I had exactly this conversation with a pair of Brooklyn friends, and I was mystified. They were asking me for advice on finding a school for their son. I was talking about finding a school with good foundational support for early literacy and math skills. Them, describing a preferred school from their school tours: “Well, the school doesn’t test.” Said with the same sense of moral authority as if they had just told me they compost or eat locally-sourced only or divest all investments in fossil fuels. I was shocked, to say the least. One mom went to an elite DC private school and an elite college. The other went to a high-flying public high school. Yet their definition of good school was the social justice messaging and the lack of tests. It was more than a little jarring. The conversation had very “Colin the Chicken” Portlandia vibes.
While I was surprised, I also realize that the real culprit is twofold:
- We don’t explain to parents what good academics look like. Heck, we have a Science of Learning movement in the US to explain it better to teachers. So, what questions would parents ask to gauge quality, other than “Tell me your assessment scores”?
- Parents trust local schools. We see this in surveys, over and over… even if you give low ratings to “American education,” you still trust your local schools. So, if your local school tells you that they are choosing not to test because testing equals bad teach-to-the-test instruction and anxiety for children, and if they say it with the same air of superiority as “Your chicken was ethically raised, and his name was Colin,” we should expect parents to think that assessment-free is the new cruelty-free. Because the school told them so.
I think the answer must be what you are doing – explaining the value of assessment to parents – but also, helping parents know what good academics look like, in a way they can grasp it, so we create “smart demand” for quality schools.
EXCELLENT essay. thank you. have had similarly weird experiences as i've researched the "great" schools everyone is always crowing abt in our neighborhood in chicago.
What if grades did not mix in all the things like effort and attendance, and just provided academic information, such as whether your child is reading on grade level? Could this be a more meaningful measure? Or at least an accompanying and more valid piece of data than a measure of one day like a standardized test? For all the time, effort and energy spent on grades it would be great if they could be more helpful and indicative of learning. And those things like effort, timeliness, etc? Give them a grade, just a separate one…so we can also know how students are doing on those.
Thanks for the comment. That exists. It's called mastery grading. Each assignment is tagged to set of learning standards ("Students will be able to support claims with relevant evidence from the text" or "Students will understand the historical circumstances which led to the Industrial Revolution") and then graded on those. At the end of the year, the student's grade is their proficiency on individual standards, not (necessarily) a holistic grade like A or B.
The problem with this is that it's really, really hard. Teachers have to know the standards for their subject really well, they have to be able to recognize grade-level proficiency of those standards (students in 3rd grade learn to write thesis statements just like 11th graders do, but the degree of sophistication is necessarily different), and they have to know exactly what their assignments are asking students of students. Even this is pretty difficult and takes years to master. (Sometimes you just need students to give you a summary of what they learned during the lesson, but maybe your lesson wasn't focused on one particular standard, per se; so what, then, would that end-of-class assignment be assessing? It gets pretty abstract.) On top of that, learning is not like a video game where a player unlocks achievements ("Superspeed!") and then they just have it. Learning is far less linear. A student's progress toward mastering polynomial expressions may stutter throughout the year, so mastery grading requires that you assess standards again and again.
Most teachers at the secondary level already utilize a form of mastery grading when they use rubrics, but a real mastery grading system is beyond the scope of what a single teacher can actually do, and is best implemented from up top, with assessments and assignments designed centrally, too. (A lot of American teachers would hate this, but, honestly, teachers should not be designing their own curriculum or assessments.)
That said, I wouldn't want to get rid of holistic grades, which are really useful in communicating to students and parents about students non-academic (so-called "soft") skills. In most cases, C students are C students: kinda lazy, turning in "good enough" work, turning in work late, a little disengaged, probably barely at grade level. In most cases, A students are A students for good reason. You rarely see a student with a 2.4 GPA and go, "Really?"
The better approach is grades AND tests, and for schools to ensure there's not too much of a gap between the two.
Yes. Grading for mastery of competencies is hard. But not impossible. As for holistic grades, how does a C student know what they need to work on or how to get there? Imagine 2 students who get a C. One understands all or most of the content, but cannot get their work in on time or has trouble getting started and thus finishing work. Or doesn’t know how to ask for help. The other does all those things, hands in their work on time, but really struggles with the content. For those students to have the same grade is not helpful. Breaking apart content from the skills and behaviors of a learner can help each of them use the grade and feedback to work on what they need to work on.
Superb essay.
I had exactly this conversation with a pair of Brooklyn friends, and I was mystified. They were asking me for advice on finding a school for their son. I was talking about finding a school with good foundational support for early literacy and math skills. Them, describing a preferred school from their school tours: “Well, the school doesn’t test.” Said with the same sense of moral authority as if they had just told me they compost or eat locally-sourced only or divest all investments in fossil fuels. I was shocked, to say the least. One mom went to an elite DC private school and an elite college. The other went to a high-flying public high school. Yet their definition of good school was the social justice messaging and the lack of tests. It was more than a little jarring. The conversation had very “Colin the Chicken” Portlandia vibes.
While I was surprised, I also realize that the real culprit is twofold:
- We don’t explain to parents what good academics look like. Heck, we have a Science of Learning movement in the US to explain it better to teachers. So, what questions would parents ask to gauge quality, other than “Tell me your assessment scores”?
- Parents trust local schools. We see this in surveys, over and over… even if you give low ratings to “American education,” you still trust your local schools. So, if your local school tells you that they are choosing not to test because testing equals bad teach-to-the-test instruction and anxiety for children, and if they say it with the same air of superiority as “Your chicken was ethically raised, and his name was Colin,” we should expect parents to think that assessment-free is the new cruelty-free. Because the school told them so.
I think the answer must be what you are doing – explaining the value of assessment to parents – but also, helping parents know what good academics look like, in a way they can grasp it, so we create “smart demand” for quality schools.
EXCELLENT essay. thank you. have had similarly weird experiences as i've researched the "great" schools everyone is always crowing abt in our neighborhood in chicago.
Thank you, Lucy! As always.
What if grades did not mix in all the things like effort and attendance, and just provided academic information, such as whether your child is reading on grade level? Could this be a more meaningful measure? Or at least an accompanying and more valid piece of data than a measure of one day like a standardized test? For all the time, effort and energy spent on grades it would be great if they could be more helpful and indicative of learning. And those things like effort, timeliness, etc? Give them a grade, just a separate one…so we can also know how students are doing on those.
Thanks for the comment. That exists. It's called mastery grading. Each assignment is tagged to set of learning standards ("Students will be able to support claims with relevant evidence from the text" or "Students will understand the historical circumstances which led to the Industrial Revolution") and then graded on those. At the end of the year, the student's grade is their proficiency on individual standards, not (necessarily) a holistic grade like A or B.
The problem with this is that it's really, really hard. Teachers have to know the standards for their subject really well, they have to be able to recognize grade-level proficiency of those standards (students in 3rd grade learn to write thesis statements just like 11th graders do, but the degree of sophistication is necessarily different), and they have to know exactly what their assignments are asking students of students. Even this is pretty difficult and takes years to master. (Sometimes you just need students to give you a summary of what they learned during the lesson, but maybe your lesson wasn't focused on one particular standard, per se; so what, then, would that end-of-class assignment be assessing? It gets pretty abstract.) On top of that, learning is not like a video game where a player unlocks achievements ("Superspeed!") and then they just have it. Learning is far less linear. A student's progress toward mastering polynomial expressions may stutter throughout the year, so mastery grading requires that you assess standards again and again.
Most teachers at the secondary level already utilize a form of mastery grading when they use rubrics, but a real mastery grading system is beyond the scope of what a single teacher can actually do, and is best implemented from up top, with assessments and assignments designed centrally, too. (A lot of American teachers would hate this, but, honestly, teachers should not be designing their own curriculum or assessments.)
That said, I wouldn't want to get rid of holistic grades, which are really useful in communicating to students and parents about students non-academic (so-called "soft") skills. In most cases, C students are C students: kinda lazy, turning in "good enough" work, turning in work late, a little disengaged, probably barely at grade level. In most cases, A students are A students for good reason. You rarely see a student with a 2.4 GPA and go, "Really?"
The better approach is grades AND tests, and for schools to ensure there's not too much of a gap between the two.
Yes. Grading for mastery of competencies is hard. But not impossible. As for holistic grades, how does a C student know what they need to work on or how to get there? Imagine 2 students who get a C. One understands all or most of the content, but cannot get their work in on time or has trouble getting started and thus finishing work. Or doesn’t know how to ask for help. The other does all those things, hands in their work on time, but really struggles with the content. For those students to have the same grade is not helpful. Breaking apart content from the skills and behaviors of a learner can help each of them use the grade and feedback to work on what they need to work on.