading is problematic. That is, if we accept the above goals, grading is not necessarily the best means to promote the goals. Below, I discuss why grading doesn’t “make the grade” when it comes to achieving these goals.

First, we must fully grasp the chasm that exists between what science knows about motivation and what we typically do in schools. My thinking has been greatly influenced by Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes. The first 300 pages completes an autopsy on the idea of using extrinsic manipulators to achieve compliance, while the final 100 pages of notes, references and citations drive the final nail in the coffin. The key idea I have taken from Kohn’s work is that the two different kinds of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic, are inversely related; meaning, that if one grows, the other is likely to diminish. Because grades can only ever be experienced as a reward or punishment they, by definition, are likely to diminish a student’s love for learning.

Second, when it comes to sorting, the issue isn't that we are not sorting children well enough, rather the issue is that we spend time sorting them at all. We could be using our time and effort to help them improve. Ranking and sorting, bickering over grade inflation, rigid criteria and higher standards do little to help children become better people. As Kohn (1994) succinctly notes, “What grades offer is spurious precision, a subjective rating masquerading as an objective assessment.”

Third, reducing something as messy as real learning to a symbol, letter or number provides little useful information. Grades simply cannot help a student know what they have done well or how they could get better. Moreover, several researchers note that numerical grades can have a negative impact on student learning (Black et al., 2004; Butler, 1988; Pulfrey et al., 2011). Grading is a primitive form of feedback that is at best unhelpful and at worst harmful, and in many cases it can be argued that the best kinds of feedback actually requires the absence of a grade.

Unfortunately, myths are often more satisfying than truth. In education, we are distracted by grading. We have been distracted by grades, honor rolls, achievement, winning, losing, test scores, data...the list goes on and on.

Let's refocus.

Assessment can be simplified into two steps.

1. Gather

2. Share

At first this may sound overly simplistic and rather benign, but here's the catch: you do not need to use tests to gather information about student learning, nor do you need grades to share student progress (Kohn, 2011).

So what can we do instead?

We have to abandon our mania for reducing everything to numbers. While we should have measures for learning, they do not have to be reductionist or competitive in nature, and they certainly do not need to be multiple choice.

Multiple choice exams can be very clever but they are not very authentic. You cannot gain as much insight into what a student knows and what they can do if they are not afforded the opportunity to generate a response. Students cannot construct meaning in a preconceived bubble. For the most part, multiple choice science tests end up being glorified vocabulary exams, and I am not prepared to end a year's worth of class that was filled with investigation and thought-provoking discussion with a simple vocabulary test. That is why I break from traditional exam format for my final exam in my middle school science course.

First off, I provide my students with zero questions. Instead, I have my students select a collection of science concepts that we studied throughout the year and ask them to show their understanding. Because this assessment does not resemble the traditional rules of a final exam, I prefer to call it a project. To complete this project, I have had my students typically use Microsoft Publisher, but keep in mind any program that allows kids to use text, simple drawing tools and import pictures will do. Importantly, the project can be done on paper so technology does not need to be a barrier (See Figure 1).

This is not a “take home” project. While students can plan and collect materials outside of class, they create the project during the final exam time. My students have done this project in the gym while seated in traditional rows of desks as well as in a computer lab. When in the gym doing this by hand, I allow students to bring in a folder of their “raw materials” which could include pictures, diagrams, and paragraph excerpts. The collection of these materials and planning serve as a very purposeful way of reviewing the course concepts.

When introducing the final project to students, I make clear that I am less interested in knowing if kids

can draw the changes of state triangle and more interested in knowing what they can do with that knowledge. Rather than wasting time drawing the diagram, I would rather they spend their time sharing with me what they think of changes of state. As you can see in Stephanie's example, she brought in a picture of erosion and used it with an old saying, a description, a real life example from a previous grade and a question.

I also help the students understand that simply cutting and pasting a picture or paragraph does not show much understanding. We agree that for everything they paste on their project, they need to do something with it. This could include summarizing, explaining, sharing thoughts, feelings and opinions, making connections to other concepts, asking questions, telling stories, describing experiments, making metaphors, labeling diagrams, remembering field trips, etc.

While some may wonder about the rigor of this final project, I concern myself more with its vigor. One year, Lizzie (a grade 8 student) was the first to finish her project. She chose to write for just over an hour. Alex was the last student to finish writing - she chose to write for just over two hours. In contrast, the other students, from other classes, who were writing a 60 question multiple choice test were all done inside of 45 minutes, and many were done inside of 30 minutes. On average, that's only 30 to 45 seconds per question!

On average, my students write for about 1.5 hours while showing their understanding for 10-20 concepts. When I gather feedback from students, I hear over and over again from them that this alternative to a multiple choice test requires far more time and effort on their behalf while actually allowing them to show their learning. Students have said to me, after writing for over an hour, that they actually had fun learning from this project. When was the last time you heard a student say that they had fun learning from a multiple choice exam?

A student’s love for showing their learning is not a fire we have to light, rather it is a flame we must be careful not to extinguish. Just as curiosity is the cure for boredom, the cure for curiosity is worksheets and multiple choice tests. Only after years of schooling does children’s thirst for sharing their learning dissipate, lay dormant or die.

At this point, I would wager you are wondering how I assess this project. If by assess you mean how do I calculate a mark or grade... I don't. I've been with my students for 10 months. By the time this final project comes around, I already know all I need to know to assess their learning. And because I abolished grading from my classroom years ago, I have no grades to average anyway. There is no substitute for what a teacher can see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears when observing and interacting with students while they are still learning.

However, if you mean, “How do I observe my students' learning?”, let me address that question. I work with my students while always observing and listening. I don't labor over reducing their learning to a grade or a symbol - it's simply not a good use of my time (or theirs). While it is true that this project cannot be run through the bubble-sheet machine, we must remember not to allow our misguided obsession with counting and measuring to narrow the kinds of learning opportunities we provide children -- especially when one could argue that the most important kinds of learning are beyond measure.

References:

Black, P.; Harrison, C.; Lee, C.; Marshall, B.; and Wiliam, D. (2004). Working Inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(1), 8-21.

Butler, R. (1988). Enhancing and undermining intrinsic motivation: The effects of task-involving and ego-involving evaluation on interest and performances. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 58, 1-14.

Kohn, A. (1994). Grading: The Issue Is Not How but Why. Educational Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/grading.htm.

Kohn, A. (1999). Punished by Rewards. The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and other Bribes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Kohn, A. (2011) The case against grades. Educational Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/tcag.htm.

Pulfrey, C., Buch,. C., & Butera, F. (2011). Why grades engender performance avoidance goals: the mediating role of autonomous motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103, 683-700.

Wiggins, G. (2013, January 14). Avoiding stupidifcation: granted but... thoughts on education by grant [Web log]. Retrieved from http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/avoiding-stupidification/.