Not Your Mama’s Grading and Reporting
Grading and reporting is a topic I have dreaded discussing for years. It is the proverbial Pandora’s Box. Basically, when it comes to grading and reporting, everyone has an opinion on the “best” approach.
In my own undergraduate work related to education, this is something that was not explicitly addressed. I had limited responsibility for it when I was a student-teacher, and when I did get my own classroom, it was like the Wild West. I could set up my grading any way I wanted as long as no one’s parents got mad. I honestly had no idea how to report what students actually knew because I wasn’t sure if I knew myself!
So here we are in 2018, and grading and reporting is still an issue. These are some of the comments I often hear from teachers:
“I have to grade everything or they won’t do it.”
“I am going to give them extra credit for their test corrections.”
“I don’t know how to grade guided reading.”
“I just give them a grade for doing it.”
These comments reflect real issues we deal with when teaching. It’s a thorny topic that we need to dig into a little more deeply in order to really understand and become skilled at it.
Enter in Sue Brookhart.
Sue’s book, How to Use Grading to Improve Learning, is helping me evolve in this area. In this book, Sue shares her own journey and offers tips on how to approach it in modern education. One strategy that really resonated with me is this: Grade achievement, and handle behavior issues behaviorally. Use other management strategies — not grading — to handle non-achievement factors.
Saying you can understand a student’s comprehension by how they behave in class is like announcing you know how to make an amazing cake because you’ve seen one once. It lacks depth and focuses too much on the surface (and both will lead to very disappointed bystanders).
So basically, Sue is in favor of grades reflecting what students actually learn.
When we dip into assigning grades for behaviors instead of learning, we start to muddy the waters. One way I can think of it is in the following categories:
Achievement (learning) vs. Non-Achievement (behaviors)
Ironically, this is how the report card was set up many years ago. Grades and conduct, with the conduct intentionally separated.
Sue is not suggesting there’s not a link between these things. What she is suggesting is in order for grading to really help students move forward, we need to stay in the lane of achievement.
Well, I just opened the box.
What do you think? I encourage you to begin some discussions about grading, even if it is just informally. Does your current grading structure reflect achievement (student learning) or is it heavy on non-achievement (behaviors)?
~Alice & Hope