Averaging Grades is Far Below Average

AVERAGING TO CALCULATE GRADES IS FAR BELOW AVERAGE...  

IT’S TIME FOR TEACHERS TO STOP SIMPLY AVERAGING SCORES TO REPORT STUDENT LEARNING!

Consider this scenario:

Let's say that you're a competitive swimmer in training.  In your first seven time trials, you post very mediocre times.  If we used letter grades to evaluate those first seven trials, you'd earn C's on all those times.  After your seventh time trial, you study film on your stroke and you discover a hitch in your stroke that is slowing you down significantly.  You work hard to correct the hitch and after much practice, your blow your last three time trials out of the water and you're swimming at an olympic level (an A+ grade).  If someone were to use the traditional "average" system of grading over the ten trials, you'd probably grade out at a B- or C.  However, if you are indeed currently swimming at an olympic level, calculating the average of all your time trials has no meaning.  The only thing that matters is the progress you’ve made which has resulted in your ability right now.  Your final evaluation should be a measure of your progress toward of becoming a high level competitive swimmer, not an average of all your performances.  In this situation, the average doesn’t have any meaning or usefulness.

Find the sum and divide by the number of numbers.  We’ve all been taught that when we are faced with a long list of numbers, finding the average is the optimal way to find the happy medium.  We're told that finding the average yields the one number that is the best representation of that set of numbers.   

All of us, even teachers, have fallen for that myth of the average…  Hook, line, and sinker!

In Rick Wormeli’s article “It’s Time to Stop Averaging Grades,” he argues that teachers need to abolish the average as a way of determining grades.  Calculating the average to determine a grade is an artificial and arbitrary measure of learning that in many ways does not even make sense at all.  In our AMS 8th grade math department, we believe that it is much more useful to families to report out on students’ progress towards achieving specific grade level learning goals.  Read more about our philosophy and system of reporting out/monitoring student progress here.