Making the Grade.

Maybe I’ve become the crazy teacher. I had the realization recently that I am far more concerned with kids thinking “she made me believe I could do anything” than I am about standards.

At the end of the year, I give students a survey to grade both me and our class. It is anonymous. There are several questions on the survey. Some of them require rating, other require responses. Things like “I enjoyed most of the titles we read this year: strongly agree/strongly disagree [or somewhere in between]” or “If I could take one book off of the shelf so that no one was ever required to read it again it would be ____________.” It is rather eye opening to see what kids liked and didn’t like about the class. I do it quarterly for feedback about assignments, but the end of the year survey is a bit more involved.

While I could say that it is great to get comments that go something like “While it may seem like I’m complaining a lot, this was my favorite class!” the reality is, every year, these surveys make me change my teaching. And this year, they’re making me re-think things in an entirely different way.

I was a bit surprised to look over four quarters of grades and see how many A’s and B’s were earned. While I don’t doubt that those grades were earned, I was surprised by some of the names attached to those A’s and B’s. Their writing is not of A or B caliber. Their understanding of literature does not match those grades. So, how did they earn them?

They showed up. They did their work. They tried hard.

My grading scale is broken up fairly evenly so that no one can “just” score high on tests and ace the class. Similarly, one can’t simply do all of their homework and earn a passing grade. I have three categories at 25%, then one at 15% and one at 10%. What I’m realizing is that their grade does not necessarily reflect the mastery of the standards I’m teaching them. And, therefore, I suppose the question I’m posing is: should they?

Should a student be graded on their mastery of a specific subject/standard or on the effort put forth in conjunction with the former? Where’s the mid-point?

These are the questions that ought to be discussed during staff meetings, not who has lunch duty. These are the questions that will reshape how we teach and what we teach and everything in between.

None of the schools at which I’ve taught have ever had a seminar, course, presentation on proper grading scales. No one teaches you how to do this stuff. Maybe you stumble upon an old grading scale or google a sample for the grade and subject you teach. I find this to be troubling.

The first week of school, I spend at least two periods going over with students how to understand and figure out grading scales. None of them have ever been able to explain to me how a grading scale works. When I explain to them that an assignment on a grading scale where the average assignment is worth ten points is the same as an assignment with ten times the value on a grading scale where the average is 100 points, their minds are blown. They’ve learned that ten is much, much less than 100, therefore, the 100 point assignment is of much more value. When I have them grade their own essays using a rubric and then give themselves a letter grade, the numbers and the letters NEVER match. I am learning that students have a poor understanding of grading, percentages, and what “mastery” means. For quite some time, many of them have been told that effort is enough. But in the real world, that is not true. So, I find it my duty to teach them that effort is good and it is important, but it doesn’t always earn you a paycheck.

If I were to only “put forth effort” in lesson planning and grading papers and never actually completed those things, they would be at a loss. It is the same thing with their work, right? If they put forth effort, but didn’t quite get the right answer, how do you grade this? Maybe I should teach math or a subject where there IS only one right answer. English is too subjective.

Other teachers: what are your thoughts? How do you grade? How much does effort play a part? What are your percentage breakdowns? How do you measure a student’s success? Parents, former students, and community members – weigh in. What do you think about grades?