Grading and Reporting Student Learning

Keynote by Thomas R. Guskey

Designing new reporting structures to better communicate and involve parents in students' learning



Why do we use report cards and assign grades?

 Here are the 6 different possible reasons that Guskey listed:

1. Communicate with parents
2. Student self-evaluation
3. Placement information for future classes
4. Student motivation
5. Evaluate effectiveness of educational programs
6. Evidence of students' lack of effort or responsibility

Here's the problem - within a school, there is a great deal of dissent about which purposes should be used. These purposes are not all compatible with one another - focusing on 1 and 2 implies giving up on 3 and 5. Guskey states that the staff at a school must reach a consensus on the purposes of grading before being able to examine and improve upon the method.

The problem goes deeper when you consider grading elements. Put yourself in a student's shoes. In one class, your grade depends on quizzes and homework; in another class, your grade depends on homework quality, participation, and punctuality, etc. In the end, you have little clarity about how your grade is determined from class to class; this lack of clarity leads to grades serving none of the above purposes they were supposed to serve.

No one method of grading and reporting serves all purposes well.
The bottom line is that grades need to serve multiple purposes. They need to communicate achievement to parents. They need to guide student self-evaluation. They need to document student effort. Yet when we average everything together into a single grade, the result is a piece of information that doesn't communicate anything. So what's the solution?

Here's a proposed solution to the problem in the form of a report card. Instead of averaging everything together, the product, process, and progress are separated and reported as different grades.

The only thing that counts towards a student's GPA is the achievement grade. In this way the GPA reflects actual student achievement, not artificially inflated or deflated by effort, punctuality, etc. So why bother report the other grades? Think about how valuable this information would be to parents, counselors, other teachers. When the grades aren't averaged together, they actually mean something, which means they can be used to help students in a multi-faceted way.

The achievement grade should reflect what students actually know.
Sounds pretty obvious. But there are a lot of traditional practices that contradict this principle.

• Averaging to obtain a course grade (this implies that no learning occurred over the course of the quarter. The student's work on the first day was just as important, and displayed their learning, as well as their work on the last day.)
• Giving zeros for missing work
• Taking off points for late work
• Taking off points for 'bad' behavior

The bottom line is that the achievement grade needs to be accurate in order for students to understand their own skill progress so they can take ownership of their own learning. Having a separate grade for participation, punctuality, and effort as seen in the example above can really help keep the achievement grade accurate.

Do not use grades as weapons!
Guskey only briefly touched upon this subject, but it is a deeply significant issue to consider in the context of oppressors and the oppressed. If you really think about it, grades have no place in Friere's popular education model of teacher-student and student-teacher.

Here's an interesting analogy to consider. Teachers are often quick to point out the apparent contradiction of the relationship between teacher and principal. The principal is supposed to be an advocate for the teacher, but at the same time the principal is the judge and determines whether or not you have a job. How can you be both an advocate and judge at the same time? Here's the kick in the head - this is exactly the relationship a teacher has with a student. The teacher thinks of themselves as an advocate for the student's learning, but due to the evaluative nature of grading, the teacher is the judge and determines whether or not the student will pass. We have a responsibility to make sure grades are not used as weapons, and that they accurately reflect the agreed upon purposes in a multi-faceted way.

Peter's opinion:
Pretty deep stuff! It's scary to consider how meaningless and inconsistent traditional grades are. And that analogy between principal/teacher and teacher/student was pretty eye-opening. My concern is that Guskey was pretty adamant about having a staff consensus about the purposes of grading as the starting point for reforming the method. I worry about being able to reach such a consensus - but I'm certainly willing to try!

I think the sample report card is really worth looking at closely. We've heard some of this stuff before at the PLC conference from last year - the only thing that should affect the GPA is student achievement. It's difficult for me to fully understand how to enforce punctuality if students know it's not part of their GPA grade. But the separation makes perfect sense. My understanding is that teachers need to have full knowledge of the achievement grade. Counselors and parents get a lot more information from the participation, homework, punctuality, and effort grade. This gives a much clearer picture of what is going on with a student then what we see right now in PowerSchool, which is a whole bunch of grades like 36%, and it's unclear what that even means.