Grades Gotta Go! (Part 4: "Purpose-Driven Grading")

The next issue with most grading systems is mis-using grades to achieve the wrong purpose. As you can tell, these issues with grading are all interrelated. The focus of today's topic deals directly with the question of why we use grades at all. What I find is that the purposes of grades tend to fall into one of two categories:

Produce a behavior (compliance) 

vs. 

Reflect mastery/provide feedback (learning)

Many teachers argue that grades should actually do both of the above, especially depending on the age of the learner. Commonly, some teachers and parents will suggest that students need grades to help them gain the value of learning until they later develop the intrinsic motivation to appreciate it on their own without these extrinsic "prompts" (grades).

First of all, this mindset plainly ignores what we know about motivation. It, yet again, is also one of the areas where many people would see the obvious fallacy in this position if they would just step outside of the world of institutional education for a moment. Let's imagine a parent saying, "I am trying to get my child to learn the value of eating healthy snacks instead of candy by repeatedly giving them pieces of chocolate.", or "We would like to get the employees in our company to see the value of the work they do just for the sake of the creativity and joy it provides them, so we will start paying bonuses for new ideas until they appreciate that it isn't about the financial gain of designing new products." 

As absurd as this reasoning sounds, it is the same with grading policies. To be blunt, the idea of making people dependent upon a device to prove that it will help people get to a place where they can function better without that very device is just as dumb as it sounds. And that is coming from a person who used to apply that silly mindset wholeheartedly in my former teaching days.

Secondly, there is no evidence to show it motivates learning even inside the public school system. Kindergartners in public schools and children in Montessori schools (or similar systems) demonstrate an enormous enthusiasm for learning without the "reward" or "punishment" of a grade being constantly put before them. This reality is so apparent, in fact, that my school district has a "backpack vision" (picture a child with a backpack on walking into school for the first time): We want students to exit (graduate) our system with the same passion for learning that they had when they entered our system, without economics determining success. The axiom at work here is that children naturally WANT to learn before they ever encounter a grading system! 

Are we going to say that they are mature enough to understand the intrinsic value or "deeper appreciation" of learning at age 5 more than middle school or high school students? The entire line of reasoning here defies any sense of what is developmentally appropriate.

Here's the catch, though. The biggest problem with this misconception about grading is that it does indeed APPEAR to work. Of course, if you ratchet up the short-term external consequences (positive or negative) - and that is what grades are, consequences, then you will naturally see an increase in short-term compliance. This is why so many people think it is justified to use grades to produce a behavior, whether it be completing homework, turning things in on time, having an organized binder, coming to class prepared, getting a form signed by parents, attempting bonus problems, etc. (the list is endless of what we "bribe" kids to do).

Truth be told, there are appropriate times for extrinsic motivation. The problem with using grades in this way is that it could, in fact, actually have a detrimental, inverse effect on learning. And that is NOT okay!

At this point, it doesn't require a lot of studies (although they have been done) to prove this point. Every teacher already knows this is true because every teacher has heard these famous words asked by more than one student: "Is this for a grade?" Why do they care to know? Because if it's not, then why bother doing it? The value of learning doesn't even cross the student's mind when immersed in a grading culture. Sadly, I am worried that it doesn't cross many teachers' minds either.


Daniel Pink presents some interesting findings about motivation and performance in this video (if you can't view the video above). What connections can be made between his comments and our current grading policies?

Grades Gotta Go! (Part 3-C: "Better Late Than Never")

Another issue with most grading systems happens when there is an emphasis on penalizing students for late work. Rick Wormeli deals with the 'late work' challenge here.




This topic gets to the heart of a much larger problem in our schools. We need to find ways to transition from time being the constant to learning being the constant. I won't dig in to that idea here too much, but I will say that the more asynchronous practices we can introduce, the better. We must begin to deconstruct the factory-model approach.

As far as grading goes, the bottom line is that policies that eliminate hope also tend to eliminate learning. Since learning is our business in public education, this should concern us.

This is my final entry dealing with the problems of grading as they relate to forcing all kids to learn at the same time and in the same way, although one could probably argue that all grading practices somehow connect to that issue.

I will look at another aspect of grading in next week's post.

Grades Gotta Go! (Part 3-B: "Practice Makes Permanent")

The next issue with most grading systems occurs when teachers grade students' first efforts or grade practice.

In his work on faulty grading practices that inhibit learning, Ken O' Connor includes the practice of "grading first efforts." As he explains, "learning is not a 'one-shot' deal."

This bad practice ties directly to the notion that all students should learn all things at the same time, which I discussed in my previous post. Instead of rehashing that idea here, I want to move now to the specific, problematic grading practices that result from this faulty thinking, the greatest of which is giving summative scores to people while they are still in the learning process.

The sports world already well understands the learning-performance cycle. Practices are used as opportunities to learn and develop skills while coaches constantly, immediately, directly, and specifically provide feedback for athletes. With good coaches and teammates (peers), athletes are receiving information in an ongoing manner for the purpose of helping them improve.

Athletes work hard and learn from mistakes in practices despite the fact that none of their efforts or stats is counted toward a single game’s outcome! You never see a basketball scoreboard start out with one team having an advantage based on free throw percentages during practice the night before the game. You never see a football team having to start a game down a touchdown because a quarterback had too many incomplete passes in practice that week.

When you watch ESPN’s Sportscenter, you are going to see and hear reports of all kinds of statistics and highlights, but none that come from practices. Why? Because the reporters, broadcasters, coaches, and fans from everywhere all recognize that it is the game where players need to be held accountable for their achievement.

Classroom teachers would do well to take notes from this analogy and refuse to grade students’ practice, including homework. Notice that I am very intentional about distinguishing grading from giving feedback. Feedback that “feeds forward” is a critical part of the practice component of learning a new skill or concept! Formative assessment is ongoing and necessary. Grading should not be mistakenly equated to providing feedback. Indeed, grading often interferes with effectivefeedback and has no correlation to learning.

Practice should be an opportunity for a student to receive timely feedback from teachers, experience peer-assessment, and carry out self reflections. Ensuring that these aspects are key ingredients to the learning cycle will help prevent another poor practice all too often employed, the infamous completion grade.

Completion grading is what teachers use to entice students to do their homework while not destroying their hope with a string of low grades for poor performance. It is most likely done with good intentions. However, it can be quite a destructive practice when it comes to learning. 

What teachers do not often have the chance to do is take a big step back and look at the big picture of practices that they have been using for a long time. With time to do so, I believe many educators would see just how illogical it is to use completion grades to build knowledge or skills.

First, completion grades mis-communicate ability and progress to both students and parents. Many times, a student receives several consecutive 100's on homework assignments only to fail the assessment. This leaves everyone confused.

Second, completion grades discourage critical thinking because there is no need for a student to evaluate his or her work, analyze errors, attempt more challenging problems, etc.

Third, completion grades do not adequately prepare students for assessments. In fact, they can actually interfere with the learning process because of poor practice. Students can repeatedly be doing things incorrectly if they are only graded for completing the task. This is probably the most obvious and harmful negative effect of completion grades.

Imagine a coach telling a baseball player to practice batting for a "completion" grade. No coach would ever tell the player to just practice swinging a set number of times just for the sake of doing the activity, while neglecting to consider form, stance, follow-through, contact with the ball, etc., and expect that to prepare the player for game situations against pitchers.

The above example is only baseball. What if we were to apply the mentality behind completion grades to other serious endeavors, let's say preparing to do surgery or flying a plane or putting a roof on a house? Even the thought of such a thing is unacceptable.

Virtually any activity that requires a particular execution of a skill should never be rehearsed over and over without considering the quality of the action because brain research teaches us that practice makes permanent. Good practice leads to better performance. Poor practice, which can go unchecked with completion grading, can lead to poorer performance. Think about that! A student can actually be "taught" to be worse at something through this type of grading method.

So, what is the solution to the problem of completion grades?

The answer is to not grade practice at all. Only give feedback!