Why Change our Structure?

Challenges with Traditional Grading Practices

For decades, dating back to the early 1900s, experts have documented issues with the 100-point scale, percentages and letter grades. These scholars, including Thomas Guskey, Alfie Kohn, Ken O’Connor, and Joe Feldman, have concluded that the traditional grading system is an inequitable and inaccurate way to measure learning. Key issues they highlight include:

• “Omnibus” Grades: Averaging (and sometimes weighting) different categories such as quizzes, tests, homework, and participation into a final grade makes it unclear what an 88% or B actually signifies about a student's performance and learning. 

• The Myth of Objectivity and Precision: Points and percentages imply objectivity and precision. A score of 90% on a 10-question test is seen as an objective measure. Using a 100-point scale suggests learning and growth can be precisely quantified. However, research has shown this presumed objectivity and specificity to be an illusion. When evaluating the same learner work, even using rubrics, teachers regularly give vastly different scores on a 100-point scale.

• Inconsistent Expectations and Policies: Assessment and grading practices vary from teacher to teacher and school to school. Nearly every teacher employs their own system and policy for grading and reporting, often detailed in the syllabus, but sometimes unclear. However, even if it is clear on the syllabus, a high school learner could have 7 different grading systems where points carry different weights and meanings, requiring complex daily calculations to figure out the "rules of the game" in each class to earn a good grade. 

This doesn’t mean we must abandon points, percentages, and mathematical formulas entirely. We use these regularly in daily lives as adults to measure success. For example, a marketing professional might calculate the percentage of web traffic generated by a social media post to gauge its effectiveness and inform their next steps. They may track month-to-month trends in average blog views to adjust long-term strategy. Notice how in this example, it is clear what they are measuring and why. Each data point is tied to specific action items. However, the way points, percentages and averages are currently used in education creates a false sense of clarity. In reality, what's actually being measured and how is often ambiguous for learners, families, and even educators.

In addition to these issues, Joe Feldman writes in “Grading for Equity” that our current grading practices are rooted in industrial-era beliefs and school-centered structures. However, in the 21st century, in a learner-centered paradigm, we hold different beliefs and therefore need different structures (2019).  

Roots of Current Grading Practices

Industrial-era beliefs created school-centered systems in the 20th century as schooling became compulsory and expanded to more and more children. The prevalent assumption then was that intelligence was innate and fixed. The introduction of the bell curve took this further, suggesting that only a small portion of learners were naturally capable of succeeding – an idea founded in racist and elitist notions. The 21st century calls for a new paradigm: a belief that all humans have unique strengths and the capacity to learn, grow and succeed through personalized pathways. Yet our grading system continues to operate from the outdated belief system that ranks learners and narrowly defines intelligence and success.

Behaviorism also heavily shaped early 20th-century beliefs. Skinner’s 1940s research asserted that rewards and punishments drive human learning and behavior. Modern motivation theory has shifted to focus more on developing a growth mindset with research from Carol Dweck and the power of intrinsic motivation from pursuing mastery rather than performance goals. However, classrooms across the country continue to use points and grades to compel learners to complete work and follow rules. A late penalty and a zero for cheating is a legacy of behaviorism.

The industrial era’s biggest value was efficiency. Decisions about what school looks like, what Tyak and Tobin (1994) refer to as the “grammar of schooling,” such as bell schedules, stem from this value. Our grading systems are also designed to be as efficient as possible, with mathematical formulas and a focus on churning through the grades rather than focusing on feedback and iteration. Research has shown us though, in the 21st century, that learning takes time and how long is in fact different for each learner (Sawyer, 2008). In fact, those cycles of feedback and iteration, learning from mistakes and tinkering with ideas are crucial for the learning process. Focusing on efficiency, or just covering the standards or inputting a score at the end of the semester to fulfill the grading requirements, does not truly support learners and their growth.

Finally, the industrial era of school-centered schools were built on principles of obedience and compliance in order to prepare factory workers. This shows up in current grading practices such as homework completion or participation grades that rely on learners being compliant with rules the teacher has outlined. In the industrial era, children of the wealthy had tutors and academic experiences that asked them to apply their learning and solve problems, while the masses in compulsory education were expected to conform.  In many ways, the system is still designed this way. Although the system "worked" in producing compliant workers, because as W. Edwards Deming says, “every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does.”  However, in the 21st century employers are not looking for compliance. A longitudinal study by Karen Arnold (2020) revealed that high school valedictorians - the learners deemed most successful in this system - went on to achieve "conventional" measures of success as adults but did not become transformative leaders or change agents who took risks, started new things, or solved problems in creative ways. America Succeeds (n.d.) has done immense research into the skills that employers are looking for in the 21st century and they include leadership, innovation and critical thinking, not following directions.

Not only are K-12 systems thinking about a paradigm shift, but universities are also catching onto challenges with traditional grades and supporting faculty in thinking about alternative grading structures. Guides from Larson (2023) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Streifer and Palmer (n.d.) at the University of Virginia (n.d.) cover the limitations with traditional grading and offer alternative options. Not only is higher education thinking about new grading structures within their own courses, but they are increasingly open to considering new options for transcripts, such as portable learner records, which could have trickle down effects for the K-12 system (Vander Ark, 2021).

The Need for a Learner-Centered Paradigm

In the 21st century, as the world rapidly changes with AI and other technologies, we need our learners to have agency, learn how to learn, think critically and solve problems. A school model designed for obedience and compliance no longer serves our learners, as they live in a world that demands more. As Devin Vodicka wrote in Learner-Centered Leadership, "the post-industrial education system will require post-industrial measures of success" (2021). 

A learner-centered paradigm, what Aurora Institute defines as Competency-Based Education (2023), in which we support all learners to know who they are, thrive in community and actively engage in the world as their best selves, calls for a new assessment, grading and reporting paradigm. If learning truly happens anywhere, anytime and we believe it does not occur in silos nor in time boxes, then we must rethink structures such as traditional courses (or content/subject blocks in elementary), taught by one subject-area educator, to a group of learners who are the same age. These structures underpin the traditional grading system, so as we reimagine them, we must also rethink how learning is assessed and reported. 

Taken from the Learner Centered Collaborative Competency Based Reporting Playbook.