Read The Case Against Percentage Grades by Thomas Guskey, which provides some historical background on grading and discusses some problems with percentage grades.
Read It’s Time to Stop Averaging Grades by Rick Wormeli, which explores reasons why averaging grades is problematic.
Watch this short video and jot down notes collecting evidence or comments which resonate with you:
What’s Wrong with Traditional Grading
Take a moment to answer the poll below.
In the comment section below, cite a piece of evidence from the above readings, video, or cartoon which resonated with you and elaborate on how or why it resonated with you.
Grading for Learning 
What resonated to me the most is the information provided in the article It’s Time to Stop Averaging Grades by Rick Wormeli. The explanations given about the difference a percentage point can make for students trying to enter universities and the types of opportunities offered really stuck with me. The student with an A does not necessarily know more or is smarter than the student with the 89%. It brings students stress and frustration when teachers are stubborn about decimals. I also found that the author made the case that most of the current grading philosophies are based on how easy it is for the teachers to grade rather than allowing the students to demonstrate understanding and growth. He states “Why don’t we choose our grading philosophy first, then create the technology to support it rather than sacrificing good grading practices because we can’t figure out a way to make the technology work?”. This quote is important because I do not think many teachers think about their ineffectiveness of their grading strategies and do not consider other approaches.
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Averaging grades doesn’t accurately reflect a student’s comprehension and mastery of their assignments. A four point-based rubric grading appears student-friendly because students know what is expected and can be graded based on what they know and how much effort they exerted,
However, one poor or low grade can decimate a student’s average, making them appear to be doing poorly when they may have just had a bad day the day they took the test. We should be evaluating students on what they know and the growth they have made, not on how they compare with others, based on a 100 point scale.
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The short video “What’s wrong with traditional grading?” made some valid points that I had not previously considered. When work is marked with a percentage score, the student truly doesn’t have an idea as to how to rectify the errors to avoid repeating them. Percentage scores tend to intimidate students and, after many repeated low scores, oftentimes, students will no longer make an attempt at a challenging task.
Additionally, “The Case Against Percentage Grades” brings to light the drawbacks of traditional grading. As Guskey stated, this system “stands as a major impediment to making grades fairer, more accurate, and more meaningful.” Although percentile grades make it easy for teachers to track rapid growth, teachers’ various measures would produce varied results of students’ skills, and therefore, would be inadequate.
Guskey discusses the idea that percentage grades intend to reflect the capacity of students’ growth and knowledge but this is not “an appropriate approach to setting cutoffs [which] must combine teachers’ judgements of the importance of the concepts addressed.” In other words, a valid grading system would need to be a consolidation of numerous teachers’ input as to the importance of a selected concepts – truly an impossible task.
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The short video “What’s wrong with traditional grading?” made some valid points that I had not previously considered. When work is marked with a percentage score, the student truly doesn’t have an idea as to how to rectify the errors to avoid repeating them. Percentage scores tend to intimidate students and, after many repeated low scores, oftentimes, students will no longer make an attempt at a challenging task.
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What resonated with me was the potential problems with traditional grading that were mentioned in the video. It resonated because as an LAUSD student I felt this way. I felt that teachers would not let me know what I was doing wrong, so I can improve. I felt that I was not as smart as I thought I was. I, as the video stated, would avoid taking risks, and would seek out easier tasks. I see now as a teacher how each student is an individual, and some might need more time on a certain standard in order to show mastery. I see that as a teacher I must inform my students of their strengths and weaknesses, and what they must do to improve their grade. We only learn from our mistakes, if we are not told they are mistakes we will keep making the same mistakes. Learning is a process, and it must be treated as such.
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What resonated with me was when he said that students don’t know how to improve, and that reminded me of the importance of using rubrics, so the students will know how they are being graded. Students want to be given easy assignments non rigorous non critical thinking so they can get a good grade but not put their brain to work.
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One part of the video that resonated with me is when the narrator discusses how a student may have fallen behind then loses motivation. Further, he or she will seek out easy assignments or not challenge themselves to improve. In my experience as a learner, I can relate to the aforementioned points. We must set up an environment where students feel comfortable taking risks and seek to improve themselves. We must provide rigor and the encouragement to seek out what is challenging without the fear of failure or setbacks.
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This video explains the long lasting impacts of grading for students. As they receive zeros or failing grades they tune into this fixed mind set where they won’t take risks or they will give up on the rest of the assignments since it’s mathematically impossible to improve within the grading period. Also students may not be aware of ways in which they can improve. Students may also feel that letter and number grades are unfair.
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1. Our education system has not adequately addressed the issue with grading. We have not questioned the system and rely on the numbers in order to justify a particular grade. Learning is easily measured by points. We always want a clear-cut line that demonstrates student learning but in reality, numbers can’t always tell us the truth. “Adding more gradations to the measurement scale offers only the illusion of precision” (Gusky).
2. Averaging grades have never really made sense to me. Either you know the material or you don’t. A student may not have learned the material the first time around due to various reasons. If a student retakes that same test and shows that they have mastered the material, an average of the two grades is not representative of the actual learning that has taken place. In addition, if skills are scaffold then those early skills would be needed to pass later exams. That means if a student passes a later exam, then they have demonstrated mastery of previous skills.
3. A grade without feedback is meaningless. Mistakes are ok as long as we follow them with, why? Where did you make the mistake? What skills am I missing in order to improve?
4. Our system of grading has created students who more focused on getting a good grade than actually learning. How may points are needed to get a certain grade as oppose to what do I need to learn to be better prepared for college and life.
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In “The Case Against Percentage Grades” Thomas Guskey points out that historically there is a huge discrepancy on the scoring of student’s work when using percentages. In 1912 a study by Daniel Starch and Edward Charles Elliott found that given the same two papers to grade, 147 teachers gave a wide range of scores from 50 to 97 on the two papers. On one of the papers, 15 % of the teachers gave it a failing grade and 12% gave it an A. So there really is no standard that teachers use when assigning percentages to papers, it’s all up to the individual teacher. Students become frustrated because they don’t know what it takes to get an A or even a passing grade in the class. The findings led to teachers going back to a standard 5 point grading system, that is; A,B,C,D or F. The decrease in score categories led to better consistency with teachers in the grades assigned to student performance. (Johnson, 1918 Rugg, 1918)
But with technology today most schools use an electronic grading software program that is designed by engineers and technicians who prefer to use scales that appeal to them, mainly percentages. So we have gone back to a flawed system that can be inaccurate when assessing final grades. When using a 100 point scale to grade students work, what we have is a 60 point failing system and only 40 points for passing. What if a student misses an assignment and receives a 0 for a grade? What will it take to overcome this and achieve a passing grade for the class? And what if a student misses his goal by less than 1 point like from 89 to 90? This difference between an A or a B can lead to the difference of what college the student can go to, or between a 59 and 60 can lead to a student dropping out of school.
In “It’s Time to Stop Averaging Grades”by Rick Wormeli, he admitted that he refused to round up a student’s score to achieve an A and give him straight A’s in all his classes by one-tenth of a point! This decision haunted him for years. Wonder what it did to that student’s self esteem? The difference of a single percentage point or less can be a huge difference in the career of a student. It is not a fair assessment of the student’s knowledge of a specific subject. He also points out that a student’s personal life can have a huge bearing on how he or she preformed on a test. There can be problems at home or many other factors in their life that can affect a student’s focus.
In the short video clip, “What wrong with Traditional Grading?” the narrator gives specific examples of how traditional grading can be a problem for the students. They are given a grade on an essay paper that is lower than they expected but they don’t know what they did wrong or how to improve. They end up avoiding branching out and taking risks because they are afraid of making mistakes and being graded down for it. He talks about what kind of grade do you give a student who starts out low in the semester but ends up high versus a student who started out high but ended up low. Do they both deserve the same grade because their final point score was identical? Which student learned the most from the class? There are so many problems with traditional scoring.
In closing, I believe that students learn to do what it takes to get past a class with the highest grade possible for them. They are more interested in their point score or percentage then they are mastering the material taught in the class. They cram the night before a test and a month or even one week later will forget most of what the test was about. We need to change this ideology.
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Information from the articles, video, and cartoon that resonated with me are:
1) “…most present-day grading systems stand as a major impediment to making grades fairer, more accurate, and more meaningful” (Guskey). As a teacher, I would be greatly disheartened if my grading system were deemed to be unfair, inaccurate, or meaningless. Having a grading system that allows students to show growth and yet accurately displays their ability level in comparison to other students on the SBAC is important.
2) “Just because something is mathematically easy to calculate doesn’t mean it’s pedagogically
sound” (Wormeli). Averaging grades doesn’t accurately portray a student’s growth. If he started at a 60, but ended at an 80 when tested on the same material, the most accurate score should be an 80.
3) According to the video, without accurate and constructive feedback, a simple grade or numbered score doesn’t provide students with directions they need in order to improve.
4) According to the cartoon, the student was graded by everything except mastery of the standards, thus learning nothing or providing no evidence that mastery of the standards occurred.
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In The Case Against Percentage Grades, the author’s example regarding the subjectivity of grading by teachers was eye-opening. I was shocked at wide the wide range of scores given by teachers. Even more shocking was the recreation of this experiment almost a hundred years later, with the same results! Unbelievable. This really made me think about the lack of precision in the 100-point grade system; it is deceiving because you would think that with 100 distinct levels the system would be more accurate. But it is not. It creates room for subjectivity to creep in. This example made me really rethink the grading system I use and how accurate (or inaccurate) it really is.
The article about averaging, along with the examples from the video, were solid reasons for why averaging is really not desirable. While I do think that you can learn from your mistakes (if the teacher gives you your test back, you can see what you missed or read the comments and suggestions), the lack of risk taking, often opting out for easier points, and the subjectivity of grading were clear. A better method is needed. After reading the articles and seeing the video, I agree that the 100-point system, percentages and averaging grades are all relics of an archaic educational evaluation system that I plan to avoid in the future.
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One of the articles asked, “Why don’t we choose our grading philosophy first, then create the technology to support it rather than sacrificing good grading practices because we can’t figure out a way to make the technology work?” This resonated most with me because of the many examples of how policy and practices are misaligned with sound pedagogy, yet we continue to believe in them because of their convenience.
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The short video indicates that there are a few problems with “traditional grading.” It shows the negatives of traditional grading. Among others, the lack of feedback, it does not show students how to improve, students are afraid to take risk or make mistakes, students are not able to re-take tests, it does not account for growth, and the amount of points given yields different percentages.
It seems to me that the more we analyze and inquire about our grading practices, the more we find out that it does not represent what we teachers want to communicate. The implementation of a uniform grading system will take time and a lot of training for teachers. All of this must be accompanied with information to parents of what is the point of our new grading system and what we really are communicating by using it.
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