Grading For Equity
This page is intended to provoke conversations about our practice, equity, and metacognition. Grades and grading are part of our personal teaching philosophies. However, the best part of our practice is the ability to be creative, innovative and student centered.
"Agency, dialogue, self actualization, and social justice are not possible in a hierarchical system that pits teachers against students and encourages competition by ranking students against one another. Grades are currency for a capitalist system that reduces teaching and learning to a mere transaction." - Jesse Stommel.
Grading for equity has been amplified during the pandemic. More and more scholars are contributing to the conversation regarding the inadequacies and the injustice of grades. Here are some sources to explore.
Alfie Kohn, "The Case Against Grades"
Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes
Susan D Blum, "Ungrading: Why reading students under minds learning"
Peter Elbow, "Grading Student Writing: Making It Simpler, Fairer, Clearer"
Peter Elbow, "Ranking, Evaluating, Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment"
Joe Feldman, "Grading for Equity"
Asao Inoue, "A Social Justice Framework for Anti-Racist Writing Assessment: Labor-Based Grading Contracts"
Cathy Davidson, "Contract Grading and Peer Review"
Jeffrey Schinske and Kimberly Tanner, "Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently)"
Jesse Stommel, "Why I Don't Grade"
@ONE Series on Equitable Online Teaching (*Susan Blum will be featured)
The following videos are examples I have in my own courses.
There is no voice-over in the video. Visual descriptors are available in the video description via YouTube.
Grades Suck
The video presents an argument representing my practice and my core beliefs about learning and the problems with grades. The implementation of UnGrading will be provided in the Orientation Module is Canvas.
This model is designed by Fabiola Torres.
One model of Ungrading
The video explains an abridged (short) version on how Ungrading will be implemented in our online learning environment. The implementation of Ungrading will be provided in the Orientation Module is Canvas.