Grades: Problems for Students
and Teachers
What is the main job of teachers? The answer seems
obvious: to teach. Yet if this is true, why are they not
evaluated on this basis? Teachers can go decades without
being observed in the classroom. Whether they are good
as instructors seems to be irrelevant since no action is
taken either way. Conversely, grades are scrutinized by
administrators every semester. When something goes
wrong, immediate action is taken, implying that the real
job of teachers is to assign grades.
As a teacher,
I was reminded annually that my primary task was to
judge and sort students rather than educate them. This
reminder came in the form of a memo saying that if class
averages fell outside of a certain range, “teachers
should meet with the principal to justify their grades”.
Initially, the premise seemed reasonable. Low averages
implied that students were not learning or that
expectations were unrealistic. High averages implied
that standards were lax or that grade inflation was a
problem.
Grade inflation happens when teachers
yield to pressure, causing averages to rise despite
unchanging student ability. Since the grading ceiling is
constant, grade inflation is also called “grade
compression”, as the bell curve gets squeezed toward the
high end of the grading spectrum. The existence of this
phenomenon is not universally accepted. Critics claim
that grade inflation is a myth. They point to one study
of college transcripts that showed a small decline in
grades over a twenty-year period. However, college
enrollments increased by more than 50% during this
period. The author of the study himself said that the
decline in grades was “not surprising given the overall
increase in participation in higher education”. In
other words, high enrollments may have diluted the
talent pool, keeping grades low.
Despite a few
doubters, most researchers agree that grades can
increase over time. In the largest study of high
school transcripts ever published, it was found that
averages increased by 11% between 1990 and 2000.
Increases were seen in all subject areas and academic
levels. When faced with this evidence, critics are not
dissuaded. They argue that students are earning higher
grades because they are smarter and working harder than
previous generations. But this explanation is difficult
to accept since standardized test scores have remained
constant while grades increased.
Regardless of
whether grade inflation is real, administrators try to
prevent it by ensuring that averages are similar between
classes and that grades are distributed along bell
curves within classes. Sometimes this is an unspoken
rule; sometimes it is an official policy. In Arkansas, a
statewide “Grade Inflation Index” is used to equalize
grades across high schools. Such well-intentioned
attempts to maintain standards have serious unintended
consequences. Instead of striving for universal
excellence, teachers need poor performances to make
their averages work out, creating a conflict of
interest. Teachers cannot serve as advocates for
students if they are also expected to act as judge and
jury.
In graduate school, I took a course that can best be
described as surreal. Each student was given a thick
manual of photocopied articles compiled by the
professor. The strange thing was that the pages were not
numbered. Rather than, “Turn to page 132,” we were told,
“Open your manual to the three-quarter mark. Look for a
picture of a lung. It’s four pages before that, on the
back of a graph.” That was weird, but the most absurd
part of the course came when the final exams were
returned. Our professor, Dr. Forrester, informed us that
he had incorporated “insult marks” into the calculation
of exam grades. This was a new concept for me.
Apparently, insult marks arise when one of your answers
is so insulting to the collective intelligence of
humanity that a zero is insufficient. Think of it as
academic antimatter. Exceedingly stupid answers receive
negative marks, which then annihilate some of the
positive marks from other questions. Dr. Forrester had
an equally bizarre perspective when it came to questions
that students aced. He would say, “Question five was
pointless because everyone got it right; good questions
have normal distributions that separate students.”
The belief that students should compete for grades is
not new. It is called “grading on the curve” or
“norm-referenced” evaluation. The opposite is
“criterion-referenced” evaluation. Generally, I avoid
these terms because they are bombastic and because there
is no practical difference between them. For example, is
the SAT a norm-referenced or criterion-referenced test?
In theory, all students can get a good score. In
reality, the test is carefully designed to ensure a bell
curve. Thus, the SAT is a norm-referenced test, with the
“norming” done in advance. The same is true of
teacher-designed tests. Teachers rarely grade on the
curve after the fact; they arrange this beforehand by
adjusting the difficulty level of assessments. A test
that is too easy is followed by a more difficult one and
will be made harder for next year’s class. Since
teachers are expected to keep averages within a
reasonable range, they give norm-referenced tests that
masquerade as criterion-referenced tests. Even if the
true intent is to measure ability without sorting students,
this is defeated when grades are used to decide honors,
scholarships, and college admissions.
Our focus on sorting students, rather than ensuring
mastery, means that many students do not receive proper intervention and correction, causing them to grow
increasingly despondent. Their response to failure is
shared by most people – and most dogs.
In 1965, Martin
Seligman was a graduate student at the University of
Pennsylvania. While performing learning experiments on
dogs, he was surprised to find that some did not respond
to mild electric shocks. Upon further investigation he
discovered that, in previous trials, these dogs had been
restrained while being shocked. Since prior attempts to
flee had been futile, they learned to accept shocks,
even though their circumstances had changed to permit
escape. This phenomenon, now called “learned
helplessness”, arises when subjects believe they cannot
control their environment and become passive as a
result.
Learned helplessness manifests itself in schools as
absenteeism and apathy. It is the direct result of our
dysfunctional grading system. When a student receives
60%, they are 40% wrong and are being punished for their
mistakes since no opportunity is given to improve their
grade. The threat of poor grades forces students to
check their work and raises standards. Unfortunately,
enthusiasm and self-confidence are the cost. Students
learn that nothing they do is good enough and that they
are powerless to control their environment. Constant
academic insufficiency also hurts teachers, who discover
that nothing they do impacts learning or interest. They
feel powerless because lessons are never fun enough,
assignments are never marked fast enough, and grades are
never high enough.
Teachers as well as students may be inappropriately
passive, and it is possible that learned helplessness is
implicated in poor teaching, discipline problems,
withdrawal, dissatisfaction, absenteeism, and turnover
on the part of teachers.
– Christopher Peterson
Let me make a suggestion. Grades should never
be used unless followed by clear explanations and
opportunities to correct mistakes. Giving a student 60%
and then moving on to a new topic means we are giving up
on their learning. It is disrespectful, destructive, and
has no place in a sane learning environment. The only
reasonable response is, “Okay, you don’t really
understand what we’re doing; let’s do it again until you
get it right.” Rather than accepting or encouraging
failure, we should insist on complete understanding from
all students, all of the time. A student who does poorly
on a task should revisit it until mastery is achieved.
The consequence for a poor performance should not be a
bad grade but the additional time required to fix
inadequate work. Rather than “I’m stupid” and “I can’t
do this,” students should be saying, “I need to work
harder” and “I can do this if I invest enough time.”
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with
problems longer.
– Albert Einstein
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The Technology Solution
This is an excerpt
from
Chalkbored.
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to learn more about ...
- International comparison of grading practices
- Grading alternatives: pass/fail and narrative
assessment
- The public cost of K-12 education
- The importance of choice, inspiration, and
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