Why Give a Grade to a Student?

Hi Again,

As we continue on our journeys to becoming credentialed teachers, there are many things we should be thinking about as we prepare to enter the classroom.  One of those is why do we even give grades to students in the first place?  The article this week addresses this issue by giving three rationales for doing just this.

The first one "is to be able to label students on the basis of their performance and thus to sort them like so many potatoes.  Whatever the use we make of sorting, the process itself is very different from - and often incompatible with - the goal of helping students learn."

The "second rationale for grade is to motivate students to work harder so they will receive a favorable evaluation."  With this one there is discussion about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Apparently extrinsic motivators frequently undermine intrinsic motivation.

The last rationale given was "simply to provide feedback so they can learn more effectively tomorrow than they did today.  Helping students to internalize and work toward meeting high standards, but that is most likely to happen when they 'experience success and failure not as reward and punishment, but as information.'"

This article goes on to give five principles for assessment. They are as follows:

1. Assessment of any kind should not be overdone.

2. The best evidence we have of whether we are succeeding as educators comes from observing children's behavior rather than from test scores or grades.  We need to acknowledge the limits of measurement.

3.We must transform schools into safe, caring communities.

4.  Any responsible conversation about assessment must attend to the quality of the curriculum

5.  Students must be invited to participate in determining the criteria by which their work will be judge, and then play a role in weighing their work against those criteria.

And if you must give a grades to students there were also some suggestions on how to approach this as objectively as possible. These suggestions include:

1.  Refrain from giving a letter or number grade for individual assignments, even if you are compelled to give one at the end of the term.

2. Never grade students while they are still learning something and, even more important, do not reward them for their performance at that point.

3.  Never grade on a curve.

4.  Never give a separate grade for effort.

There was much food for thought about the grading system and many good suggestions to take into consideration when we have the opportunity to participate in this process with students.

Happy reading and commenting.

Sheila

Kohn, Alfie.  Grading: The Issue is not How but Why.  Retrieved from http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/grading.htm on March 13, 2012