Teachers’ Kryptonite

If you want to see a room full of teachers start squirming with nervousness, just start talking about “equitable grading.” Equitable grading is a process by which teachers are asked to meet and discuss to define what accommodations and grades mean for their course (for example, what does it mean to earn an “A,” or a “F”)., and how subject matter teachers will grade similar assignments.

Schools that get really good at “equitable grading” send a message to young learners that, no matter who your teacher is, you will receive a similar accommodation and assessment based upon the task assigned.

But most schools not only fail at “equitable grading,” they fight against it tooth and nail.

Recently, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and RAND released a report on “equitable grading.” The  74 wrote the following story regarding the report:

“A recent survey of nearly 1,000 K-12 teachers found that about half had seen ‘equitable’ grading policies used in their school or district and most reported the approach hurt academic engagement.”

“Equitable grading practices strive to make grades more accurate and fair by removing bias and separating behaviors – like handing in a late paper – from academic mastery or understanding the subject matter. The educators were polled as part of the first nationally representative teacher survey on the issue that was conducted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in partnership with RAND.”

“’Lenient grading, grade inflation. It kind of feels like maybe it doesn’t really matter than much, and it’s a victimless crime or something,’ said Adam Tyner, who authored an August report on the survey and is the national research director at the Fordham Institute, a right-learning education reform think tank. ‘But it actually has real consequences for students.’”

“He pointed to research demonstrating that when teachers lower standards, students learn less.”

“’I hope people will listen to the teachers and really take it seriously that there are legitimate concerns with some of these policies that need to be aired out and discussed,’ he added.”

“At a webinar [recently] hosted by the Fordham Institute and education nonprofit TNTP, researchers met to discuss the report’s findings. Adam Maier, analytics director at TNTP, noted that ‘these practices are attempting to solve a real problem.’”

“Current, traditional grading models send kids mixed signals that don’t accurately reflect their achievement, he said. In the process of addressing these concerns, though, reformers are ‘stripping away some of the other useful things about grade.’”

“To understand the implications, researchers asked teachers about five policies, which they said they took from Joe Feldman’s 2018 book Grading for Equity and deemed to be particularly ‘controversial.’ Those included:

No zeros – Mandates that teachers assign a minimum grade of 50% (or something similar) for missed assignments or failed tests.

No later penalties – Gives students the right to turn assignments in late without penalty.

Unlimited retakes – Gives students the right to retake tests/quizzes without penalty.

No homework – Prohibits teachers from including homework assignments in a student’s final grade.

No participation – Prohibits teachers from basing any part of a student’s grade on class participation.”

“At least a quarter of teachers said their school or district had adopted each of the three most common practices: unlimited retakes, no late penalties and no zeros. This was especially true for middle school educators, about 40% of whom reported they were in use.”

“While teachers didn’t support the majority of the policies, some were particularly unpopular, such as mandating a minimum 50% grade, regardless of work completed. The vast majority of educators surveyed (81%) said this was ‘harmful,’ a trend which held true regardless of the teacher’s race, years of experience or the race of the students.”

“This criticism was mirrored in the open response portion of the survey, where it was ‘the most mentioned – and most widely ridiculed – grading policy,’ according to the report.”

“’I don’t believe there was a single unambiguous comment in support of no zeros or minimum grading,’ Tyner said.”

“’We have gone to the ‘Do nothing, get a 50’ grade policy,’ wrote one teacher. ‘Students have figured out that, if they work hard for a quarter (usually the first) they can ‘coast’ the rest of the year and get a D.’”

“Feldman, who authored the book on these practices, challenged the findings in an interview with The 74, arguing that the survey’s authors misrepresented his theories and practices.”

“’What they seem to have asked is what are the teachers’ opinions of equitable grading practices when we deliberately mischaracterize and oversimplify the practices, and regardless of whether the teachers were trained to use the practices or even know what they are,’ Feldman said.”

“In an emailed statement, Tyner refuted this claim saying, ‘We do subject all of our work to external peer review, and this report was reviewed by Dr. Sarah Morris, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the implementation of these policies.’”

“Feldman did note that there’s been a tendency within districts and schools to oversimplify the practices, especially in cases where, ‘they were searching for a quick solution during the pandemic or they were just jumping on the equity bandwagon.’”

“When that happens, and educators are mandated to use flawed versions of the practices, it unsurprisingly doesn’t go well – a sentiment he thinks may be reflected in the survey results.”

“’There was pushback and a lot of resentment and misunderstanding and [it] sort of collapsed or exploded,’ he said.”

“Educators have long grappled with how to accurately and fairly assess students, and debates about the benefits of ‘traditional’ versus ‘equitable’ grading practices are not new, though they have become particularly divisive in the years since the pandemic.”

“Researchers have been studying these reforms and standards-based grading for decades and argue that, when implemented correctly, they should more accurately reflect what students know and correct for both inflating – and deflating – grades.”

“But, a misunderstanding of the true principles, a lack of proper training for educators and a rush to quickly adopt a complex new system has often led to messy execution, according to experts.”

…

“While most educators (58%) said it was important to have clear, schoolwide grading policies, a substantial minority (42%) believe that they should be able to use their own judgement when it comes to grading.”

“Tyner said moving forward he hopes educators will ‘take the best of the reforms and from traditional grading, because there’s nothing wrong with trying to make grading more fair and more accurate. It’s only when the implication is that we might be lowering standards and expectations for students that we need to just be really, really careful with what we’re doing.”

In other professions, like law and medicine, there are approved ways of practice – but not in education when it comes to grading. Most traditional schools allow individual classroom teachers to decide what will be graded and how grades will be assigned. Some even include allowing “extra credit” when students bring Kleenex and toilet paper to the classroom.

The inability to establish predictable and defendable accommodations and grading practices is a main factor in people like me doubting whether this traditional K-12 system can be trusted to evaluate learning in a trustworthy manner.

Because right now there are too many teachers just making stuff up.

Til tomorrow. SVB