A quick (very excited) note from Matt: It’s finally done!! My Better, Faster Feedback course is now available, and I couldn’t be more excited! The class is my deepest look yet at how to reclaim those nights and weekends from student papers while also using improved knowledge of feedback to provide even better instruction.
The course features the following:
Thirty videos, nearly three hours in total, that refine and build upon ideas and approaches from Flash Feedback while also introducing a host of new better, faster feedback practices that I have added to my practice in the five years since I completed the Flash Feedback manuscript. Click here to see the video topics.
Access to the feedback resources and materials that I use in my classes right now
Two live feedback problem-solving sessions
Ongoing enrollment in my free quarterly class-alumni-only review where I share the newest advances, articles, and discoveries in the field of feedback.
Given your support for my work, I am offering a one-time discount of 50% for newsletter subscribers in my first cohort this fall. To get the discount, use the code SUBSCRIBER when checking out and sign up by September 15. Hope to see you there!
Going Grade-Less Five Years In Part 1
Next week I will be setting up my gradebook, which means it is time for my annual ritual of reflecting on how much I hate grading student work. As I said in my original post on grades in 2019, grading is right up there with watching state-mandated online training modules and filling out our labyrinthian teacher evaluation as one of my least favorite parts of the job.
Now, a quick clarification before moving on: When I say grading, I don’t mean giving feedback to student work. Grading and offering feedback to student work are often used as synonyms, but they are very different. Feedback is information for the student about how to move forward and do better. It is a map to a brighter future. Feedback is a passion point for me—one I feel so strongly about that I wrote an entire book and created an entire online class about it.
Assessment is information too, but it is a static valuation of a student’s abilities and/or skills at a certain moment in time. Think of it like a photograph. And while there are some forms of assessment I don’t mind—like formative assessment where a teacher collects information to better understand where students are in the learning process—I loathe having to do the primary form of assessment found in schools, which is, of course, grading.
Like many teachers, I don't have a choice when it comes to grades. They are contractual and expected, but for five years I've sought answers for how to, if not go completely gradeless (which isn't an option for me), give grades less power and mitigate the negatives that often come with them even as I work within a traditionally graded system.
Because this is the time of year when grade policies solidify, I wanted to start the newsletter this fall by reflecting on my grading journey thus far in the pursuit of answers for where to go next. Today's post* will explore the negatives that can dwell in the often toxic wake of grades because understanding the issues with grades is an important prerequisite to finding better ways of approaching grading.
With that in mind, here are some of the most damaging potential negatives the come with grades:
Grades Can Negatively Impact Individual Student Identity, Behavior, and Motivation
Volumes have already been written on the negative impact grades have on student identity, behavior, and motivation, so I’m not going to go deeply into them here, but in short grades can impact identity, behavior, and motivation in the following ways:
Grades can feed fixed mindsets. Steady streams of a particular grade can cause a student to begin to identify with that grade, sometimes even referring to themselves as an “A student” or “C student.”
Grades can diminish motivation. They are a classic example of extrinsic motivation, which generally lowers intrinsic motivation. They also signal to students that learning is over, meaning that once grades come out, growth tends to stall.
Grades can discourage students from being creative and taking risks, as they fear jeopardizing their academic performance and GPA. Grades can also encourage plagiarism when students grow desperate to get a certain mark.
Grades are deeply interwoven with shame, stress, and other potent impediments to the type of deep learning, curiosity, and joy we likely want for our classes.
Grades Can Negatively Impact Group Dynamics
Not as commonly discussed—but in my mind equally important—is the corrosive effect grades can have on a class community. Some of the relationships often damaged by grades include…
Student relationships with each other. Grades act as a dividing force. You can see it when papers come back and students compare grades. In that moment, look at the students’ faces and you will see how the ratings divide students and impede the formation of a strong classroom community.
Student relationships with the teacher. The traditional use of grades sets up a dynamic of the teacher being the distributor of grades, the keeper of the important answers, and the arbiter of right and wrong. This dynamic can block the formation of strong student-teacher relationships, and if our ultimate goal is for students to be empowered and independent, not disempowered and dependent learners, grades often act as one of the biggest obstacles to that goal.
Student relationships with themselves. This was covered earlier, but grades can stand in the way of the students being, in the words of Polonius, true to thine own selves. So often grades lead students to prioritize the deciphering of the teacher's wishes over expressing their own perspectives in assignments.
Grades are More Imprecise Than We Give Them Credit For
Between the categories, precise numbers, and final grades that calculate to a hundredth of a percent, a gradebook usually looks impressive and precise. But if we are being honest, they are far less precise than we regularly present for the following reasons:
Any student (or teacher) can tell you that a paper will likely get very different scores depending on the teacher scoring it. In fact, even with the same teacher, scores can vary depending on the teacher’s mood.
What a grade means is often wildly different from class to class. For example, in some classes a grade might be based largely on effort or homework completion, while in another homework will have no bearing on the grade, with skills shown on a test or paper acting as the foundation of the grade.
The limitations of grades as a measurement instrument have always bothered me too. An analogy I often use is that trying to capture the totality of a student story or presentation with a number out of 100 is like trying to capture the Pacific Ocean or the Rocky Mountains with a postage stamp. You can get a vague sense, but so much gets chopped off at the borders.
Lastly, it is also worth noting that everything listed above is generally worse for the students who have the most negative relationships with our subjects or schools or who don’t feel belonging in our classes. Strong connections within the classroom and stable and positive academic identities can act as firewalls to the issues mentioned above, while feelings of isolation or negative academic identities can act as amplifiers of them.
Next week, I will share what I now do to try and mitigate these issues, but for right now I want to pause and offer an invitation to you, the reader, to share how you handle these issues that commonly come with grades. Over the summer in Camp Rewrite, I learned so much from the participants, and I think the participants learned so much more because they had each other instead of just hearing my voice. So one of my most fervent hopes for the newsletter this year (and a part of why I moved it to Substack) is I would like to create spaces for us all to learn from each other (especially given how many people have left EduTwitter or EduX or whatever it is called this week). So, if you care enough about assessment to have read this far, please think about sharing in the comments below how you approach going grade-less—which is to say making grades less negative in your classes!
Happy Start to '23-'24 and Yours in Teaching,
Matt
*Grading and assessment aren't exactly simple topics, and the hurried beginning-of-year pace doesn’t lend itself well to reading and digesting a 3,000 word treatise on grades, so, I will be splitting the post into three entries. Look for entry #2 on Tuesday.
Need a bite-size common sense explanation version for parents more than anything else...😐