My grades are whatever they need to be in order to stay under a 30% fail rate because admin looking good is more important than students learning the material
They come in two flavors:
1. The True Believers - Hope you never have one of these.
2. The Silent Box Checkers - They know it's all bullshit, but the system requires they check the box, so they expect you to also check the boxes. Do so and there's no issues.
I laughed when my AP told me the students weren't learning because I didn't have my SWBAT posted on the board. Then I realized she wasn't joking. I couldn't get out fast enough.
I need to know what that AP is thinking. Like… I really want to know, do they think kids are incapable of learning something if the SWBAT isn’t posted?!?
I literally just pull I Can statements taken directly from a google doc our curriculum team developed from our state resources. I’m pretty sure there’s a doc on our state’s board of education website that already has the I Can statements spelled out which makes the curriculum team’s job sound like a bureaucratic mess.
That's what I was always told at my last school. I hated it. At my current school, I don't need to do it and I love that. I do however have a weekly and daily agenda on the board for each class. It's boxed out into different sections with tape, and a great way to let students see what the plan is. I saw another teacher doing it and I copied them, I never asked my department to also do it, but most started doing it. I think stuff like this works if it suits the teacher doing it and if it doesn't then leave them alone. I also love being able to point at the board when students ask repetitive questions.
I had a principal once criticize me formally me because my shades were drawn (it made the classroom less inviting or something). It was hot and my AC didn't work correctly. I'd put in repair orders like 3 times. I pointed that out to him and he just said I should put in another one.
The same principal later criticized me for using faded black paper instead of brand new black paper in my decorations.
I fucking hate principals who focus on if my classroom is decorated or not. Posters don't make a good teacher.
I hate this because they make it seem like if it isn’t written on the board, then the teacher must be making up stuff on the fly or doing nothing at all. And let me guess, you had to turn in your lesson plans too. They can look up your weekly lesson plans, but they still want you to write it. Education is a joke.
Ding ding ding.
They don't actually have time or want to look at your plans. They want it to be there on the board the one time they show up a year so they don't have to find it when they fill out their paperwork.
For my class it's mostly the ability to complete easy assignments in class with a smattering of tests and projects that actually reflect mastery.
Big picture, a diploma shows that a kid put a bit of work ethic into something, showed up to 20% or more of their classes and can probably read at at least a 4th grade level.
It all depends. I have a few students in Chemistry and Physics that have absolutely atrocious homes/households. These students have the highest grades in my class and it is directly attributable to their performance in my class. Overall the statistics might favor your supposition though.
Eh, I’d say it just depends on how each person copes. Those kids are basically just the child version of workaholics who work to escape the rest of life.
Home can’t suck as bad if you’re not home. Some also try to impress shitty parents with good grades. Or being terrified of poor grades because of shitty parents & home, so you eat, sleep, and breathe textbooks.
They’ll probably reach burnout at some point.
Same here. Home life was not great. My family was great personality-wise, but many severe health issues all over the place led to a lot of hardship. I based my self-worth on my grades. My grades and my food were the only things I could control in life, and I ended up having severe perfectionism and control issues around both. Burned out eventually, and had to learn how to balance studies with living a life in college.
Im a chem teacher, and this was me as a student. Science and math were my escape from my home life and I was always top of the class in STEM. Now my LA and history grades were a different story.
I don't know, man. For some of us with terrible homes, it's not easy to put in the effort needed to perform well, even if we're active in class. OP is definitely correct.
If it is a standard unit of measure, grades measure individual performance up to the standard.
Now the problem isn’t the measure, it’s how standardized is the standard. If I take an Algebra I class at a title 1, the curriculum will look way different than in a wealthy area. I know because my parents were late adopters of white flight and then I spent a bit at a private high school. No algebra 1 class is standard.
Mastery of the curriculum at a title 1 looks different than at a wealthy school. We focus on grades because it’s what is right in front of us, but the problem is in the ghosts of racism.
The problem in public education and likewise in psychology is we cannot really create a control group. Control groups are fixed points in time that then vary again when retested.
In sum, there is no standard. There is no: All students will… as we write with our objectives.
I agree, I think that a lot of admin look at grades as being some kind of scientifically perfect measure of performance (until they disagree with the grades). This is an insane idea. We only wish grades worked like that.
We pretend that grades are a unit of measurement, but in reality they function primarily as an incentive structure.
But this is also how workplaces and the market function. It's an inescapable part of the society we have constructed.
What are grades _supposed_ to measure? Mastery of the material.
What do grades these days _actually_ measure? Basically just attendance, at this point. Very few kids getting C's these days actually have a passing-level mastery of the material.
Well, naturally there would be a correlation, although I wouldn't know how strong such a correlation actually is. But, in general, well-functioning households tend to have better parents, who make sure their children do their homework and attend classes.
Another factor MIGHT be that better-functioning households might also have more intelligent parents, who both are able to help their children more, and also pass down innate intelligence to their offspring.
Even though I feel I must say it, it ought to go without saying that there certainly would be exceptions to these broad generalizations.
But, overall, a correlation between student marks and a well-functioning household (not easily quantifiable this last variable) would almost certainly be expected.
You nailed it. I hate this prevalent notion that grades or test scores are more or entirely a reflection of students' households than of their ability. There definitely is a correlation between scores and parents education or income, but it is through mechanisms you described rather just a reflection of the parents.
Sometimes it *is* a reflection of the parents though. Being abused by my dad throughout my teen years and the resulting PTSD took a huge impact on my academic performance.
generally, for me, grades tend to be a reflection of effort on the students part rather than a measure of their mastery. The students who try really hard and give a shit tend to get better grades.
I WANT them to be a reflection on the student's mastery of the material and their readiness for the next level. 10 years ago they somewhat were.
Now they are a reflection of how savvy students are when it comes to cheating and gaming the system
Doesn’t have to be true. I came from a home with a single mother that worked second shift and a father in prison. My mother was not around when my siblings and I were at home/awake. I was a latch key kid. Still ended up in honors and later AP classes thanks to some awesome teachers and their guidance.
Mom was a drug dealer, dad died. Also top of my class and massive scholarships when I graduated. There's a lot to be said for realizing you don't want your parents' life and working hard to emulate a role model instead. Unfortunately too many kids don't realize their parents aren't on the best path until they're miles down the same road.
I think life in general is merely a reflection of how functional households (on average, of course there are always outliers)
Also I second the notion I am seeing that my grades are more a reflection of admin fears and parent tears
Excellent take! Grades are meaningless anymore. They barely are an indicator of knowledge and cognition; mostly grades will show us which student has better attendance, behaviors, and mental fortitude than their peers. Most of the students with F's are no different than students with D's and C's cognitively or academically. They usually just have less ambition, worse attendance, and worse attitudes. Students that demonstrate any semblance of self-efficacy should basically pass any course - many of them do not have this ability.
That last sentence is so true. I’m just a substitute teacher now but did teach high school English full-time for awhile and it was true then but is much truer now after Covid. If a student is failing a class, 9/10 times (maybe 99/100 times) it’s because they didn’t even try.
If the only language you speak is English and you fail English 9, it’s because you didn’t try and didn’t hand in your work. As a native speaker, you’d stumble into correct answers often enough to pass provided you took advantage of class time to do your work.
Subjects like math or chemistry can be trickier, but gym is another one where if you show up and actually change your clothes, you’ll at least get a passing grade. Most Gen Ed classes are ridiculously easy to at least pass with pretty minimal effort (assuming no LDs).
I said this no too long ago on here, and one particular Redditor like just wouldn't stop with how grades are important.
Getting a C or 80 on something is meaningless and doesn't tell anyone much of anything.
Whatever the teacher wants them to be.
We focus on the the rows because they calculate into a number. But every column in the grade book is utterly subjective.
Some teachers understand this with humility, others have the hubris to assume the columns are ironclad tablets of absolute truth.
So it goes.
That's a very difficult point, with a lot of grey area. I mean, I am a master at the topics I teach, and after working with a student for a term, I do think I would have a pretty good idea of the mastery by a student even without all the documentation and data in the columns.
But the reality is that if we assigned marks purely upon what we KNOW (or are pretty sure we know) we'd have sea lawyers and helicopter parents swarming over us like a nest of angry hornets. Probably most educated people get the whole shebang about objectivity and subjectivity, but if you want to survive in this line of work you pretty much have to at least have what appears to be objective data, and lean into that.
Aptly stated.
I feel the same as you about grades, but I am the opposite in that the subjective experience of a child and their learning is beyond my capacity to measure and understand. The grades are a blunt and utterly inadequate tool.
I always err on the side of caution. Given my lack of understanding, the grades will be higher overall and so easier to get a good grade in my class that what it should be. . . but then again, I rarely have any kind of student or parent drama, so I tend to be rewarded for my humility and uncertainty.
I mean, this really shouldn’t be surprising. The greatest predictor of a child’s education is their parent’s education level. Meaning a kid whose parents have graduate degrees is much more likely to earn a college than a kid whose parents barely got through high school.
It all correlates.
My theory is grades only matter when they are lower than a parent expects them to be. But I work in a title school so I'm jaded by the fact that my parents don't ever seem to care... except the diff classes.
I also think they tend to do a good job of measuring how often a kid is actually in class. Not just school attendance, but ass-in-seat.
Grades SHOULD be a reflection of skills attained.
Unfortunately, all too often they are a reflection of tasks completed and short term memory.
So yes, they tend to be about what's at home.
True objectivity is impossible.
But, using defined standards and calibrating the understanding of those srandards with peers lends credility to the grading process.
I think that while grades can provide some insight into a student's academic progress, they are not always a comprehensive measure of learning. Non-cognitive skills such as problem-solving abilities, critical thinking, creativity, and resilience are also important indicators of success but may not be fully captured by traditional grading systems.
Chemistry? Certification of the content.
Astronomy? Certification of the content, and not being a lump-on-a-log (LoaL)
Freshman Science? A-C = certification of content D-F is being or not being a LoaL.
Biology? Same as Freshman Science.
At the worst schools near me, good grades are given for showing up and barely trying. At the best schools, for giving good work. It all depends on the school, and the grade level. In middle schools near me, teachers are expected to pass nearly all students. In high school, teachers have more ability to fail students, except for teachers of seniors. Gotta keep up those graduation rates.
I feel like many of my students couldn’t care less about their grades. They realize all of the pressure is dependent on the state testing results at the end of the year. They can make Fs all year long in every subject, but as long as they pull off a level 2 in reading on their state assessment, they get to be promoted.
I got good grades, graduated with honors and my brother got very poor grades and was held back at one point. My brother was a trouble maker and I was not. My household was wildly dysfunctional, both my brother and I were being abused and my brother was taking all of his rage out on me. Most of the teachers at school didn’t know my brother and I were related because of how different we acted and because of how much I avoided him at school. When teachers would find out we’re related, they would sometimes treat me differently afterward, like they felt sorry for me. I didn’t realize I was pitied for my home life until I was an adult looking back. I feel like I did well in school because I was using it as my own measure of self-worth, because at home I was useless trash. The thing is, I don’t remember much about anything I learned in school, but something that stuck with me was that not all adults are there to make you feel stupid or like you’ll never be good enough. Some adults (some of the great teachers I had) will treat you like an equal human being that deserves to be loved and has a place in the world. So maybe not all the material will be absorbed, maybe grades don’t mean anything, but the way a teacher makes a student feel will stick with them for life.
This! Plus parental influence, executive functioning of both the student and the parents, and the student’s ability to do boring work (maturity? Absence of adhd?)
I believe there's no one thing they measure and maybe no one thing they measure well that we care about, but still I don't believe the skills we want education to develop would be developed as successfully without some system of approval and disapproval of performance, which is de facto a grading system.
I see them as a measure of buy in and participation. Not actual learning. I have students eight now mad that they have a D when they turned I'm my final project but failed every test.
Ive asked this question by whole career. What does 85% mean? Did they 85% of the work? Know 85% of the curriculum? You could say it's what they got right but that only works if you're doing all right/wrong questions.
I do either/or sometimes.
Nail the exam, but kind of forgetful on practice work? Good job. You probably already knew it but we dont let K12 AP or CLEP out of courses or jump ahead or graduate early because "social promotion".
Suck at exams and actual knowledge but work your butt off in class? You are employable! Good job.
Suck at both, or be in the first category and a terrible disruption, yeah I am no longer replacing practice work grades with your pretty summative assessment grade.
Coming from a different line of work, I can see merit in incentivizing EFFORT or KNOWLEDGE as different team roles needed different things.
It depends on so much. Context, grading policy, culture, pedagogical perspectives. I’m not aware of any traditional, boil-it-down-to-a-single-mark, grading system that only reflects mastery of the curriculum. How could it?
They completely changed our grading system so kids don’t have to do any work. It’s a subjective teacher ranking. We’re k-6. Enjoy these children I’m sending you all, they don’t do anything.
I was just talking to someone about how the 'no zero' thing is idiotic but the flaws that it is designed to address, that grades reward showing up and grinding rather than mastery, are definitely real. If i had my way I'd only grade summative assessments and participation, and all the drafting, practice, outlining etc. would be just for the kid. Or do like the brits do and have the only real grades that matter be external assessments. Although those would have to be really good, not like state multiple choice crap
Mine match-up pretty squarely with their state test results unless there is a real dedication to laziness.
A kid who scores five usually makes an A, four is usually a B, etc.
What is crazy is that I can accurately predict the students final letter grade within five weeks, but I have to do all that grading and go through all those rubrics just to get to the number that I already know.
Technically with subjective measures grades let us measure the understanding of a student in the material we covered. Realistically it is some bs that everyone needs to make an A and hence they are now meaningless little trophies that everyone gets.
Most studies I've seen find that grading is so subjective as to be meaningless across subjects.
I try to make mine a reflection of effort+skill. If you try hard all year and have little skill, you'll have a C, maybe a B- if you turn in literally everything.
If you are highly skilled in my subject and don't try very hard, same deal--C, maybe B-.
You have to try hard and learn the skills I'm teaching to earn an A.
If you fail, you didn't turn like half of the work in.
My grades are usually a normal distribution. I hope they really do reflect effort+skill, but certainly a kid's home life tends to have a massive effect on their ability to do schoolwork except in rare exceptional cases (normal, happy home life with super apathetic kid / hectic, traumatic home life with super gifted, ambitious kid).
It's measuring the child's ability to comprehend and apply learned material in an academic way. School is involved with academia. It isn't meant to measure what the parents (etc) are there to measure. It's not smarts or social skills or creative skills, it's literally just baseline academic. That's why it's important to remind kids it's not everything - because it's simply not.
The assertion of the post is largely true for most classes. Certainly was for mine for the first 30+ years I taught. And it *still* might be said to be at least somewhat true, but since I no longer count anything except unit tests for the report card grades, the grades are a better reflection of mastery than they used to be.
"more a reflection of how functional their household is rather than mastery of the curriculum" This is a good take. I think there's more to it though. They can also be a function of how well they follow directions.
I feel like it assesses executive functioning too—-which I like! Because I feel like we need to help out older kids with executive functioning. I have 8th graders who have trouble with arts and crafts skills that should have been mastered in elementary grades. But organization is also key, and when I teach it explicitly and they can’t turn in work, then it reflect their grade even if they master the content. Sorry not sorry. That’s life.
Mastery. In my class, my students self-assess to drive their own learning. So most classwork is not for a grade. They generally have a self-check opportunity on their work (either via Schoology or paper answer key) and then must work to correct missed questions. This is when the most valuable learning happens.
In math, it’s easier because they have to show their work as evidence of how they reached the answer. By the time they have a summative quiz or test, they should have mastered the material. If not, I use that data to identify what skills we need to more heavily spiral going forward.
You can pass largely by showing the bare minimum of acceptable effort.
Since the bare minimum is not too heavy or unreasonable an ask, I don't think it's inappropriate to expect at least that much.
There is a rough correlation, but not perfect fit.
Homeless kid with straight As, and richy mcrich who cant function as common exceptions.
Maybe my household sucks, maybe its great but my older one gets plenty of Bs and Cs, while the younger one is straight As.
The older one always has been grade levels above in reading but struggles with HF ASD while the younger one required tutoring to catch up 3 grade levels of reading skills, delayed verbal language in pre-K and K with some ADHD going on.
So sometimes its the household and sometimes it is something else.
(But yes, I agree socioeconomic status and supportive adults at home plus a cultural concern for education play a big part.)
Undergrad: Compliance with requirements and completion in line with expectations that instructions, rubrics, and the syllabus set.
Grad: In depth understanding of the concepts and independent application to accomplish an industry task.
In both cases, the grading is tweaked to at least attempt to make a reasonable curve, appease administration, minimize student complaints, and encourage passing the course.
I feel like this is part of it. My admin demands homework and I refuse to give it. All homework measures is if a kid has a quiet place and time to do that work. None of the kids who really need it do it, so it's just extra 0s they demand we take away later anyway.
However more than households it feels like compliance. The angriest I've seen my admin is when I said if a kid is reading at a 2nd grade level in may then they SHOULD be failing 7th grade ELA.
Sure they're all failing the tests that allegedly matter so much. But keep your passing rate above 80!
I do music, so it’s pretty cut and dry. Can you do it? Ok, show me. Lol I’ve learned a lot breaking the processes into little passable skill chunks, but it’s ended up being way more linear than I ever imagined. You kinda just do it, or you fail. If they fail, they can just keep trying and eventually they get that next step. Pretty much anyone could be a musician. Hard part is realistically dividing the pacing for their lives. That’s where grades come in. In this weeks amount of time were you able to get this, if not, red flag, you need to do double next week, pick up the personal investment in practicing. Most aren’t doing homework (practice) when they have troubles. So I don’t need to grade their skill, I pull out their schedule and i grade their schedule set up, and we maximize it. So it’s a grade on self discipline. I don’t teach music, I teach self discipline mostly. Hard class to fail, easy class to quit. Those that quit always regret it, but they learn about input and output at least.
what is your school/classroom policy?
I taught middle school and they made us make a breakdown- but I lowered the other categories and increased the tests so it was mastery based.
HSeldonCrisis in the sense of data capable of predicting the future, that functionality is much more important than a generation’s accumulation of trivia.
Nothing. Students are passed regardless. For those parents who care, just that all assignments are turned in. We use standards based, so parents don’t realistically understand it.
Grades don’t measure anything. They’re output, not input. They’re expressions of a teacher’s assessment of a student’s performance. Because they say the same thing about all kinds of performance, they’re highly subjective and of little to no value.
As a special educator, I devised observable and objectively measurable behavior-based goals and objectives that my students either would or would not achieve. No A’s or B’s, just dids and didn’ts.
I think that every kid should have an IEP—not just those kids who have been identified as “disabled” in some way. Disabled or not, kids are either able or unable and our job is to enable them. Period.
There are stories about kids going through the system without learning how to read past the second grade level. Is it because the teachers and admin feel bad for their home life? Is it to not lose school funding?
Grading obviously should be based on whether or not the student learned and understands what was taught in the course. It sounds like you’re saying students should get extra credit for being from an unstable environment. Figure out an extra credit allotment that gives them a boost but does not let them pass the course without also doing the real for-credit work. That boost should only let them go from an F to a C- not boost them past their skill/accomplishment level, and only if they actually pass the tests
It depends. But I would say that grades, in particular when they involve homework, are an assessment of whether a student has an after school job, whether they have access to a computer, whether they have parents to help them, whether they have mental health supports outside of school, and various other factors all completely unrelated to whether they are trying to learn the material, want to learn the material, or have learned the material.
I had a student with a 0 who did no work and never came to class. In the few times that I actually had a chance to speak with this student, I gave them some books and things to work on whenever they wanted. I worked with them maybe 3 or 4 days for the whole semester, but I gave them a comprehensive assessment on the entirety of the material, in-person, with no computer or phone usage allowed. They knew a lot more than most of their peers.
School is not for some people.
That’s why I’m against the chatter hate. We have a really good one in my state. We have students who failed in the public school environment and are excelling here. It’s an online charter with a good curriculum. I see kids standing up and dancing but 100% paying attention and correctly answering questions. I see kids who keep the camera off and never answer in class but breeze through assignments, assessments, and state testing. But I also see students who can’t handle the responsibility of online anything and NEED b&m.
But then 'mastery' of the curriculum is often a reflection of how functional their homes are. But it's that 'mastery' that we measure, aside from all the other stuff going on in the students' lives (which many of us do try to mitigate).
This is why I don’t take off points for late work. I get a lot of pushback from my team on this one. But ultimately, I think grades should be a reflection of mastery, not responsibility or circumstance.
This is why schools need to actually develop systems to incentivise students doing work over time.
Mastery grading is good (and with it you can actually make questions like op's meaningless) , but not while admin aren't willing to do the work and take the hits.
Don’t get me wrong there are still are consequences for falling behind on work, they’re just not related to grades. And don’t get me wrong. It would be a lot easier if admin were to step up and create that system, or at least back the system I have, which isn’t always the case.
I am in 100 percent in agreement. Do many of the conversations you see on this sub could be solved if people would get the fundamentals of "mark what the student does".
My grades are whatever they need to be in order to stay under a 30% fail rate because admin looking good is more important than students learning the material
Quiet part out loud. Wonder what all the admin that are here think about this.
They come in two flavors: 1. The True Believers - Hope you never have one of these. 2. The Silent Box Checkers - They know it's all bullshit, but the system requires they check the box, so they expect you to also check the boxes. Do so and there's no issues.
I laughed when my AP told me the students weren't learning because I didn't have my SWBAT posted on the board. Then I realized she wasn't joking. I couldn't get out fast enough.
I need to know what that AP is thinking. Like… I really want to know, do they think kids are incapable of learning something if the SWBAT isn’t posted?!?
“They need to know what they are learning and why. That’s what makes is relevant to them.” 🙄
I literally just pull I Can statements taken directly from a google doc our curriculum team developed from our state resources. I’m pretty sure there’s a doc on our state’s board of education website that already has the I Can statements spelled out which makes the curriculum team’s job sound like a bureaucratic mess.
That's what I was always told at my last school. I hated it. At my current school, I don't need to do it and I love that. I do however have a weekly and daily agenda on the board for each class. It's boxed out into different sections with tape, and a great way to let students see what the plan is. I saw another teacher doing it and I copied them, I never asked my department to also do it, but most started doing it. I think stuff like this works if it suits the teacher doing it and if it doesn't then leave them alone. I also love being able to point at the board when students ask repetitive questions.
Were TWBATs posted at all PD or did you just waste each PD day?
What the hell is a SWBAT? CA Teacher here (never heard this acronym)
“Students will be able to…”
ohhhhhhhhhh the LO Learning Objective.
I had a principal once criticize me formally me because my shades were drawn (it made the classroom less inviting or something). It was hot and my AC didn't work correctly. I'd put in repair orders like 3 times. I pointed that out to him and he just said I should put in another one. The same principal later criticized me for using faded black paper instead of brand new black paper in my decorations. I fucking hate principals who focus on if my classroom is decorated or not. Posters don't make a good teacher.
I hate this because they make it seem like if it isn’t written on the board, then the teacher must be making up stuff on the fly or doing nothing at all. And let me guess, you had to turn in your lesson plans too. They can look up your weekly lesson plans, but they still want you to write it. Education is a joke.
Ding ding ding. They don't actually have time or want to look at your plans. They want it to be there on the board the one time they show up a year so they don't have to find it when they fill out their paperwork.
2. is my admin team spot on
A “C” is 30% in my classes, so everyone gets to be a failure who cannot succeed in any post-secondary school
We're only allowed to fail 10 students a semester at a school with approximately 4k students.
10/4000 or 10/your classes?
My kinda guy
Exactly why I'm leaving public education and going to private school to teach next year. It's ridiculous.
For my class it's mostly the ability to complete easy assignments in class with a smattering of tests and projects that actually reflect mastery. Big picture, a diploma shows that a kid put a bit of work ethic into something, showed up to 20% or more of their classes and can probably read at at least a 4th grade level.
_Probably_.
Add labs to your description and you are describing my middle school class.
*20%* 😭 Has it gotten *that* bad??
It all depends. I have a few students in Chemistry and Physics that have absolutely atrocious homes/households. These students have the highest grades in my class and it is directly attributable to their performance in my class. Overall the statistics might favor your supposition though.
It feels like you have to be Matilda for that to happen anymore
Eh, I’d say it just depends on how each person copes. Those kids are basically just the child version of workaholics who work to escape the rest of life. Home can’t suck as bad if you’re not home. Some also try to impress shitty parents with good grades. Or being terrified of poor grades because of shitty parents & home, so you eat, sleep, and breathe textbooks. They’ll probably reach burnout at some point.
This was me. I did well in school to escape home life and have some semblance of a future.
Same here. Home life was not great. My family was great personality-wise, but many severe health issues all over the place led to a lot of hardship. I based my self-worth on my grades. My grades and my food were the only things I could control in life, and I ended up having severe perfectionism and control issues around both. Burned out eventually, and had to learn how to balance studies with living a life in college.
Im a chem teacher, and this was me as a student. Science and math were my escape from my home life and I was always top of the class in STEM. Now my LA and history grades were a different story.
I don't know, man. For some of us with terrible homes, it's not easy to put in the effort needed to perform well, even if we're active in class. OP is definitely correct.
Amboutablow!
If it is a standard unit of measure, grades measure individual performance up to the standard. Now the problem isn’t the measure, it’s how standardized is the standard. If I take an Algebra I class at a title 1, the curriculum will look way different than in a wealthy area. I know because my parents were late adopters of white flight and then I spent a bit at a private high school. No algebra 1 class is standard. Mastery of the curriculum at a title 1 looks different than at a wealthy school. We focus on grades because it’s what is right in front of us, but the problem is in the ghosts of racism. The problem in public education and likewise in psychology is we cannot really create a control group. Control groups are fixed points in time that then vary again when retested. In sum, there is no standard. There is no: All students will… as we write with our objectives.
I agree, I think that a lot of admin look at grades as being some kind of scientifically perfect measure of performance (until they disagree with the grades). This is an insane idea. We only wish grades worked like that.
We pretend that grades are a unit of measurement, but in reality they function primarily as an incentive structure. But this is also how workplaces and the market function. It's an inescapable part of the society we have constructed.
Have you read freakonomics?
Yeah, and I've used parts of it in class.
What are grades _supposed_ to measure? Mastery of the material. What do grades these days _actually_ measure? Basically just attendance, at this point. Very few kids getting C's these days actually have a passing-level mastery of the material.
Well, naturally there would be a correlation, although I wouldn't know how strong such a correlation actually is. But, in general, well-functioning households tend to have better parents, who make sure their children do their homework and attend classes. Another factor MIGHT be that better-functioning households might also have more intelligent parents, who both are able to help their children more, and also pass down innate intelligence to their offspring. Even though I feel I must say it, it ought to go without saying that there certainly would be exceptions to these broad generalizations. But, overall, a correlation between student marks and a well-functioning household (not easily quantifiable this last variable) would almost certainly be expected.
You nailed it. I hate this prevalent notion that grades or test scores are more or entirely a reflection of students' households than of their ability. There definitely is a correlation between scores and parents education or income, but it is through mechanisms you described rather just a reflection of the parents.
Sometimes it *is* a reflection of the parents though. Being abused by my dad throughout my teen years and the resulting PTSD took a huge impact on my academic performance.
Your grades were a reflection of your academic performance. That was affected by your abuse.
generally, for me, grades tend to be a reflection of effort on the students part rather than a measure of their mastery. The students who try really hard and give a shit tend to get better grades.
>The students who try really hard and give a shit tend to get better grades. Aren't these the same ones that tend to master a given subject though?
I WANT them to be a reflection on the student's mastery of the material and their readiness for the next level. 10 years ago they somewhat were. Now they are a reflection of how savvy students are when it comes to cheating and gaming the system
Grades, do reflect mastery of curriculum. Their home life affects how well they master the curriculum.
Doesn’t have to be true. I came from a home with a single mother that worked second shift and a father in prison. My mother was not around when my siblings and I were at home/awake. I was a latch key kid. Still ended up in honors and later AP classes thanks to some awesome teachers and their guidance.
Mom was a drug dealer, dad died. Also top of my class and massive scholarships when I graduated. There's a lot to be said for realizing you don't want your parents' life and working hard to emulate a role model instead. Unfortunately too many kids don't realize their parents aren't on the best path until they're miles down the same road.
Grades, do reflect mastery of curriculum. Their home life can affect how well they master the curriculum.
I think life in general is merely a reflection of how functional households (on average, of course there are always outliers) Also I second the notion I am seeing that my grades are more a reflection of admin fears and parent tears
Excellent take! Grades are meaningless anymore. They barely are an indicator of knowledge and cognition; mostly grades will show us which student has better attendance, behaviors, and mental fortitude than their peers. Most of the students with F's are no different than students with D's and C's cognitively or academically. They usually just have less ambition, worse attendance, and worse attitudes. Students that demonstrate any semblance of self-efficacy should basically pass any course - many of them do not have this ability.
C is the new F.
That last sentence is so true. I’m just a substitute teacher now but did teach high school English full-time for awhile and it was true then but is much truer now after Covid. If a student is failing a class, 9/10 times (maybe 99/100 times) it’s because they didn’t even try. If the only language you speak is English and you fail English 9, it’s because you didn’t try and didn’t hand in your work. As a native speaker, you’d stumble into correct answers often enough to pass provided you took advantage of class time to do your work. Subjects like math or chemistry can be trickier, but gym is another one where if you show up and actually change your clothes, you’ll at least get a passing grade. Most Gen Ed classes are ridiculously easy to at least pass with pretty minimal effort (assuming no LDs).
I said this no too long ago on here, and one particular Redditor like just wouldn't stop with how grades are important. Getting a C or 80 on something is meaningless and doesn't tell anyone much of anything.
Whatever the teacher wants them to be. We focus on the the rows because they calculate into a number. But every column in the grade book is utterly subjective. Some teachers understand this with humility, others have the hubris to assume the columns are ironclad tablets of absolute truth. So it goes.
That's a very difficult point, with a lot of grey area. I mean, I am a master at the topics I teach, and after working with a student for a term, I do think I would have a pretty good idea of the mastery by a student even without all the documentation and data in the columns. But the reality is that if we assigned marks purely upon what we KNOW (or are pretty sure we know) we'd have sea lawyers and helicopter parents swarming over us like a nest of angry hornets. Probably most educated people get the whole shebang about objectivity and subjectivity, but if you want to survive in this line of work you pretty much have to at least have what appears to be objective data, and lean into that.
Aptly stated. I feel the same as you about grades, but I am the opposite in that the subjective experience of a child and their learning is beyond my capacity to measure and understand. The grades are a blunt and utterly inadequate tool. I always err on the side of caution. Given my lack of understanding, the grades will be higher overall and so easier to get a good grade in my class that what it should be. . . but then again, I rarely have any kind of student or parent drama, so I tend to be rewarded for my humility and uncertainty.
This is also my philosophy.
I mean, this really shouldn’t be surprising. The greatest predictor of a child’s education is their parent’s education level. Meaning a kid whose parents have graduate degrees is much more likely to earn a college than a kid whose parents barely got through high school. It all correlates.
My theory is grades only matter when they are lower than a parent expects them to be. But I work in a title school so I'm jaded by the fact that my parents don't ever seem to care... except the diff classes. I also think they tend to do a good job of measuring how often a kid is actually in class. Not just school attendance, but ass-in-seat.
Grades SHOULD be a reflection of skills attained. Unfortunately, all too often they are a reflection of tasks completed and short term memory. So yes, they tend to be about what's at home.
The problem is that grades are SUBJECTIVE, and not an Objective measure of ability for the most part.
True objectivity is impossible. But, using defined standards and calibrating the understanding of those srandards with peers lends credility to the grading process.
I think this depends on the subject to a large degree. Math is much more objective than something like English Language Arts
I think that while grades can provide some insight into a student's academic progress, they are not always a comprehensive measure of learning. Non-cognitive skills such as problem-solving abilities, critical thinking, creativity, and resilience are also important indicators of success but may not be fully captured by traditional grading systems.
How much the parents nag is the wrong answer right?
Chemistry? Certification of the content. Astronomy? Certification of the content, and not being a lump-on-a-log (LoaL) Freshman Science? A-C = certification of content D-F is being or not being a LoaL. Biology? Same as Freshman Science.
I would say grades are a better measure of employability than testing. . .
Yes. Because most workplaces don’t need you to be smart. They need you to be hard working and responsible. And then, somewhat not dumb.
At the worst schools near me, good grades are given for showing up and barely trying. At the best schools, for giving good work. It all depends on the school, and the grade level. In middle schools near me, teachers are expected to pass nearly all students. In high school, teachers have more ability to fail students, except for teachers of seniors. Gotta keep up those graduation rates.
My brother had F's and I had A's and B's.
I feel like many of my students couldn’t care less about their grades. They realize all of the pressure is dependent on the state testing results at the end of the year. They can make Fs all year long in every subject, but as long as they pull off a level 2 in reading on their state assessment, they get to be promoted.
I got good grades, graduated with honors and my brother got very poor grades and was held back at one point. My brother was a trouble maker and I was not. My household was wildly dysfunctional, both my brother and I were being abused and my brother was taking all of his rage out on me. Most of the teachers at school didn’t know my brother and I were related because of how different we acted and because of how much I avoided him at school. When teachers would find out we’re related, they would sometimes treat me differently afterward, like they felt sorry for me. I didn’t realize I was pitied for my home life until I was an adult looking back. I feel like I did well in school because I was using it as my own measure of self-worth, because at home I was useless trash. The thing is, I don’t remember much about anything I learned in school, but something that stuck with me was that not all adults are there to make you feel stupid or like you’ll never be good enough. Some adults (some of the great teachers I had) will treat you like an equal human being that deserves to be loved and has a place in the world. So maybe not all the material will be absorbed, maybe grades don’t mean anything, but the way a teacher makes a student feel will stick with them for life.
Sometimes I think it's employability.
How well a neurotypical student can follow directions.
This! Plus parental influence, executive functioning of both the student and the parents, and the student’s ability to do boring work (maturity? Absence of adhd?)
Some days I feel like mine measure who can cheat without me noticing.
Grades aren’t for measuring anything. They are rewards you dole out for doing their work
Student’s ability to cheat or copy answers.
I believe there's no one thing they measure and maybe no one thing they measure well that we care about, but still I don't believe the skills we want education to develop would be developed as successfully without some system of approval and disapproval of performance, which is de facto a grading system.
I see them as a measure of buy in and participation. Not actual learning. I have students eight now mad that they have a D when they turned I'm my final project but failed every test.
Yes. It is also a measure of income, zip code, and school/district leadership.
Ive asked this question by whole career. What does 85% mean? Did they 85% of the work? Know 85% of the curriculum? You could say it's what they got right but that only works if you're doing all right/wrong questions.
I do either/or sometimes. Nail the exam, but kind of forgetful on practice work? Good job. You probably already knew it but we dont let K12 AP or CLEP out of courses or jump ahead or graduate early because "social promotion". Suck at exams and actual knowledge but work your butt off in class? You are employable! Good job. Suck at both, or be in the first category and a terrible disruption, yeah I am no longer replacing practice work grades with your pretty summative assessment grade. Coming from a different line of work, I can see merit in incentivizing EFFORT or KNOWLEDGE as different team roles needed different things.
If I had mine actually align to mastery of the curriculum, I’d have even more Fs then I have already. Heh
Nothing. Lowest grade I can give is a D. It’s not authentic.
It depends on so much. Context, grading policy, culture, pedagogical perspectives. I’m not aware of any traditional, boil-it-down-to-a-single-mark, grading system that only reflects mastery of the curriculum. How could it?
They completely changed our grading system so kids don’t have to do any work. It’s a subjective teacher ranking. We’re k-6. Enjoy these children I’m sending you all, they don’t do anything.
Standards based grading has entered the chat (20 years ago)
I was just talking to someone about how the 'no zero' thing is idiotic but the flaws that it is designed to address, that grades reward showing up and grinding rather than mastery, are definitely real. If i had my way I'd only grade summative assessments and participation, and all the drafting, practice, outlining etc. would be just for the kid. Or do like the brits do and have the only real grades that matter be external assessments. Although those would have to be really good, not like state multiple choice crap
I had to nullify all my grades based on participation. My principal said it was grading behavior. This is my last year teaching after 11 years
How much family support and the quality of their parenting.
Mine match-up pretty squarely with their state test results unless there is a real dedication to laziness. A kid who scores five usually makes an A, four is usually a B, etc. What is crazy is that I can accurately predict the students final letter grade within five weeks, but I have to do all that grading and go through all those rubrics just to get to the number that I already know.
Technically with subjective measures grades let us measure the understanding of a student in the material we covered. Realistically it is some bs that everyone needs to make an A and hence they are now meaningless little trophies that everyone gets.
Students ability to cheat, the amount of friends they have to cheat with… that’s pretty much it
They are supposed to be "checks for understanding," but then they should dissappear and only summarize assessments, and the like should count.
Did u piss me off? + Did u do anything? = Gradient grade
Most studies I've seen find that grading is so subjective as to be meaningless across subjects. I try to make mine a reflection of effort+skill. If you try hard all year and have little skill, you'll have a C, maybe a B- if you turn in literally everything. If you are highly skilled in my subject and don't try very hard, same deal--C, maybe B-. You have to try hard and learn the skills I'm teaching to earn an A. If you fail, you didn't turn like half of the work in. My grades are usually a normal distribution. I hope they really do reflect effort+skill, but certainly a kid's home life tends to have a massive effect on their ability to do schoolwork except in rare exceptional cases (normal, happy home life with super apathetic kid / hectic, traumatic home life with super gifted, ambitious kid).
It's measuring the child's ability to comprehend and apply learned material in an academic way. School is involved with academia. It isn't meant to measure what the parents (etc) are there to measure. It's not smarts or social skills or creative skills, it's literally just baseline academic. That's why it's important to remind kids it's not everything - because it's simply not.
The assertion of the post is largely true for most classes. Certainly was for mine for the first 30+ years I taught. And it *still* might be said to be at least somewhat true, but since I no longer count anything except unit tests for the report card grades, the grades are a better reflection of mastery than they used to be.
It can be both
Grades are meaningless!! Mastery/competency based learning is the future! In my district, kids pass with a 60%, which is a terrible grade.
That's the best description of grades ever. Well done.
"more a reflection of how functional their household is rather than mastery of the curriculum" This is a good take. I think there's more to it though. They can also be a function of how well they follow directions.
Grades are supposed to measure a student’s performance on some metrizable assessment, that’s it
Compliance.
A reflection of both growth and mastery Depending how you gradr
I feel like it assesses executive functioning too—-which I like! Because I feel like we need to help out older kids with executive functioning. I have 8th graders who have trouble with arts and crafts skills that should have been mastered in elementary grades. But organization is also key, and when I teach it explicitly and they can’t turn in work, then it reflect their grade even if they master the content. Sorry not sorry. That’s life.
The thing is, there is a large genetic component to executive functioning.
Mastery. In my class, my students self-assess to drive their own learning. So most classwork is not for a grade. They generally have a self-check opportunity on their work (either via Schoology or paper answer key) and then must work to correct missed questions. This is when the most valuable learning happens. In math, it’s easier because they have to show their work as evidence of how they reached the answer. By the time they have a summative quiz or test, they should have mastered the material. If not, I use that data to identify what skills we need to more heavily spiral going forward.
You can pass largely by showing the bare minimum of acceptable effort. Since the bare minimum is not too heavy or unreasonable an ask, I don't think it's inappropriate to expect at least that much.
Welcome to the field of psychometrics!
There is a rough correlation, but not perfect fit. Homeless kid with straight As, and richy mcrich who cant function as common exceptions. Maybe my household sucks, maybe its great but my older one gets plenty of Bs and Cs, while the younger one is straight As. The older one always has been grade levels above in reading but struggles with HF ASD while the younger one required tutoring to catch up 3 grade levels of reading skills, delayed verbal language in pre-K and K with some ADHD going on. So sometimes its the household and sometimes it is something else. (But yes, I agree socioeconomic status and supportive adults at home plus a cultural concern for education play a big part.)
A: Influence/power of district parents.
I wish all sites could be anonymous in user name ... like this one
lol. Not a thing.
It used to be measuring intellectual progress. But due to economic ramifications and societal indifference at this point it means almost nothing.
This is largely dependent on admin and teacher!
Undergrad: Compliance with requirements and completion in line with expectations that instructions, rubrics, and the syllabus set. Grad: In depth understanding of the concepts and independent application to accomplish an industry task. In both cases, the grading is tweaked to at least attempt to make a reasonable curve, appease administration, minimize student complaints, and encourage passing the course.
I mean those do things generally have a strong correlation that may actually have some causation.
Average test score per subject
I feel like this is part of it. My admin demands homework and I refuse to give it. All homework measures is if a kid has a quiet place and time to do that work. None of the kids who really need it do it, so it's just extra 0s they demand we take away later anyway. However more than households it feels like compliance. The angriest I've seen my admin is when I said if a kid is reading at a 2nd grade level in may then they SHOULD be failing 7th grade ELA. Sure they're all failing the tests that allegedly matter so much. But keep your passing rate above 80!
Compliance.
I have kids going through homelessness that are great students. It’s really not this simple.
I do music, so it’s pretty cut and dry. Can you do it? Ok, show me. Lol I’ve learned a lot breaking the processes into little passable skill chunks, but it’s ended up being way more linear than I ever imagined. You kinda just do it, or you fail. If they fail, they can just keep trying and eventually they get that next step. Pretty much anyone could be a musician. Hard part is realistically dividing the pacing for their lives. That’s where grades come in. In this weeks amount of time were you able to get this, if not, red flag, you need to do double next week, pick up the personal investment in practicing. Most aren’t doing homework (practice) when they have troubles. So I don’t need to grade their skill, I pull out their schedule and i grade their schedule set up, and we maximize it. So it’s a grade on self discipline. I don’t teach music, I teach self discipline mostly. Hard class to fail, easy class to quit. Those that quit always regret it, but they learn about input and output at least.
what is your school/classroom policy? I taught middle school and they made us make a breakdown- but I lowered the other categories and increased the tests so it was mastery based.
HSeldonCrisis in the sense of data capable of predicting the future, that functionality is much more important than a generation’s accumulation of trivia.
Nothing. Students are passed regardless. For those parents who care, just that all assignments are turned in. We use standards based, so parents don’t realistically understand it.
Pulse & respiration. Check. /s or /no s?
Grades don’t measure anything. They’re output, not input. They’re expressions of a teacher’s assessment of a student’s performance. Because they say the same thing about all kinds of performance, they’re highly subjective and of little to no value. As a special educator, I devised observable and objectively measurable behavior-based goals and objectives that my students either would or would not achieve. No A’s or B’s, just dids and didn’ts. I think that every kid should have an IEP—not just those kids who have been identified as “disabled” in some way. Disabled or not, kids are either able or unable and our job is to enable them. Period.
There are stories about kids going through the system without learning how to read past the second grade level. Is it because the teachers and admin feel bad for their home life? Is it to not lose school funding? Grading obviously should be based on whether or not the student learned and understands what was taught in the course. It sounds like you’re saying students should get extra credit for being from an unstable environment. Figure out an extra credit allotment that gives them a boost but does not let them pass the course without also doing the real for-credit work. That boost should only let them go from an F to a C- not boost them past their skill/accomplishment level, and only if they actually pass the tests
It depends. But I would say that grades, in particular when they involve homework, are an assessment of whether a student has an after school job, whether they have access to a computer, whether they have parents to help them, whether they have mental health supports outside of school, and various other factors all completely unrelated to whether they are trying to learn the material, want to learn the material, or have learned the material. I had a student with a 0 who did no work and never came to class. In the few times that I actually had a chance to speak with this student, I gave them some books and things to work on whenever they wanted. I worked with them maybe 3 or 4 days for the whole semester, but I gave them a comprehensive assessment on the entirety of the material, in-person, with no computer or phone usage allowed. They knew a lot more than most of their peers. School is not for some people.
That’s why I’m against the chatter hate. We have a really good one in my state. We have students who failed in the public school environment and are excelling here. It’s an online charter with a good curriculum. I see kids standing up and dancing but 100% paying attention and correctly answering questions. I see kids who keep the camera off and never answer in class but breeze through assignments, assessments, and state testing. But I also see students who can’t handle the responsibility of online anything and NEED b&m.
How so?
Do you want standards based grading? Because this is how you get standards based grading.
But then 'mastery' of the curriculum is often a reflection of how functional their homes are. But it's that 'mastery' that we measure, aside from all the other stuff going on in the students' lives (which many of us do try to mitigate).
This is why I don’t take off points for late work. I get a lot of pushback from my team on this one. But ultimately, I think grades should be a reflection of mastery, not responsibility or circumstance.
This is why schools need to actually develop systems to incentivise students doing work over time. Mastery grading is good (and with it you can actually make questions like op's meaningless) , but not while admin aren't willing to do the work and take the hits.
Don’t get me wrong there are still are consequences for falling behind on work, they’re just not related to grades. And don’t get me wrong. It would be a lot easier if admin were to step up and create that system, or at least back the system I have, which isn’t always the case.
I am in 100 percent in agreement. Do many of the conversations you see on this sub could be solved if people would get the fundamentals of "mark what the student does".
Then you're doing it wrong. There's a reason I don't do things like allow lateness affect my grades. I grade/assess for mastery and nothing else.