In our own district, we have spent the better part of four years moving away from a grading model that went virtually unchanged from our school’s opening in 1965. For nearly fifty years, we stuck with traditional grading practices that are most familiar to everyone in high schools and colleges—a model of counting points and percentages and putting a letter stamp on the student—A, B, C, D, or F.
For decades, we have agreed that these letters actually stand for something. We are here to question that long-standing agreement and share how we are working to clearly articulate what we expect students to know, understand, and do; how well we expect students to perform; and how we expect students to prove what they’ve learned with clear, explicit evidence.
Like most educators, we rarely questioned traditional practices despite what we know about growth in learning. These deeply embedded traditional practices continue to live in schools as they generalize descriptions of student performance and lump students into letter groups. “He’s an ‘A student’” and “She’s a ‘C student’” are comments that seem to have meaning in our schools, to our families, and in our judgments about what students know, understand, and do. These letter stamps operate like distinctions or labels. For better or worse, they denote each student’s capacity and predict potential for success.
The truth is no one can really state what these letters stand for from classroom to classroom, school to school, or state to state. An A from Mr. Smith’s classroom might be very different from an A in Ms. Garcia’s classroom. An A in Mr. Smith’s classroom might actually be a C in Ms. Garcia’s classroom. Not to mention how an A in ninth-grade English in New York City might represent learning that is vastly different from an A in ninth-grade English in rural Alabama.
As we move forward in our efforts to change grading practices, we try to revise these long-standing generalities about how we grade and report student learning and, instead, report what our students know, understand, and are able to do. Breaking out of traditional grading practices that perpetuate generalities requires intentional conversations about teaching and learning. These conversations require meaningful changes in how we unify and articulate curriculum, instruction, and assessment. More important, these conversations are changing how teachers and students approach the learning process.
While we continue to implement a more effective grading model, two adages ring true: No one size fits all and go slow to go fast. In other words, when building a change in our grading practices, we believe (1) our teaching teams must collaborate and decide how best to implement shifts toward more communicative grading practices and (2) what is best for teaching and learning takes time to process.
For these reasons, we are not in a rush to make these changes overnight. Instead, we would rather have teachers unpack the value of these shifts in ways that support productive conversations with students and teams about curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Upending ineffective traditional grading is our goal. To do it, we’ve chosen to work mindfully and intentionally with teachers to support this change, answering their questions and developing their insights about teaching and learning.
A New Language: Evidence-Based Grading
In our own work and in the work we’ve observed in other schools, implementing either traditional grading or what is called standards-based grading often stalls the changes we need to make. While standards-based grading models have good intentions, many lead teachers back to ineffective traditions or grading practices that do little to open up the conversations we need to have about teaching and learning.
We propose shifting toward grading practices that focus on the evidence that students produce. As we emphasize in the book Proficiency-Based Assessment (Gobble, Onuscheck, Reibel, & Twadell, 2016), we must change the language we use for grading. We should grade the evidence students create to demonstrate what they know, understand, and can do. This is important as we change our approach to grading practices that reflect school shifts in curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
In this book, we assert that evidence of student learning must be the starting point of change. The evidence that students produce shows the relationship between their work and expected levels of proficiency. The conversations about teaching and learning then become much more dynamic and formative—every student gains clarity and perspective about how he or she can improve.
Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines evidence as “something which shows that something else exists or is true” (Evidence, n.d.). This is the same way we look at grading student performance. We must examine the available body of facts and information to determine whether it proves student learning.
When curriculum teams make collaborative decisions about student evidence that demonstrate learning growth, we support more equitable learning environments across different classrooms. When these same teams calibrate and interpret evidence based on agreed-upon expectations, we guarantee accurate and consistent feedback across these classrooms. These two changes can remedy the often random, subjective, and arbitrary elements used to determine grades in traditional grading systems.
In order to implement evidence-based grading in their classrooms, teachers should focus on the elements we discuss in the following sections.
Curriculum Focuses on Proficiency-Based, Student-Friendly Learning Targets
Students should have access to a thoughtfully considered, well-designed, high-quality curriculum. While it is important that the curriculum has meaningful and relevant standards, it is just as important that it is written with student-friendly learning targets that challenge students daily. Students must be able to state what teachers are asking them to know, understand, and do. However, even clear learning targets are not enough. For those targets to be meaningful and useful learning tools, they must be scaled for proficiency expectations—in other words, we must be able to describe what proficiency looks like in terms of mastery and needs improvement.
In an evidence-based grading model, proficiency-based learning targets describe expectations for learning. They unpack standards for learning into specific, well-described statements of learning that make sense to students. In an evidence-based grading model, these descriptions then become a tool for learning; they state what students must learn and define what it means to reach or exceed learning proficiency. A well-written learning target makes sense to the student, and it clearly states performance expectations. Nothing is hidden about what a student must learn. We encourage teachers to use these learning targets as tools for growth and reflection. They help state the gradation of learning that a student must attain (Gobble et al., 2016).
Learning should be placed on a continuum of proficiency, not viewed as a scaffolded progression. Consider table which highlights the differences between a scaffolded learning progression and a proficiency-based gradation. Scaffolded learning identifies different skills students should learn in sequence, but it does not state an expectation for learning. However, proficiency-based gradation states what skills students are developing and how well they are meeting expectations.
Table I.1: Scaffolded Learning Progression Versus Proficiency-Based Gradation
| Scaffolded Learning Progression | Proficiency-Based Gradation |
| The student can identify vocabulary terms. | The student can appropriately explain vocabulary terms in a written analysis using simple stated details from class. |
| The student can define vocabulary terms. | The student can accurately explain vocabulary terms in a written format using simple stated details from class. |
| The student can explain vocabulary terms. | The student can accurately explain vocabulary terms in a written format using complex stated details from class. |
| The student can analyze vocabulary terms. | The student can accurately explain vocabulary terms in a written format using creative and unique details. |
A