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For the past 14 years, allowing students to figure what success means on their own terms and owning it, is what has driven my Student Success Project. This means not having to live up to other peoples meaning of success and best of all avoiding the labels which come with it and definitely NOT tied into test scores, GPA’s and class rankings.
This societal obsession has attributed to student burn-out; created a mental health crisis; student stress levels of pandemic proportions; a record-breaking number of medicated students and unconscionable suicide attempts and successes. How can we start to really fight back? To do so means to eviscerate, eradicate and eliminate the accelerant at its root grades and the grading system.
A+, A, A- = EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE
I am talking about starting in grade school all the way to college. Especially as I think about all of these high stakes decisions — who gets into college, who gets which jobs, and how much these decisions depend on people’s ability to perform on tests — I can’t help but reflect on my lifelong distaste for society’s obsession with grading.
Most of that was my unfriendly relationship with grades. During my four years at the University of Miami grades were nowhere (and I mean nowhere) as important as was my 24/7 involvement in student activities. As a matter of fact, they got in the way of me being part of almost everything happening on campus.
I think grading is dreadful. But it’s not just because society is obsessed with it or that it causes stress. There are much deeper, fundamental reasons why I think not only exams, but all forms of summative assessment, are destructive, ineffective, and highly problematic from an equity perspective.
C+, C, C- = INDICATES SATISFACTORY PERFORMANCE
Students worry about grades when they turn in assignments, and react with feeling when they receive them. Grading is fraught with emotion on both sides and seems to have little to do with learning. Are grades necessary? Does marking student work with a D or an F do harm, creating a toxic environment? And if it does, what should we do?
Grades, it can be argued, are necessary. They rank performance against a standard, they inform students of their level of success, and they show the need for improvement. To grade means to place on a scale of elevation, to judge whose work is lower and whose is higher. A high grade indicates expertise: do you want to drive across a bridge built by someone who got a C in engineering?
Grading is also warping society in a way that is masking the real purpose of school, which is to learn, to grow, and to discover one’s self.
This system was widely adopted only in the 1940s, and even now, some schools, colleges and universities use other means of assessing students. But the practice of grading, and ranking, students is so widespread as to seem necessary, even though many researchers say it is highly inequitable.
B+, B, B- = GOOD PERFORMANCE
For example, students who come into a course with little prior knowledge earn lower grades at the start, which means they get a lower final average, even if they ultimately master the material. Grades have other problems: They are demotivating, they don’t actually measure learning and they increase students stress.
During the pandemic, many instructors and even whole institutions offered pass/fail options or mandated pass/fail grading. They did so both to reduce the stress of remote education and because they saw that the emergency, disruptive to everyone, was disproportionately challenging for students of color.
D+, D, D- = LESS THAN SATISFACTORY PERFORMANCE
How about this. Let us give students feedback and ample opportunity to revise their work. I mean, isn’t that the whole purpose of feedback anyway? Isn’t our work supposed to enrich, evolve, refine and upgrade into better versions of the original thinking?
Of course as always, let me know what you think. But remember, comments and feedback only because I REALLY hate grades.
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder of The Student Success Project and Think Factory Consulting. He can be reached by email at ritchie@thinkfactory.com and on Facebook and You Tube as The Student Success Project.
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