Grades:

GRADES: HARMFUL TO LEARNERS OR HOPE-INSPIRING?

Are we talking about grades again????

Believe it or not, there are some of us teachers who like grades even less than students do. Grades have the potential to pit teachers against students. Grades don’t generally inspire students to do work. Grades often just make students feel bad. The meaning of grades can also be quite different from teacher to teacher.

The greatest problem arises when grades end up doing harm to student. How can grades possibly harm students? Grades are harmful when they hinder student learning. For example, grades can be discouraging to the point that they bring about student apathy and despair, ceasing all learning. Grades can fill a student with a paralyzing fear of failure, and thus cause anxiety in learning. Grades can lower self esteem and stamp out hope. Grades can indeed take all the fun out of learning.

Grades don’t always have these detrimental effects on students, but there are definitely grading decisions/policies that teachers make that do more harm than good. In this blog article “Grades Do More Harm Than Good,” Chris Couch explores some of the problems inherent with letter grades. In “When Grading Harms Student Learning,” Andrew Miller explores four specific grading practices that are harmful to student learning. He advocates for more equitable grading practices (e.g. standards-based grading, mastery-based grading, and competency-based grading) that provide hope and are aligned with the premise that “it’s never too late to learn.”

Our 8th grade math department believes that learning and hope must go hand in hand when it comes to grading. We actively eliminate harmful practices that take away hope for students (e.g. assigning zeros as grades, penalizing late work, grading student practice) and replace them with policies and practices that encourage student learning in a positive environment. Our focus is learning, not compliance for compliance sake. We seek to design grading systems that report on student mastery of standards. We work with families to figure out how best to promote good study habits and learning (coercion and grades are NOT an effective strategy to develop good study habits). Our goal is for students to not merely get the right answer, but to develop good critical thinking and problem solving skills. After all, that’s ultimately what math is really about.

Ultimately, grades are meant to be a measure/report of student learning. Grades are not meant to be the teacher's source of power over students.

We’d love to say “Good riddance!” to grades, but alas we can’t (at least for now). Instead, we try our best not to let grades get in the way and instead, we focus on effective teaching/learning practices.