Making the (Argument Against the) Grade

When people ask me what my least favorite part of teaching is, it's a no-brainer: grading. I could write countless sonnets about all the ways in which and reasons why I hate it. It's not just that it's so time-consuming (it is) and steals precious weekend hours (it does) or that I labor over how to express the most appropriate, individualized feedback for each student (I absolutely do!); my biggest complaint is that I'm increasingly convinced that this part of my job - assigning letters and numbers to student products - does little to help them learn.

On the other hand, they do lots to distract students from learning objectives, to increase competition among students, and to raise student and parent anxiety. None of that, frankly, is good for my classroom or the learning opportunities I'm trying to create there. I'm not the only teacher who's been interrupted as she introduces a new activity or assignment to be asked "how many points" it is, and we've all spent time consoling students whose disappointment over a single assessment led to tears, anger, or the silent treatment. As fabulous as the parents in my community are, they're still more apt to ask about grades than they are about growth on other continuum.

I'm not saying grades don't motivate students. Certainly, some students crave the recognition that comes with acknowledgement of achievement, whether it's an A+, a gold star, or honor roll, and that desire fuels work. But I question if those students are really engaging in authentic learning and not just high-level people-pleasing; in fact, I can't help but wonder sometimes if the learning that happens in those pursuits is incidental to the grabbing of the carrot at the end of the proverbial stick.

None of this is intended to disparage students who want to succeed academically. I respect students who hold high standards for themselves; I respect them more if their assessment of whether or not those standards have been met is derived from something bigger than the number or letter that appears in a gradebook.

Is this a lot to ask of a student? Maybe, but then I feel like it's our job to help students respond to a lot of other types of feedback and consider other means of evaluation. (To be fair, we need to do the same work with their parents - if we don't want them to obsess over grades, then the onus is also on us to explain our concerns in ways that don't rely solely on bad quiz scores.) A friend teaches at a school where students don't get letter grades at the end of the term; instead, they schedule 15 minute conversations with each teacher to talk about their progress, looking together at important products during the discussion and setting goals together for future improvement. It sounded magical, she said, and liberating... until she found over and over that students would engage in these conversations, saying all the right things, and then as a calculated, almost-afterthought, venture somewhat tentatively, "so, that would be, like, an A-?" It's the in-person equivalent of watching students flip to the last page of a returned paper to see the grade, ignoring all the meticulously crafted questions and comments about choices and structure - to them, the final grade is the most important thing; to me, it's the least.

None of this is revolutionary at this point. This Atlantic article is already a few years old, but feels as just as fresh as last spring's conferences, and it's just one of many recent pieces that questions the efficacy of grades. All over the place, schools are (and have been) experimenting with different formats for summative assessments; student-led conferences, student-curated portfolios, student-designed capstone projects and other options provide opportunities to demonstrate their learning - and more importantly, reflect on it. I'm not sure of the best path away from the traditional grading system so many (too many?) of us are still using, but I'm curious about what better alternatives exist.