told this student that the paper must be
redone. He was incredulous. He pleaded
his case fervently, emphasizing that the
paper was typed, edited, and completed
on time. I explained that although punctuality, neatness, and grammar are
important, it was his understanding that
mattered most. Apparently 12 years of
education had taught him otherwise.
Parent concerns are added proof that
our unintended message has been delivered. Time after time, parent inquiry into
student performance focuses on missing
assignments. Parents want to know what
missing work their child can turn in for
credit, recognizing, quite accurately, that
grades are primarily a reflection of effort
rather than progress toward learning
goals.
What Do We Measure?
As I reflected on this topic, I resolved to
refocus myself and my students on
learning. This, of course, required that I
know what exactly I meant by student
learning. Once more I took a look at my
practice, and what I discovered was
disturbing. I was not unlike the teacher
I spoke with recently who hesitated to
test her students after a three-day
weekend because she feared they would
perform poorly. If we avoid assessing our
students after a long weekend, then
obviously we are not expecting, nor
attempting to assess, enduring understanding in students. Grant Wiggins and
Jay Mc Tighe (2005) agree that grades
tend to measure students’ short-term
recall of information, rather than long-term, meaningful understanding.
If we focus predominately on measuring students’ compliance and their
ability to recall facts, our practices will
interfere with our most significant
purposes as educators. If we are to shift
our focus to higher-level thinking, we
must shift our grading practices.
Fixing the Fixation
on Compliance
One key to making grades more mean-
ingful is carefully distinguishing
academic achievement from what Robert
Marzano (2000) labels nonacademic
factors. This strategy remains the important first step as we work to develop
grading practices that support higher-level thinking (Winger, 2005).
As an instructional coach, I work with
teachers to shift the focus of their grades
from compliance to learning. Some
teachers point out that nonacademic
factors, such as the ability to meet deadlines, are crucial to success in school and
in life. I agree that teachers should
emphasize, and maybe even measure,
student responsibility. The issue is one of
focus and priorities. Nonacademic
factors must be measured independently
from learning and should never be
allowed to dominate the overall grade.
To keep the focus on learning, we
must carefully reconsider what we are
measuring. For example, a student’s
performance on small daily assignments,
usually assigned for practice or as preparation for the next class, is often more
indicative of responsibility than of
whether he or she grasps an important
concept. Therefore, I record most of
these daily assignments in a section of
my grade book reserved exclusively for
nonacademic factors.
If an assignment done at home will be
used to measure students’ academic
achievement, I often give that piece of
work a nonacademic as well as an
academic grade. This allows me, for
example, to lower the nonacademic
grade if the work is turned in late while
providing accurate feedback and full
credit for the learning.
It is important to teach and expect
responsibility. But it is also crucial that
we value and accurately measure
academic achievement. This system of
separating academic and nonacademic
factors in my grade book enables me to
do both.
Assessing Our Expectations
Once we have distinguished nonacademic factors from learning, we must
carefully define the learning we are
targeting and ensure that the academic
portion of the grade deliberately assesses
student progress toward it.
The movement toward standards-based grading aims to make grades more
meaningful by connecting them to
curricular standards. As we began
rethinking grading in our district, our
teachers employed this approach. Kendy
Blake, a 6th grade science teacher, set up
her grades around the topics of earth
science, life science, and physical
science. She also assessed writing as a
separate skill category and separated
nonacademic factors into a category
dealing with work habits. Mike
Mahoney used district standards to set
up grades in his algebra class around the
topics of polynomials, quadratics, probability, exponents, and systems of equations. He also had a nonacademic
component that he labeled personal
responsibility.
We discovered, however, that
although this approach communicated
more specific information about student
learning, it did not address our tendency
to assess students’ recall of information
rather than higher-level thinking.
Mike Mahoney’s experience illustrated
how this standards-based approach fell
short. His math assessments typically
included 15–20 questions that involved
using algorithms to arrive at correct
answers. Then the assessment added one
or two story problems that required
students to apply the mathematical
concept to a new situation. Mr. Mahoney
expected only his A students (perhaps
