A 2008 Fairfax County Public Schools study indicates that 89 percent of colleges responding to a survey use grades to compare applicants, 39 percent require a minimum grade point average (GPA) for admissions into honors programs, and 33 percent require a minimum GPA for merit scholarships. More than half of the colleges do not recalculate grades based on the rigor or content of the course (Fairfax County Public Schools, Department of Accountability, 2008). Therefore, the grades that teachers assign can have a profound impact on students’ future opportunities. The grades that students earn in middle school often influence their eligibility for college-preparatory coursework in high school. Similarly, decisions about which students qualify for advanced courses in middle school are influenced by the grades elementary school teachers assign. Grades also are important for both emotional and financial reasons; therefore, it is completely understandable that the topic of grading is sometimes fraught with contention.
Thomas Guskey and Jane Bailey (2001) document the century-long history of grading controversies. In just one system—Fairfax County, Virginia—there have been more than half a dozen different grading policies since 1912, with a variety of descriptive, numerical, and letter grading schemes. If we take into account the different systems in use at different schools, then the variation is even greater. The “standard” one hundred–point scale with ten-point intervals (90–100 = A; 80–89 = B; 70–79 = C; 60–69 = D; lower than 60 = F) dates from the 1960s, and it is now the most widely used system in the United States, according to high schools and colleges responding to the Fairfax survey (Fairfax County Public Schools, Department of Accountability, 2008).
Identifying What Influences Grades
Most teachers, parents, and school administrators assume that the biggest influence on grades is the individual student’s performance. At first glance, such an assumption seems reasonable, but as you will learn in the following pages, a variety of other influences are involved, including the ways that electronic grading systems are programmed, ancient administrative policies, accidental errors, and teachers’ and administrators’ idiosyncratic judgments. If a school system aspires to implement a grading system that is fair, accurate, specific, and timely, then it must create grading mechanisms that focus more on students’ performance and less on subjective factors unrelated to student achievement.
Let us begin with the premise that people want to be successful. Students want to learn, teachers want their students to excel, and education leaders and policymakers make their decisions in pursuit of students’ best interests. Teachers also want their students to arrive in class ready to learn, finish their assigned work, respect teacher feedback, and leave at the end of the year ready to enter the next level of learning with confidence and success. When we assume goodwill by students, teachers, and leaders, we influence even the most difficult discussions in a positive way. Rather than presume that we must convert bad teachers into barely acceptable ones, let’s instead focus on how to help excellent teachers, administrators, board members, students, and parents make better decisions about one of the most important and emotional subjects in education—how to grade to promote improved student performance.
Of course, grading is only one form of feedback, but it is the form that gets the most attention. Guskey and Bailey (2001) argue that feedback other than grading is actually more influential on student learning. This contention makes sense. Consider, for example, how effective feedback from coaches and music teachers results in encouragement, corrections, and immediate improvement. If a school has an excellent system of feedback but ineffective grading practices, that school undermines many of its own efforts. However, if a school is able to implement effective grading practices, it reinforces all of its other educational endeavors.
Reconciling Experience and Evidence
We are all victims of experience and context, often believing that personal experience is superior to evidence. While students have learned to scoff at medieval superstitions and to value the testing of hypotheses, prevailing discussions in education often remain stubbornly focused on experience rather than evidence.
Casual assertions have a way of becoming accepted with insufficient challenge. Some readers might recall futurists of the 1980s predicting that by the year 2000 schools would be paperless and student writing would give way to dictation into voice-recognition systems. As we know, neither prediction is close to reality. Educators still endure similar assertions about their profession and about grading policies. Rhetorical certitude, however, is not a substitute for evidence. When considering how to improve grading policies, one of the most important agreements that teachers, parents, students, and school leaders must reach is that evidence should guide their conclusions.
Try an experiment with your colleagues by asking them the following questions.
• What enduring principles have you learned in your career? What, in brief, do you know for sure about teaching, learning, and student achievement?
• What beliefs did you have ten years ago that you now know are no longer true?
Compare the quantity of responses to the first question to the quantity of responses to the second question. I rarely have difficulty eliciting a conclusion to the first question: “The primary causes of student achievement are …” or “The most important components of good teaching are …” However, the responses to the second question require some effort. Admitting that what we knew a decade ago in education was imprecise, uncertain, or downright wrong appears to require a rare degree of candor.
Now, pose the same questions to an ophthalmologist, climatologist, marine biologist, cardiologist, orthopedic surgeon, or international aid worker. These professionals have little difficulty acknowledging that what they know today surpasses what they knew in previous decades. They accept the fact that today’s evidence trumps yesterday’s experience. For example, a cardiac surgeon knows that twelve years spent in a surgical residency taught her very little about the powerful effects of behavioral modification on heart patients today. That doesn’t undermine the value of her surgical training but rather amplifies the value. Each time we know—as parents, professionals, craftsmen, musicians, or students—a little bit more about how our work improves and the results we expect, the better our results will be.
Thankfully, the use of evidence in medicine and many other fields has led to meaningful and life-saving reforms (McAfee, 2009). The elevation of personal preference over evidence is not unique to education but appears to be part of human nature. It seems people prefer the comfort of the familiar over the discomfort of the new, even if evidence supports the latter. That is why the most rational and reasonable people can do irrational and unreasonable things in resisting change (Deutschman, 2007). However clear the evidence, personal experience remains triumphant in too many discussions of education policy.
Education in particular—a profession that prides itself on progress—is rooted deeply in past convictions. We lay claim to 21st century learning by placing an electronic board at the front of the class, but we lecture as if electricity has not yet been invented. We praise collaboration yet often assess our students in a manner that punishes and berates peer assistance.
How can we distinguish experience from evidence? The most effective way I know is to use the following six levels of evidence.
1. Opinion: “This is what I believe, and I believe it sincerely.”
2. Experience: “This is what I have learned based on my personal observation.”
3. Local evidence: “This is what I have learned based on the evidence, which not only includes my own experience but also my friends’ and colleagues’ experiences.”
4. Systematic observation: “I have compared twelve schools that fully implemented my proposed intervention with twelve schools that did not implement it. Here are the results that show the difference between these twenty-four schools …”
5. Preponderance of evidence: “This is what we know as a profession based on many of our colleagues’ systematic observations in many different circumstances in varied locations and