# data[].attributes.headline
How Grades Fail (And What YouCan Do About It)

# data[].attributes.subject
How Grades Fail (And What YouCan Do About It)

# data[].attributes.body
Grading is an area of personal challenge (and frustration) for me. I'd prefer to avoid it and focus on feedback, as well as goal setting for future growth. I agree that grading often lacks value beyond being used as currency. I feel strongly that students shouldn't be graded based on knowledge and skills developed outside of the course's content.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.clLpTtcA
"Students too often mistake their grade for learning and think the A, B, or C is the only thing that matters."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Grades Fail (And What You Can Do About It) _ NEA

# data[].attributes.body
This article is about a 'restorative' approach to grading. This teacher grades her students with a combination of assessments and 'daily grades', which reflect effort, attendance, behavior, and engagement more than testing any skill or memorization. She also refers to her grading practice as a 'no zero policy', where students aren't punished for factors beyond their control, such as tardiness or distraction.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.RZ9poc8g
In high school (and perhaps still now), I was always the student to chase grades, often at the expense of real, true learning. I think this kind of system would have equalized the playing field and helped me take more time for learning and reflection. I think it's tough to know how to grade in fields like chemistry and biology, where you're often expected to measure content acquisition rather than skills.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.clLpTtcA
"This change feels more intrinsically motivated than more punitive measures such as punishment related to poor attendance, given that knowledge acquisition—rather than rote learning—is at the heart."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A fresh approach to promoting equity in grading can lead to stronger relationships with students and deeper learning in the classroom.

Teachers and administrators are working hard to support student mental health and create a more equitable education system. But grading and assessment is often left out of the conversation, even though we know that socioeconomic status, learning differences, and chronic stress and adversity can impact students' performance-as can stereotype threat, or the fear of confirming negative stereotypes about one's identity.

To institute a more equitable approach to grading in my classroom, I changed how I calculate grades in my chemistry classes. I believe that teachers should evaluate students' content knowledge, not their behavior or ability to follow rules, demonstrate compliance, or memorize social norms. My approach demonstrates that change is possible and resonates with students.

Implementing Restorative Assessment

In my system, students receive two types of grades: assessments and daily grades. Assessment grades are based on students' content knowledge and performance as demonstrated, not through memorization-based recall activities but through substantive projects and assignments that require them to apply their learning to new contexts, demonstrating transfer.

Because my objective is to simulate real-world applications of knowledge and to make learning accessible, I invite students to use their notebook-containing notes from class-during assessments. Just as they will have access to factual information in real-world contexts (such as the internet, while working on a job site during their careers), so do I encourage them to utilize informational tools in the development and demonstration of their learning in the classroom.

Utilizing Daily Grades

I use what I call "daily grades" to document how a student has spent time engaging with curricular content and working toward an assessment. Multiple absences or a lack of engagement can influence but do not determine a student's learning of the material. For that reason, I don't factor students' attendance into grades but focus on the quality of students' work.

Through this approach, students see a cause-and-effect relationship emerge between their behavior (e.g., attendance and engagement) and performance on assessments. In my classroom, many students have changed their behavior as a result (attending more classes, for example, or taking more initiative to catch up when missed lessons are unavoidable). This change feels more intrinsically motivated than more punitive measures such as punishment related to poor attendance, given that knowledge acquisition-rather than rote learning-is at the heart.

While teachers can customize the weight of daily grades and assessments, I have done ratios of 50/50, 60/40, and 70/30 (weighting daily grades and assessments, respectively) and found that, with my students, the most productive ratio was 60/40. This balance produced final grades that felt most representative of my students' performance in class.

Offering Flexibility and Adaptation

I always encourage and make available retakes and makeups on assessments. I treat the end of the semester as students' final deadline and accept revised work until that time. Learning is iterative, and I believe that everyone should have the chance to improve. And life happens-students who have responsibilities or circumstances that cause them to miss time in the classroom deserve opportunities to catch up and to demonstrate their learning in equitable ways.

This is why, additionally, I do not give homework. I provide time in class for students to work on content with opportunities to seek out my support or that of their peers. This approach allows us all to learn from one another throughout the process of knowledge acquisition and respects students' and their families' time outside of the school day.

Considering Student Behavior

As noted above, there are many factors that can impact students' behaviors and attendance at school, and many of these factors are beyond students' control. Why, then, should we punish students when their behaviors or attendance begin to slide? Why not respond with care, concern, and responsiveness to the situational complexities that may give rise to these challenges?

"No zero" policies, in which students' grades are not impacted by these factors, offer students clean slates for returning to the classroom and reengaging in learning without fear. Their grades, through this approach, are solely connected to their demonstrated content knowledge and progress toward the achievement of learning objectives, which are possible even when students have challenging days or have to miss class and catch up on their work at a later time. Learning, in this case, is objective-not impacted by circumstances or the potential bias.

Student Responses-and Responsiveness

In my work, I have found that students respond positively to the efforts I am making to help rather than punish them, leading to greater student buy-in during class. Implementing a responsive approach to grading has led to stronger student-teacher relationships in my learning environment and has cultivated greater trust among all involved-which, in turn, boosts students' motivation.

Grade equity is important if we are serious about closing the opportunity gap that continues to plague our educational system while increasing student accountability through restorative rather than punitive measures. Grades that reflect learning, not behavior, can bring us that much closer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A fresh approach to promoting equity in grading can lead to stronger relationships with students and deeper learning in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.body
As a student, I really enjoyed contract grading because I know exactly what was expected of me to get the grade I signed up for. It really gave me more motivation for the class. Then again, the student experience is very different than the educator experience.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.RZ9poc8g
Contract grading isn't perfect, but it's a good starting point for how I would like to grade. I want to grade in collaboration with the student. The thing that causes so much stress with grading is that the student is afraid of how the teacher will evaluate it, and they feel as if they have no control. Contract grading gives the student control over their grade, which eases some of the anxiety around grades.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.clLpTtcA
"While there was an adjustment period, students seemed to appreciate that the contract privileges their labor as much (or more than) the discrete grade at the end of each assignment."

# data[].attributes.body
My school tried to switch to the type of solution the article brings up - and it really didn't go well. I do think grades are important, but it was interesting to see the points that this article brings up.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.RZ9poc8g
The 1-4 scale was used for a bit when I was in middle school in order to see if it would be more helpful to students than regular grading. It didn't work well and was confusing for students. I picked this article because the fact that they were using the same method caught my eye, and I wanted to learn more about the reasoning for why it is used. 

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.clLpTtcA
One of the areas Revere High is working on with the grant, she says, is rethinking report cards. Their current approach mimics, in some ways, what elementary schools typically do, which is to include comments about student strengths or areas that need improving in their habits-of-work, not just the letter grade. They are working on transitioning course grades from a single letter to a report of proficiency on course competencies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
My son's binder was a mess. Loose papers were falling out, others looked like they had been balled up or stepped on, some more than once. The binder itself was bent in one corner. But he was a seventh-grader and to him, it looked just fine.

Unfortunately, his seventh-grade math teacher didn't agree and deducted points from his grade for being messy. This same teacher also took off points when homework was completed with something other than a pencil or if a student needed a second copy of an assignment. If a student was asked to move their seat during class, she slashed five points. Points were earned back if a parent signed the list of rules, and it was returned in a timely manner.

Being organized and not misbehaving in class are skills students need to figure out, for sure, and I certainly wanted my son to be neater, but factoring these behaviors into grades - especially for middle-schoolers just learning to come into their own - didn't make sense to me.

And so, when I learned, a few years later, that my son's high school was rethinking their grading practice, I decided it was time to dig deeper into what Grading for Equity author Joe Feldman, Ed.M.'93, calls "one of the most challenging and emotionally charged conversations in today's schools."

Grades Are What?

I started by asking a question that seems simple on the surface: What is a grade?

Feldman, a former teacher and principal, says that on a really basic level, grades are the way teachers calculate and report student performances. Typically, it's an accumulation of points (0 to 100) with corresponding letters (A through F, minus E). Earn an 89 on a test and your grade is a B+, for example. Believed to date back to 1785, when Yale President Ezra Stiles gave four grades to his seniors ( optimi, second optimi, inferiors, and pejores), grades have long been a part of our education system in the United States. In fact, Feldman says, grades have become "the main criteria in nearly every decision that schools make about students," from whether they get promoted to the next class or held back, to which course level a student should be taking, such as college prep, honors, or AP. It's how many high schools tally GPA and student rank, and one of the main ways that colleges decide who they'll even consider for admissions.

"Grading is evaluation, putting a value on something," says Denise Pope, Ed.M.'89, a senior lecturer at Stanford who runs a project called Challenge Success. Pope stresses, however, that grades are not the same as assessment, and to really talk about grading, we have to make the distinction between the two terms.

"Assessment is feedback so that students can learn," Pope says. "It's helping them see where they are and helping them move toward a point of greater understanding or mastery. Grading doesn't always do that, but assessment should."

When she hosts professional development workshops to help schools rethink their assessment practices, she likes to point out that the Latin root of assessment is sari, which means to sit beside. Assessment is seeing where a student is with their understanding - what they don't know, what they do know - and then using that to determine what they need. "Sometimes a grade does that," Pope says, "but a lot of times students have no idea what that grade means."

And that's what seems to be at the heart of the debate about grading, and what rubbed me the wrong way when my son was in that math class: Students, teachers, parents, and college admissions officers have no idea what a letter grade - this thing we are saying is really important in a student's school life - is really saying. Does an A mean a student has truly mastered that history lesson? Does the C+ mean the student was "sort of" getting the math they were learning, or did it mean they were an ace at math, but just couldn't keep a neat binder?

What's the Problem?

The confusion starts with consistency, as in, there is none. At most schools, there's no consistency about what's included in a grade or what's left out, even among teachers teaching the same subject in the same school to students in the same grade at the same level. This creates what is often called "grade fog" - we're not sure what the grade means because we're asking that A or that C+ to communicate too much disparate information.

"It's radically inconsistent from teacher to teacher," says A.J. Stitch, Ed.M.'12, the founding principal of the Greater Dayton School, a private school in Ohio for kids from low-income backgrounds that doesn't use traditional grades. At public schools where he has worked in the past, he says "most teachers had different approaches to weighting homework, classwork, quizzes, and tests."

For example, he says, "a student may demonstrate mastery of content on a test, quiz, and classwork, yet still fails a course because the teacher decides to weigh homework 40%, and the student, for one reason or another, struggles in that regard. Obviously, that's inequitable, and it illustrates the variation of weighted grade scales and how it impacts a student's success or failure, regardless of whether they mastered the standards taught in the course. Sadly, I made this mistake myself as a young teacher, and as a principal I've seen too many teachers make this mistake, too."

Jason Merrill, the principal of Melrose High School, where my son currently goes to school, says this is one of the biggest reasons they started looking at their teaching and learning practices, and why they applied to become one of five schools in the multi-year Rethinking Grading Pilot program sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

"Your son has eight teachers right now that all have their own way to grade. Completely their own," he says. "The average kid often gives up trying to figure it out. Some teachers count homework, some teachers don't. Some teachers grade homework, some teachers grade it as completion. Some teachers count large tests for a lot more than others. What we want to do is not have 85 different ways to respond to a fire alarm."

Feldman says we also don't want to include non-academics in grades - things like messy binders and not coming to class with a pencil, or the one that is commonly factored in: late work.

"A student who writes an A-quality essay but hands it in late gets her writing downgraded to a B, and the student who writes a B-quality essay turned in by the deadline receives a B. There's nothing to distinguish those two B grades, although those students have very different levels of content mastery," he says.

Traditional grading also invites biases, he says, especially around behavior. "When we include a student's behavior in a grade, we're imposing on all of our students a narrow idea of what a 'successful' student is," Feldman says, and "you start to misrepresent and warp the accuracy." For example, a student who participates in discussions and always brings their pencil to class earns five points, but they get a C on the test. Adding the five behavior points lifts that C test grade to something in the low B range. Although students and parents are happy the grade is a B and that the student's all-important GPA remains intact, this warping can create longer term problems.

"You're telling the student that they're at a B level in content, and they're actually at a C," Feldman says. "They don't think there's a problem, the counselors don't think there's a problem, and the student goes to the next grade level and gets crushed by the content. They had no idea that they weren't prepared for the rigor of that class because they kept getting the message that they were getting B's."

It can be especially confusing for parents, says Christopher Beaver, one of the assistant principals at Melrose High. "I knew what my own kids could do skill-based wise, but if I'm a parent and I don't know what my kids can do because the teachers haven't laid that out for me on a report card, then I can't look at a report card and say, 'See that. My kid is proficient at this skill or my kid is proficient at that skill,'" he says. "I'm going to focus on something like the GPA because that's all I have. And I'm going to assume, if my kid has a high GPA, that my kid's skillset is at a proficient level. But that is not always the case."

As a parent, I was confused earlier this year when my son's overall grade in a class was low, even though he seemed to get the content. We looked online at the grading portal the district uses and sure enough, he had Bs and As. But then there was that one grade: a 44 on a test he didn't have enough time to finish. That one low test score brought the whole grade down because of another impossible part of how we grade: averaging.

"We have this ridiculous system of averaging things out," Pope says, "which doesn't make any sense because the goal is to get students to learn material. Same with the case against zero, right? Why would you give a kid a zero? A zero is worse than an F."

The "case against zero" idea is that when using a 0-to-100-point scale in grading, a student should never receive a zero, even if they didn't turn in an assignment. Sounds odd, given that a zero for not turning in work is how we've long operated, but as author Doug Reeves wrote in 2004 in "The Case Against the Zero" in Phi Delta Kappan, "assigning a zero is disproportionate punishment."

Why? Because mathematically, with a 0-to-100 scale, failing a class is more likely than passing a class. Think about it. Each letter grade is 10 points - an A is 90-100, a B is 80- 89, a C is 70-79, and a D is 60-69 - but the scale's one failing grade, an F, spans not 10 points, but 60 (0 to 59). The result is that a zero disproportionally pulls down an average and makes it that much harder to pull a grade up significantly. A student with two 85s, for example, is averaging a B. If that student gets a 0 on one assignment, their average drops to 56, an F. Even if the student gets 85s on the next two assignments, their average still only jumps to a 68. So, four Bs and one zero means the student's averaged overall grade is a D+.

This averaging especially penalizes students who start out a semester slower with lower grades. Even if they figure out the material and fully master content later, averaging won't necessarily reflect what they truly know. In his book, Feldman gives an example of a student who, coming into ninth grade, had never learned to write a persuasive essay. The ninth-grade teacher gives an assignment early in September, revealing this student's writing inexperience.

"The essay gets a D-. But it's early in September, and you, as the teacher, provide instruction and guided practice with feedback," Feldman writes. The student's writing improves, and their grade goes up with each new assignment. The student eventually learns how to write an amazing persuasive essay. They are doing A work. However, when the grades are averaged, that early D- drags down the overall grade and though the student mastered persuasive writing, their A drops to a B-.

Add Stress to the Mix

Beyond the problems with how we grade or what a grade means, Robin Loewald, Ed.M.'19, an English teacher at Melrose High, also worries about the effect grades have on student mindset, especially for middle- and high-schoolers.

"Grading in general is tough because of the expectations for students with college applications," she says. "There tends to be a lot of stress around grades and the minute difference between a 93 and 94. In truth, it's hard to really delineate the difference between those two numbers in terms of student understanding and mastery of the subject."

Pope focuses her work extensively on the stress students take on trying to chase "good" grades and the extrinsic motivation - driven by external rewards - that takes over. In an op-ed she co-authored in February for The Hechinger Report about the furor over ChatGPT, she wrote that instead of asking how to stop students from cheating using bot programs, we should instead be asking "why" students are cheating in the first place. Chasing those good grades is part of that "why."

"We have this real system of you need to get the grades and the test scores in order to please your parents, go to college, get the merit scholarship, get a good job - whatever it is," she says. "There's this extrinsic motivation that's tied to grades, which adds to student stress, and in some cases can lead to really unhealthy practices like perfectionism or great anxiety, paralysis. And it could also really turn kids off. 'Well, I got a C so I'm bad at math. I'm not a math person so clearly, I shouldn't try anymore.'"

As Feldman said during an interview in 2019 with the Harvard EdCast, for students, even attempting to follow the range of grading practices each of their six or seven teachers follows can be stressful.

"For the student, it adds to my cognitive load," he says. "I not only have to understand the content and try and perform at high levels of the content, but now I also have to navigate a grading structure that may not be totally transparent, and may be different for every teacher, and particularly for students who are historically underserved and have less education background and fewer resources and understanding of how to navigate those really foreign systems. It places those additional burdens on them, which we shouldn't do."

Are There Alternatives?

If traditional grades say little about a student's mastery of the material, are often inequitable, and can add more stress, what are better ways for teachers and schools to capture a student's skills and understanding of the material? And given the long history of using numbers and letter grades, are schools even ready to change?

Back in 2005, Chester Finn Jr., M.A.T'67, Ed.D.'70, then president of the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, told The Washington Post that "high schools will keep using them if college admissions offices keep requiring them, which they likely will."

But nearly two decades since Finn made that observation, it's clear that some schools, like my son's, are ready for change and have ideas on how to do that.

At the Greater Dayton School, Stitch says their ability to work outside the structure and limitations of a public school gave them the liberty to design whatever grading scale they thought was best for kids. They chose not to use the A to F scale.

"The traditional grading system is not aligned to learning outcomes," he says. "Traditional grading is one-and-done in terms of you've learned the content, or you haven't, and the grade you get is the grade you get. A better grading system allows for multiple attempts of content mastery."

Which is why his school uses only two grades - "mastered" and "in progress," and students have unlimited chances to learn the material and become proficient, he says. Students also learn at their own pace and the school's standards are broken into kid friendly "I can" statements so parents and students know exactly what skills a student "can" do and which skills they are working on.

A few years ago, Melrose High started allowing students to redo their work if the grade was below a certain number. The idea was that learning shouldn't be punitive - it was about mastering content, even if that took more than one try.

As Merrill says, "At the end of the day, we want all kids to learn. We don't want to prove that they don't know something. We want to be like, you need to do some work to retake this again to show us that you do know it."

Loewald says the school's English department additionally has an extended revision policy around writing assignments, where students can meet with their teachers to edit, revise, and resubmit their writing work. She allows students to revise almost every assignment.

"I think that the process of learning through revision is really helpful and allows there to be less pressure on the initial submission of work," she says. "Students are graded on rubrics and can use those rubrics to guide their revisions of assignments. The only assignments that I do not allow students to revise are their reading checks since those are things we talk about and reference in the class in which they're due."

Merrill says the school's revision policy is a work in progress - it needs its own revision - because there is currently too much variation in what students can redo. "We are working to build a single, consistent retake policy. If we de-emphasize the weighting for formative assessment and practice materials, such as homework and classwork, then we can have a retake policy that addresses summative assessments only," he says.

Caitlin Reilly, Ed.M.'14, recently started as a deputy principal at Revere High School, located just north of Boston and part of the state's Rethinking Grading Pilot. She says the school is moving toward a full competency-based model. Although there's variation on how competency-based is defined, it generally means that instead of evaluating students as proficient based on the amount of time they spend on a subject - 58 minutes for factoring polynomials or three years taking a foreign language - time allotment is shifted to how well students can define what they actually know about a subject. And those competencies aren't vague - they're clearly spelled out by a school.

"For us, competency learning is a matter of equity for students because it makes apparent to all students, what are you working toward?" says Reilly. "Where do you not yet have the skills? What support do you need? And students should be seeing their progress to the standards of the course. Knowing that is incredibly important for all students, versus the hidden game of school when you have this letter grade, and you don't know where it's generated from, or you have a test that you got 10 points just for writing your name."

One of the areas Revere High is working on with the grant, she says, is rethinking report cards. Their current approach mimics, in some ways, what elementary schools typically do, which is to include comments about student strengths or areas that need improving in their habits-of-work, not just the letter grade. They are working on transitioning course grades from a single letter to a report of proficiency on course competencies.

"Our current report card is a one-pager that has letter grades ... but for every class students have, there's a habits-of-work box that includes the four habits-of-work that we assess: active learning, respect, collaboration, and ownership," she says. For each habit, there's a scale of proficient, some proficiency, or not yet proficient, with rubric-defined criteria that guides the understanding of what it is to be proficient in each category." In that way, it's not just a teacher's general "sense" of which category to pick or a parent's guess as to what each habit actually means.

As I talked to educators about other ways to rethink how we grade, some suggested dropping the lowest grade in a class or not grading assignments done early in a semester. Many mention not grading homework but instead allowing that work to be a place where students can figure things out and make mistakes, especially when new concepts are introduced. Others talk about doing away with the 0-to-100 scale. In Melrose, Loewald says the English Department has already shifted to a 1-to-4 scale.

"A four meaning the student is exceeding expectations, three is meeting, two is approaching, and one is developing," she says. "It's much more accurate in terms of assessing student learning to use a smaller scale."

Feldman says that with any change around such an entrenched topic like grading, "We are learning that you actually have to invest in teacher understanding along with policy development in order to change practice around grading."

It's something my son's school has already jumped on with a core group of administrators and teachers examining current practices and testing out some of the changes they want to make.

"They've all set goals for themselves and are participating in regular coaching," says Melanie Acevedo, the district's director of instructional technology and personalized learning. "They come to a meeting once a month and talk about what's working, what's not working. They are a group that's trying things out. They're being the people that are booted on the ground, really experimenting so that we can come back to the bigger faculty and say, here are some things that people have tried. Do you want to try that? We're building this idea from the staff and from the teachers because they're the ones that know best."

One of the things Melrose High isn't doing, at least not yet, is blowing up the entire grading system or even doing away with traditional A to F grades.

Instead, says Merrill, they've set a goal so that by next fall they have "a very clear, consistent, transparent grading practice and policy in place for all teachers," he says, and can answer questions like: How do we assess kids? How do we communicate that? How do kids know where they stand? How do they reflect and retake or do revisions? How do we count homework? Is that grading equitable? "There are so many pieces that go into it," he says, "but we're not looking to make any of our kids a trial."

Luckily, there's broader interest in "rethinking grading," as the Massachusetts pilot is called. Sales for Feldman's Grading for Equity book are robust enough that he's working on a second, updated edition, and, he says, "I am not any less confident that this is one of the most important levers that schools and districts can use to not only improve student achievement, but also reduce achievement and opportunity disparities."

Rethinking grading may even keep some teachers in the profession longer.

"We've heard, and we have some data, that this work actually increases the likelihood that some teachers would stay in their district," Feldman says. "We see a real crisis in the retention of the teaching force. Knowing that there's a learning opportunity that can engage them more directly with why they went into teaching in the first place, and gets them more excited about teaching, I think is really important." Teachers, he says, don't want to be the bean counters or police officers they often become when it comes to grading.

"The five participation points every day. The, you turned it in late one day, so you lose 10% or you turned it in two days late so 20%," he says. "None of us went into teaching to do that."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When it comes to how we show what students know, do traditional grading practices deserve an F?

# data[].attributes.headline
Our Grading System Was Setting Students Up to Fail Until This Change

# data[].attributes.subject
Our Grading System Was Setting Students Up to Fail Until This Change

# data[].attributes.body
This article details one school's efforts to implement standards-based grading. This switch did not automatically have a positive impact, rather, teachers and the school community had to negotiate elements of the new grading system in order to make it work.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.RZ9poc8g
Standards-based grading is a concept I find very interesting and it is one that has gained a lot of traction in recent years. I appreciated this article's look at its implementation because it shows how much research/trial-and-error go into implementing a new grading system. I appreciate the emphasis put on truly learning the content with standards-based grading. It ensures that if you have an off-day and perform poorly, you have a chance to try again. One of my classes this semester follows this kind of system, and I can see how the professor has taken some of the lessons mentioned in this article into consideration. For example, she uses strict retest windows that attach assessments to timelines. 

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.clLpTtcA
"When we stripped away the other pieces of traditional grading and solely focused on standard mastery, students’ grades dropped precipitously."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Several years ago, during a one-on-one conversation with an art teacher at the middle school where I was principal, I came to an unsettling realization.

We were wrestling with the fact that our traditional way of grading was doing our children a disservice. As the school leader, I had spoken with many alumni who told me just how different the expectations were in high school.

When I reflected on one graduate who had recently returned to visit, I realized that we had set her up to fail.

The recent graduate had been a wonderful student. She showed up every day, worked hard, and supported her peers. She was delightful. She was also behind academically.

She had come to us from an elementary school that was underperforming and could often feel chaotic. At home, she was living a life that more closely resembled adulthood than childhood, often minding younger children and taking care of a mom who needed help.

With support from her teachers, she was earning A's and B's on her report card. However, her grades were not an accurate reflection of her independent mastery of standards. Our A's and B's represented that she completed classwork, turned in her homework, and participated in class. None of that meant that she grasped the content and skills-but in our district, it did mean she was eligible for one of the "top" high schools.

When she graduated from our school, she attended one of those selective high schools only to transfer out in less than a year. When she came back to visit, she shared that the new environment was simply too much for her. Classes were bigger, and teachers had less capacity to individualize instruction.

Even though we wanted all our students to have access to the most prestigious schools, it wouldn't mean much if they couldn't be successful.

If we wanted to do a better job for students like her, then we had to adjust the way we graded-which would mean changing the way we instructed.

I set out to learn more about standards-based grading, an approach to learning that evaluates student learning against a specific set of standards. Students have multiple opportunities to retake assessments, with their final grade reflecting their mastery of a skill or standard rather than the average of various assignments. If you got a 50% on the fraction test, for example, you could take it again. If you got a 75% the next time, that was your new grade.

This approach meant that children's grades would reflect academic mastery and nothing else. Our team researched it, talked to staff, and discussed it with alumni.

Eventually, we shifted the school to standards-based grading. Our team tested things out, had honest debates, observed each other's classrooms, and argued. We figured out how this approach would work for special education. We talked about all the different ways assessments could look. We hashed out how many times a student could reassess. We sat down with families and got their feedback.

When we stripped away the other pieces of traditional grading and solely focused on standard mastery, students' grades dropped precipitously.

I would love to say that we met this challenge head-on. That we took it as an opportunity to be great. But that's not true-not immediately.

For many of us, our initial response was despair. What were we doing here? What had we been doing?

I thought that standards-based grading would increase equity. Traditional school consistently rewards children whose families have more resources. However, there are always the kids who can handle the material but don't have the time and support to complete their homework each night. Now, that they wouldn't be penalized for incomplete homework, their grades should have increased.

Instead, students were confused, turned in their homework at lower rates, and demonstrated a reluctance to reassess on material that they hadn't mastered. Instead of taking advantage of the chance to raise their scores, they appeared content to accept the initial grade.

After coping with our grief, my staff and I talked about what we could do. Teachers made adjustments. We increased formative assessments. We added reassessment windows. We delineated between assignments that could be retaken and ones that couldn't.

Slowly, things began to change. We heard the students using the language that we were using. Families were reaching out with questions about reassessments. Teachers began to settle into a rhythm.

We codified our work. We redesigned grading criteria, held meetings where teachers shared what was working and what wasn't, and showed videos of students walking through their assignments to current and prospective families.

Eventually, standards-based instruction became part of who we were. Families and kids entered the community knowing that we would work hard to build relationships and that students' grades would be a reflection of the skill they had mastered-not how competent they were at following the rules. At our school, you would know which standards your child had mastered and which ones they were still working to develop.

We were never looking to penalize the kids who had figured out how to play the game of school; we were simply trying to create a fairer and more accurate system of assessment. One that encouraged students to have a sense of ownership of their learning.

Under our new system, I don't believe that the graduate who prompted my revelation would have earned the same A's and B's that got her into the high school she wasn't prepared for-at least not right away. I like to imagine that she would have risen to meet the challenge and that we would have been more attuned to her skill gaps.

Of course, even if we had transitioned to standards-based instruction sooner, our system would still be imperfect. All grading systems are.

Authentic learning happens over time and looks different for each of us. We master skills at our own pace. We comprehend when we're ready, not because of an imaginary end point in time. Grading doesn't naturally reflect learning; it highlights comparisons, averaging, and sorting.

While my teachers and I knew that we could not upend the paradigm of grading in education, we knew we could try to find the most authentic way of playing that game-for every other kid who came through our doors.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Our Grading System Was Setting Students Up to Fail-Until This Change (Opinion)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our first reaction to standards-based grading was despair. Then, slowly, things began to change.

# data[].attributes.headline
Summit Reflection: Grading, Gamification, and the “Game” of School

# data[].attributes.subject
Summit Reflection: Grading, Gamification, and the “Game” of School

# data[].attributes.body
When searching for articles on grading, I came across the idea of gamification. Gamification refers to grading and engaging students like they would be in a game. This could look like using a point system, badges, leaderboards, etc. The article I chose summarizes a presentation done by Barry Fishman, a professor of learning technologies. He shares a new take on gamification, explaining the difference between using games to teach and developing the classroom like one would develop a game.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.RZ9poc8g
As someone who struggles with procrastination, the idea of turning my daily life tasks into a game always seemed interesting to me. Though I have never tried it myself, I was extremely intrigued when learning about the idea of gamification as a teaching practice. Specifically, the aim of gamification is to reduce the negative impacts placed on students from traditional grading by developing a classroom that engages and encourages students in ways a game would. With video or board games, students are used to failing a level or losing a round. In the classroom, these losses would be devastating, but in the game world they are expected. As someone who already enjoys games, the idea of developing my classroom as one may develop a game is mind blowing and so incredibly exciting. The focus of developing a classroom in this way is to decenter grading as the end result and focus more on a student's learning journey. Specific grading practices already aligned with this idea include mastery grading and ungrading which both focus on the learning process as indicative of a student's understanding. 

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.clLpTtcA
"...grades tell us limited information, because they focus on outcomes and hide the learning journey."  from the reflection article and "I am not talking about playing games to learn... I am talking about improving the game of learning." from the lecture video itself. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Duke Learning Innovation & Lifetime Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Summit Reflection: Grading, Gamification, and the “Game” of School - Duke Learning Innovation & Lifetime Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In early October, LILE hosted the inaugural Emerging Pedagogies Summit for Duke faculty and staff invested in teaching and learning. The Summit’s goal was to promote ongoing conversations about the future of…

# data[].attributes.body
Ughh this is such a critical conversation! At what point do we need to consider the quality of work over the effort of work? In some respects, I am a major proponent of everyone’s best is individual and personal based on their experiences and abilities; however, in the name of equality, I do feel guilty when Student A’s best is completing two questions and Student B’s best is completing the entire assignment. I want to employ equitable practices in my classroom, but how do I continue to motivate Student B? So much food for thought 😮‍💨 (The above article is a definitions guide and my article of choice is below!)

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.RZ9poc8g
I’ve always been encouraged to expect the highest standards from students, so they can achieve their fullest potential. I think I echo with the teachers’ sentiments that our students deserve schools to care enough to expect excellence.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.clLpTtcA
When schools implement “equitable” grading, students learn that actions have no consequences, that they will be rewarded regardless of effort, and that excellence isn’t worth the trouble. They deserve a better message: That the school expects excellence from them and cares enough to hold them to that standard.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Understanding Equitable Grading Jargon - Defending Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Grading for equity, a concept popularized by consultant Joe Feldman, seeks to replace traditional grading concepts which use measurable inputs and outcomes, including class attendance and participation, test scores, and completed assignments, with Equitable Grading that relies on “Accuracy” “Bias Resistance” and “Motivation”. Although, as we will see, Equitable Grading can cause confusion for teachers, […]

# data[].attributes.body
I had one math professor use mastery grading, and I really enjoyed the approach of having questions with increasing levels of difficulty. Even before I received a "grade" on an assessment, I could concretely understand my level of mastery of each topic based on my ability to complete each level of questions on the assessment.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.RZ9poc8g
I chose this article because I wanted to explore more about implementing mastery grading. In this article, the teacher explains some of her initial questions and wrestling with mastery grading, many of which were similar questions I also had. How does mastery grading compare with rubric grading? (Rubric grading measures mastery from a holistic perspective -- ex. how often a student answered correctly on a summative assessment, whereas a summative assessment with mastery grading has specific questions of increasing levels of complexity to gauge the level of mastery on the topic). How do you assess and apply a grade to students through mastery grading? The author describes the process she went through to arrive at her current assessment and grading plan, with guidance from online courses, other teachers, and her school's guidelines. I appreciate how this teacher connected with many resources in order to thoughtfully restructure her grading and reflect on her student's improved engagement in assessments.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.clLpTtcA
"Mastery checks make it impossible for students to get to the end of a unit without understanding the concepts along the way."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mastery-based grading in a blended, self-paced, and mastery-based classroom can be really tricky depending on the mindset of where you teach. Some schools report student progress based on percentages, weighted categories, or points to arrive at a grade. Other schools use mastery criteria or even a pass/fail system to communicate how students are learning. Some schools require a certain number of grades be entered each week, month, or grading period. It can be a confusing process to figure out what all these labels mean about student learning.

When I began implementing blended learning, self-paced structure, and mastery-based learning, I found that the structure of students passing a mastery check to move onto the next lesson was a GAME CHANGER. Prior to this, I was using leveled rubrics to grade major assessments and letting students revise. At the time, I thought this was mastery-based grading. The middle school where I teach is an endorsed International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Program. In an IB school, we are required to use more holistic assessment rubrics, leveled 1-8 where a level 4 corresponds to a basic level of understanding. This assessment often took the form of an end of the unit project. Students could re-assess/re-do if they didn't reach their goal level on the assessment in order to achieve mastery. The problem was, it was always student initiated and very few students showed interest in revising their work by the end of the unit. This never sat well with me.

Enter the concept of mastery checks: requiring students to reach a level of mastery, determined by whatever mastery looked like in my school, in little chunks. Mastery checks make it impossible for students to get to the end of a unit without understanding the concepts along the way. In theory this made sense, but putting it into practice was my challenge. For more guidance, I took The Modern Classrooms Project's (MCP) free course, looked at the exemplars provided, and took advantage of all the resources MCP had to offer including the mentorship program. For months, the "grading" piece of mastery-based learning continued to puzzle me: If students do all the "must do" tasks, do they earn a certain grade? If they complete the "should do" and "aspire to do" tasks, do they earn a higher grade? Do I grade all of those pieces? Should it be based on completion or an actual score?

After many conversations with colleagues, trying a few different approaches, and getting feedback from my students, I settled in on an approach that works best for my classroom. Because of the IB influence in my school, I look at mastery in terms of level of understanding rather than the number of correct answers, a certain percentage earned, or number of items completed for a project. This Evidence of Learning summary gives a simple description of the levels of understanding I use for determining mastery. I am fortunate to have a supportive administration that encouraged me along with several colleagues to develop this summary. In conjunction with IB guidelines, we determined that level 4 is required for mastery.

This is the general approach I use for mastery-based grading:

1. Tie Lessons and Mastery Checks to Levels of Understanding

If students have a true understanding at each level, they should be able to demonstrate that level. So, I plan my mastery checks and lessons based on the evidence of learning levels for must do, should do, and aspire to do activities:

"Must do" corresponds to basic level understanding/mastery.

"Should do" corresponds to either proficient or advanced mastery, depending on the lesson.

"Aspire to do" corresponds to the advanced level.

In my middle school social studies classroom, I teach the must do, basic level mastery concepts through instructional videos. They are accessible to all students and thus allow everyone to achieve mastery. On the mastery check for each lesson, the questions for the basic level of understanding come from the instructional videos.

The should do tasks are often an annotated reading and partner discussion that extend/apply the basic concepts. This is where the next level and sometimes the highest level of mastery questions in the mastery checks come from.

Potentially, the aspire to do activities could be used for the highest level of understanding depending on the type of activity. For me this was the simplest way to start, by building quiz- style mastery checks that are based on level of understanding.

Here is one example of a leveled mastery check following a lesson on the Paleolithic Era. The level 3-4 questions are directly based on the must do instructional video and guided notes. These are the basic level of understanding students must achieve to move on. The level 5-6 questions come from the guided notes and an annotated reading activity, which is a should do activity. In this mastery check, the advanced level (7-8) open-ended question comes from a deeper understanding of the should do activity, requiring students to think beyond the text to answer it. If the lesson had included an aspire to do activity, I would have instead used that activity to create the advanced level written response question.

In this approach, all students have the ability to access all parts of the lesson, if they choose. If they choose not to access some or all of the higher levels, that is OKAY. This is the beauty of students having a choice and gives them another chance to own their learning.

2. Only Grade Mastery Checks, Not the Tasks Students Do to Build Their Understanding

Secondly, I do NOT grade the must do, should do, or aspire to do tasks done prior to the mastery checks. I repeat, I DO NOT GRADE the work because this work corresponds to the levels of understanding on the mastery check. If students understand the lesson work, students will reach their level of understanding on the mastery check.

Although I don't grade tasks, I do give feedback. Students must check in their work with me before attempting a mastery check. If there is something I see that indicates they might not understand, I have a conversation with them and guide them to truly learning the material. I may ask them to re-watch a video or add an annotation to a reading or even just check a provided answer key. I may give them another way to learn the material and figure out how to master a missed concept.

I also find that because I am using blended learning and a self-paced structure, my time is freed up so I can spot check in with students and give meaningful, real time feedback. These letter grade/score-free conversations are often the ones that are the most valuable to a student's growth and learning.

This is my approach to mastery grading in my MCP classroom. It took some time to figure out a workable way to assess learning that made sense for my situation, but I am in a constant state of growing and thus am never "done." I would love to hear from you about how mastery grading works in your class or about how you may have taken some of these ideas and changed them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Leveled Approach to Mastery-Based Assessment and Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In mastery-based learning, how should teachers determine mastery? Learn how one teacher created a workable approach to assess learning in her classroom.

# data[].attributes.headline
Getting Rid of Zeros Won’t Fix the Grade Book

# data[].attributes.subject
Getting Rid of Zeros Won’t Fix the Grade Book

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.RZ9poc8g
I chose this article because I was interested in the motivation aspect of grading after witnessing some students this week being really resistant/unmotivated to complete assessments.  I am curious as to how different grading policies might motivate learning versus stifle it. I had not heard of this 50 threshold and wanted to see if the class had any thoughts on it.

# data[].attributes.custom_properties.clLpTtcA
If we really want to solve the problem of zeros in the grade book, we have to ask ourselves this question: “If I got rid of averaging in my grade book, what would I do?”