Editor's Note: The following is in response to a story that was published in the Tuesday, Sept. 13 edition of The Monroe Times.
I was disappointed to read the recent Monroe Times headline "New Scale Has No Zeros," which completely missed the point of the recent changes to grading practices at the School District of Monroe.
Concerns voiced over the unfairness of the new guidelines overlook the issues pervasive in past grading practices that required a new approach. With more than 300 different approaches toward grading used district wide, and a heavy focus on homework as a major driver of course grades, our current system lacked consistency and effectiveness at measuring whether students were achieving learning outcomes.
Grading practices are inherently flawed, by nature. Published studies have shown that grading practices of large groups of teachers, reviewing the exact same student work, are already subject to a wide degree of variation in student score or grade. Perceptions of student behavior, appearance, culture, gender, and even neatness of handwriting have all been shown to unfairly influence student outcomes where grading practices include subjective factors.
Participation, effort, attitude, and respect are all important aspects of student character development, and will be measured, tracked, and reported on transcripts through a student's citizenship grade. By the same token, a student's academic grade will merely be a means of communicating the extent to which they have acquired the learning objectives of the course.
A 20-member team comprised primarily of teachers took a very thorough approach toward assessing best practices and current trends in grading, and ultimately recommended our new model, which is largely driven by the research of Dr. Thomas Guskey of the University of Kentucky. Dr. Guskey holds a Ph.D. from the Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis Program (MESA) at the University of Chicago, and has authored 18 books and more than 200 scholarly articles on grading practices. Guskey is a consultant to more than 25 educational organizations worldwide, including the U.S. Department of Education, and in 2006 received the Relating Research to Practice Award from the American Educational Research Association.
Guskey's research indicates that teachers can better motivate students by regarding their work as incomplete and requiring the additional effort on the part of the student to turn it in, rather than giving the student a failing grade. When we fail a student, we give them an excuse to avoid the work - our new model is focused on making students turn in their work so assessments can be made about whether they are acquiring the skills that they need.
While "tough love" and "old school" mentality would suggest that students not turning in work need to "be taught a lesson," there is absolutely no research that supports using grades as punishment is an effective learning tool. On the contrary, a large body of research, including that of Dr. Guskey, has shown that while high grades have some value as rewards, low grades typically cause students to withdraw from learning. Many students, to protect their self-image, regard a low grade as irrelevant or meaningless, and simply shut down. Over time, students learn that it is easier to fail than to struggle to do the work they are assigned.
While I can appreciate concerns that our new grading may seem unfair, the fact of the matter is that no grading system will ever be fair - there are merely some systems that are more effective than others at achieving a desired result, which should be communicating the degree to which a student has attained a skill level or learning objective.
One only has to look at how most colleges and universities use high school grades for proof of widespread skepticism over grading practices. While college applicants are required to submit high school transcripts during the admission process, standardized tests such as the ACT or SAT are often used to help institutions to determine a student's skill level on a "normed" basis, eliminating local biases wrought by inconsistencies among grading practices and course rigor. Universities don't even trust each other's grading practices, generally requiring applicants to their graduate, medical, and law schools to submit to standardized tests like the GMAT, LSAT, and MCAT, to gain admission.
The most important component of the new district grading guidelines is the emphasis on summative assessments, such as semester exams, chapter tests, final drafts, and labs, and the reduced emphasis on formative assessments, typically homework. Grading practices that place a heavy emphasis on summative assessments are more effective at measuring whether students have acquired learning objectives, and are more similar to grading systems at colleges and universities. Grading practices with a heavy homework and participation emphasis are less likely to effectively measure a student's relative level of mastery of learning objectives.
With so many approaches to grading being used in our district, it was not uncommon to see many courses placing much greater emphasis on formative work than summative, even in cases where core courses were examined. A limited emphasis on summative work is not proven to be effective at preparing students for success in college and beyond, and does not accurately predict the level to which a student has mastered a particular subject.
More than 70 percent of our Monroe graduates pursue higher education, most at 4-year colleges and universities. Data the district has analyzed reveals about one-third of our graduates who pursue higher education do not obtain a degree, demonstrating the need to do more to prepare students to succeed at the college level. Nearly half of our graduates from the Class of 2005 who attended 4-year institutions eventually dropped out, a trend that has a staggering financial and human cost. We must do better at preparing our students to obtain the education they will need to succeed in an increasingly more competitive and complex world.
I am hopeful that our district's recent changes, founded in solid research, and developed through the efforts of a collaborative team, can help our students to better acquire the skills they will need to ensure lasting success in their future endeavors.
- Robert Erb, Monroe, is vice president of the Monroe Board of Education and chairman of its Curriculum Committee.
I was disappointed to read the recent Monroe Times headline "New Scale Has No Zeros," which completely missed the point of the recent changes to grading practices at the School District of Monroe.
Concerns voiced over the unfairness of the new guidelines overlook the issues pervasive in past grading practices that required a new approach. With more than 300 different approaches toward grading used district wide, and a heavy focus on homework as a major driver of course grades, our current system lacked consistency and effectiveness at measuring whether students were achieving learning outcomes.
Grading practices are inherently flawed, by nature. Published studies have shown that grading practices of large groups of teachers, reviewing the exact same student work, are already subject to a wide degree of variation in student score or grade. Perceptions of student behavior, appearance, culture, gender, and even neatness of handwriting have all been shown to unfairly influence student outcomes where grading practices include subjective factors.
Participation, effort, attitude, and respect are all important aspects of student character development, and will be measured, tracked, and reported on transcripts through a student's citizenship grade. By the same token, a student's academic grade will merely be a means of communicating the extent to which they have acquired the learning objectives of the course.
A 20-member team comprised primarily of teachers took a very thorough approach toward assessing best practices and current trends in grading, and ultimately recommended our new model, which is largely driven by the research of Dr. Thomas Guskey of the University of Kentucky. Dr. Guskey holds a Ph.D. from the Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis Program (MESA) at the University of Chicago, and has authored 18 books and more than 200 scholarly articles on grading practices. Guskey is a consultant to more than 25 educational organizations worldwide, including the U.S. Department of Education, and in 2006 received the Relating Research to Practice Award from the American Educational Research Association.
Guskey's research indicates that teachers can better motivate students by regarding their work as incomplete and requiring the additional effort on the part of the student to turn it in, rather than giving the student a failing grade. When we fail a student, we give them an excuse to avoid the work - our new model is focused on making students turn in their work so assessments can be made about whether they are acquiring the skills that they need.
While "tough love" and "old school" mentality would suggest that students not turning in work need to "be taught a lesson," there is absolutely no research that supports using grades as punishment is an effective learning tool. On the contrary, a large body of research, including that of Dr. Guskey, has shown that while high grades have some value as rewards, low grades typically cause students to withdraw from learning. Many students, to protect their self-image, regard a low grade as irrelevant or meaningless, and simply shut down. Over time, students learn that it is easier to fail than to struggle to do the work they are assigned.
While I can appreciate concerns that our new grading may seem unfair, the fact of the matter is that no grading system will ever be fair - there are merely some systems that are more effective than others at achieving a desired result, which should be communicating the degree to which a student has attained a skill level or learning objective.
One only has to look at how most colleges and universities use high school grades for proof of widespread skepticism over grading practices. While college applicants are required to submit high school transcripts during the admission process, standardized tests such as the ACT or SAT are often used to help institutions to determine a student's skill level on a "normed" basis, eliminating local biases wrought by inconsistencies among grading practices and course rigor. Universities don't even trust each other's grading practices, generally requiring applicants to their graduate, medical, and law schools to submit to standardized tests like the GMAT, LSAT, and MCAT, to gain admission.
The most important component of the new district grading guidelines is the emphasis on summative assessments, such as semester exams, chapter tests, final drafts, and labs, and the reduced emphasis on formative assessments, typically homework. Grading practices that place a heavy emphasis on summative assessments are more effective at measuring whether students have acquired learning objectives, and are more similar to grading systems at colleges and universities. Grading practices with a heavy homework and participation emphasis are less likely to effectively measure a student's relative level of mastery of learning objectives.
With so many approaches to grading being used in our district, it was not uncommon to see many courses placing much greater emphasis on formative work than summative, even in cases where core courses were examined. A limited emphasis on summative work is not proven to be effective at preparing students for success in college and beyond, and does not accurately predict the level to which a student has mastered a particular subject.
More than 70 percent of our Monroe graduates pursue higher education, most at 4-year colleges and universities. Data the district has analyzed reveals about one-third of our graduates who pursue higher education do not obtain a degree, demonstrating the need to do more to prepare students to succeed at the college level. Nearly half of our graduates from the Class of 2005 who attended 4-year institutions eventually dropped out, a trend that has a staggering financial and human cost. We must do better at preparing our students to obtain the education they will need to succeed in an increasingly more competitive and complex world.
I am hopeful that our district's recent changes, founded in solid research, and developed through the efforts of a collaborative team, can help our students to better acquire the skills they will need to ensure lasting success in their future endeavors.
- Robert Erb, Monroe, is vice president of the Monroe Board of Education and chairman of its Curriculum Committee.
