The Problem with Grades

Going to do this kind of backwards to make this easier to read. I'll include more background info at the end, if it helps set a better context. But, I really want the heart of what I have to say to stand out.

My other internal debates to follow in this string of posts:

- Process/Problem Solving/Analyzing Mistakes vs. Precision (Getting a correct answer)
- Responding to students' needs vs. "Enabling"
- Responding to students' needs vs. Curriculum content
- Depth and Problem Solving vs. Curriculum content
- Keeping students from "gaming the system"
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In a nutshell, this post is about me wanting to stop grading students. At very least, to stop grading using averages. I think it's done so much damage to myself, my students, and my classroom over the past couple years. I think it's caused some students to hate math.

I've followed a lot of Joe Bower's work on classrooms without grading over the past few months. I think it's really good stuff. I think my two biggest problems with grades are the negative feelings/pressures they put on students and that they give students an acceptable place to stop learning or improving.

I think my ideal system would be using some kind of feedback portal, such as this one, and then sitting down with students at the end of the semester where they and I decide their final grade. Bascially, everything would be both "formative" and "summative." Anything can be used to provide continual evidence of learning, yet nothing counts as an individual grade. The feedback is the important thing.

Maybe though, this post is more about my fears of doing this:

1) How many students will see this as a reason not to have to do anything? There a lot of students in my school who have played the system for years.  Regardless of the feedback they get, how motivated will students be with very few immediate consequences for not doing the work?

2) I've talked about this, and it does not seem to be a philosophy that other teachers would believe in. Many believe standards-based grading, or not grading at all, would hurt students because colleges still only look at GPA. I've complained about teachers who are too easy on their students, and I worry that although it would end up being far from the truth, I would get lumped into this category. A lot of teachers (and I admit to being one of them quite a bit) say that students have gotten lazier because we allow them to re-test, don't grade homework, and are very soft with deadlines. I worry about this problem getting much bigger without grades.

3) I know that for now, I would still have to a give a final grade. I love the idea of the students being a big part of determining their own grade. But, with parents and students who still worship GPA, what's to stop students from (or parents pushing their students to) argue for a grade that is much higher than what reflects their actual learning? If students know that they can get by without doing the work, then why wouldn't they slack off?

4) Students already play games between teachers. "I didn't do my homework because I had a summative that was due in another class." While that offends me, it's only a rational thought. Some teachers also count "reading quizzes" as summative assessments, or just count normal assignments as summative just to "make" students do them, even if it's questionable whether they are assessing competence vs. compliance. (I'll still keep an open mind that I could be in the wrong on this one. Maybe I'm too committed to following the rules, and I should be breaking this rule if it would help my students? But I still ultimately believe that not grading homework is the correct way to go, even though it's much more difficult.) If I'm the only teacher who uses this system, how often will my work be pre-empted by a "summative" in another class?

5) I teach one of my courses with two other teachers. There are expectations for consistency within teams. I'm not sure how I could do this while the other teachers use a traditional grading system.

6) How will this fly in the community? We have two cultures within our school: one of a Chicago school, and one of the suburban schools around us. Most of the suburban schools around us are very traditional, and have been able to stay that way because of their upper-middle class clientele. They haven't had as many problems with low test scores because they don't have much poverty in their schools. The status quo works, so there's not much need to fix it. I'm sure most of the area around me favors traditional schooling. The parents who are most involved in the school fall in the mindset of the suburban schools around us. If I ever had the need or opportunity to move schools, and were to interview for a position or work at one of these schools, would I be accepted there with this kind of philosophy?

7) Is it a manageable system? (Although it certainly seems more manageable than trying to be strict and manage everything for the re-dos. And seems to have more integrity than just spoon-feeding students the test so that they don't have to do re-dos or just giving students high grades that they don't deserve to limit the re-dos and keep everybody off my back.)

8) What about students who should fail? They shouldn't pass on to the next course without the required knowledge. How does this look in a system without grades? What about athletic eligibility? Every week I have to submit a list of failing students? What does this look like without grades?

As you can see, though I think I want to do this, I see many obstacles. More background info about these thoughts and why I feel this way is below if you're still interested.
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One of the main topics so far of the "How to Learn Math" course has been the role of mistakes: the way they cause new synapses to grow, how making mistakes is the most useful thing to be doing, how they are the key to innovation, and so on.

And I do try to give this message to students in my classroom. Mistakes are great because we all can learn from them.

So I say this, and as I'm going through this course, everything keeps screaming at me, "Zach, you are a big f-ing hypocrite." What kind of mixed messages had I been sending to students?

You see, in the past few years our school has gone to only counting summative assessments in grades. One of the ways I tried to convince students to do homework was to tell them that it's good to make mistakes on your homework. If you're going to make mistakes, you want to find that out on your homework where it doesn't hurt you, instead of finding out on the test where it does hurt you.

Because it's one thing for a student to hear me say that you learn from mistakes. It's another thing for the student to see the "50" on her test and try not to cry, because she actually did do the homework well and worked hard on it. She thought she knew it, too. And now she's freaking out because she has to take the time to put in the work to re-do the test, all while trying to keep up with the current material in class and balancing her other courses and her sport.

We also put a maximum grade on re-tests. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I don't think it worked the way we wanted it to. The only people it seemed to punish were mostly the people who actually were re-testing because they cared about learning it. It hasn't done anything to stop students who are intent on failing the first time and being a chronic re-tester from doing so.

What this has led to over the past couple years has been students trying to work the system - trying to do as little math as possible while getting the highest possible grade. Most days, I walk into class, and on a good day, maybe three or four students have practiced outside of class to an acceptable level. This seems to be the consensus among many teachers, that students just don't do homework anymore because they don't have to.

The first game students would play was don't do anything, bomb the test, do the remediation work, memorize the old test, and then do the re-test (since many re-test problems are similar to the original one.) Then we started requiring homework to be done, contracts to be signed, etc., but students still only paid lip-service to them and were still playing the "bomb the first one, memorize it for the re-test game." I know I could have been stricter at times, but I also don't need someone asking me why over half of my students are failing, which might possibly be the case.

It's been really frustrating, and I really want students to start actually trying to learn the math and not trying to pass a test or accumulate enough points (to pass, for a B, etc.).

Dante's Mathematical Inferno

This is my first reflection on the "How to Learn Math" free online course that I'm taking, and also kind of a "brain dump" on my struggle with some very common controversial current education issues.

This course has really affected me, even emotionally at a couple of points, and is giving me a stronger push to try to implement some really drastic changes in my classroom.

The bad thing though, is that it's made me wonder what level of "Math Teacher Hell" I deserve to be condemned to, after some of the "torturous injustices" I've subjected my students to in the past.

I'm going to break my internal debates into a few separate posts, just to keep things organized and to keep posts from getting too long.

Hopefully with this confessional, I can do some "penance" this year and eventually have my "math teacher sins" forgiven.

Actually, I'm hoping it will help my students learn more.