Grading

Good Evening!

Grading has to be one of the most hated (but also, most misunderstood) aspects of teaching. I hear from multiple non-education folks that teaching is an easy 7:30-2:00 job, but grading can have teachers pulling “all-nighters” just like their students. Inside the world of education, grading is a highly controversial issue, with overarching questions such as what should go into a grade?, how accurate are grades?, should grading be standardized?, and should grading be differentiated? While there are many grading systems out there, the dominate two are the tradition points system (0-100% or A-F) and the standards-based system. While the overall grade set-up of a class is one issue, the grading of every day assignments is another. Both of these concepts will be the main focus of this post.

It is hard for me to say what my ideal grading scheme would be. While participation and effort are important, some would argue grades should only reflect content knowledge. Therefore, it would make sense to have multiple grades for one class: a content grade and a “studentship” grade (do you do your homework and participate?), and perhaps even more. That being said, these grades would also boil down into a number or letter, which has the students focusing on getting points instead of learning, which is a major paradigm shift that needs to be made in education (but that is a much larger issue…). I guess, ideally, a pass/fail system with well developed and supported narrative statements for each student would be the most accurate way to grade, but the time that would go into such a system would make it completely impossible to execute with 90+ students. Which brings me to the standards-based grading system…

The math department at my placement is in an interesting stage of phasing out the traditional system while also experimenting with standards-based practices for the first time. Personally, my MTF and I are working with both systems. The traditional system is much like you would expect, a certain percentage or weight is given to homework, classwork, tests, and quizzes. However, for the standards-based grading system we have created a set of learning targets (LTs) for each unit. We grade the students based on their ability to show understanding for each of these learning targets in multiple ways. Ways to show understanding include tests, tickets-to-leave, presentations, staying after school, and homework, to name a few. That being said, because of the administrative set-up at the school, these standards-based grades need to be boiled down to a traditional points system at the end of the year for final grades. However, the hope is to put students focus on their own learning, and to allow them to easily see where they are at and where they need to go. We are still in the early stages of implementing this system, but I will definitely post updates as they occur. This is a grading system I am unaccustomed to so I am excited to try it out and see how it compares to the traditional system.

Another important aspect of grading is the actual grading of assignments. Of course I would love to leave comments all over students’ work to give them plenty of feedback, but with nearly 100 students this can be a tall order. Luckily, I am currently only focusing on one class period so I have been able to take my time grading their assessments, but as I take on more classes this will become much harder. I remember nights of my undergrad student teaching when I would be at the school until 5 at night trying to finish grading multiple choice tests. Any sort of narrative written feedback would take much longer. Therefore, I am interested to hear from other teachers to see their suggestions for this difficult issue. As with many aspects of teaching, grading is a difficult concept that seems to have more questions than answers, but with all things, it gets easier with time.

As always, thank you for reading, and please comment any questions, suggestions, or ideas you may have!

See you next week!