It is time to make the seemingly impossible, possible. We're going gradeless, folks! So far in this series I've introduced the topic of eliminating grades, covered the relevancy of the topic, made a case for the gradeless classroom being a trend and an issue and presented the challenges associated with going gradeless. In conclusion to this blog series, I am going to offer three stages of implementation, ranging from small, baby-step changes to total grade elimination. Immersing yourself in the unknown can be scary. You can either dip a toe in to see if going gradeless is for you or hold your breath, run full speed ahead and just jump in! No matter which course you choose to take, the following suggestions will help you create a culture that deemphasizes grades and emphasizes learning. Dipping Your Toe in The Water For those interested in a trial period, try these tips for the first grading period:
Wading in Slowly For those interested in a gradual approach, begin by implementing the strategies above as well as:
Cannon Ball! For those ready to go completely gradeless, be sure to talk with administration about how gradeless you can actually go, then:
Hopefully, these suggestions will assist you on your journey to going gradeless. The water may be cold. It may be deep. And the territory unfamiliar. But the plunge will be oh so refreshing!
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So if you're still following this blog series, and you're into the idea of going gradeless, I have to be honest with you. There are challenges associated with abandoning the traditional grading system. To go grades-free means to reject an established and relatively universal method that reports learning outcomes and behavioral expectations of students. A system which is ingrained in generations and generations of educators, students and parents. If considering going against the grain, you should be well aware of, and ready for, what obstacles lie ahead in the transition to a no-grades classroom. Challenge #1- School and School System Mandates Your principal and/or school system will most likely require that grades are entered in a certain time frame. You will need to discuss the possibility of alternative grading with your administration for approval. If admin prohibits you from going gradeless, you will have to find other ways to minimize grading in your classroom instead of overtly eliminating grades. If admin gives you the green light to go gradeless, then you will have to deal with students and parents next. Challenge #2- The Opposition Be prepared to have students, parents and even other teachers push back on your going gradeless implementation. High school students and classic overachievers will most likely not be overly enthusiastic about not receiving grades. They will feel that a gradeless system is not fair to their student records, class placement and GPA. Parents will be wary about not being informed regarding their children's progress in an A-F and the consequences of no-grades in high school and college. And for many families, good grades reflect upon their heritage and culture and are expected from children. You must be prepared to clearly communicate the rationale for going gradeless, explain a plan of implementation and adequately address the concerns of those that you teach. Student learning will be based off of teacher feedback and may require students to do iterations of their work. Students who have comfortably submitted B, C or F level work their entirely lives will adamantly resist redoing and resubmitting assignments. Additionally, your colleagues will not like your grades-free approach because it threatens the supremacy of tried and true reporting that most other teachers will still be using. Challenge #3- Implementation If you manage to get admin, parents and kiddos on board, there is still the issue of how to set up a gradeless classroom and do so effectively. The first thing that needs to be sorted out, is what exactly will replace grades. There still has to be a system in place that regularly reports progress to students and parents. Most likely what replaces grades will not be an easier alternative. You will be using more time to provide feedback to students--either written, verbal or through technology. If you are not tech-savvy or have limited access to techonology, this poses another challenge to going gradeless. While it is not impossible to go gradeless without tech, it certainly makes a grades-free teacher's life easier when communicating feedback. Since grades will no longer be a motivating or punishing force in your classroom, your lessons must be relevant and engaging to keep students wanting to do the work, not just having to. And what if students don't do the work? Going gradeless will challenge your classroom management as well as your instructional strategies. Challenge #4- Grades Still Hold Value Although there is a plethora of progressive research stating that grades reduce students' interest in learning, reduce their preference for challenging tasks and tend to reduce the quality of student thinking (Alfie Kohn, "From Degrading to De-grading," High School Magazine, 1999 retrieved from www.alfiekohn.org), 100 years of research on grading suggests multidimensional benefits of old-fashioned grading including being on time, getting things done, willingness to participate and managing time well. Furthermore, an annual survey of college admissions officers finds that college prep classes taken in high school and the grades earned are more important than SAT and ACT scores (pages 16-17 in the report). Would going gradeless be a disservice to future scholars, employees and citizens? Now that you are informed of potential hurdles to grade elimination, is the risk worth the reward? Yes! Emphatically, yes. Ultimately, going gradeless isn't easy but it is worth it. Nothing worth having comes easy. Stay tuned for the conclusion of this blog series that offers practical ways to grade less or go gradeless. Eliminating grades is not just a trend. It's a movement. Teachers schools, school districts and even higher institutions of learning have gone completely gradeless or have alternative methods of evaluation in place of A-F grades. The New York City Department of Education has been a huge proponent and exemplar of mastery-based learning. The city has a growing program called the Mastery Collaborative, which helps mastery-based schools share their methods around the city. The Mastery Collaborative consists of 40+ public middle and high schools across New York City. (Retrieved from http://www.masterycollaborative.org/) NYC provides just one model of what schools and school systems are doing to shift the paradigm of grading and learning to support teachers, students and parents in a mastery-based format. But in a more grassroots fashion, teachers from all over the world are taking it upon themselves to ditch traditional grading with the support of other like-minded educators on social media. Facebook groups such as Teachers Going Gradeless and Teachers Throwing Out Grades have 3,904 and 8,738 global members respectively. Gradeless Gurus such as Alfie Kohn and Mark Barnes have hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. And there are countless books, podcasts and blogs on the topic of eliminating grades, This movement is definitely trending!
The reason educators are transitioning away from grades in the first place is due to the issue of inequity in the grading system itself. The biggest issue is defining what a grade is. While many teachers say grades represent learning, actions say otherwise. Grades have often been used as a means of punishing and rewarding students based on compliance, which can stifle risk-taking and kill creativity. Factors such as turning in work late or not at all, having a name on the paper and making sure the assignment is colorful can impact the grade yet says nothing about what the student actually learned. If a teacher has a "no late work" policy, student are not even allowed to submit the assignment to exhibit their learning. Generally, school districts now use A-C, and F grading system with the D removed. There are 10 point increments between an A and B, a B and C and a C and an F. But then there's a 70 point range to fail (if you include the zero)!
Although traditional grading is flawed, many students have adapted and learned to thrive within the system. But there are many who have not. Think about those who historically make bad grades...
The achievement gap is a huge issue in education and it is tied to grades. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data shows that despite increasing math and reading scores, the gap remains between White and Black/Hispanic students. Socioeconomic status has a “substantial effect” on student grades. For over three decades, girls have earned higher grades and grade point averages than boys in school. And sixty to seventy percent of included students with disabilities receive below-average grades in their general education classes, with more than half of all students having a grade-point average below 2.24, with 35% below 1.75. (Gary Chu, "The Grade Divide," Teachers Going Gradeless, 2017). Eliminating grades is a trend-- no a movement-- to address the larger issues inherent in a traditional grading system when it comes to quality teaching and learning. If you are following this blog, you may be intrigued.
Hmmm, going gradeless sounds pretty interesting. Do tell me more! You may be skeptical. Not sure about this. If grades are eliminated, what kind of assessment system will replace it? Or you might be straight up shaking your head and laughing out loud. Okay, that just isn't possible. My principal won't have it. The parents will be irate. And the students won't do the work. This topic is relevant to a wide range of educators because grades are not limited to a specific content area or grade level. Grading and assessment are an integral part of teaching and learning but so many teachers get it wrong-- not out of malice but because they grade as they were graded. Grades can be used to punish or motivate students. But they should be tied to student learning and mastery only. Additionally, assessment is a component of Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES) on which teachers are evaluated. Researching, instituting and implementing best grading practices should be a priority for all teachers. Common misconceptions of eliminating traditional grades include:
Embracing a gradlesss approach is by no means the easier route. It's quite the contrary. In lieu of grades, teachers provide formative feedback--written, verbal and through conferencing. Students work towards mastery and collaborate with the teacher to track what they know and what they need to work on. Mastery-based learning, also known as proficiency-based or competency-based learning, is growing across the country, in grassroots movements or by school district mandate. Schools in New York, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Chicago and Idaho have either adopted this program or are transitioning towards it. (Kyle Spencer, "A New King of Classroom: No Grades, No Failing, No Hurry," The New York Times, 2017). In a gradeless, mastery-based classroom, students are learning not earning. Alfie Kohn has gathered from research that students who simply work for grades are more likely to lose interest in the learning itself, prefer the less challenging tasks and think in a superficial fashion as well as to forget what they were taught. (Alfie Kohn, "Getting Rid of Grades," 2010). Eliminating grades shifts the paradigm. Mark Barnes suggests clearly communicating to stakeholders the rationale for going gradeless and what a gradeless classroom looks like: observation, feedback, iteration and student self evaluation. Other experts in the realm of grading and assessment, like Robert Marzano and Rick Wormeli, suggest a less radical standards-based approach. Standards-based grading ties all learning to a learning target. The traditional 100-point scale is replaced with a 5 or 4 point scale to minimize the effect of the zero. More people are familiar with standards-based grading and it can be used as a stepping stone to total elimination of grades. What are grades supposed to represent? Most would say something along the lines of student learning, content mastery or application of skills. But are letters, numbers and percentages true representations of student learning? When teachers take off points for no name on the paper, late work, give a 100 for completion or a zero for not turning in the assignment at all, it doesn’t convey student learning. Number and letter grades often don't reflect mastery of content learned. It also curbs the incentive to want to reflect, redo and resubmit if the grade is satisfactory to the student or if the grade is too low to come up from. My trend focuses on eliminating the traditional grading system in favor of feedback-based formative assessment, narrative reporting and conferencing with students. Some of the leading professionals in favor of this trend are Alfie Kohn and Mark Barnes. I discovered the topic of "going gradeless" when I was researching how to improve my own grading practices. Through this blog series, I hope to find a practical way to transition out of traditional grading and provide insight to my peers on this trend. Hello peers! Thank you for taking the time to visit my EDCI 6158 blog. I look forward to getting to know everyone, collaborating with and learning from fellow and future educators.
I teach 8th grade Georgia Studies at Veterans Memorial Middle School. Previously, I taught 6th and 7th grade social studies at Fort Middle School for six years before transferring to VMMS. I am highly involved at my school and in the district. I am the department chair, social studies fair coordinator, I serve on leadership team and on the school improvement plan team (SIP). I also write middle grades curriculum and assessments for MCSD. I graduated from CSU in 2011 with a B.A. in Secondary History Education and am currently pursing my M.Ed in the same field. I absolutely love teaching and despite the issues associated with this profession, there is nothing else I’d rather do than teach and love children! Due to the brevity of this post, please feel free to explore the About Mrs. Ellis, Awards and Recognition and Credentials sections of this website, read my guest blogs on GPB and/or follow my educational social media accounts : Instagram, Twitter |
AuthorVanessa Ellis has been teaching middle grade social studies for 7 years. She is the 2017 Georgia Economics Teacher of the Year, a 2018 Harvard Fellow and a teacher leader in Muscogee County. She loves to teach and have FUN while doing it! Who says social studies has to be boring? ArchivesCategories |