“You got an A in Algebra One in your previous school, but you clearly don’t know very much algebra. How did you get that A?” was my question to a certain high-school freshman I was teaching. No, it was not in so many words—I carefully phrased it more gently—but that was definitely the meaning of what I was asking.

Her response was something like “I came to class every day, I was on time, I did my homework, and I was always well-behaved.”

Clearly that’s not what an A is supposed to mean. But the problem is that there is absolutely no consensus concerning what it is supposed to mean. If it means that you mastered the material, then there’s no motivation for a student who is trying hard but not succeeding. If it means that you worked hard, and pleased the teacher, but didn’t learn the material, then it sends the wrong message to the student, their parents, and next year’s teacher/school. If it’s just kind of algorithmic average of everything from test scores to homework to class behavior, in an attempt to satisfy everyone, then it satisfies no one.

What’s the solution? Some say abolish grades (for all kinds of educational and political reasons—some valid, some not), some say rename the grades, some say give multiple grades by breaking out the criteria, some say indicate whether each specific skill or concept has been mastered or has not (yet) been mastered. There are lots of grading systems. I could write a book on it; many people have. In my 49 years of teaching I’ve tried various answers—and I don’t like any of them. Of course I am constrained by the team of teachers that I’m a part of, by the department consensus, by my department head, by the school/district. Sometimes even by the grading software! But I am lucky to have been teaching in various schools and programs where I have had more flexibility and clout than average, so I’ve been able to experiment. In my 21 years at Weston and my overlapping 20 years at the Crimson Summer Academy (CSA), I was primarily influenced by my former department head, Dennis McCowan, resulting in the system I currently use.

Before I tell you what that system is, a word from our sponsor. OK, not our financial sponsor, as no one is paying me for this, but our inspirational sponsor, as I was inspired to write this post by reading an article in Ed, the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. You should go and read that article before I tell you my system.

Currently the skeleton of my grading system is a simple P/N distinction. A grade of P means “proficient,” an admittedly subjective judgment of whether the student’s work on this assignment, project, quiz, or test demonstrates proficiency in the skills and concepts involved in that work. And a grade of N means “not yet proficient,” and the student deserves a second chance. (Everyone deserves a second chance.) By redoing certain parts of the assignment, or by successfully completing a similar but different quiz or test, they can raise their grade to an R, which means “revision demonstrates proficiency.”

That’s the skeleton. There are four additional wrinkles:

• In rare circumstances a student is given the chance to get a third bite of the apple by doing another retake.
• A grade of N on a project cannot be raised, as ample feedback has been provided during the in-class time to work on a project.
• An additional grade of E (for “excellent”) is available for tests and quizzes, but not for assignments and projects, as we learned that too many ambitious students were earning an E by insisting on too much help instead of doing their own work.
• A grade of N on the final exam cannot be raised, as “final” means “final,” as I always point out.

Categories: Teaching & Learning