The Grading Treadmill

At the end of each marking period, I obsess over grades. Teachers like to say that they don’t “give” grades, but that students “earn them the old-fashioned way,” as if John Housman was speaking. I don’t believe that.

The game of grades is rigged and teachers control it. Students must learn how to play the game anew each time they enter a classroom. And while grades are supposed to be a measure of success in a course, that is not the whole truth. They are a reflection of the personality, priorities, and preferences of the person grading. The teacher, team, or school decides what is valued and how much. The grader decides if we are averaging or using standards or a contract or some other “system.” The students simply have to do their best to get to the cheese – over and over again.

I get tension headaches staring at my computer screen perseverating over grades. How could the student be earning a B+ when she had an A only a few weeks ago? Sometimes, students’ grades appear to be going in the wrong direction – or don’t make sense. I look for my error or where the student changed or a reasonable rationalization for a simple truth: students’ growth is not a direct learning curve. They fall down and get back up. They have bad days after many good days. They fail at the tasks they could do well just a few days before. They are human beings and there are myriad factors that influence their work – and I am only one of those factors.

I have written about grading many times.  I continue to struggle with our reasons and methods of grading. I feel like George Jetson on the treadmill screaming for Jane to “Stop this crazy thing!”

I am a proud standard based grader. That means that, instead of assigning points to everything happening in class and then performing some magical formula to arrive at a grade, I base grades on students’ demonstration of proficiency on a set of measurable skills. This makes grading far more challenging than plugging numbers into a computer and arriving at an average.

I assess how well and how often students can write a complete thesis, analyze a quotation, or infer a theme. The problem is turning these assessments into a single grade. Is the ability to cite correctly as important as integrating evidence? Should all claims be treated the same? Are reading and writing equal? Are skills on which we spent more time more important?

My judgment is not perfect. I fully understand why teachers love the point averaging system. It gives the illusion that the grade is objective. It is not. I, the teacher, am creating that grade regardless of how many layers of arithmetic sit between me and letter – or the student. Sometimes, I am not sure. Sometimes, I can see multiple interpretations of students’ work.

A grade isn’t the best form of feedback to students. I give far more detailed and thorough feedback about their work and skills than a single letter. The grade, no matter what form it takes, is such an amalgam of so many factors that it certainly doesn’t communicate the journey we’ve taken in class and often obscures important information.

I just turned in my grades for second semester. There were several on which I spent more than a few hours. I reviewed old work. I read final exams multiple times. I changed my mind and then changed it again.

I have been doing this for a long time and it hasn’t become easier. Grades have value. They are symbols of self-esteem and college currency. They add up to awards, scholarships, and auto insurance. I can’t take them lightly.

Arriving at students’ grades is not easy. If a teacher can do it quickly and casually, something is wrong. Like a diagnosis, it is a professional judgment based on lots of information, observation, and assessment – and it should be accurate!   

In a Kurt Vonnegut short story, Thomas Edison creates an “intelligence analyzer” and tells a young man that, ‘“It will be your generation that will grow up in the glorious new era when people will be as easily graded as oranges.’”  No one should be easily graded. Perhaps no one should be graded at all. In addition to being treated like oranges, grading traps us on George Jetson’s treadmill!