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Emphasis on Grades

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No grades (or less emphasis on them). In our current environment, I know that I could not get out of assigning grades for student work throughout the term for report cards. However, I have already been making an effort to not grade every little thing. As we go through a skill set, I will try to choose a beginning, middle, and end point to grade in order to show student growth. This has been working pretty well so far, and students have stopped asking me "will this be graded?"

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To summarize the main points of the article:
1. Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself.
2.  Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenging tasks.
3. Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking.
4. Grades aren’t valid, reliable, or objective.
5. Grades distort the curriculum.
6. Grades waste a lot of time that could be spent on learning.
7. Grades encourage cheating.
8. Grades spoil teachers’ relationships with students.
9. Grades spoil students’ relationships with each other.

I particularly resonated with this article. My students, 6th and 7th graders, are fixated on their grades. For the most part, they do not care about the learning itself, but care instead about figuring out the quickest way possible to that coveted "A".

I also struggle a lot with the loss of time spent chasing down students to fix grades, or general fussing about specific percentages/points/etc. If I didn't have to spend that time in this manner, we could go so much deeper into the material.

Connections: The additional pressure of achieving their desired grade shifts student focus away from the material at hand. This places any information that they do glean from the material most likely into the short-term memory, fit only for repetition into a test and then quickly dismissed.

Implications for the Classroom: Students need to see the learning as valuable for what it is, not what grade it can earn them. I should strive to incorporate more lessons and activities that perhaps shift the attention away from the grade, and more onto the mastery of skills.

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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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Sitting In Desks All Day

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Teaching Without Differentiation

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Differentiated learning! The movement towards Blended Learning is a great step towards allowing students to follow their unique learning paths. I use small-group instruction, stations, and playlists to allow for some student agency and differentiation.

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This article illustrates how different students learn via different learning pathways. We as teachers need to understand that the same approach is not going to reach all students the same way. We are doing our students a disservice if we fail to differentiate to meet their learning styles.

Connections: When we do not teach in a way that follows that student's learning pathway, they may decide that the material is simply too difficult. We have all seen a student who has shut down because they believe that the work is too hard, and that response actually stems from the same part of the brain as "fight or flight": the amygdala.

Implications for Classroom: Differentiation is not just a buzzword. It is necessary and key to our students' success. It is difficult to recover a student from that "fight or flight" shut down, so we need to make sure that they feel appropriately challenged, but far from hopeless.

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November 2001 | Volume 59 | Number 3
Understanding Learning Differences Pages 6-12

Kurt W. Fischer and L. Todd Rose

Two bright, energetic 7-year-olds, Clara and Scott, want to read well, but they differ greatly in their patterns of skills. Clara can read the words "dog," "black," and "waffle" (as well as many others), and she can make rhymes with them and sound out the letters to pronounce the word. Scott can read those words, too, but he struggles with the rhyming and sounding out, especially for "black" and "waffle." Scott's performance changes dramatically when his teacher helps him. She provides a choice of words that rhyme with "black" or shows Scott how to sound out the word, and he performs perfectly for a while. Then, after a few minutes without her support, he again struggles with the rhyming and sounding out.

To understand and explain these variations in learning and development, we must detect the patterns behind Clara's and Scott's actions. When faced with the task of explaining such complexity, scientists and educators have typically retreated into oversimplifications. Most focus on a single factor to explain variation-typically, intelligence, developmental stage, or developmental norm. "Clara is smarter than Scott," or "Clara is at a higher stage than Scott," or "Scott is below grade norm, and Clara is at norm." But why can Scott perform the tasks correctly with his teacher? There is more to the differences than can be explained by a one-factor ladder of increasing competence, knowledge, or intelligence.

As researchers, educators, and parents, we are keenly aware, and often painfully reminded, that students do not all climb the same ladder. Their individual academic and social skills do not develop at the same time or in the same manner but in much more interesting and complex ways. A dynamic analysis of how students construct their skills offers a richer understanding of their learning differences-both the diverse pathways of different children, such as Clara and Scott, and the large variations in skills of an individual child that occur as a function of context and emotional state, as in Scott's activities with his teacher.

Each student constructs distinct pathways in every important learning domain, including reading, mathematics, and social interaction. At the same time, each student possesses a different level of skill in the learning domains; these variations in performance are a function of the student's emotional state and how much immediate support the student receives.

Constructive Webs of Development

An alternative framework for understanding learning and development is a dynamic approach that moves beyond the static one-dimensional ladder and builds on the concept of a constructive web of skills (Fischer & Bidell, 1998). Seeing learning as a dynamic construction of webs facilitates understanding the complex patterns of development and learning. Figure 1 depicts a small-scale version of this web; the strands represent potential skills that are developing in a domain, and the points of connection among the strands represent the integration of these skills. To read words, for example, the student needs to develop two different learning domains: visual-graphic skills, such as reading written letters and words; and sound analysis, such as rhyming and sounding out words. The idea of constructive webs explains how students can vary yet remain stable in development and leads to a recognition of patterns of variability that have eluded the classical models in the ladder framework.

Students continually construct multiple strands in their webs, such as sight and sound strands for reading words, with each skill contributing to the emergence of more complex skills along a strand. For example, identifying the letters of the alphabet helps students build the skills of reading and spelling individual words. A strand considered by itself is like a ladder of skills in a domain; however, it branches and connects with other strands-and there are many strands, not just one. In reading an alphabetic language such as English, the reader connects strands for visual-graphic and sound analysis to read effectively.

The development of a given skill involves diverse strands, branches, and connections, with one student showing a web like that in Figure 1 for reading and another student showing a different web. Unlike the rigid steps of a ladder, the sequence and order of the strands in a constructive web are not predetermined, nor is there one universal sequence.

At the same time, webs often demonstrate a great deal of order. Students commonly show similar strands, branches, and connections, as well as similar start and end points. These components are completely lost in the one-dimensional image of a ladder, which forces all students into one rigid model. Uncovering the orderly patterns through dynamic analysis of constructive webs creates powerful tools to help educators move beyond normative approaches and build effective individualized instruction. Two students in the same classroom may look similar in test performance, but their strengths and problems can be different because they are progressing through distinct developmental webs.

Early development of reading illustrates this type of ordered variability. In one study by our research group, the Dynamic Development Research Group at Harvard University (Knight & Fischer, 1992), 120 students in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades, ages 6-8, performed a series of six tasks with familiar words from their scholastic reading series in school. The six tasks all related to reading individual words: word definition, letter identification, rhyme recognition, rhyme production, reading recognition, and reading production. Examining these tasks allowed us to identify for each individual student the webs of skill development for learning to read single words (Fischer, Knight, & Van Parys, 1993). The webs from the study are far simpler than the one in Figure 1 because of the small number of tasks that we included in the study. With more tasks, the webs would show more strands and connections.

Figure 1. A Constructive Web of Development

According to the standard theory of reading development, proficient reading comes from the integration of visual-graphic skills, such as letter identification, with sound-analysis skills, such as rhyme recognition (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994). The constructive web that illustrates this standard theory, shown as Pathway A in Figure 2, starts with word definition because students must know the word before they can use it appropriately. Initially, the sight and sound domains are independent and not integrated, forming separate branches for the early tasks: letter identification and rhyme recognition. Later, the two branches come together as students integrate sight and sound skills to read words and become proficient readers.

Figure 2. Pathway A: A Common Web for Reading Words

In our study, most normal readers, like Clara, demonstrated this developmental pathway and fit the standard theory. Clara's rhyming and reading tasks connected closely for each word that she read, so the sight and sound tasks in her constructive web integrated to form reading skills.

At the same time, a number of students performed the tasks differently and constructed two distinctive alternative webs that did not indicate integration (see fig. 3). Scott had difficulty with rhyming and sounding out words such as "black" and "waffle," even though he could read them. He was developing along one of the alternative webs, in which sight and sound tasks were not integrated. In Pathway B, the two strands remain separate and unintegrated. The web begins like the others, with word definition and then letter identification, but the remaining tasks develop along independent branches for reading and rhyming and do not achieve full integration. Rhyming tasks typically develop later than reading tasks, as with Scott.

Figure 3. Two Alternative Webs for Reading Words

The third web, Pathway C, shows even less integration, with three separate branches for letter identification, rhyming, and reading, as well as slow development of both reading and rhyming skills. The students who produced Pathway C all showed serious reading problems, and some of those developing along Pathway B had problems, too. These alternative webs illustrate the difficulty that poor readers have in integrating skills across strands.

Focusing only on deficits in the alternative webs is a mistake, however. The students producing these webs could read many of the words in the study, and some performed normally on standardized reading tests. They were developing along alternative pathways, learning to read without integrating the sights and sounds of words in the "normal" way. Learning to read is more difficult for most students following alternative pathways, but eventually many students with severe reading problems become skilled readers and writers by developing along distinctive pathways. In a study of highly suc-cessful adults who were dyslexic as students, Rosalie Fink (1995) found that they had become powerfully literate readers and writers, even though they still retained their difficulties with reading individual words, especially integrating the sights and sounds of novel words. These successful adults had found their own independent pathways to literacy.

Developmental Range

Although a student develops along an individual web for reading, no individual acts consistently at a specific level on a strand; instead, he or she acts within a range of levels. Initially, Scott could not rhyme or sound out the words, but when his teacher provided support, he moved temporarily to a higher level, rhyming and sounding out successfully for several minutes. All students show similar variations in developmental range. They never remain fixed at one stage, even for a specific domain, such as reading words in the class curriculum, but instead vary across several stages or levels. Teachers know intuitively about this variation and are wary of claims that students operate at a fixed level of ability.

At first glance, this kind of variability may appear random or chaotic, especially when viewed through the lens of classic developmental theory. Like the differences in developmental pathways, however, there is order in what looks like chaos. An especially powerful influence on variation is contextual support for complex performance. Scott showed his ability to rhyme and sound out the harder words when his teacher provided support by prompting rhyming and sounding out, but this high-level ability disappeared in a few minutes after her support stopped.

The same variation occurs in all skills. A youth's competence at chess improves greatly in response to support from a mentor, and it varies with other factors: new situations, different challengers, and varying emotional states. Adults show this variation, too, especially when they are learning new material. For example, a member of our research group took a course about neural networks. In class, he demonstrated good use of network concepts with the support of the teacher's instruction, but when he went home and tried to explain neural networks to his wife, his level of understanding plummeted to much simpler, less sophisticated concepts.

Extensive research has shown that each learner's range of development is defined by two upper limits of performance-the functional and optimal levels (Fischer & Bidell, 1998; Fischer, Knight, & Van Parys, 1993). Under low-support conditions, students function less skillfully, and their highest competence is their functional level, which is their best performance in most everyday functioning. When they receive high support, their highest competence is their optimal level, their best performance when a person or the context prompts the key components of the task for them. The optimal level develops in spurts during certain age periods, which are related to growth in neural networks in the brain (Fischer & Rose, 1998), but the functional level develops more slowly and continuously and varies greatly across domains.

Jill, 15, illustrates optimal and functional levels as she learns the mathematical relation between addition and multiplication for positive whole numbers. Addition and multiplication both involve combining numbers to get bigger numbers, with addition combining single numbers and multi-plication combining groups of numbers (Fischer, Hand, & Russell, 1984). Explaining this conceptual relation between addition and multiplication eludes most adolescents, but when they turn 15 or 16, they can explain it with high contextual support. When Jill's teacher or friend prompts her with key ideas, Jill can explain this relation coherently for several specific arithmetic problems (such as 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 = 40 and 5 x 8 = 40) and exhibit competence at her optimal level. Within a few minutes after the prompting ends, however, her level of performance drops abruptly, and she cannot successfully explain the same relation that she dealt with cogently with support. Her level of performance on a test will depend similarly on whether the test question prompts the key components or not. In the classroom, students demonstrate this kind of fluctuation in understanding every day.

The range between optimal and functional levels is large, as shown in the graph for skill growth in Figure 4. The graph shows only the levels that emerge during the school years; 13 developmental levels emerge between birth and age 30. Jill is in the midst of the spurt in optimal understanding that occurs at about age 15, but several years will pass before she can sustain the same understanding in ordinary performance and without high support. Variation of this kind occurs in almost all types of skills-not only reading, mathematics, and science, but also sports, social interaction, planning, and self- organization.

Figure 4. Developmental Range: Optimal and Functional Levels

Dynamic Development

Students do not all learn in the same cookie-cutter fashion, and a dynamic analysis of learning and development provides powerful new tools for understanding their variations. The multiple webs of development capture the natural variability among students, and developmental range demonstrates how the variability occurs within each student.

Identifying common alternative webs provides a useful tool for educators because the webs illuminate the different ways that students learn important skills and show that students learn in multiple ways. Even individual students perform and understand differently depending on context, especially whether they receive high or low support. A primary goal of education is to improve the functional-level performance of students so that they can then produce the skill on their own. At the same time, an optimal-level skill is a target that students experience as realistic because they can achieve it if given high support.

When educational assessments distinguish alternative developmental webs for learning and note the differences between functional and optional levels of skill, educators can teach better, write more effective curricular materials, and improve the quality of their students' learning.

References

Fink, R. (1995). Successful dyslexics: A constructivist study of passionate-interest reading. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 39, 268-280.

Fischer, K. W., & Bidell, T. R. (1998). Dynamic development of psychological structures in action and thought. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., pp. 467-561). New York: Wiley.

Fischer, K. W., Hand, H. H., & Russell, S. L. (1984). The development of abstractions in adolescence and adulthood. In M. Commons, F. A. Richards, & C. Armon (Eds.), Beyond formal operations (pp. 43-73). New York: Praeger.

Fischer, K. W., Knight, C. C., & Van Parys, M. (1993). Analyzing diversity in developmental pathways: Methods and concepts. In R. Case & W. Edelstein (Eds.), Contributions to human development: Vol. 23. The new structuralism in cognitive development: Theory and research on individual pathways (pp. 33-56). Basel, Switzerland: Karger.

Fischer, K. W., & Rose, S. P. (1998). Growth cycles of brain and mind. Educational Leadership, 56(3), 56-60.

Knight, C. C., & Fischer, K. W. (1992). Learning to read words: Individual differences in developmental sequences. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 13, 377-404.

LaBerge, D., & Samuels, S. J. (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 293-323.

Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Torgesen, J., Wagner, R., & Rashotte, C. (1994). Longitudinal studies of phonological processes of reading. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 27, 276-286.

Authors' note: Thomas Bidell, Jeanne Chall, Rosalie Fink, Jane Haltiwanger, Catherine Knight, Samuel P. Rose, and Robert Thatcher contributed to the arguments and evidence in this paper. Preparation of this article was supported by grants from Mr. and Mrs. Frederick P. Rose, Harvard University, and NICHD grant #HD32371.

Kurt W. Fischer is Charles Bigelow Professor and Director of the Mind, Brain, and Education Concentration, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Larsen Hall 702, Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138; kurt_fischer@email.msn.com. L. Todd Rose is a doctoral student, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Human Development and Psychology, Larsen Hall 103, Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138; rosela@gse.harvard.edu.

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November 2001 | Volume 59 | Number 3 Understanding Learning Differences Pages 6-12 Kurt W. Fischer and L. Todd Rose Two bright, energetic 7-year-olds, Clara and Scott, want to read well, but they differ greatly in their patterns of skills.

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Not Allowing Brain-Breaks

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Giving our students moments to breathe. Allowing for brain-breaks at times besides lunch and gym. For middle-schoolers, they need time to decompress, move around, etc., in order to stay sane. I would love to try starting each class with even just a minute or two of breathing, similar to the Take 5 practice, just to see what changes could occur to the climate of the class! Also could take the form of sustained silent reading time at the beginning or end of class.

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Flexible seating! I have found so much success in transitioning into a flexible seating arrangement in my classroom this year. I have added a small "comfy corner" to my room, as well as a variety of throw pillows and rugs to my classroom. Most of the time, the kids would honestly just prefer to sprawl out on the floor to work. I see a lot less fidgeting, and the kids who do still fidget are sitting somewhere somewhat removed from those who prefer the quiet structure of a typical desk, so it is less disruptive. I love letting my students be comfortable, because then we can focus more on the learning!

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Standardized Testing

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Allowing for a more organic flow to learning. Teaching to the test does not always give the flexibility to pace learning with your students' needs. Hard deadlines and testing windows make everything have to fall into these neat little time frames, and that doesn't always happen. Content that is not featured as prominently in the tests is thrown to the wayside in favor of focusing on the featured content. However, this does not mean that it is any less valuable for students to learn.

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I agree that there is way too large of an emphasis on grading for our kids.  It really takes away from the kids taking risks.  I also feel that it adds stress to the kids who are always on "top" to stay there.  It creates anxiety in our kids when it does not need to be there.  I also think it takes away from the joy of learning.

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Allowing for brain breaks can make a huge difference.  My classes are way more successful when I allow students breaks throughout.  Some teacher's believes that breaks waste precious class time, but it actually allows the students to be able to re-focus and accomplish more within that class period.

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Several teachers at my elementary school are really embracing the alternative seating and work spaces with rugs, bean bags, sofas, low tables, etc. In the Media Center I have 4 standing desks that kids really like and I have a set of seats that can wobble. I think that it would be easier to institute different work spaces in a classroom where kids spend most of their day. In the Media Center I see the classes once a week for 40 minutes of which 15 minutes are for book selection where students are moving around.