Episode 29: Are letter grades passé?

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Take the quiz today. Foreign welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustration frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as the micro discriminations that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I'll be discussing the trend of moving away from letter grades. Grading has been the topic of interest for educational researchers for the past 100 years. Over the past several decades, at various times, there's been a push for teachers to move away from letter grades for various reasons. What are the pros and cons of using letter grades in order to assess a student's learning? I discuss what the research reveals about assessment, letter grades, and alternatives for letter grades on this episode. School districts across the country are looking at ways to expand on traditional letter grades by including detailed narrative evaluations or using symbols or numbers as better ways to gauge how students will meet state standards. The districts are trying to redesign report cards so that parents have a better sense of how their student is doing. Reconfiguring letter grades has become a fixture in American education over the past century and has been met with resistance from parents and the public. In many communities, the transition from letter grades to other formats may be more easily accomplished in K6 grades. However, the this may not be applicable for high school students because so much is writing on letter grades, class standing, admission requirements for colleges and universities, to name a couple of specific examples. The triad for a viable curriculum for any school improvement includes the written curriculum, what's taught, and assessment or what's tested. The Common Core States Standards focuses a school's effort in clarifying student learning goals. This has led many schools to adopt standards based grading, which separates learning goals from work habits. Grading and marking systems first started in the United States in higher education in the 17th century. Several researchers credit Yale University with the first example of a grading system, a 4.0 scale that many believe influenced the modern day grade point average system. In 1877, Harvard University began using a 100 point scale to grade students. Assigning letter grades to students per course or subject area began in the 20th century and some researchers credit Mount Holyoke College with this grading system. Fast forward to the 21st century where percentages and letter grades are the dominant method of marks that are used on report cards and transcripts. Letter grades communicate a mix of factors combining non cognitive factors such as task completion, class participation, academic knowledge and positive behaviors. This does not effectively communicate student learning. Standards based grading, also known as proficiency based grading, is a philosophy of grading that separates learning goals and work habits and and repurposes homework as practice. There are a unique set of challenges that are associated with implementing standards based grading. Some educators who use standards based grading initially report an increased workload and a perceived threat of grade inflation. Parents also seem to be uncertain about the post secondary implications of standards based grading. A number of experienced teachers have expressed confidence in standards based grading, although some parent groups have pushed back on this change in policy, especially at the secondary school level. The major themes that emerge from research on standards based grading effectiveness and implementation involve three one teacher perceptions of what works in standard based grading implementations, 2 parent reactions to standard based grading and 3 leadership lessons from school systems who have transitioned to standards based grading. Understanding the teachers perspectives of what works in standards based grading is relevant. However, most teachers don't agree upon the criteria that should be used for grades to be based upon. School administrators can support teachers who are implementing standards based grading by clearly creating clarity on around the purpose of grades. Various factors may influence grading based upon a teacher's personal experiences as a learner, success using grades to motivate students, and their philosophical beliefs about education. In any case, it's important for all teachers to understand the long view when implementing standards based grading. The majority of parent reactions to standards based grading seems to apply to to those who have students in high school. Most standards based grading high schools utilize some sort of conversion system from final standard marks to letter grades on the transcript, but this doesn't always ease tensions around the change. Parents seem to just be more comfortable with what's known and tend to dislike the unknown. By this I mean that they are generally familiar with percentage in points based gradebooks. Their confusion may stem from uncertainty around a new gradebook format or why any change is necessary at all. It may be worth noting their philosophical concerns as well, since parents of middle school students and high school students can generally agree with providing students multiple opportunities to demonstrate understanding via standards based grading. However, omitting homework and calculating the final grade will was generally viewed negatively. Research by Bradbury and Bailey in 2011 indicated that standards based grading can benefit African American students, especially in science. Perhaps what's needed to be addressed is not so much about letter grades but about feedback, because a letter grade on its own is pointless without feedback. Moving away from grace and the movement associated with that that is all about using grades as the only feedback and that's just bad teaching. While students may remember grades on certain assignments or projects, what they truly remember is what was learned and the feedback that was provided to help them grow as students, readers, and writers. Grades are only a problem if the teacher stresses them above the learning process and and feedback is critical to the learning process. Grades are generally determined based upon a combination of assignments, effort, participation, and achievements. Grades should be based on learning goals, not specific activities. Mastery in a subject area needs to be demonstrated in the best way possible in order to discuss learning achievements with students. Considerations include what have they learned and are they able to demonstrate proficiency in a given area? Let's differentiate between assessment and grading. Assessment is a combination of evaluating a student's work and acquired knowledge and providing feedback for the student as well as guidance from the teacher using multiple perspectives. Grading, on the other hand, involves sorting, labeling, and ranking, computing averages as well as measuring compliance with a designated task. Grading is not assessment. It would seem that being given detailed information on a child's progress is something that a parent would prefer, but this doesn't necessarily hold true. What many parents really wanted to know was how their child compared to other children in the class. Based on research by Nancy Flanagan in education week in 2012, these parents didn't really seem to care about assessment information they just wanted letter grades. Most often this is because the parents themselves got letter grades when they were in school. Reporting, as in reporting grades on a report card, is not the same as communication as in feedback on assignments. Research over several decades has shown that grades don't lead to deeper understandings, increased intellectual role, risk taking, or better performance on complex tasks. The PDK Gallup poll of the public's attitudes toward the public schools found in 2008 that public school parents ranked examples of student work and teacher observations such as significantly higher than grades and test scores because the examples and teacher observations provided a more accurate picture of student progress. Let's break down what grading and reporting actually are. Grading represents a teacher's evaluations of a student's performance. Reporting is how those reports and results are communicated to the student, parents, and others. Educators must ensure that grading and reporting always meet the criteria of validity and reliability as well as ensuring that grading and reporting are meaningful, accurate, and fair. Research informs that in order to make grades more meaningful, educators need to address both the purpose of grades and the format used to report them. Establishing clearly articulated criteria for grades makes the grading process more fair and equitable. Unfortunately, different teachers use different criteria in determining a student's grades, and the student may not be well informed about those criteria. Educators in many parts of the world assign multiple grades because they recognize that merging diverse sources of evidence for grading distorts the meaning of any grade. These educators distinguish between product, process, and progress as learning criteria. Product pertains to those educators who believe that grading's main purpose is communicating summative evaluations of a student's achievement and performance. Teachers who use the product criteria typically base the grades on final exam scores, final reports or projects, overall assessments, and other culminating demonstrations of learning. Educators who use the process criteria emphasize that grades should reflect not only the final results but how the student gets there. These educators tend to consider responsibility, effort, and work habits when assigning grades. The progress criteria are used by teachers who believe that the most important aspect of grading is how much students have gained from their learning experiences, in other words, educational growth. They look at a student's improvements over a period of time rather than where they are at a given moment. Once the explicit indicators of product, process, and progress learning have been established, the teacher then assigns separate grades to each indicator. They keep grades for responsibility, learning skills, effort, work habits, and learning progress distinct from grades that represent a student's level of achievement or performance. This provides a more accurate and comprehensive picture of what a student accomplishes in school and eliminates any weights given to grading evidence. Assigning separate grades to each indicator also provides fairness in the grading process. Classroom assessments of student learning are all aligned with student learning outcomes that are addressed in large scale state assessments or standards. The end result of the transformation from the traditional approach to the standards based report card creates a straightforward link between curriculum and assessment. The look of report card changes with standards based grading as the child progresses through. Each grade level also has a different look and feel. For example, for elementary report cards, each subject has specific comment areas so teacher can provide separate grades for each. This does require that the teacher need to give more detailed records of a student's performance. However, it provides parents and students with more specific information about the students learning strengths and areas that need improvement. Have you had a chance to check.

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For secondary report cards, a section will be dedicated to academic achievement or product grades for each subject area or course. Those grades would be used to determine course credit and to calculate GPA as well. The description and comments section would include general comments about the class as well as individual comments about the student's performance in that class. Grades are most effective when they are used to reflect achievement and not any other aspects of student performance like effort or progress. Standards provide a sound alternative to the traditional grading system. Student assessment reports should provide a summary of student learning in clear, timely, accurate and useful manner so that students, parents and guardians and others who have legitimate permission to view the assessments should be provided with assessment reports that accurately summarize or what a student has learned in the classroom. These reports should identify students strengths and areas for improvement as well as informed decisions regarding future class placement, promotion and admission. A standards based report card should make a straightforward link between curriculum and assessment. It should involve a clear identification of curricular names or learning objectives that are rooted in national standards. Both parents and teachers favor the standards based reporting over traditional approach based on pilot implementations that were used in the research done by Munoz and Gutsky in April 2015. An alternative to using grades for reporting student progress is is a system that produces grades that are fair, accurate, specific and timely or fast. This method of reporting student achievement has a much greater likelihood of producing knowledgeable and reflective learners who understand that learning is about more than jumping through hoops or trying to accumulate numerical grade point averages. Schools must agree on the purpose of grades and in order for grades to be assigned fairly. The purpose of grades should be to communicate the current status of a student's achievement to whomever has the need and right to know that information, parents and students alike. This gives all students an equal footing on demonstrating what they know, understand and can do. School leaders and administrators need to ensure that the grades students receive in their school are an accurate representation of their achievement and that their behaviors are reported separately. This will be a different approach as traditional grades have often reflected not just achievement but also behavior compliance and test taking skills. The result is that grades basically have no meaning because they are an uncertain mix of of achievement and behavior. Accuracy also requires the grades be based on more recent evidence, not all of the evidence over an entire school year. It also provides students with multiple opportunities to show what they know instead of having to rely on one shot assessments. Specific grades are grades that are based on standards and learning goals, not assessment methods. They are based on clear descriptions of a limited number of levels, not points and percentages. The principle of specificity allows teachers to both point out errors as well as praise the learning that results from those errors. Finally, the principle of timeliness is directly related to the fundamental purpose of classroom assessment to provide information that improves teaching and learning. In other words, the more quickly information is given, the more quickly students as well as educators can work together to make adjustments and improve. Providing timely grades can be a challenge for teachers at all levels. Elementary school teachers have to provide grades and all subject matters for their class, and secondary level teachers have hundreds of students for which they would need to provide timely grades. This may require that teachers reduce the quantity of assessments in order to increase the quality. For example, assessing a student's performance on a single project that showcases their skills authentically across multiple standards may be a better choice than marking many quizzes that provide little input for reflection and improvement. One proponent of going gradeless, Alfie Cohn, argues that grades of any kind tend to foster comparison and competition and that they are destructive to students self esteem as well as being counterproductive to demonstrating the quality of learning. He further asserts that several studies suggest that grades depression creativity, foster a fear of failure and undermine any interest in education for its own sake. He also made the case that grades and other extrinsic motivators tend to make students less likely to choose challenging tasks as well as reduce the quality of their thinking. Daniel Pink took up Cone's work from 1995 by indicating that incentives like grades were work for short term compliance on simple tasks, but they basically undermine intrinsic motivation and performance on complex tasks. Grading practices today remain much the same as they were in the 19th century. The battle between traditional grading and standards based grading is that some educators believe grades are necessary to motivate learners and to maintain high academic standards standards, while others are in favor of high standards but they are prepared to drop grading altogether because of the firsthand experience that they had seen regarding irreparable damage that poor grades can have on some children. Another alternative to traditional grading is charting. During the 1920s, Superintendent Carlton Washburn did designed and implemented charting as an alternative method for reporting student progress in schools in Winnetka, Illinois. He suggested, quote unquote, adjusting the school to the child, which basically meant individualizing instruction and using evaluation as a diagnostic tool to discover how best to help a child succeed. He replaced the traditional grade book with a goal grade book or a goal record book in which dates would be used instead of grades and those dates would be when a student has completed each test in a subject area. Charting in this alternative method compares to the charting that a medical doctor uses to help their patients improve and to determine what progress the doctor's patients have made and as well as what remains to be done to ensure recovery. Under Washburn's plan, teachers would grade a student but continue to help him or her until learning occurred. In this scenario, charting does away with failing grades that can never be erased from a student's permanent record. Washburn believed that giving a student a failing grade and then moving on to something else when more instruction and more testing or would help the student learn what the teacher wanted him or her to learn was an absurd practice. Setting standards was the first step in Washburn's program. Testing was still utilized although each child was tested until he or she was able to demonstrate that the learning objectives had been mastered. The purpose of this type of testing was to find out where each student needed help. Washburn believed in functional learning in which he felt that the teacher didn't need to motivate children through threats and promises, rewards and punishment. The educator just needed to learn the kinds of circumstances, activities, experiences, and stimuli that would awaken an interested response on the part of the child. He he was basically a proponent of individualized instruction and evaluation, including the reteaching and retesting of students until standards were met. What makes this approach successful is that Washburn believed that the learner as well as the learning were what mattered. Here are this episode's takeaways. Letter grades have been used to denote student achievement for centuries. The use of letter grades is one of the most sacred traditions in American education. They are something that is easily understandable and digestible by parents as well as students. They are used as a basis for determining who gets on the honor roll or who becomes class valedictorian. Many parents become up in arms when school districts suggest reevaluating traditional student report cards in order to provide detailed feedback through the use of standards based grading. Change requires action, not necessarily agreement. Parents, communities, unions, and education administrators may never agree on a specific rating procedure, but it's likely that they will agree on values such as the desire to build personal responsibility and preparedness for the world beyond. School grading practices that have the potential to reduce failure, reduce dropouts, and improve school safety are urgent if fundamental values like equity, access to education, and fair treatment for all students are threatened, then all stakeholders must act decisively to promote and protect those values. It's been stated that teachers use the current traditional grading system because that was used to evaluate students for application and entry into colleges. However, a growing number of colleges including MIT and Wellesley, are substantially reforming their grading systems to the point that they provide rich feedback and no letter grades to their first year students. Classroom assessments of student learning are all aligned with student learning outcomes that are addressed in large scale state assessments or standards. The end result of the transformation from the traditional approach to standards based report card creates a straightforward link between curriculum assessment. Research by Bradbury Bailey in 2011 indicated that standards based grading can benefit African American students, especially in science. Perhaps what needs to be addressed is not so much about letter grades but about feedback, because a letter grade on its own is pointless without feedback. If moving away from grades and the movement associated with it is all about using grades as the only feedback, then that just promotes bad teaching. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this also, I'd love to hear from you. So please leave me a rating or a review or a comment and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. I'd really appreciate if you would recommend my podcast to a friend directly on Twitter and to mention my show in your tweet. Additionally, you can connect with me on Instagram and Facebook with the handle KimJ Fields. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have a burning question about a current situation at your child's school or a specific topic that you'd like me to discuss, shoot me a quick email@kimliberationthrougheducation.com to let me know what your is question question is. Anyone whose question is selected to be discussed on one podcast episode will receive a $25Amazon gift card. Be sure to stay tuned. On the next episode of my podcast, I'll be discussing the political football called Education. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day.

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