RETHINKING GRADING:
“Many current grading policies and practices are based more on tradition than on evidence of effectiveness. Changing the way we grade and report student learning means challenging these traditions with the knowledge and confidence that we can do better. But challenging time-honored traditions also means disrupting the security those traditions provide. It means pushing people away from something they find comfortable and familiar and toward a place of uncertainty and anxiety.” Thomas Guskey
Better Grading Practice: Guideline 1, Use a balanced grading scale --> 0-4 Scale
“Percentage grading systems that attempt to identify 100 distinct levels of performance distort the precision, objectivity, and reliability of grades. They also create unsolvable methodological and logistical problems for teachers. Limiting the number of grade categories to four or five through an integer grading system allows educators to offer more honest, sensible, and reliable evaluations of students' performance. Combining the grade with supplemental narrative descriptions or standards checklists describing the learning criteria used to determine the grade further enhances its communicative value...Use an integer grading system of 0–4 instead. In such a system, improving from a failing grade to a passing grade means moving from 0 to 1, not from 0 to 60 or 65. An integer system makes recovery possible for students. It also helps make grades more accurate reflections of what students have learned and accomplished in school."
The Case Against Percentage Grades
The Case Against 100%/Pts Scale |
In the article above, Dr. Guskey writes:
- Logistics - "a scale that identifies 60 or more distinct levels of failure and only 40 levels of success...nearly 2/3 of the scale describes levels of failure."
- Accuracy - " with more levels, more students are likely to be misclassified"
- Distortion of the 0 - "To recover from a single 0, a student must achieve a perfect score on a minimum of 9 other assignments. Attaining that level of performance would challenge the most talented students and may be impossible for struggling learners."
Better Grading Practice: Guideline 2, Use professional judgement
Teachers' thoughtful and informed professional judgments yield greater consistency in determining students' grades than do varied statistical algorithms. The takeaway message for teachers is, trust your mind instead of your machine. Teachers at every level must be able to defend the grades they assign and must have evidence to support their decisions. (Jung, 2014)
Grading is more a challenge of effective communication than a simple documentation of achievement (Guskey & Bailey, 2010). Teachers who trust their own minds—knowing that informed colleagues would likely make the same judgment—offer grades that communicate meaningful, reliable information to all.
Grading is more a challenge of effective communication than a simple documentation of achievement (Guskey & Bailey, 2010). Teachers who trust their own minds—knowing that informed colleagues would likely make the same judgment—offer grades that communicate meaningful, reliable information to all.