I’ve had the opportunity to be an ungraded student and an ungraded teacher. Years of grades in public school did nothing to improve my learning or tell me how I could improve. I guess no one cared because I got As and Bs, but I cared! Not that my grades bothered me, but I wanted to learn and understand everything. I improved so much at the ungraded school. Teachers helped us every day, and their written feedback was clear about what we did well and what we could work on.
Years later I was teaching math to high school students at a homeschool learning center. Their policy for high schoolers was to give them a Pass or a Do Over with a written explanation. I loved this! I could assign a project-based activity, and anyone who didn’t fully understand could be asked to redo things - large or small. Individual conferences ensured they understood my requests. Ultimately, everyone passed. More importantly, everyone learned.
Thanks for amplifying the message that grades do a lot of harm. Crooks (1988) wrote a paper summarizing findings across a spectrum of studies pretty much putting the nail in the coffin. But grades keep resurrecting, they won’t die, they have gotten stronger in K12, and it doesn’t seem likely that teachers working alone in classrooms are going to change anything systemically. GPA is a stronger predictor of college success than SAT, I read, and there is a good theoretical explanation. How can the power of collective teacher judgment about academic performance be harnessed as a good without damaging learning? 20 different teacher ratings hovering around a mean of 4.0 means something different than a mean of 2.6. How can education use education to improve itself? Now that GPA is unmasked as a Faustian bargain, what can be done about it to bring all the players to the discussion?
Thanks for capturing a great conversation. I’ve loved ungrading and am encouraged by the traction it seems to be getting.
I’ve had the opportunity to be an ungraded student and an ungraded teacher. Years of grades in public school did nothing to improve my learning or tell me how I could improve. I guess no one cared because I got As and Bs, but I cared! Not that my grades bothered me, but I wanted to learn and understand everything. I improved so much at the ungraded school. Teachers helped us every day, and their written feedback was clear about what we did well and what we could work on.
Years later I was teaching math to high school students at a homeschool learning center. Their policy for high schoolers was to give them a Pass or a Do Over with a written explanation. I loved this! I could assign a project-based activity, and anyone who didn’t fully understand could be asked to redo things - large or small. Individual conferences ensured they understood my requests. Ultimately, everyone passed. More importantly, everyone learned.
Thanks for amplifying the message that grades do a lot of harm. Crooks (1988) wrote a paper summarizing findings across a spectrum of studies pretty much putting the nail in the coffin. But grades keep resurrecting, they won’t die, they have gotten stronger in K12, and it doesn’t seem likely that teachers working alone in classrooms are going to change anything systemically. GPA is a stronger predictor of college success than SAT, I read, and there is a good theoretical explanation. How can the power of collective teacher judgment about academic performance be harnessed as a good without damaging learning? 20 different teacher ratings hovering around a mean of 4.0 means something different than a mean of 2.6. How can education use education to improve itself? Now that GPA is unmasked as a Faustian bargain, what can be done about it to bring all the players to the discussion?