Grading Poisons Everything in Education

Grading poisons everything in education, the moreso since the entire grading system, K through Ph.D., became a ruin about forty years ago, leaving odd, comical relics of itself — like high school valedictorians graduating with averages of 4.4 on a 4.0 scale and B the new C. But we must all still pretend it works. How wonderful it would be if teachers could just teach the best they can and students study the best they can and when the term was up both could without the charade just say go their way.

Bob Schenck, at 7:10 am EDT on May 8, 2008

Grades as Reward and Punishment

See Alfie Kohn, _Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with As, Praise, Gold Stars, Incentive Plans and Other Bribes_, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Raymond, at 8:05 am EDT on May 8, 2008

I am retired after 42 years of full-time teaching at three different universities, and I share Bob Somers’ feelings about grading. Right up to my last class last December (2007), I still thoroughly enjoyed the experience of teaching—but I was overjoyed never again to have to read and evaluate papers and exams, or to give grades.

The problem is that, as those 42 years have taught me, “teaching” (whether in the form of lecturing or mediating discussions) has in fact little to do with how much students learn. The main job of a teacher is to set up a situation where the students interact intensively with the material to be learned. The only way to insure that such interaction occurs with most students is to require assignments that “force” such interaction, and the only way to “force” it is to assign grades for the work, grades that count toward the course grade.

There are wonderful but very rare students who love or are fascinated by the material, and who therefore will interact on their own, irrespective of what the teacher does. But even at Harvard (where I taught as a teaching assistant) such students are few and far between.

The problem Somers poses is, I fear, inherently intractabie. One car occasionally read this sort of frustration between the lines of Plato’s supposed “transcripts” of the teaching dialogues of Socrates. If we could go back and overhear/-see the actual scenes, I suspect they’d be a lot like a modern classroom.

Bruce A. Beatie, at 8:45 am EDT on May 8, 2008

Grading students

You all should read ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ for a truly in-depth analysis of grading students at the university level.

Denae Swanson, Professor at San Diego, at 9:35 am EDT on May 8, 2008

Separating teaching and grading

I love teaching and hate grading for all the reasons mentioned above. I don’t dislike grading in general as much as I dislike grading my own students. I’ve just moved back to the States after 3 years abroad at a world famous international university where students are graded by exams after 3 years of study. The board of examiners and graders rotates every few years and are not necessarily the individual dons who teach that course in that particular year. Essays, not multiple choice. Seems to work. Makes teaching a more collaborative enterprise and and not the oppositional ’sway the teacher for the grade’ negotiations I frequently encounter, but still keeps students focused.I’ve often thought about trading grading responsibilities with a colleague. Has anyone tried that?

Visiting prof, at 10:00 am EDT on May 8, 2008

Pass/Fail

I teach in a school of architecture where I primarily teach architectural history and theory, but I do not see any fundamental difference between my school and a liberal arts school in terms of grading.

For about six years in the early 1970s we had a pass/fail system. We abandoned it for, among others, the following reasons:

- Most students got passes. It is a lot harder to give a student a “fail” then a “D.”

- We were taking students’ money and time. Neither the school nor the students knew where they stood. Where they cut out for the discipline we were preparing them for? (There were supposed to be written evaluations, but many faculty did not do them adequately and they were often opaque.)

I believe that grades work with the following understanding:

- Grades are to inform the student and the school of where the student stands

- Grades should minimally be used for scholarships, etc. Using them for such puts pressure on the faculty to inflated grades (“I need a “B” or I will lose my scholarship.”) and on the student to distort their work (“I better do what the instructor wants, not what I believe in.”)

To avoid grade inflation, the following should be done: An “A” means, exceptional work. Exceptional work means you post it the wall and invite colleagues from outside the school to review it. If they say: “You asked me to take a half a day off to see this?” then it was not really “A” work.

In addition, I regard the grade I give as a “letter of recommendation.” If I give a student an excellent recommendation, and they are not excellent students, I could get a call from an academic or professional colleague saying: “Hey, I took your word on this person (you gave them an “A”), what are you sending me?”

Also, grades are not moral judgments of the student as a person. I say to my students: “I am a professional. I have to make choices. I might put time into one project at the expense of another. When I do, I have to suffer the consequences of the less attended project. The same goes for you. I regard poor work on your part as a choice you have made, not as an indication of your value as a person.”

Finally we need to recognize that grades are grades. They mean that the person is good at getting good grades, and for some purposes, that is useful information to future academic potential or job performance. But there are plenty of people what got poor grades in school and did excellently in life.

John Lobell, Professor at Pratt Institute, at 1:20 pm EDT on May 8, 2008

Living the Paradox

As we write about grading, the semesters are tumbling to an end, another academic year as well (my 31st!). I have studied, interrogated, experimented with assessment alternatives across my whole career. The burden, unhappiness and discouragement felt by so many this time of year is seemingly inescapable. I’ve seen literally hundreds upon hundreds of different approaches by committed, creative and experienced teachers in kindergarten to doc seminars. And needless to say, there is no Magic Feather; many teachers have found a set of methods they trust, even endorse, but so many of us are balancing perilously from semester to semester, discovering flaws that push us to try yet another alternative.

I think one difficulty is the summative nature of the process. The formative assessing has possibility and redirection built in, but the finality of entering a grade means we must assess, finally, our performance or role in the process of judging too. A favorite quite for me comes from Herbert Kohl’s book of essays, Growing Minds: A teacher’s role is to strengthen young people, to build sensitivity and intelligence, and to refuse to make any final judgment on what it is possible for any young person to do.

Okay, that doesn’t help much with guilt or frustration, because telling a student his C isn’t a judgment of him as a person, just his work in your course that semester, has never worked well for me. But the principle has shaped my pedagogy, which includes my assessment. I try to write back and forth with my students, using content and subject matter to raise questions or uncover interests or even identify some technical proficiencies to recommend improvement. But the process is formative in the sense I’m looking towards building understanding, confidence, analytical skill and courage. The writing can be digressive and often personal, but I don’t judge much. Instead I use questions, a continuous flow of What If, What About and, best, Why. The process is to keep inquiry open and push towards more complex interrogation of the familiar. I resist making judgments as much as encouraging or requiring iterations. There are always more questions, yes?

My assessment is tied to the process, using a rubric I give them day one and asking them to use it in` making a case for how they believe their work has proceeded in terms of effort, integrity and growth. I’ve started, now, meeting 3 times a semester, the last being a closure disclosure discussion after they submit their brief about the semester they’ve spent. I tell them the discussions aren’t for me to argue with them, and for the most part, I expect to accept their judgment if I understand it and they have attempted to complete the work in a good faith manner. I don’t have to agree with them so much as understand their rationale and see the logic of their beliefs.

Do I get conned or offered excessively optimistic assessments? Sure, but the 1-to-1’s help establish a relationship and I explain the pedagogic purpose of trusting them in terms of the premise that growth requires honest self-assessment. In our lives, the most important tasks depend for meaning on our own assessments and sense of agency. I tell them what I think about their views, but by then, we’ve usually worked at a personal level for a semester. They mostly trust I’ll do what I say and give feedback or guidance vs. demands and judgments. Is this a Magic Feather? Absolutely not. It requires an obsessive commitment to my teaching, much easier chosen at this stage of my career post tenure and promotion. I neither recommend nor argue generally for it. It’s just a way that has grown out of the feelings and concerns others express here, and represents the way I’ve accommodated the complexities many feel. Maybe it sets a parameter or at least flows towards an extreme point on the continuum.

These ideas are nothing new, of course, as are the discomforts here expressed. I’ve read teacher bios and autobios for decades, at 1st seeking a resolution I’d missed or a release from the paradoxes. I found none (and this is hardly a release). Over the years, my approach has been viewed by peers elsewhere on the great continuum of judgments as lacking rigor or commitment to academic standards, etc. If I worked fewer hours and invested less in individual students – if my hobby after 30+ years was other than reading and replying to students, I might concur. Some folks reach frustration and loss of commitment and do little or nothing to offer feedback or guidance. I don’t fall into that category – if I sound a bit defensive, it’s been a long journey.

I taught for 15 years or so at a state university – this was how I did dissertations w/my doc students. I did essay takehomes w/lots of evaluative writing on them and grades for everyone else. I came to TCU 15+ years ago and tried to apply my doc pedagogy to all students. I couldn’t have before and barely manage now. Numbers matter, a lot. But I can’t go back – formative assessments are what got me into the Biz. To always push a young person a bit farther, to send them on one more foray, on their own if possible. Not to close the door or in some other way make what seems a final judgment. I struggle every single semester; I hate semesters’ ends. I struggle with conscience, interpretation, efficacy, and hope. But this is how I do it – just one more story to offer here.

Mike Sacken, prof of educ at tcu, at 2:25 pm EDT on May 8, 2008

grading as teaching

Some here assume that grading and teaching are quite separate processes. Need not be so. An English teacher, I long ago gave up exams and quizzes. Students work on written projects with my participation so that they learn to learn over the semester. The final grade merely shows how well they have done that.

My youngest son, at Evergreen State, has it even better. Student’s papers are put on line to be critiqued and discussed by other students in the class; then are revised, sometimes a couple of tmes with colleagial rsponses. Then, of coursae, there are no grades given, but there are extensive written and spoken evaluations of course work, by the professor and by self-evaluations. The process takes time, but it is really teachinhg and not rating.

David Eggenschwiler, Prof emeritus at USC, at 8:05 pm EDT on May 8, 2008

Multiple cut -off scores

Professor Sommer, who is the author of one of my favorite books, Design Awareness, has raised an exceptionally important issue that needs to be resolved before education will improve substantially.

Educators expend huge amounts of time and effort on assessment and grading — with little return on investment for the students, instruction, or the eventual application of what was taught. Somewhere in the history of education, educators decided we needed to rank order the students on a single ability continuum, and then break the ranks into levels. But, as Edwards Demming pointed out, ranks give us very little information.

A better approach is multiple cut-off scores, in which each student must answer enough items correctly in each area to demonstrate multiple competencies. This gives the students and instructors a clear picture (if the items are well constructed and tap high priority/useful information) of student —and instructional— difficulties that can be remediated. If desired, those who make all the cut scores can be ranked and split into grade levels. Multiple cut-off scores would focus instructors and students on learning and on useful feedback.

Cathie M. Currie, Ph.D., Currie Outcomes R&D, Inc., at 12:10 pm EDT on May 9, 2008

Segregating teaching and summative evaluation

Hi,

I find this topic extremely interesting, because, at the moment, I am working on a project about the ’segregation of teaching and the summative evaluation in higher education’ at the University of Leuven (Belgium). Therefore, I would like to outline the context and the assumptions of my research below, to ask your opinion and suggestions about it:

Within the context of Flemish higher education there’s an intrinsic link between teaching and summative evaluation. A lecturers carries out a supportive role as well as an evaluative role. The project “Segregating teaching and summative evaluation” intends to question the obviousness of the intrinsic link between teaching and summative evaluation by examining if and under which conditions a segregation is meaningful and attainable. To segregate means by definition that a lecturer does not has the responsibility for the summative evaluation. This is the task of an evaluator. The lecturer has a supportive role and as a consequence he/she has the responsibility for the formative evaluation. So the lecturer supports the learning process of the students and the evaluator examines if the students have reached the learning objectives. Both base themselves on the learning objectives to teach or evaluate. The basic assumption of the project is that a segregation is meaningful in the sense that students as a result of a segregation (a) will perceive the learning environment as more secure, (b) will perceive thelecturer as a real coach and © will employ deep learning approaches. In other words, we assume that there’s an impact of the evaluator on the perceptions of students and on their learning strategies.On top, we believe that it will be more fairly, more objective in some situations, because sometimes the (good or bad) relationship between lecturer and student can influence the exam results (in positive versus negative sense).

Delphine Sasanguie, Scientific Researcher at K.U. Leuven (Belgium), at 5:35 am EDT on June 4, 2008