In The
Responsibilities of Grading, authors Robert I. Wise and Betty Newman
address needed change to the current grading system. They refer to this issue as “the grading problem.” They
discussed how evidence is mounting against the traditional practices of using
percentages or letter grades and that educators, parents, and students are
looking for a solution to the issue.
They list the alternative grading procedures that have already been
proposed, such as, “parent-teacher conferences, descriptive or narrative
reporting, student self-evaluation, mastery or performance-based evaluations,
pass/fail, and its variants.” The
authors understand the severity of the problem and are looking for a good
permanent alternative rather than a short-term solution. A good alternative must consider two
educational responsibilities—evaluation and reporting.
The authors discuss the responsibility to parents, basically
letting them know how well their child is doing and what they are learning. With the current grading system, it is
hard for a parent to evaluate these responsibilities. There is not much significance to a letter or percentage
grade in measuring a student’s development. Written reports would be more
helpful, meaningful, and descriptive.
Parents could then determine specific areas of strengths, weakness, or
need for improvement. The confusion of letter grades was exemplified in the
article in the following way: “The ‘A’ Johnny brings home in reading can have a
variety of meanings. It can mean
that Johnny is reading consistently above grade level. It can mean that Johnny is one of the
better readers in his class even though not reading above grade level. It can mean that Johnny is reading as
well as the teacher thinks he can, even though he may actually be one of the
poorer readers in the room in terms of absolute achievement.”
The authors claim there is also a responsibility to
students. Ambiguous grading can
confuse a student’s personal worth.
Reactions to low grades can be withdrawal or rebellion, while high
grades can lead to unneeded suffering and anxiety by striving for these high
grades, sometimes “at the expense of personal integrity.” An “A” student may develop an ego based
on their success for a “rather narrow range of human activities we call
scholastics.”
The current system is based on standards that are not clear
and do not tell anything about an individual’s learning performance. Three types of evaluation standards are
possible: group-reference, self-reference, and task-reference. Group-reference basically means grading
students on a curve and placing them in a relative position in a group, but
gives no information on what was learned.
Students are running the same race and the same students usually
win. The authors call this
“inhumane.” Self-reference lets the student compete against himself, but this requires
prior assessed levels.
A new type of
standard system has been recently developed, which is the task-referenced
standard system, where a “task” can mean “any and all school learnings we
expect of students, from learning basic addition facts to working cooperatively
in a group.” A teacher would evaluate
how well a student has learned a particular task. This system would provide parents with a report of what
their child has specifically learned and what the school is teaching. The system shows what a student can and
cannot do. Reporting could be as
simple as using checkmarks to show achievements. Narratives could allow more complex explanations, but would
require more work by a teacher. When a student knows that mastering the
knowledge and skills with a checkmark is what counts and not their ranking
among other students, would improve the way a student performs in the classroom,
possibly even their success in life.
Wise, Robert I., and Betty Newman. “The Responsibilities Of
Grading.”
Educational Leadership 32.4 (n.d.):
253.SocINDEX with Full Test. 24 Mar. 2013.
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