Should we abolish Grades in our schools?

       Why do schools assign grades?

       Grades and grading are such natural parts of our educational system, it seems almost silly to ask this question.  It's like asking, Why do people walk?, or Why do have eyes?  Still, if we think about the meaning and purpose of grades, I would say that most people have an answer to this question.

       Grades provide a measure of success in a student's learning.

       Grades tell us our ability in a particular academic area.

       Well...maybe that is what grades are supposed to do, but (in reality) do grades serve other purposes?  If you are a teacher, have you ever given a student a bad grade because the assignment was handed in late?  Have you ever taken points off of a test because a student was talking during the test?  In these instances, the grade was determined (at least partially) based on a student's behavior and not on the student's ability.

       As a student, have you ever received a good grade and learned nothing about the thing you were graded on?  Have you ever received an "A" on a test based on what you were able to memorize?  In these instances, the grade didn't represent ability; it represented compliance.  You did what you were told to do.

       As a parent, do you ever question the good grades that you children earn?  Do you encourage your children to get good grades, or do you encourage your children to learn?  Do you view grades as a sort of competition...Your kid vs. the other kids...Who is going to win?

     I think about grades and grading a lot.  A quick Google search found other people who think about grades and grading in our schools.  One of my favorite people on Twitter Starr Sackstein. Also Alfie Kohn, Jen Rubino, and Education Stormfront.  I worry that grading is taking over our education system.  I worry that learning--the joy of learning; the desire to learn--has fallen into a (far) second place.

       There is so much pressure on students to get good grades.  Do grades mean what they used to mean?  Do grades reflect a student's ability?  Does anyone care if grades reflect a student's ability?  Grades don't have to be the enemy; but (I think) the desire to seek good grades over the desire to learn is dangerous.  We give students a false sense accomplishment when we say that they have "earned" grades and they didn't.  We give parents a false sense of their child's ability too.  How many students get great grades in high school and then cannot make it to their sophomore year in college?  Surely, this isn't our goal.

       Why do schools assign grades?  Why (should) schools assign grades?  And, can we lessen the importance of grades and increase the importance of learning?

       I hope we can.

Common Standards

     Well, I've held out this long.  I've tried to stay away from politics in this blog.  But I've talked about grades and grading; I've talked about national testing; and I've actually talked about Common Core before.  However, this time I want to share my thoughts about Common Core and address some of the counter-arguments that (in my opinion) are not sufficient to justify a school district or a state to refuse to use them.

      I support the use of the Common Core standards for English/Language Arts and for Mathematics.  I also support the common standards for Science that are coming to our public schools.  I support these standards because they were created by experts; they were vetted by experts; and they give all 50 million U.S. students a fair and equitable education.  We all know that education throughout the U.S. is not uniform because individual state standards vary widely.  Common Core sets a level playing field for all.  Additionally, these common standards are consistent with those from countries that produce students with the highest academic abilities.  We all love competition and we all love to win; so I would think that we would all want our students to be able to fairly compete with anyone in the world for 21st century jobs.  Common standards allow us to do this.

     So here are some bad reasons for turning away from common educational standards:

1) I'm a Republican and Common Core is a Democrat thing--so I'm against it.

     We live in a partisan country.  Some people are strongly Republican and some are strongly Democrat.  If a cause aligns to a particular political party, then the loyal will support it no matter the cause and no matter the details.  But Common Core is not a Democrat thing and it is not a Republican thing.  It came from the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers.  Just as No Child Left Behind was not a Republican thing (Edward Kennedy co-wrote NCLB), Common Core is not a Democrat thing.

2) Common Core is too hard.

     Compared to the academic standards in some states, Common Core will appear to be more rigorous, less rigorous, or about the same.  Since different states had different standards in the past, this comparison will look different to people in different parts of the country.  But the goal of school is to teach and prepare students for the world that they will inherit.  The goal is not for students to get good grades.  We want our students to be successful, but too many of our students have been very successful in high school only to fail in college.  That is a national shame on our nation.  Common Core is trying to prepare students for both higher education and for the word of work.  If it is hard, then students are being well prepared for their future.  Isn't that something we all want?

3) It was implemented too fast.

     States were given four years between state adoption of the Common Core standards and the actual implementation of the Common Core standards.  I think that a lot of people feel that the Common Core came all of sudden--one year we didn't have it, and the next year we did.  There was a lot of planning behind the scenes that the general public may not have seen.  This is why it seems to be so sudden to some.  If there were ten years between adoption and implementation, some people would feel the same way.  Why should we wait to give our students a world-class education?  And why give up on it just because it was fast?

     Also, public education is often accused of moving too slow.  Fifty million students and three million teachers comprise a very large group; and it is often slow for this group to change.  If we drag out the change and take our time, it might never happen.  We have to "rip off the band-aid".  Now is the time

4) (This bad reason hasn't occurred yet, but it will towards the end of this school year.)  See, everyone did poorly on the test.

     This year, for the first time, the PARCC and Smarter Balanced tests will be administered to students in grades 3 to high school.  In all likelihood, overall student scores will be low
compared to their class grades in math and English/Language Arts; or compared to past standardized test grades.  And there will be all sorts of renewed calls to cancel Common Core.

     In fact, whenever a new standardized test is administered, scores are often low at first and then increase over time.  Remember, the content of the courses are more difficult, so naturally the tests will be more difficult and some students won't be able to rise to that challenge as well as other students.  Once again, the goal of school is to teach and help students to be prepared for their future.  We are not helping students by giving them easy tests and then telling their parents that they are smart and then having these same students struggle after high school.  Colleges will recognize these new tests that same way they recognize the SAT and ACT tests.  They have to be the sort of tests that really prepare our students for college.

     We have a real chance to improve the education of millions.  And it could happen to this current generation of students.  We can say that we were there when U.S. public schools took a bold new step toward becoming the new standard in world-class education.  This is education's "moon shot".  Let's make a real difference; let's give our kids the best!

Testing That Helps Us Learn

       Schools and testing just seem to go together.  And along with "testing" comes "grading".  From the outside, school can seem like it is entirely made up of just testing and grading.  And, to be fair, schools and teachers spend a lot of time on the issues of testing and grading.  Parents like to hang report cards on the refrigerator and brag about high test grades.  Newspapers love to report about test scores of schools and school districts.  Colleges may have admission requirements related to test scores.  Even politicians like to talk about test scores.

     But inside the school our best teachers are concerned about entirely different tests.  These "tests" (or assessments) are the ones that tell students and teachers what they know and what they don't know.  We call these tests Formative Assessments--or Testing FOR knowledge.

       These tests might be graded or they might not be graded.  The purpose of these tests are not to get a grade, but instead to see what students know and what students are able to do.  These are the tests that teachers really care about; and they are the tests that students actually like because they actually give students information about what they have learned.

     The best part is that these "tests" might not even look like tests.  They might be one question at the end of the class that students answer (verbally or in writing).  It might be a game that students play in class that requires them to answer questions about current lesson topic--and earn points for their team!  It might be a mini-project in which students are given a situation that they have to make sense of and then decide what to do next.

     Formative assessments give teachers information about how well students are learning.  Teachers use this information to make decisions about what to do the next day.

     Formative assessments are a necessary part of the learning process.  It is unlikely that every students will learn and understand every lesson in the every class every day.  It takes trial and practice and support and discussion and mistakes and "try again" and more discussion and (yes) formative assessments every step of the way so that teachers and students can get information on what they know and don't know.

     Schools are supposed to be about learning.  Maybe someday, the "grading" part of school will go away and the only part that will remain will be the learning part.

     I hope to be here when that happens.

The Value of National Testing

     Chapter tests, unit tests, and final exams have been around (seemingly) forever.  These are tests that happen in school.  But what about the nationwide tests that students take?  I'm talking about the SAT, the ACT, the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), and the new PARCC and Smarter Balance tests.  What is the value of these tests?

     Let's start with the SAT and ACT, because most people know about these tests.  The purpose of the SAT test is to reliably predict an individual's success in their first year of college (see report here); and the SAT does a pretty good job of doing this--particularly for mathematics.  The stated purpose of the ACT is:

     Your ACT composite score, together with your high school grades, indicates how prepared you are for   college. In addition, the scores from the various sections of the ACT will help your college place you in the right classes, matching your skills with course requirements. (citation)

     Of course, aside from these "official purposes", we know that lots of people attribute much more importance to these two tests.  And, to be fair, some colleges have "cut-off" scores; if you score below a cut-off score, then you won't be considered for admission.  Still, my feeling has always been that there are plenty of colleges in the U.S. and unless you are determined to go "ivy league", there is a college out there ready to accept your money...uh...uh...I mean...to accept you.  Also, I believe that the SAT/ACT do a good job of showing what you know and are able to do.  Let's face it, a lot of students are good at "playing school".  They know what to do to get an "A".  But some student get an "A" because they understand the material and other students get an "A" because they are good at "playing school".  The SAT/ACT helps to separate these two groups of students.

     The NAEP, on the other hand, probably does the best job in determining what our nation's student know and are able to do.  This test is given to a sample of students in every state.  Colleges don't look at this test and parents don't get individual scores from this test--so it is a "low-stakes" test.  Students don't feel external pressure to do well on this test and nobody hires a tutor to do better on this test.  The PARCC and the Smarter Balanced tests--the new tests to be used to assess the Common Core standards--are supposed to be more like the NAEP tests.  Colleges aren't asking "What did you get on your PARCC Algebra 2 test?" yet, but I believe they will in the coming years.

     The value of these new tests are really the same as the value of the old SAT/ACT tests; they are supposed to show what students have actually learned in school.  We have to brace ourselves for students who get good grades in school and bad grades on PARCC and Smarter Balanced.  It will happen to the students who are good at "playing school" but not so good at learning.

     Students who do well on these tests should do well in their college courses.  Students who don't do too well will know where they stand and will enter college (I think) with a better idea of what they need to do to succeed.

     Sometimes I worry that the reason more than 50% of students that start college and never finish is because their teachers and school counselors and parents made them feel that their good grades in high school meant that they would be academically successful in college.  Their PARCC and Smarter Balanced grades may give them a different point of view--and that's OK.

     The value of national tests is an unbiased view of a student's academic ability.