Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments From Degrading to De-Grading

Can folks give your opinion on this piece:

http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/degrading-de-grading/

I was looking at online writing programs for my DS10 and this was linked in the D3 site. I am not sure I agree with the thought process. While not being obsessed about grade how do you judge if you are improving. Is grading not the best mechanism for it?

I don't trust a lot of what Alfie Kohn writes, but have found some merit in the occasional piece of his. So I like to think I'm somewhat open-minded when I approach his writings. Overall, though, I tend to see him as being led by ideology.

He has a point about people having OCD over grades. College admissions committees and tiger parents, in particular, drive this kind of thing, and they make most people miserable as a result. At the same time, this problem isn't the fault of the grades themselves. It's the fault of people who want to judge humans by using industrial metrics that are best suited to analyzing the quality of widgets made in a factory (GPA, SAT scores, extracurricular scores, etc.). Students aren't widgets.

IMO, grades are used best as a means of determining how well a student has learned some material. This is how I think they should be used: "you got a D on that test about fractions. We'll go over the material again for a week or two, and then you can try again. You can't move forward until you get a C, but you should try for at least B." Systems like the Khan Academy try to do this: sorry, you can't move forward until you get n right in a row. We could argue about the details, but the basic idea is good. Optimally, grades should be used to identify strengths & weaknesses, and their primary function should to help enhance learning.

So on the one hand, unfortunately, our hyper-competitive system doesn't work like this. Kohn makes some really good points in that regard ("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.")

On the other hand, some of his points are a bit out there ("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"]).

IMO, he's throwing the baby out with the bathwater there. Qualitative assessment has its place, but he ignores the fact that it's even more subjective than he claims grades are.

I think that it is helpful to consider the differences between differing assessment practices-- something that Kohn seems to often be on the verge of doing, but never quite gets there. Like Val, I find that I sometimes agree with him, but usually wind up shaking my head and sighing that if only he'd stopped there, I'd have been happy to agree with him and pass his write-up along. But alas...


I digress.

There is a role for formative assessment in shaping learning, and it doesn't foster all of the ills that Kohn ascribes to the practice of assigning values to performance metrics.

Then again, there are not consequences for mistakes in that kind of assessment-- it's merely a matter of seeing how the learning process is coming along, if you will.

Summative assessment, on the other hand, is the kind that evaluates what you have learned, and how well, at some fixed point in time after the learning process has theoretically taken place. This is the one which assigns a "value" such as a letter grade, a certification of some sort, etc. regarding the level of mastery that the student has attained.

The trouble is that many educators and certainly those producing tests and materials have forgotten that this distinction matters at all-- and have hopelessly married the two things together in the world's most hideous shotgun wedding ever.

This is where daily three-question multiple choice "quizzes" that count as 20% of a student's course grade come into things. Because homework is NOT evaluated anymore-- (that would have been "formative" assessment, by the way)-- but note that if you miss anything at all-- that is, if you aren't "perfect" more often than not? You have a D percentage for that portion of your class grade. The SUMMATIVE grade.

See what I mean?

It's not that either thing is awful by itself-- but that BOTH things are ultimately rather important to producing competent and healthy learners who strive for excellence (because it matters in the summative model) but avoid perfectionism (because it's okay to make mistakes during the formative portion of the assessment model).

I got into an argument with our sp.ed director because the district refused to qualify DD for an IEP even though she was doing practically no work in school. What he seemed to be telling me was that she could be asleep in school all day, every day, and do no work, but if she is able to pass standardized tests for math and reading, that proves adequate academic progress. So what kind of message does that send? It's Ok to do nothing in school, and be completely zoned out, as long as you can pass a multiple choice test? I felt like beating my head against the wall. This is what it now boils down to in so many schools/districts. They don't even care about actual class work or homework anymore, it's all about a score on a standardized (usually multiple choice) test. DD has been skating by on cognitive ability alone, because she's great at taking tests. Since she's "sweet", and obviously has a "problem" (ADHD) the teachers don't want to give her bad grades. It IS very biased. DS is in third grade and doesn't get any grades, but at some point things change. Instead of grades, the assignment is simply indicated with what is right and wrong. If it's especially good there might be a SUPER on the top. I'm not sure why that can't work for the older students as well. Maybe not the smiley stickers, but a similar system. If there is a 20/30 on the top of the paper, the student is going to know they didn't do a very good job of learning the concepts (at least the ones that were tested). Why does it need to translate to a "D"?