I teach at a fairly affluent school where a lot of students go on to prestigious colleges, and I've been told our average grade is now above 91. I am considered a "harsh" grader because my averages are usually in the B+ range.
Many of my students seem to feel that an A means that you worked hard and completed all the requirements. Many of them (and their parents) are also confused as to why a straight A transcript isn't enough to get them into Harvard or even, sometimes, into honors classes.
I like to have a little more spread in the grades because I want to incentivize excellence... It's hard to recognize when a student is doing really great work if everybody who meets the basic requirements gets the same grade.
I really wish we could lower the temperature around grades, because right now they aren't useful as information... Grades are not communicating much that's meaningful about students to parents, colleges, or the students themselves if everybody has straight As! But it's a classic collective action problem, and I don't know how it gets solved.
"I really wish we could lower the temperature around grades, because right now they aren't useful as information..." This. This. This.
If everyone thinks a grade means something different, then it isn't a useful tool for communicating learning—for teachers, students, and families alike.
Yeah, I would just like to be able to communicate honestly wth students about the progress they are making without it being bound up in so much else. You can do this in other ways, but they pay most attention to the grade, so as long as the grade is good they tend to block out the other stuff.
What is the purpose of a grade? Is it a measurement of learning or is it a tool for distinguishing (weeding out?) students for the next level (class, college, job)? It seems many of the disagreements about grades connect back to disagreements about the purpose of school.
Agree with this—which is why I think we need to have these conversations much more frequently, as inevitably the answers trace back from deeper experiences and beliefs around the nature of school.
Such a good conversation! I have to admit being a little more worried about grade inflation than you are, but luckily I haven’t reached click-bait levels of panic yet, lol.
Oh, I wouldn't say that I'm "not worried"—I think it's measurably clear that things have shifted and more students getting A's than before! (The history piece from Inside Higher Ed linked earlier in the post had much more nuance around this, too.)
About more students getting A's, it seems like a potentially useful thought experiment to imagine a class where all the students get A's. Would we take this as evidence that something is going right, or that something is going wrong, and why? (Very likely we would need to know more to say, but if that's the case, what are the questions we would want to ask/answer?)
This is a great question, and also one when, reflecting on my own classroom, the "weeds" of the conversation are necessary.
I look at it as a good thing. Students have the ability to revise up to a certain point on all major writings (which make up the vast majority of their grade) and the process to go through that revision requires conferencing and demonstration of the skills needed for that task—not to mention the extra work of going back to make those targeted revisions!
So a student who gets an A either [a] showed mastery on those assessments on their initial attempts or [b] put in the work to revise after feedback on the times that they did not—and in either case, I feel 100% fine with that student exiting the course with an A.
An 'A' to me always makes me think of a student who has absolutely put in the work, regardless of the subject. Someone who has spent hours studying throughout the week. That's my 'go-to' image.
Awesome that you are having these conversations with your students!
I would say that A is for excellent, but that students can achieve excellence in many ways and none of them require perfection.
There's quite a lot of evidence that emphasizing grades has a negative effect on student learning, and the greater the emphasis, the greater the negative effect. In my community college writing courses, I want to keep the focus on student learning as much as possible, and so I try to reduce the emphasis on grades essentially as much as I can.
To do this, paradoxically, it's necessary to recognize the pragmatic impact that grades have on my students: on financial aid eligibility, on prospects for applying to competitive programs, on opportunities to transfer to four-year schools. And then there's also the impact that grades have on students' sense that they do or don't belong in college.
In response to this, I've tried to design a grading system that ensures that students will end up in a good place if they're putting in the work. While the system is still a work in progress, I think it's really helped to create a classroom culture that keeps the focus on learning.
I teach at a fairly affluent school where a lot of students go on to prestigious colleges, and I've been told our average grade is now above 91. I am considered a "harsh" grader because my averages are usually in the B+ range.
Many of my students seem to feel that an A means that you worked hard and completed all the requirements. Many of them (and their parents) are also confused as to why a straight A transcript isn't enough to get them into Harvard or even, sometimes, into honors classes.
I like to have a little more spread in the grades because I want to incentivize excellence... It's hard to recognize when a student is doing really great work if everybody who meets the basic requirements gets the same grade.
I really wish we could lower the temperature around grades, because right now they aren't useful as information... Grades are not communicating much that's meaningful about students to parents, colleges, or the students themselves if everybody has straight As! But it's a classic collective action problem, and I don't know how it gets solved.
"I really wish we could lower the temperature around grades, because right now they aren't useful as information..." This. This. This.
If everyone thinks a grade means something different, then it isn't a useful tool for communicating learning—for teachers, students, and families alike.
Yeah, I would just like to be able to communicate honestly wth students about the progress they are making without it being bound up in so much else. You can do this in other ways, but they pay most attention to the grade, so as long as the grade is good they tend to block out the other stuff.
What is the purpose of a grade? Is it a measurement of learning or is it a tool for distinguishing (weeding out?) students for the next level (class, college, job)? It seems many of the disagreements about grades connect back to disagreements about the purpose of school.
Agree with this—which is why I think we need to have these conversations much more frequently, as inevitably the answers trace back from deeper experiences and beliefs around the nature of school.
Such a good conversation! I have to admit being a little more worried about grade inflation than you are, but luckily I haven’t reached click-bait levels of panic yet, lol.
Oh, I wouldn't say that I'm "not worried"—I think it's measurably clear that things have shifted and more students getting A's than before! (The history piece from Inside Higher Ed linked earlier in the post had much more nuance around this, too.)
About more students getting A's, it seems like a potentially useful thought experiment to imagine a class where all the students get A's. Would we take this as evidence that something is going right, or that something is going wrong, and why? (Very likely we would need to know more to say, but if that's the case, what are the questions we would want to ask/answer?)
This is a great question, and also one when, reflecting on my own classroom, the "weeds" of the conversation are necessary.
I look at it as a good thing. Students have the ability to revise up to a certain point on all major writings (which make up the vast majority of their grade) and the process to go through that revision requires conferencing and demonstration of the skills needed for that task—not to mention the extra work of going back to make those targeted revisions!
So a student who gets an A either [a] showed mastery on those assessments on their initial attempts or [b] put in the work to revise after feedback on the times that they did not—and in either case, I feel 100% fine with that student exiting the course with an A.
An 'A' to me always makes me think of a student who has absolutely put in the work, regardless of the subject. Someone who has spent hours studying throughout the week. That's my 'go-to' image.
Appreciate this share! But I think this is where the word "effort" steps in and it gets immensely tricky in reality, right?
Awesome that you are having these conversations with your students!
I would say that A is for excellent, but that students can achieve excellence in many ways and none of them require perfection.
There's quite a lot of evidence that emphasizing grades has a negative effect on student learning, and the greater the emphasis, the greater the negative effect. In my community college writing courses, I want to keep the focus on student learning as much as possible, and so I try to reduce the emphasis on grades essentially as much as I can.
To do this, paradoxically, it's necessary to recognize the pragmatic impact that grades have on my students: on financial aid eligibility, on prospects for applying to competitive programs, on opportunities to transfer to four-year schools. And then there's also the impact that grades have on students' sense that they do or don't belong in college.
In response to this, I've tried to design a grading system that ensures that students will end up in a good place if they're putting in the work. While the system is still a work in progress, I think it's really helped to create a classroom culture that keeps the focus on learning.