I found Kohn’s article interesting and it lead me to read another, “From Degrading to De-Grading” (Kohn, 1999). In this, Kohn begins by discussing the three main effects of grading:
1. Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in learning itself.
2. Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenging tasks.
3. Grades tend to reduce the quality of students' thinking.
Point #2 is the one that really stood out for me for a couple of reasons.
I am dealing with my daughter right now who doesn’t want to take any more honors/AP classes because she sees her friends getting higher (I’ve had to work really hard when talking to her to say “higher” and not “better”) grades in the regular sections. It's been a challenge to keep reinforcing to her that she is a good student because she has learned that her grades tell her whether or not she is a good student. As a high school freshman, she is now also learning about class ranking. She recently found out that she is #124. I think that’s pretty good but she doesn’t see it that way. And then, to put the icing on this cake, she came home with her PSAT scores yesterday and she was not happy at all with them even though they were not bad scores. (These issues combine with Kohn's point #9: Grades spoil students' relationships with each other.)
I had a college professor who did something really interesting. On the first day of class we got to decide what our grade would be. We were handed a matrix that showed all the possible grades and what you would have to do to earn that grade. The higher you wanted your grade to be, the more challenging the assignments were that needed to be done to earn that grade. We had to select our grade and sign a contract stating which assignments we were going to do and that is what we were held accountable for that semester. All of our assignments were passed back to us without a grade, only comments, and part of each subsequent assignment included that we would show growth by improving on areas noted in the previous assignments.
I had another college professor who told us that we learn the most when we are pushed beyond our comfort level. It is a hard thing for all of us to do, so given the choice it is easy to understand that students will choose tasks that are within their comfort level but it is our jobs to push them further.
Kohn continues in the article with many other reasons against grading. If you found Kohn’s article that we read for class interesting, I recommend you read this one too. http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/fdtd-g.htm
I did find Kohn's article on grading interesting. I think your college professor had a wonderful approach with letting you choose your assignments and therefore your grade for the course.
ReplyDeleteWe had some discussions about that when my sister came to visit. My kids who are in elementary school (K and 2nd) don't get grades. They get a checkmark for either meets expectations or not and get a S for satisfactory, E for excellent and N for needs improvement. My nephews school gives actual grades for 1st grade (and also tons of homework to go with it). My sister was so incredibly stressed about grades, she had him doing all sorts of cramming before tests. She admitted that she might have been getting a little worked up about it, and it was stressing out my nephew....in 1st grade!
It was interesting to me that the grades were making a significant difference on our children's abilities to just be kids. I am glad my boys won't be getting letter grades for a few more years. I know it's inevitable and they are a necessary evil to some extent, I'll just enjoy the good times and try to remember Kohn's thoughts on the topic.
I think those are grades -- S, E, N, check, or minus. Those are the same type of grades my kids got and I remember getting in elementary school and I always viewed them as grades. Kohn does point out that not giving grades (ABC or SEN, however you look at them) is much easier and most often found in elementary school and then some in middle school. High school is where the resistance to go grade-free comes in. I think the big part to remember is that grade-free doesn't mean evaluation-free. I love the idea of giving students qualitative vs. quantitative assessments. Kohn lists some high schools that don't use grades and a couple of them are in Colorado. I'm actually considering making the trip to do one of the observations there.
DeleteI spent several years on an admission committee for UNC-Chapel Hill's Med School. Grades were 1/3 of the criteria for admission. Other schools have GPA cutoffs, and the system as it is has a GPA fetish. We had several applicants with no grade history, and I think this would be an interesting study, one of the dozen or so had perfect standardized MCAT's, the other's were mediocre. It gave us nothing to work on except interviews. Of note, the motivated and very highly goal directed tended to be poorer standard test scorers. What this all means is unclear. A friend of mine went to an open enrollment Dental School (no longer does this) with the knowledge that after the second year 50% of the class would be released. The open enrollment was a neat idea, the result a cut throat class that strove individually to outdo the others. Food for thought.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter is a Junior in High School and has also dealt with similar issues with her peers and grades. Even though i agree that grades are not the the be all end all i still encourage my kids to keep them up (because my grades were mediocre at best in high school). I also encourage them to make sure they understand the core concepts of any topic. I saw many students that received better grades, obtain better scholarships and be exposed to more opportunities for knowledge. The system needs to be re-tooled for sure but as my kids go through it i want them to make the most of it, as i can tell you do as well.
ReplyDeleteWas rolling in thought and remembering that grading was problematic for me and that I (as an intrapersonal learner with visual tendencies) had frequent concerns about AP classes. I avoided them in 9th grade entirely, primarily because of the fear of a "B". In 10th grade the system changed grading policy. All AP classes were scaled one point higher, a B in AP Biology was equivalent to an A in regular Biology. That allowed me to drop my apprehensions. Later, when my younger brother (2 years behind) was in HS, they changed the rules to lessen the bonus to your GPA by 50%. The AP enrollment dropped 30%. My college allowed 20% of your grades to be pass/fail (excluded were core courses in 200 and higher levels). That allowed students, like me to venture into areas that were unknown and take classes that were stocked with a majority of students with much more background knowledge. I took two classes I never would have ventured into in my Sophomore year (Philosophy of Eastern Religion and Biochemistry). Ended up transferring from Biology to Biochemistry as a major. Without that flexibility (the Biochem class was a 400 level course) I would never have made the step. When you have a goal set and you know GPA is a major factor, it becomes the drive for success and one loses opportunity to diversify. Neutrality of outcome was a calming effect for me and gave me the green flag to explore.
ReplyDeleteAt my daughter's school, honors and AP classes add .025 points to your base GPA per semester as long as you get a C or better.
DeletePrior to reading Kohn’s article, I did not realize how unproductive the evidence shows grades to be. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. It makes sense that if the focus is on the grade, then the motivation is towards getting a good grade instead of actually learning and committing to the material. I appreciated Donna’s comment on focusing on qualitative learning instead of quantifying learning. I think that it is important to think outside of the box when it comes to grading. I believe that for most subjects such as the humanities (ones that have room for creative response), the teacher’s suggestions and comments would be very helpful. There have been times when I have received a paper with a grade on it, and I wasn’t sure why I got that particular grade. If the grade was lower than I expected, I was disappointed and often times discouraged if the teacher did not offer suggestions of what I could do to improve. When teachers comment on students work, I think that comments should helpful and constructive not just critical. In other areas of study such as math and science, students need to know which problems they got incorrect, but here also, I think that teacher’s comments would be helpful, especially if a teacher sees that the student is struggling with the same types of problems over and over again. I think this would help the student recognize they may need to give extra attention to certain types of problems and I think it would help the teacher to recognize the learning pattern of individual students. Even though grades will continue to be used in most schools in the near future, I think that more attention needs to be given to whether or not students are actually learning the material, or merely memorizing it for the grade.
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