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Students write their own final report based on successes and challenges. 

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Students write their own final report based on successes and challenges. 

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For the past 14 years Alison Peacock has run an unconventional school. Grades are not the focus; children aren't told attainment levels and the information is only disclosed if parents ask.

As head of the Wroxham school in Hertfordshire, Peacock is the perfect addition to a new commission set up by school reform minister, Nick Gibbs, to explore new ways for primary schools to monitor pupil progress after levels were scrapped.

Peacock sees the demise of levels as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change how children are assessed nationally. But instead of simply replacing the old structure with a new one, she'd like to focus on enabling children to learn in a meaningful way so that assessment becomes "a tool for improvement rather than judgment".

The assumption that you can reliably put a number against what a child is capable of is flawed and dangerous.

At the end of the year in Wroxham, students write their own report, detailing their successes and challenges. The teacher then has a conversation with them to extend this further. Those in year 5 and 6 also give a presentation on their work from the year, which parents attend. The child is at the centre of a discussion on how they can be helped to progress.

"What a pupil needs to do to be graded a 4b, for example, is a meaningless conversation," she says. "Whereas talking about how to improve their multiplication of decimals is helpful."

Thirty years ago, before its Educating Essex fame, Peacock taught at Passmores Academy in Harlow. While there she was shocked when her manager said her lower-level English class couldn't be given anything higher than a grade D on their report card because that was the level the group was considered to be at. "To class them all at one grade, when some could do more than others, just felt so wrong," she says.

The children at the school were the most deprived of any that she's worked with. Some of the teaching staff thought that because a student came from a certain family or housing estate they could only achieve so much, she says. Putting people into categories and making assumptions on how intelligent they are enforces a pre-set limit on what they can achieve.

A lot of her concerns around ability labeling are rooted in her parents' education. Peacock's mother had wanted to go to university, but her family couldn't afford to send her. And, although her father passed his 11 plus, he was unable to attend grammar school because his parents couldn't pay for the uniform. Both later became teachers.

"From the earliest days as a teacher, I wanted to make sure I wasn't doing anything that could stop children believing in themselves."

When Peacock joined Wroxham school in January 2003 it was in special measures; Ofsted described the children as "unteachable". By October of that year it had moved up a grade and in 2006 it was judged to be outstanding - an award it achieved in 2009 and 2013.

How did she turn the school around? "The first thing I did was talk to the teachers about how they thought the school could improve," Peacock says. "Nobody had ever asked them."

From there she worked on enlivening the curriculum. "Behaviour management had been about battening down the hatches and occasionally a pupil would break out of that and hurl a chair," she says. "It was about giving the pupils experiences that they couldn't help but be excited by." This included a teenage rock band performance and workshops run by artists and poets.

It was during this time that the University of Cambridge asked if researchers could come into the school to write about what was happening. Peacock had appeared in a previous book by the university, Learning without Limits, which looked at the classroom practice of nine teachers. But this new proposal was daunting as it was was solely focused on her school.

"It's one thing to talk a good game, but it's quite another to have a load of people observing lessons and talking to children and parents," Peacock says. The result, Creating Learning without Limits, was an international success, and Peacock is now negotiating a book deal on Learning without Levels.

The headteacher says she never set out to get rid of ability labelling at the school. It grew from conversations with staff, and when it worked the idea was developed. Pupils are never set tasks by ability. Topics are taught to the whole group and students are then choose from a range of activities of varying complexity. If they begin a piece of work and think they could try something more difficult, or need something easier, they can change.

"This is not about being soft and fluffy. It's about believing that listening to pupils matters," she says. "The assumption that you can reliably put a number against what a child is capable of is flawed and dangerous. Potentially, it leads to the individual and the people around them having a very limited set of expectations."

She believes it is detrimental even if the student is given a high grade, pointing to research by Carol Dweck from Stanford University to illustrate this. When two groups of children were given a complex mathematical task, the group that was told they had good problem-solving skills progressed much further than the group that was simply told they were very good at maths.

Peacock's criticisms of ability labelling extends to how schools and teachers are treated too. "I'm proud to tell you we're an outstanding school, but I don't think it helps," she says. Rather than Ofsted dishing out grades, she'd like a benchmark that says whether a school is good enough and for there then to be an open dialogue on how it can improve.

"If teachers feel constrained, judged and labelled, then they can't lift the limits on pupils," she says.

Alison Peacock is looking for stories from the UK and abroad about people who have succeeded against the odds, and of schools that are trying to work in a different way to enable children for her new book, Learning without Levels. If you would like to get in touch, email her a t alison.peacock@thewroxham.net.

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The idea you can put a number against a child's ability is flawed and dangerous

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For the past 14 years Alison Peacock has run an unconventional school. Grades are not the focus; children aren't told attainment levels and the information is only disclosed if parents ask.

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Earlier this week, there was a terrible tragedy in Toronto as a man killed ten people and injured 14 others as he drove his van into pedestrians on Yonge Street (click here to read more).

Today, the name of one of the victims, who worked at Earl Haig Secondary School (where I have spent some time supervising a student teacher), was released. Her story, having worked only a single day at that high school and being a single mother of a seven year old, is heart-wrenching. To read more about the victims click here.

Yesterday and today, after some of the initial shock of the attack has abated, I have been amazed at how "self-congratulatory" people have been about how individuals/Toronto/Canada has reacted. I have sensed a "we're better than others" ... the police officer who arrested the man did not shoot him, news agencies deliberately delayed associating the attack with terrorism, and, on social media, people confronted those from outside of Canada who tried to conjure up connections with multiculturalism, religion, and terrorism.

I am proud of how we as Canadians generally responded to this horrible incident.

But...

I'm also concerned that we are patting ourselves on the back and making it seem like no other city (or country) that has been involved in an attack such as this has not reacted in kind. I'm guessing that there are many in Norway (2011 car bomb attack in Oslo followed by an attack at a summer camp) who also responded as we did in Canada. I think many Londoners would say that they have experienced multiple such attacks (2017 London Bridge, 2005 bombings) and have jolly well carried on. How about those in Nice in 2016?

For that matter, are there not many in countries which are under constant threat of attack who also respond in ways that seek peace?

We have experienced a terrible tragedy in Canada. Yes, I am proud that we did not immediately jump to conclusions that contribute to "uber" militarized and politicized responses. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We are not that different than others around the world who are reasonable, peace-seeking peoples. For that, we should be thankful.

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"Global" and "local" are constructs which no longer adequately capture our lived experience. "Glocal" attempts to capture the melding of international and local realities. This blog provides an opportunity to consider how we can develop glocal thinking and encourage others to do so as well.

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HIGH SCHOOL MAGAZINE

March 1999

By Alfie Kohn

Pour lire cet article en français, cliquer ici.

You can tell a lot about a teacher's values and personality just by asking how he or she feels about giving grades. Some defend the practice, claiming that grades are necessary to "motivate" students. Many of these teachers actually seem to enjoy keeping intricate records of students' marks. Such teachers periodically warn students that they're "going to have to know this for the test" as a way of compelling them to pay attention or do the assigned readings - and they may even use surprise quizzes for that purpose, keeping their grade books at the ready.

Frankly, we ought to be worried for these teachers' students. In my experience, the most impressive teachers are those who despise the whole process of giving grades. Their aversion, as it turns out, is supported by solid evidence that raises questions about the very idea of traditional grading.

Three Main Effects of Grading

Researchers have found three consistent effects of using - and especially, emphasizing the importance of - letter or number grades:

1. Grades tend to reduce students' interest in the learning itself. One of the most well-researched findings in the field of motivational psychology is that the more people are rewarded for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward (Kohn, 1993). Thus, it shouldn't be surprising that when students are told they'll need to know something for a test - or, more generally, that something they're about to do will count for a grade - they are likely to come to view that task (or book or idea) as a chore.

While it's not impossible for a student to be concerned about getting high marks and also to like what he or she is doing, the practical reality is that these two ways of thinking generally pull in opposite directions. Some research has explicitly demonstrated that a "grade orientation" and a "learning orientation" are inversely related (Beck et al., 1991; Milton et al., 1986). More strikingly, study after study has found that students - from elementary school to graduate school, and across cultures - demonstrate less interest in learning as a result of being graded (Benware and Deci, 1984; Butler, 1987; Butler and Nisan, 1986; Grolnick and Ryan, 1987; Harter and Guzman, 1986; Hughes et al., 1985; Kage, 1991; Salili et al., 1976). Thus, anyone who wants to see students get hooked on words and numbers and ideas already has reason to look for other ways of assessing and describing their achievement.

2. Grades tend to reduce students' preference for challenging tasks. Students of all ages who have been led to concentrate on getting a good grade are likely to pick the easiest possible assignment if given a choice (Harter, 1978; Harter and Guzman, 1986; Kage, 1991; Milton et al., 1986). The more pressure to get an A, the less inclination to truly challenge oneself. Thus, students who cut corners may not be lazy so much as rational; they are adapting to an environment where good grades, not intellectual exploration, are what count. They might well say to us, "Hey, you told me the point here is to bring up my GPA, to get on the honor roll. Well, I'm not stupid: the easier the assignment, the more likely that I can give you what you want. So don't blame me when I try to find the easiest thing to do and end up not learning anything."

3. Grades tend to reduce the quality of students' thinking. Given that students may lose interest in what they're learning as a result of grades, it makes sense that they're also apt to think less deeply. One series of studies, for example, found that students given numerical grades were significantly less creative than those who received qualitative feedback but no grades. The more the task required creative thinking, in fact, the worse the performance of students who knew they were going to be graded. Providing students with comments in addition to a grade didn't help: the highest achievement occurred only when comments were given instead of numerical scores (Butler, 1987; Butler, 1988; Butler and Nisan, 1986).

In another experiment, students told they would be graded on how well they learned a social studies lesson had more trouble understanding the main point of the text than did students who were told that no grades would be involved. Even on a measure of rote recall, the graded group remembered fewer facts a week later (Grolnick and Ryan, 1987). A brand-new study discovered that students who tended to think about current events in terms of what they'd need to know for a grade were less knowledgeable than their peers, even after taking other variables into account (Anderman and Johnston, 1998).

More Reasons to Just Say No to Grades

The preceding three results should be enough to cause any conscientious educator to rethink the practice of giving students grades. But as they say on late-night TV commercials, Wait - there's more.

4. Grades aren't valid, reliable, or objective. A "B" in English says nothing about what a student can do, what she understands, where she needs help. Moreover, the basis for that grade is as subjective as the result is uninformative. A teacher can meticulously record scores for one test or assignment after another, eventually calculating averages down to a hundredth of a percentage point, but that doesn't change the arbitrariness of each of these individual marks. Even the score on a math test is largely a reflection of how the test was written: what skills the teacher decided to assess, what kinds of questions happened to be left out, and how many points each section was "worth."

Moreover, research has long been available to confirm what all of us know: any given assignment may well be given two different grades by two equally qualified teachers. It may even be given two different grades by a single teacher who reads it at two different times (for example, see some of the early research reviewed in Kirschenbaum et al., 1971). In short, what grades offer is spurious precision - a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.

5. Grades distort the curriculum. A school's use of letter or number grades may encourage what I like to call a "bunch o' facts" approach to instruction because that sort of learning is easier to score. The tail of assessment thus comes to wag the educational dog.

6. Grades waste a lot of time that could be spent on learning. Add up all the hours that teachers spend fussing with their grade books. Then factor in all the (mostly unpleasant) conversations they have with students and their parents about grades. It's tempting to just roll our eyes when confronted with whining or wheedling, but the real problem rests with the practice of grading itself.

7. Grades encourage cheating. Again, we can continue to blame and punish all the students who cheat - or we can look for the structural reasons this keeps happening. Researchers have found that the more students are led to focus on getting good grades, the more likely they are to cheat, even if they themselves regard cheating as wrong (Anderman et al., 1998; Milton et al., 1986; also see "Who's Cheating Whom?").

8. Grades spoil teachers' relationships with students. Consider this lament, which could have been offered by a teacher in your district:

I'm getting tired of running a classroom in which everything we do revolves around grades. I'm tired of being suspicious when students give me compliments, wondering whether or not they are just trying to raise their grade. I'm tired of spending so much time and energy grading your papers, when there are probably a dozen more productive and enjoyable ways for all of us to handle the evaluation of papers. I'm tired of hearing you ask me 'Does this count?' And, heaven knows, I'm certainly tired of all those little arguments and disagreements we get into concerning marks which take so much fun out of the teaching and the learning. . . (Kirschenbaum et al., 1971, p. 115).

9. Grades spoil students' relationships with each other. The quality of students' thinking has been shown to depend partly on the extent to which they are permitted to learn cooperatively (Johnson and Johnson, 1989; Kohn, 1992). Thus, the ill feelings, suspicion, and resentment generated by grades aren't just disagreeable in their own right; they interfere with learning.

The most destructive form of grading by far is that which is done "on a curve," such that the number of top grades is artificially limited: no matter how well all the students do, not all of them can get an A. Apart from the intrinsic unfairness of this arrangement, its practical effect is to teach students that others are potential obstacles to their own success. The kind of collaboration that can help all students to learn more effectively doesn't stand a chance in such an environment.

Sadly, even teachers who don't explicitly grade on a curve may assume, perhaps unconsciously, that the final grades "ought to" come out looking more or less this way: a few very good grades, a few very bad grades, and the majority somewhere in the middle. But as one group of researchers pointed out, "It is not a symbol of rigor to have grades fall into a 'normal' distribution; rather, it is a symbol of failure - failure to teach well, failure to test well, and failure to have any influence at all on the intellectual lives of students" (Milton et al., 1986, p. 225).

The competition that turns schooling into a quest for triumph and ruptures relationships among students doesn't just happen within classrooms, of course. The same effect is witnessed at a schoolwide level when kids are not just rated but ranked, sending the message that the point isn't to learn, or even to perform well, but to defeat others. Some students might be motivated to improve their class rank, but that is completely different from being motivated to understand ideas. (Wise educators realize that it doesn't matter how motivated students are; what matters is how students are motivated. It is the type of motivation that counts, not the amount.)

Grade Inflation . . . and Other Distractions

Most of us are directly acquainted with at least some of these disturbing consequences of grades, yet we continue to reduce students to letters or numbers on a regular basis. Perhaps we've become inured to these effects and take them for granted. This is the way it's always been, we assume, and the way it has to be. It's rather like people who have spent all their lives in a terribly polluted city and have come to assume that this is just the way air looks - and that it's natural to be coughing all the time.

Oddly, when educators are shown that it doesn't have to be this way, some react with suspicion instead of relief. They want to know why you're making trouble, or they assert that you're exaggerating the negative effects of grades (it's really not so bad - cough, cough), or they dismiss proven alternatives to grading on the grounds that our school could never do what others schools have done.

The practical difficulties of abolishing letter grades are real. But the key question is whether those difficulties are seen as problems to be solved or as excuses for perpetuating the status quo. The logical response to the arguments and data summarized here is to say: "Good heavens! If even half of this is true, then it's imperative we do whatever we can, as soon as we can, to phase out traditional grading." Yet many people begin and end with the problems of implementation, responding to all this evidence by saying, in effect, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we'll never get rid of grades because . . ."

It is also striking how many educators never get beyond relatively insignificant questions, such as how many tests to give, or how often to send home grade reports, or what grade should be given for a specified level of achievement (e.g., what constitutes "B" work), or what number corresponds to what letter. Some even reserve their outrage for the possibility that too many students are ending up with good grades, a reaction that suggests stinginess with A's is being confused with intellectual rigor. The evidence indicates that the real problem isn't grade inflation; it's grades. The proper occasion for outrage is not that too many students are getting A's, but that too many students have accepted that getting A's is the point of going to school.

Let's consider the most frequently heard responses to the above arguments - which is to say, the most common objections to getting rid of grades.

First, it is said that students expect to receive grades and even seem addicted to them. This is often true; personally, I've taught high school students who reacted to the absence of grades with what I can only describe as existential vertigo. (Who am I, if not a B+?) But as more elementary and even some middle schools move to replace grades with more informative (and less destructive) systems of assessment, the damage doesn't begin until students get to high school. Moreover, elementary and middle schools that haven't changed their practices often cite the local high school as the reason they must get students used to getting grades regardless of their damaging effects - just as high schools point the finger at colleges.

Even when students arrive in high school already accustomed to grades, already primed to ask teachers, "Do we have to know this?" or "What do I have to do to get an A?", this is a sign that something is very wrong. It's more an indictment of what has happened to them in the past than an argument to keep doing it in the future.

Perhaps because of this training, grades can succeed in getting students to show up on time, hand in their work, and otherwise do what they're told. Many teachers are loath to give up what is essentially an instrument of control. But even to the extent this instrument works (which is not always), we are obliged to reflect on whether mindless compliance is really our goal. The teacher who exclaims, "These kids would blow off my course in a minute if they weren't getting a grade for it!" may be issuing a powerful indictment of his or her course. Who would be more reluctant to give up grades than a teacher who spends the period slapping transparencies on the overhead projector and lecturing endlessly at students about Romantic poets or genetic codes? Without bribes (A's) and threats (F's), students would have no reason to do such assignments. To maintain that this proves something is wrong with the kids - or that grades are simply "necessary" - suggests a willful refusal to examine one's classroom practices and assumptions about teaching and learning.

"If I can't give a child a better reason for studying than a grade on a report card, I ought to lock my desk and go home and stay there." So wrote Dorothy De Zouche, a Missouri teacher, in an article published in February . . . of 1945. But teachers who can give a child a better reason for studying don't need grades. Research substantiates this: when the curriculum is engaging - for example, when it involves hands-on, interactive learning activities - students who aren't graded at all perform just as well as those who are graded (Moeller and Reschke, 1993).

Another objection: it is sometimes argued that students must be given grades because colleges demand them. One might reply that "high schools have no responsibility to serve colleges by performing the sorting function for them" - particularly if that process undermines learning (Krumboltz and Yeh, 1996, p. 325). But in any case the premise of this argument is erroneous: traditional grades are not mandatory for admission to colleges and universities. (See Sidebar A.)

A friend of mine likes to say that people don't resist change - they resist being changed. Even terrific ideas (like moving a school from a grade orientation to a learning orientation) are guaranteed to self-destruct if they are simply forced down people's throats. The first step for an administrator, therefore, is to open up a conversation - to spend perhaps a full year just encouraging people to think and talk about the effects of (and alternatives to) traditional grades. This can happen in individual classes, as teachers facilitate discussions about how students regard grades, as well as in evening meetings with parents, or on a website - all with the help of relevant books, articles, speakers, videos, and visits to neighboring schools that are farther along in this journey.

The actual process of "de-grading" can be done in stages. For example, a high school might start by freeing ninth-grade classes from grades before doing the same for upperclassmen. (Even a school that never gets beyond the first stage will have done a considerable service, giving students one full year where they can think about what they're learning instead of their GPAs.)

Another route to gradual change is to begin by eliminating only the most pernicious practices, such as grading on a curve or ranking students. Although grades, per se, may continue for a while, at least the message will be sent from the beginning that all students can do well, and that the point is to succeed rather than to beat others.

Anyone who has heard the term "authentic assessment" knows that abolishing grades doesn't mean eliminating the process of gathering information about student performance - and communicating that information to students and parents. Rather, abolishing grades opens up possibilities that are far more meaningful and constructive. These include narratives (written comments), portfolios (carefully chosen collections of students' writings and projects that demonstrate their interests, achievement, and improvement over time), student-led parent-teacher conferences, exhibitions and other opportunities for students to show what they can do.

Of course, it's harder for a teacher to do these kinds of assessments if he or she has 150 or more students and sees each of them for 45-55 minutes a day. But that's not an argument for continuing to use traditional grades; it's an argument for challenging these archaic remnants of a factory-oriented approach to instruction, structural aspects of high schools that are bad news for reasons that go well beyond the issue of assessment. It's an argument for looking into block scheduling, team teaching, interdisciplinary courses - and learning more about schools that have arranged things so each teacher can spend more time with fewer students (e.g., Meier, 1995).

Administrators should be prepared to respond to parental concerns, some of them completely reasonable, about the prospect of edging away from grades. "Don't you value excellence?" You bet - and here's the evidence that traditional grading undermines excellence. "Are you just trying to spare the self-esteem of students who do poorly?" We are concerned that grades may be making things worse for such students, yes, but the problem isn't just that some kids won't get A's and will have their feelings hurt. The real problem is that almost all kids (including yours) will come to focus on grades and, as a result, their learning will be hurt.

If parents worry that grades are the only window they have into the school, we need to assure them that alternative assessments provide a far better view. But if parents don't seem to care about getting the most useful information or helping their children become more excited learners - if they demand grades for the purpose of documenting how much better their kids are than everyone else's, then we need to engage them in a discussion about whether this is a legitimate goal, and whether schools exist for the purpose of competitive credentialing or for the purpose of helping everyone to learn (Kohn, 1998; Labaree, 1997).

Above all, we need to make sure that objections and concerns about the details don't obscure the main message, which is the demonstrated harm of traditional grading on the quality of students' learning and their interest in exploring ideas.

High school administrators can do a world of good in their districts by actively supporting efforts to eliminate conventional grading in elementary and middle schools. Working with their colleagues in these schools can help pave the way for making such changes at the secondary school level.

Finally, there is the question of what classroom teachers can do while grades continue to be required. The short answer is that they should do everything within their power to make grades as invisible as possible for as long as possible. Helping students forget about grades is the single best piece of advice for creating a learning-oriented classroom.

When I was teaching high school, I did a lot of things I now regret. But one policy that still seems sensible to me was saying to students on the first day of class that, while I was compelled to give them a grade at the end of the term, I could not in good conscience ever put a letter or number on anything they did during the term - and I would not do so. I would, however, write a comment - or, better, sit down and talk with them - as often as possible to give them feedback.

At this particular school I frequently faced students who had been prepared for admission to Harvard since their early childhood - a process I have come to call "Preparation H." I knew that my refusal to rate their learning might only cause some students to worry about their marks all the more, or to create suspense about what would appear on their final grade reports, which of course would defeat the whole purpose. So I said that anyone who absolutely had to know what grade a given paper would get could come see me and we would figure it out together. An amazing thing happened: as the days went by, fewer and fewer students felt the need to ask me about grades. They began to be more involved with what we were learning because I had taken responsibility as a teacher to stop pushing grades into their faces, so to speak, whenever they completed an assignment.

What I didn't do very well, however, was to get students involved in devising the criteria for excellence (what makes a math solution elegant, an experiment well-designed, an essay persuasive, a story compelling) as well as deciding how well their projects met those criteria. I'm afraid I unilaterally set the criteria and evaluated the students' efforts. But I have seen teachers who were more willing to give up control, more committed to helping students participate in assessment and turn that into part of the learning. Teachers who work with their students to design powerful alternatives to letter grades have a replacement ready to go when the school finally abandons traditional grading - and are able to minimize the harm of such grading in the meantime.

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For a more detailed look at the issues discussed in this article, please see the books Punished by Rewards and The Schools Our Children Deserve as well as the DVD No Grades + No Homework = Better Learning. Click here for a more recent article about the subject that offers a skeptical look at "standards-based" grading, a more comprehensive analysis of why grading is inherently counterproductive, and more examples of teachers who have stopped doing it.

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SIDEBAR A:
Must Concerns About College Derail High School Learning?

Here is the good news: college admissions is not as rigid and reactionary as many people think. Here is the better news: even when that process doesn't seem to have its priorities straight, high schools don't have to be dragged down to that level.

Sometimes it is assumed that admissions officers at the best universities are 80-year-old fuddy-duddies, peering over their spectacles and muttering about "highly irregular" applications. In truth, the people charged with making these decisions are often just a few years out of college themselves and, after making their way through a pile of interchangeable applications from 3.8-GPA, student-council-vice-president, musically-accomplished hopefuls from high-powered traditional suburban high schools, they are desperate for something unconventional. Given that the most selective colleges have been to known to accept home-schooled children who have never set foot in a classroom, secondary schools have more latitude than they sometimes assume. It is not widely known, for example, that at least 280 colleges and universities don't require applicants to take either the SAT or the ACT. [By 2010, that number had grown to nearly 850, representing almost 40 percent of all accredited four-year institutions in the U.S.]

Admittedly, large state universities are more resistant to unconventional applications than are small private colleges simply because of economics: it takes more time, and therefore more money, for admissions officers to read meaningful application materials than it does for them to glance at a GPA or an SAT score and plug it into a formula. But I have heard of high schools approaching the admissions directors of nearby universities and saying, in effect, "We'd like to improve our school by getting rid of grades. Here's why. Will you work with us to make sure our seniors aren't penalized?" This strategy may well be successful for the simple reason that not many high schools are requesting this at present and the added inconvenience for admissions offices is likely to be negligible. Of course, if more and more high schools abandon traditional grades, then the universities will have no choice but to adapt. This is a change that high schools will have to initiate rather than waiting for colleges to signal their readiness.

At the moment, plenty of admissions officers enjoy the convenience of class ranking, apparently because they have confused being better than one's peers with being good at something; they're looking for winners rather than learners. But relatively few colleges actually insist on this practice. When a 1993 NASSP survey asked 1,100 admissions officers what would happen if a high school stopped computing class rank, only 0.5 percent said the school's applicants would not be considered for admission, 4.5 percent said it would be a "great handicap," and 14.4 percent said it would be a "handicap" (Levy and Riordan, 1994). In other words, it appears that the absence of class ranks would not interfere at all with students' prospects for admission to four out of five colleges.

Even more impressive, some high schools not only refuse to rank their students but refuse to give any sort of letter or number grades. Courses are all taken pass/fail, sometimes with narrative assessments of the students' performance that become part of a college application. I have spoken to representatives of most of the following schools, and all assure me that, year after year, their graduates are accepted into large state universities and small, highly selective colleges. Even the complete absence of high school grades is not a barrier to college admission, so we don't have that excuse for continuing to subject students to the harm done by traditional grading.

Any school considering the abolition of grades might want to submit a letter with each graduating student's transcript that explains why the school has chosen this course (see Sidebar B). In the meantime, feel free to contact any of these successful grade-free high schools:

Carolina Friends School, Durham, NC

Eagle Rock School, Estes Park, CO

Jefferson County Open School, Lakewood, CO

Lehman Alternative Community School, Ithaca, NY

Metropolitan Learning Center, Portland, OR

Poughkeepsie Day School, Poughkeepsie, NY

Saint Ann's School, Brooklyn, NY

Waring School, Beverly, MA

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We at ______________ High School believe our graduates are uniquely qualified to take advantage of what your institution of higher learning has to offer because they are interested in what they will be able to learn rather than in what grade they will be able to get. By the time they leave us, our students have grown into scholars, and that's due in large part to the absence of traditional ratings. Students in other schools spend much of their time and mental effort keeping track of their grade-point averages, figuring out what is required for an A and then doing only that and no more. At ___________, that time and energy are devoted exclusively to encountering great ideas and great literature, using the scientific method, thinking like an historian or a mathematician, and learning to speak and write with precision. Our students not only think clearly - they take joy in doing so . . . precisely because their efforts have not been reduced to letters or numbers.

The enclosed transcript includes a wealth of other information about the applicant - a descriptive list of the courses s/he has completed and the special projects and extracurricular activities s/he has undertaken, as well as what selected members of our staff have to say about the student as a thinker and as a person. We believe that these data, together with the personal essay you may request and the interview we hope you will conduct, will give you a rich and complete portrait of this applicant such that a list of grades would add little in any case.

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REFERENCES
Anderman, E. M., T. Griesinger, and G. Westerfield. "Motivation and Cheating During Early Adolescence." Journal of Educational Psychology 90 (1998): 84-93.

Anderman, E. M., and J. Johnston. "Television News in the Classroom: What Are Adolescents Learning?" Journal of Adolescent Research 13 (1998): 73-100

Beck, H. P., S. Rorrer-Woody, and L. G. Pierce. "The Relations of Learning and Grade Orientations to Academic Performance." Teaching of Psychology 18 (1991): 35-37.

Benware, C. A., and E. L. Deci. "Quality of Learning With an Active Versus Passive Motivational Set." American Educational Research Journal 21 (1984): 755-65.

Butler, R. "Task-Involving and Ego-Involving Properties of Evaluation: Effects of Different Feedback Conditions on Motivational Perceptions, Interest, and Performance." Journal of Educational Psychology 79 (1987): 474-82.

Butler, R. "Enhancing and Undermining Intrinsic Motivation: The Effects of Task-Involving and Ego-Involving Evaluation on Interest and Performance." British Journal of Educational Psychology 58 (1988): 1-14.

Butler, R., and M. Nisan. "Effects of No Feedback, Task-Related Comments, and Grades on Intrinsic Motivation and Performance." Journal of Educational Psychology 78 (1986): 210-16.

De Zouche, D. "'The Wound Is Mortal': Marks, Honors, Unsound Activities." The Clearing House 19 (1945): 339-44.

Grolnick, W. S., and R. M. Ryan. "Autonomy in Children's Learning: An Experimental and Individual Difference Investigation." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52 (1987): 890-98.

Harter, S. "Pleasure Derived from Challenge and the Effects of Receiving Grades on Children's Difficulty Level Choices." Child Development 49 (1978): 788-99.

Harter, S. and Guzman, M. E. "The Effect of Perceived Cognitive Competence and Anxiety on Children's Problem-Solving Performance, Difficulty Level Choices, and Preference for Challenge." Unpublished manuscript, University of Denver. 1986.

Hughes, B., H. J. Sullivan, and M. L. Mosley. "External Evaluation, Task Difficulty, and Continuing Motivation." Journal of Educational Research 78 (1985): 210-15.

Johnson, D. W., and R. T. Johnson. Cooperation and Competition: Theory and Research. Edina, Minn.: Interaction Book Co., 1989.

Kage, M. "The Effects of Evaluation on Intrinsic Motivation." Paper presented at the meeting of the Japan Association of Educational Psychology, Joetsu, Japan, 1991.

Kirschenbaum, H., S. B. Simon, and R. W. Napier. Wad-Ja-Get?: The Grading Game in American Education. New York: Hart, 1971.

Kohn, A. No Contest: The Case Against Competition. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

Kohn, A. Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993

Kohn, A. "Only for My Kid: How Privileged Parents Undermine School Reform." Phi Delta Kappan, April 1998: 569-77.

Krumboltz, J. D., and C. J. Yeh. "Competitive Grading Sabotages Good Teaching." Phi Delta Kappan, December 1996: 324-26.

Labaree, D. F. How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997.

Levy, J., and P. Riordan. Rank-in-Class, Grade Point Average, and College Admission. Reston, Va.: NASSP, 1994. (Available as ERIC Document 370988.)

Meier, D. The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem. Boston: Beacon, 1995.

Milton, O., H. R. Pollio, and J. A. Eison. Making Sense of College Grades. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986.

Moeller, A. J., and C. Reschke. "A Second Look at Grading and Classroom Performance: Report of a Research Study." Modern Language Journal 77 (1993): 163-69.

Salili, F., M. L. Maehr, R. L. Sorensen, and L. J. Fyans, Jr. "A Further Consideration of the Effects of Evaluation on Motivation." American Educational Research Journal 13 (1976): 85-102.

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HIGH SCHOOL MAGAZINE March 1999 By Alfie Kohn Pour lire cet article en français, cliquer ici. You can tell a lot about a teacher's values and personality just by asking how he or she feels about giving grades. Some defend the practice, claiming that grades are necessary to "motivate" students.

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Bruce Rodrigues: EQAO, Assessment, and Mathematics

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Bruce Rodrigues, CEO of EQAO, presents primary, junior and grade 9 mathematics assessment data in the context of current provincial conversations, positioning EQAO as only one piece in the assessment picture of Ontario.

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The Power of Performance Assessments | Edutopia

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Edutopia blogger Bob Lenz shares the Envision Schools' framework for assessing high school students during their four-year academic journey.

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When we started Envision Schools 13 years ago, we believed then -- as we do now -- that standardized assessments were necessary but insufficient for determining college and career readiness. It seemed obvious to us, as it does to so many educators, that bubble-in answers would only ever tell part of the story and that broader, richer assessments were critical to showing the full range of a student's abilities.

This is why we, in collaboration with the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE), created the Deeper Learning Student Assessment System (DLSAS). Schools and students needed more complete and better ways of demonstrating knowledge and skills along with ways of conducting authentic performance assessment for students.

Conley's report comes at just the right time; while we have heard endlessly about teacher, student, and parent frustration over standardized testing, about what those tests are missing, and how limited they are, the educational community has been too silent about alternatives. Conley offers several suggestions, and his report is essential to the larger conversation about performance assessment and what needs to happen in American schools.

Performance Assessment

But what exactly is "authentic performance assessment" and how do we know when it's happening? What are the reasons why we need to care about Conley's report?

Real performance assessment happens when we measure not just knowledge, but also skills and competencies that are inextricably related to success in college and career. This kind of assessment is concerned not just with content but also with real-world applications. Here's how you know when you have true, meaningful performance assessment happening in your classroom: when preparing for the test, taking the test, and then applying the skill in real life all look the same.

Consider the skill of parallel parking (or any other driving competency). How do you learn and practice it? By parallel parking. When you're getting a driver's license, how are you tested for this skill? By parallel parking. And what do you do with the skill after you pass the test? You parallel park.

The driver's license exam is a culminating assessment that results in the legal right to drive. It is not the only assessment in the process: The driver's permit exam (usually a written or electronic, standard multiple-choice test) assesses your knowledge of the rules of the road. It is an important step in the process, but not as important as demonstrating what you can actually do with your knowledge. That's where the performance test of actually driving and parking the car comes in.

Seen in this light, the need for real performance assessment in schools becomes more obvious. We can see exactly how important doing is to the process of learning, and we can easily agree that a driver's license should only be awarded to someone who knows not just the rules of the road but also how to operate a car.

Conley's report helps us understand the continuum of the types of assessments and invites states to consider how to move their assessments from "Parts and Pieces" towards "Big Picture:"

Standardized assessments, even when they include open-ended questions and are performance-based, only give us part of the picture of a student's readiness for college and career success. Project-centered tasks ask students to practice and demonstrate command over the very skills they will need for the next step in their learning journey.

We think we need to move from having students drive toward their future while looking in the rear view mirror (tell what you know) to an "Eyes Forward" assessment (preparing them for the world to come). The following video created with Envision and the design firm IDEO illustrates this analogy.

Conley's Key Findings

1. College and career readiness depends on more than just academic knowledge and skills. Students also need to develop an array of personal and interpersonal competencies, as well as practical knowledge about the transition to life after high school. Examples include time management, perseverance, goal setting, self- advocacy, and even financial planning.

2. Schools can assess and teach a much wider range of competencies. Research shows convincingly that student motivation, persistence, self- discipline, problem solving, college planning, and other critical elements of college and career readiness can be assessed and taught effectively.

3. Traditional state tests are convenient but not very informative. Standardized, multiple-choice reading and math tests are reliable, familiar, affordable, and easy to administer. Unfortunately, they do not provide much useful information about students' progress toward long-term goals.

4. States are taking a new look at performance assessments. Today, a number of states are returning to performance assessments in order to get a better read on college and career readiness; the movement is already happening.

5. College and career readiness are best measured through a combination of assessments. Multiple-choice achievement tests have their uses, but so do diagnostic tests, performance tasks, informal assessments, and other means of tracking student progress. No single measure is sufficient to judge school performance and to guide instruction.

What Educators Can Do

Conley offers a wide range of recommendations for education stakeholders to follow; only a few are listed here. This is a starting point, a place for those of us who want to see real change happen to come together and make agreements. For a complete list of Conley's recommendations, see the full report. For now, let's take his advice and start with the following:

1. Define college and career readiness comprehensively.

2. Adapt federal education policy to allow greater flexibility in the types of data that can be used to demonstrate student learning and growth.

3. Look for ways to improve the Common Core State Standards and related assessments so that they become better measures of deeper learning.

4. Determine the professional learning, curriculum, and resource needs of educators to implement a new system of assessments.

The time is now for states and districts, charter management organizations, schools, and all of the educational initiatives to align with assessing deeper learning outcomes. To do so is to truly prepare our young people for college and career success in ways that will have real and positive impacts on their lives.

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A New Era for Student Assessment | Edutopia

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When we started Envision Schools 13 years ago, we believed then -- as we do now -- that standardized assessments were necessary but insufficient for determining college and career readiness. It seemed obvious to us, as it does to so many educators, that bubble-in answers would only ever tell part of the story and that broader, richer assessments were critical to showing the full range of a student's abilities.

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Editor's Note: Our guest blogger today is Andrew Marcinek, an English Instructor at Boys Latin Charter School of Philadelphia. His post is inspired by this week's #edchat topic, "What's the ideal classroom design for 21st-century learning?"
The answer to student achievement and mastery is not found in shaded bubble. This, however, is what we work with yearly in American schools. We teach. We Test. We re-teach. We differentiate. We struggle. We do everything within our power to promote student learning, but in the end, it comes down to the mighty test. This is the culture we live in and until we have teachers in congress and school boards eliminated, this is what we have to work with.

I will now come down off of my soap box and offer some ideas for promoting 21st century assessment in your classroom while synching your lessons with state standards and objectives. In the past, many of us would design a unit, create a test, and develop lessons. While this is still a good practice, we need to change the method of delivery and assessment in rapidly changing world.

Today's students' are unlike any other student in history; they have access to more information than any generation in history, yet they are underperforming. Wait...what? Underperforming! In the most affluent country on the planet? The numbers are shocking, but they're real. How did this happen in America?

One of the reasons this is happening is because of the way we assess our students. Students are residing in a 20th century classroom equipped for the 21st century. Students are taking 19th and 20th century exams in a classroom that has an interactive white board and 1:1 laptop ratio. This is where our problem begins.

We give assessments to gauge mastery and understand how our students are performing, however, do we vary and differentiate those assessments? No. Everyday teachers hear the word differentiation, yet only a few actually follow this trend through to their assessments. A 21st century assessment is a menu of options. It allows students to pick and choose the best method for showcasing a specific skill. It is an authentic method of learning and something adults do every day.

In the work place - be it a school, law office, or a graphic design start-up - employees are faced with a set of problems daily. Those problems need solutions. You see where I'm going with this? Why don't we apply the same principles to our classroom assessments? At the beginning of each unit teachers present essential questions that are hovering over each lesson and are constantly referred to throughout the unit. These questions need answers. It is the students' job to find the best answer along the way and make their own decision.

Let's consider two options.

Option 1

1. My students are currently reading The Kite Runner. In the beginning of the unit, I presented three guiding questions.

a. What is a family?
b. Do our childhoods shape the adults we become?
c. Can a person truly forgive another or themselves?

Throughout the unit we cover various standards via NCTE for ELA - activating prior knowledge, analyzing vocabulary, summarizing, examining figurative language, etc. These standards are implemented into the daily lessons and each day is met with a reflection blog that students maintain and are responsible for on a daily basis.

So what is the end product? How do I know if my students mastered the skills set forth in the beginning of the unit? I let them choose.

We have a classroom outfit for the 21st century learner. We have 1:1 laptops, a classroom wikispace, a class blog, projector, smart board, and digital cameras. Students are given a review of the unit. We revisit main ideas, plot points, characters, and themes. In the end, we recall our essential questions. I ask students to take one essential question and answer it by using support from the novel. I don't give them a handout or a packet. I don't even use paper. I give them a problem, a question, and now they must find the best solution.

This type of assessment emulates real life and what we, as adults, are faced with daily. Students are forced to think critically, analyze the literature, apply what they know and synthesize that with some form of multimedia, and then the class, myself, and possibly my learning network can assess and evaluate what they have mastered. This type of assessment not only embeds the entire ladder of Bloom's taxonomy, but it adheres to all of the standards and provides an audience for student work.

Students may choose to work in groups, they can choose to present via multimedia, or they can simply write an essay or blog post. The parameters are flexible and I am constantly monitoring for questions and progression. They have a deadline and a rubric that will assess their work. The rubric is broad and allows for students to showcase their talents and skills rather than travel down a myopic tunnel. The assessment meets all of the standards and allows for all types of learners to shine. It is differentiation at its best.

Option 2

Give them a unit test. Print it out and staple it together. Differentiate it by providing multiple choice questions, matching, short responses, and an essay. Have the students sit in rows, take the test all at once, and hand it in when they are finished. Run their answers through the scantron machine and get results, data, and a nice print out with an easy to read graph. You know exactly where each student is lacking and behind right? Sure, the data says so. Here is what the data does not account for...

...a bad day, a good guess, a sleepless night, a fight with a boyfriend or girlfriend, an upset stomach, a visual learner.

There is no data for that and there never will be.

Andrew Marcinek has been an English teacher for six years. He is also an adjunct professor of Language Arts at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, PA. Next fall Andrew will take over the Instructional Technology Specialist position at The Boys' Latin Charter School of Philadelphia. Andrew also authors a blog, iTeach, that focuses on 21st century classroom innovation and offers lessons and ideas for teachers seeking to advance their curriculum and tweets by the handle @andycinek.

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Guest Blog: Reinventing Assessment for the 21st-Century | Edutopia

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Editor's Note: Our guest blogger today is Andrew Marcinek, an English Instructor at Boys Latin Charter School of Philadelphia. His post is inspired by this week's #edchat topic, "What's the ideal classroom design for 21st-century learning?" The answer to student achievement and mastery is not found in shaded bubble.

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Don't be overwhelmed!

Explore the various themes by taking a look some of the articles and videos. We have a menu of options provided for you, in hopes that you may find items of personal relevance. The expectation is not to read them all (quality over quantity).

Feel free to add resources or comments to the Padlet board.

Thanks for entering into this learning journey with us!

~ Jess & Jenny

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Grading Game blog/comments

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Today I had a very interesting conversation on Twitter. Now I want to preface this with, this type of conversation has been happening for quite some time and it is a conversation that will continue. But today's conversation made me think.

The conversation was on Assessment practise and it actually stemmed from a recent article in the globe and Mail.

What do you think? "If we want better students, end the 19th-century 'grading game'" http://t.co/G60qDdfhvT @BeuckelareNic @MathletePearce
- Brian Aspinall (@mraspinall)January 3, 2015

I read this article earlier on in the day and have been stewing over this thought for quite some time. This led me to tweet this in response:

@MathletePearce @mraspinall @BeuckelareNic needs to start somewhere. i was even thinking of letting my class right their own reports
- Jonathan So (@MrSoclassroom)January 3, 2015

P.S: I did mean to type Write instead of right.

Well this sparked an interesting conversation with John Walkup, based on his twitter profile a professor of Cognitive Rigor ( I apologize John if I messed that up). See the full conversation here on my storify: https://storify.com/MrSoclassroom/debate-on-assessment.

The conversation was quite amazing and sparked many thoughts about self assessment and assessment as a whole. Would love to hear your thoughts on the debate?

Overall, the themes (in my opinion [not trying to be bias here]) was that John was questioning me using student self reflection as the final mark in the reporting system.

To me reports is a task that I have to do as a teacher. In fact I hate them. I think they serve no purpose (in their present state) except to inform parents about the progress that their child made during the term. What I find even more redundant is that many parents don't even read the comments that teachers write because all they look at is the grades. Now let's tie it back to the globe and mail article. They suggested that grades hinder learning. And with this I agree.
Learning is a process. When all we are consumed about is a letter at the end of the class we are not worrying about what we are learning just the outcome. If we focus solely on the learning then so will students. This is why I suggested letting my students write their own reports. Now of course I wouldn't be handing in that as the final assessment, as first of all I don't think my principal or school board would let me but also their needs to a some sort of evaluation from the teacher but what is wrong with incorporating their thinking into the reports. How meaningful would that be? How engaging would it be to see their thoughts and reflections incorporated with my comments? How many parents would spend more time reading the comments because its their child's work?
These are all important questions we need to be asking.

Now as I have said before this is a topic that I have been thinking hard about for the past couple of years. I recently wrote a blog post about it called: Reflection on Assessment. This year my daughter started school. It has been a very interesting ride. It has made me really reflect as a teacher on how I am communicating to my students and to my parents. Assessment has been one of those key areas.

For me assessment is about the learning process. Children, like adults, learn at different rates and stages. Learning is not linear but it still is learning. When we impose certain milestones on children there is a sense of failure that goes with it for not meeting those standards. Yes failure is good but losing self esteem over it is not. At the same time it is fine to have standards as long as children know how they learn and that they will achieve those standards eventually. For this to happen, students need to be taught self reflection. It is a very hard thing for students and adults to learn. It starts with being honest with yourself and those around you. Yes as John pointed out their will be bias in a reflection but if we are honest with ourselves then the bias is limited. Students need to see that reflecting allows you to set goals, make plans to reach those goals and then finally obtain them.

In my classroom assessment is ongoing. We have daily conferences with students as they learn, every center and lesson has a reflecting piece that students do through Vlogs or ticket out the door activities. Students have created online portfolios that they share their work and treat it like a resume of learning. Also at the end of every term, we have a sharing session with our parents. Here parents are invited to see their child's work and learn together with them. We play math games, do lessons and the students share their portfolios. With the help of GAFE (google apps for education) rubrics and success criteria are shared with parents and students. Their assignments are marked with feedback and comments and the students reflect right on the assignment back to me. As I said it is about the learning.

Now the reason why this talk resonated with me so much is John's final statement to me:

@MrSoclassroom @tritonkory @mraspinall I am all for well-planned, concerted, thoughtful shifts. Not a fan of revolution talk
- John R. Walkup (@jwalkup)January 3, 2015

So I guess my question is:

1) Is this revolutionary talk? or just forward thinking?
2) Am I out in left field to think that assessment practises and how we report our progress needs to change?
3) How do we make these changes so that they don't seem so radical?
4) What are your assessment practise?
As always would love to hear your thoughts.

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Revolutionist or Forward thinking: Thoughts on Assessment

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Today I had a very interesting conversation on Twitter. Now I want to preface this with, this type of conversation has been happening for quite some time and it is a conversation that will continue. But today's conversation made me think.

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Globe and Mail

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Since elementary school, I knew that grades mattered - a lot. I was a keen student who spent most of my schooling chasing after the highest marks and beating myself up for anything less than an "A". Looking back, I was more concerned with playing the "grading game" than actually learning. While some would argue that higher grades are a reflection of ambition and hard work, they are more so a distraction from a deeper learning process. If we want to create a truly equitable education system with excellent learners, we need to stop this futile metric. It's time to "end the grading game."

The grading system has been around since the 19th century, and has remained unchanged ever since. The unfortunate reality is that grades are currently the only metric we have to benchmark students and remunerate their efforts. They have become a currency in the education world. Students who can perform within the confines of tests and assessments earn them and anyone who is outside the mold is left wanting. This system has trickled down from the universities and colleges that require this currency as a price for a student's educational experience, making it hard to dissolve. The rigidity of this practice has stifled creativity and reinforced a negative climate for learning which underlies academic dishonesty, competition, and anxiety.

I recognize that it is unfair to say that grades are at the root of all evils in the education system. As someone who has benefited from "good grades", it is hard to imagine how I would have advanced in my career in education without them. However, this also brings to light the students who have suffered on the other end of the grading scale - the students with "poor grades". These are the students who may have had a bad academic year or just needed more time and were not able to recuperate from it. That is unfair.

To retire this futile game, educators need to bring assessment up to speed to create lifelong learners adept for the 21st century. As education evolves, we need to prevent this "currency" from being misused as the only worth of a student's learning.

Instead of suddenly abolishing grades overnight, the value placed on them needs to change first. Teachers can begin to change the conversation around grades by putting the focus on alternative forms of assessment, such as written feedback and one-on-one interactions, as well as peer collaboration. If we are going to be committed to preparing students for the future, then they need to understand how they are developing, how to keep on improving, and how to work with others. These small changes can inspire the transition from the "grading game" into a lifelong investment in learning.

In contexts where there are high student-teacher ratios, these alternatives may not be as feasible. However, that is not an excuse for students to keep on suffering in this archaic system. Alfie Kohn addresses this by placing hope in alternative-school structures, such as team-teaching and interdisciplinary classes. The key here is supporting teachers and giving them the time and space where they don't have to rely on grades as the primary representation of a student's learning. This is a shift in the whole system's mindset.

Since we know that grades are not going to magically disappear, we need someone to start this movement. Colleges and universities have the power to stop this flow of grade currency (that they created). They can start by not requiring grades as a transaction into post-secondary schooling and establish a more meaningful system for student assessment. This transition would be a game changer, making grades increasingly less necessary for all levels of education.

At the end of the day, we want our children to be well-educated, good citizens who are prepared for the challenges of a constantly evolving world. Transforming the culture around grades will give students a more holistic understanding of their learning and role as learners. It's time to break the rules of this tired game and start the movement for a lifelong learning process.

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If we want better students, end the 19th-century 'grading game'

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Since elementary school, I knew that grades mattered - a lot. I was a keen student who spent most of my schooling chasing after the highest marks and beating myself up for anything less than an "A". Looking back, I was more concerned with playing the "grading game" than actually learning.

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This is a guest post by Mark Barnes, an international speaker and author of five education books, including Assessment 3.0: Throw Out Your Grade Book and Inspire Learning (Corwin, 2015). Mark co-moderates the global facebook group Teachers Throwing Out Grades and the #TTOG Twitter chat and is the publisher of the popular education blog, Brilliant or Insane: Education on the Edge. Follow him on Twitter at @markbarnes19.
Grades are just a math game. This is what I told students many years ago. "If you know how to work the numbers, you can get a good grade." As I lectured 30 seventh graders about improving their poor grades, a graphic illustration of the math that was beamed onto an interactive whiteboard punctuated the lesson.

This bizarre instruction continued for 20 minutes, the 12 year olds studied the graphic, which demonstrated how zeroes were, as I dramatically explained, "the devils behind the F's" that many in the audience had received on their recent report cards. If a student's zeroes were turned into even half credit on all of the assignments, she would pass. Essentially, I told these already reluctant learners that they could put in a lazy effort and receive a passing grade--maybe even a C.

When the worst school year I'd experienced in more than a decade of teaching ended, I realized that I wasn't teaching students anything, except failure or, worse, how to manipulate traditional grades enough to build report cards that would be acceptable at home. Something had to change, if I were to remain in the education profession.

I entered the next year both enthusiastic and nervous. A new group of students would meet a teacher and a classroom that my colleagues wouldn't recognize. Gone were rows of desks, worksheets, lecture, and multiple choice tests. The most eye-popping change, though, was the complete elimination of traditional grades. "I'll never put a number, percentage, or letter on any activity or project you complete," I announced to surprisingly silent students that first day.

Students who had only experienced traditional grades throughout their school lives were asked to discuss learning, to reflect and, ultimately, to evaluate themselves. Many were shocked, when we discussed an activity, and I asked them to return to prior learning, to rethink what they had done, and rework the activity for further discussion. An amazing and enriching ongoing conversation about learning was born.
What about report cards?
I would review each student's work, summarize and explain what I had observed, and ask questions. "Did you consider doing it this way?" I might inquire. "What would it look like if you tried this instead?" Soon, students had these informative conversations with each other, as they grew into enthusiastic, independent learners, who never feared a bad grade, because there were no grades. They never asked for extra credit, because there was no credit; there were only learning opportunities. Learning for the sake of learning.

When the marking period ended, it was time for report cards. For my colleagues, still residing in the traditional grades world, this was easy. A computerized grade program did the work. All points on individual activities and tests were added and a final grade was calculated. Once again, it was all about the math. In my no-grades language arts class, we had no numbers or percentages for a computer program to turn into a grade.

Still, my districted mandated grades, so students needed one for their report cards. How, though, do you assign a letter grade to learning in a class without grades? This was a problem for a short time, until one day during a crucial discussion with a student about an assignment. "If I did this in a class with grades," he wondered, "what grade do you think it would get?"
Students as critics of learning
His question triggered an epiphany. "I don't know," I answered. "What grade would you give it and why?" As this important conversation continued, I realized that I didn't have to assign a report grade to my students. They had been part of the discussion all year, why not have them grade themselves?

The last week of the grading period, I sat down with every student individually, and we reflected on the work that was done during a nine-week quarter. We revisited in-class activities and projects and talked about the feedback they'd received and how they handled any redirection.

After conversations that lasted five to eight minutes, I asked one simple question: "What grade should you get?" I was astonished by the quality of self-evaluation from young people, who had never before been asked to grade themselves. Some even said that they deserved failing grades, because they didn't work as hard as they could have. While I hated the idea of placing a label on my students, the discussions about what they had accomplished and what they wanted to improve upon were invaluable.

One year after I considered leaving education because I felt like I was failing my students, everything had changed. On the last day of school, we chatted about the impact of a no-grades classroom on learning, and I was happy to know that the students loved it. This was the last question from a student that remarkable year: "Mr. Barnes, why don't all teachers throw out grades and give us feedback about our learning?"

I wasn't sure how to answer, but I knew the question meant that change was inevitable.

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How Eliminating Grades Changed Everything in My Classroom

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This is a guest post by Mark Barnes, an international speaker and author of five education books, including Assessment 3.0: Throw Out Your Grade Book and Inspire Learning (Corwin, 2015). Mark co-moderates the global facebook group Teachers Throwing Out Grades and the #TTOG Twitter chat and is the publisher of the popular education blog, Brilliant or Insane: Education on the Edge.

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Formative Assessment is Transformational

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Grading Transformation

When teachers check for understanding, they are doing so as a means to ensure that students are successful in the summative assessment. It's important to remember that formative assessments are for learning, not necessarily of it. Summative assessments, on the other hand, are often assessments of learning. Consequently, the teacher's grade book is transformed. I wrote about this personal transformation in a previous blog post. By embracing formative assessment, teachers are awarding students at their best, not at their worst. The grade book more accurately reflects student competency of content and skills. Formative assessment leads to more equitable and fair grading practices.

Teaching Transformation

Teachers work smarter, not harder, when they use formative assessments. One of the biggest mistakes a teacher can make with formative assessment is to over-simplify the process of using it to adjust instruction. Formative assessment is actually more nuanced. For example, a teacher collects an exit ticket and discovers that about a third of the class missed a concept. Because of this, she returns the next day and reviews the content with the whole class. Pardon me, but I think that is crazy! Why would you do that? Only a third of the students need that review -- the rest are ready to move on.

Here, formative assessments must be used in making decisions to "feed forward," or make the right decision in terms of instructional next steps. Teachers also need to probe whether or not the mix-up was truly an error or instead just a mistake. A mistake implies that further instruction on that content may not be needed, while an error indicates that instruction must happen, as there are gaps in the learning. These instructional next steps might indeed be whole-class instruction, but they also include one-on-one support, small group instruction, and other important differentiation decisions. Overall, a teacher can give the right instruction at the right time as his teaching becomes responsive to students, rather than responsive to other forces.

Student Learning Transformation

Teachers use formative assessment to let students know where they are in the learning journey. Assessment is no longer a surprise! Student learning becomes transparent and also personalized. In addition to just-in-time learning, students get just-in-time feedback. Teachers rely on formative assessment to give students specific, actionable feedback that they can use to refine their work, seek out resources, and engage in learning that is specific to their needs. Because of this, all students increase their capacity for success. All students are getting what they need when they need it, as opposed to when the teacher guesses they need it. What happens next? Increased engagement! Students are more engaged in the learning because it is relevant and meaningful to them.

Classroom of Empowerment

Another big transformation that occurs when teachers practice formative assessment is a classroom of empowerment. Students are empowered to take ownership of the learning process. They know where they are and can set goals for next steps. They are given the power to "fail forward" and know that it's never too late to learn. Teachers are also empowered to make the right decisions in meeting their needs of their students. In fact, I would take this a step further -- remember that a formative assessment isn't formative until you decide it is. Similarly, a summative assessment isn't summative until you decide that it is. You, as the teacher, use your professional judgment and are empowered to make the right decisions for your students as individuals and your classroom of learners as a whole.

Remember, formative assessments look and sound different -- and frankly, they should. Formative assessment includes oral language and questions, projects or performance assessments, written components, movement and gesture activities, technology tools, and more. These assessments are not always intended to be large assignments, but rather can be quick and efficient ways to check for understanding. I hope my comments here serve to affirm that which you're already doing well. Great teachers know their students, make adjustments, reflect, and honor the learning process. When teachers embrace and regularly use components of formative assessment, they are truly transformative teachers!

How is formative assessment transforming you, your students, and your school?

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Formative Assessment Is Transformational! | Edutopia

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When teachers check for understanding, they are doing so as a means to ensure that students are successful in the summative assessment. It's important to remember that formative assessments are for learning, not necessarily of it. Summative assessments, on the other hand, are often assessments of learning.

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Assessment, Choice, and the Learning Brain

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The growing field of educational neuroscience, converging developmental psychology, cognitive science, and education, can help teachers and school leaders rethink how they approach assessments. While some of its initial findings merely support what educators have intuitively believed, it is also challenging many assumptions and providing new insight into best educational practices, especially regarding assessment.

What we do know is that a plethora of assessment-related research has shed light not just on the importance of students' mindsets, but also on the importance of continual feedback and how active retrieval of information, in carefully spaced intervals, can produce long-lasting learning. Research also shows that providing students with choice enhances attention and engagement -- and confirms that the arts can help deepen long-term memory consolidation (Hardiman).

Specifically, the following research is helping to change our understanding of the correlation between teaching and learning -- and altering our approaches to student assessment.

Mindsets: Performance vs. Mastery Goals

Research on the connection between motivation and learning has focused on two types of mindsets that students develop, based on the kind of experiences (including assessments) we present them with in school. Students tend to develop either performance-related goals or mastery goals (Ames & Archer).

Performance-related goals are those linked to more traditional types of assessments. Students become motivated by the grades they achieve, their rankings compared to other students, and extrinsic rewards such as honor rolls or school awards. In contrast, students who develop mastery goals are motivated by the actual learning experiences. Their rewards arise from the challenges of acquiring and applying new knowledge and skills.

While students may possess a combination of both types of goals, those motivated primarily by performance goals tend to lose motivation and confidence when faced with difficult academic challenges or when set back by failures. In contrast, students who are motivated by mastery goals are more likely to persevere in the face of such challenges. Difficult tasks or setbacks do not diminish their motivation or self-esteem (Pintrich; Grant & Dweck). Students with mastery goals mindsets are more likely to choose more difficult but rewarding ways to demonstrate learning.

Feedback on Performance

Another focal point of research is the timeliness and method of providing feedback to students. Timely feedback has been shown to deepen one's memory for the material assessed (Pashler, Cepeda, Wixted, & Rohrer). Moreover, in a study comparing immediate versus delayed feedback, the mere anticipation of timely feedback produced better performance. Students who knew that they would get immediate feedback performed better on a task than those who were told that feedback would be delayed (Kettle & Häubl). Finally, studies suggest that marking answers right or wrong (as in multiple choice tests) has little effect on learning. However, providing the correct response only after a student has spent time "struggling" to find the correct answer significantly increases retention of the material (Fazio, Huesler, Johnson, & Marsh).

Researchers have also discovered that the spacing of assessments and feedback produces more effective learning. If students revisit content over carefully spaced intervals, they retain information longer than if presented with information once and then only assessed immediately after initial (short-term) mastery (Kornell, Castel, Eich, & Bjork).

These findings, among others, show us the reciprocal relationship between assessment and learning. Providing timely and effective feedback can improve students' mastery of the content and produce more efficient -- and satisfying -- learning experiences.

Active Retrieval of Information

A growing body of research suggests that actively retrieving information produces significant long-term benefits for learning compared to passive studying (Karpicke & Roediger). While any assessment requires some type of active retrieval, having students reconstruct what they know through alternative assessments leads to deeper understanding and consolidates learning in more powerful ways than traditional testing (Karpicke & Blunt).

Active retrieval is also crucial as students prepare for assessments. Too often, when we ask students to reflect on their study strategies, they say they simply reread class notes. Training students to build regular self-testing into their study strategies will help them embed material into their long-term memory (Kornell & Son).

From Theory to Practice

Moving neuroscientific research on assessment into classroom practice faces two barriers. First, despite the fact that the work of educators targets the organ of learning, the brain, most teachers and school leaders have little understanding of the architecture of the brain and how it receives, filters, and applies information. Second, work that falls under the various versions of "brain-based" is too often believed to be of greatest benefit to struggling learners, those who historically might be called "learning challenged." Such thinking is short-sighted and fails to recognize the importance of research in educational neuroscience for all students.

But what teachers assess should be what teachers want students to know, not just for an upcoming test, but also for the long term. And how we assess students has important implications for whether they will retain content or procedural knowledge for the short or long term. Far too often, as neuropsychology professor Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa pointed out in 2010, "While students manage to keep enough dates, facts, and formulas in their head to pass the test, this knowledge never made it to long-term declarative memory, it was never truly learned at all (only memorized in the short term)." Research in educational neuroscience, therefore, should not only inform the types of assessments teachers give students, but also help shape the strategies students use to prepare for assessments, or to work through projects.

How can all this research impact assessment at your school? Every year, we need to assess every student in multiple, developmentally appropriate ways. That was the impetus for " Assessment Tic-Tac-Toe." (Note: link downloads a 60 KB pdf.) This is what differentiated assessment means. Some assessments will play to a student's strength while others will pose significant challenges; some assessments will, wonderfully, do both.

Notes

Hardiman, Mariale. The Brain Targeted Teaching Model for 21st Century Schools. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 2012.

Ames, C. & Archer J. (1988). "Achievement goals in the classroom: Students' learning strategies and motivation process." Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(3) 260-267.

Pintrich, P. (2000). "Multiple goals, multiple pathways: The role of goal orientation in learning and achievement." Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(3), 544-555.

Grant, H. & Dweck, C. (2003). "Clarifying achievement goals and their impact." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(3), 541-553.

Pashler, H., Cepeda, N.J., Wixted, J.T., & Rohrer, D. (2005). "When does feedback facilitate learning of words?" Journal of Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory & Cognition, 31(1), 3-8.

Kettle, K.L. & Häubl, G. (2010). "Motivation by anticipation: Expecting rapid feedback enhances performance." Psychological Science, 21 (4), 545-547.

Fazio, L.K., Huesler, B.J., Johnson, A., & Marsh, E.J. (2010). "Receiving right/wrong feedback: Consequences of learning." Memory, 18(3), 335-350.

Kornell, N., Castel, A.d., Eich, T.S., & Bjork, R.A. (2010). "Spacing as the friend of both memory and induction in young and older adults." Psychology and Aging, 25(2), 498-503.

Karpicke, J.D. & Roediger, H.L., (2008). "The critical importance of retrieval for learning." Science, 319(5865), 966-968.

Karpicke, J.D. & Blunt, J.R. (2011). "Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping." Science, doi:10.1126/science.1199327.

Kornell, N. & Son, Lisa K. (2009). "Learners' Choices and Beliefs Abut Self-Testing," Memory 17 (5), 493-501.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Assessment, Choice, and the Learning Brain | Edutopia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The growing field of educational neuroscience, converging developmental psychology, cognitive science, and education, can help teachers and school leaders rethink how they approach assessments. While some of its initial findings merely support what educators have intuitively believed, it is also challenging many assumptions and providing new insight into best educational practices, especially regarding assessment.