Do your grading practices undermine equity initiatives ?
Discussions about grading , like all conversations about equity , are hard , emotional and confusing . But our grading practices exert enormous influence on how our students learn , especially those who have been historically underserved .
8 Leadership
Positive and supportive school cultures are critical to students ’ academic success . We seek to create learning environments that encourage students to take risks , affirm success is always possible , strengthen relationships between teachers and students , and don ’ t limit students based on their home environment , resources or previous educational struggles .
Yet despite our unwavering commitment to equity and the success of every child , some of our students continue to doubt that we truly care and believe in them , and academic failure continues to be disproportionately distributed along predictable lines of race and income .
Our achievement and opportunity gaps persist because we do what David Tyack and Larry Cuban described two decades ago as “ tinkering toward utopia ” – we change relatively minor elements of our schools and unrealistically expect to reap major improvements . If , as the quality improvement movement saying goes , “ systems are perfectly designed to get the results they get ,” then we need to address core elements of schools in order to realize a different result .
Few elements of our schools are more entrenched than how we grade students : not simply how teachers evaluate students ’ work , but the much more complex system of how the grade is calculated and what aspects of a student ’ s performance in a class are and aren ’ t included in the grade .
Grades are the main criteria in nearly every decision we make about students , including promotion or retention , extra-curricular eligibility , course placement and college admission . Perhaps most powerfully , grades significantly influence how a child feels and thinks about a course , a subject , a school and even herself . Many of us can recall how the grades we received affected our self-image and ideas about what we were “ good at .” Even if we develop a loving , supportive school culture , it won ’ t mean a thing if the way we grade dispirits students or ever tells them that they can ’ t be good at school .
We may not realize that the grading practices most of us use are artifacts of the Industrial Revolution . Despite critical advances in how we think about children and
By Joe Feldman