Before assigning final grades, I steel myself for cusp numbers—each 76.3 and 89.5 and every other figure landing between A, B, C, and the oh-so-subtle levels of the letters. It’s absurd to think my year-end assessment accurate to the tenth, yet many students—particularly the most ambitious, hard-working, and conscientious ones—care deeply about that tenth.
I hate grades (and won’t repeat myself explaining why), but I assign letter grades because it’s a responsibility of my job. And the school tracks my statistics. In a department meeting last spring, my average ranked second highest among freshman English teachers. Though I did not give many very high scores, mine fell in the narrowest range, only ten to fifteen points between top and bottom. The administration offered these results as “helpful information only,” but the agenda seemed clear. I was embarrassed to be laid so bare before my peers. At a school like ours, where being rigorous is de rigueur, no teacher likes being a pushover.
Defensiveness kicked in—so many variables go into those statistics. Sectioning is never equitable, particularly when the registrar groups students for an honors section in another subject. Having students early in the day can be an advantage, and you also can’t discount the relationship between teacher and students. When the atmosphere is positive and the class active and curious, the grades will be higher, particularly if the students come to believe they can do better. Naturally, I want to claim all these variables contribute to my inflated scores and hope my colleagues won’t look down on me. Yet my explanations sound like excuses. Bottom line, I’m too easy.
I know the trouble. The biggest influence on a class average is a teacher’s grading policies, and mine are terrible. I give too many second chances. After tests, students can earn back three or four points by correcting the questions they missed, or by finding the spot in the reading where answers appeared, or by responding to an essay choice they passed over and practicing their writing. Students can also rewrite out-of-class essays. To encourage them to revise, I grant the grade they ultimately earn. An “A” can wipe out a “C.” I drop the lowest quiz each quarter.
Some colleagues would say I’m seeking affection. Maybe I am. I don’t enjoy adversarial classes. Still, I’m not naïve. H. L. Mencken said no teacher should expect to be seen as more than a benevolent jailer. Most students appreciate me only as much as their last grade. In my experience, anything a teacher does exclusively to be nice, backfires. What seems nice often isn’t, and it’s best to be consistent instead. I try to be consistently challenging.
As I see it, students barter for grades. My standards are my standards (and I think they’re high) but students give what they can to reach them. A few have the mental wherewithal, habits, and training to meet my standards easily. The ones who don’t add effort, particular attention to the skills I’m trying to teach, desire to improve, and intangibles like curiosity, teamwork, organization. The more opportunities I give—and the more varied opportunities I give—the more they do. Many find ways to apply their particular strengths in surprising and resourceful ways.
Which is, unfortunately, a quick path to grade inflation. I could easily bring my grades down by eliminating every policy that allows students to learn from mistakes. All I need to do to stop being a grade inflater is reduce the amount of work I give them, rendering every little misstep more consequential.
As it is, I sometimes find myself perversely grateful for students who, through disorganization, missing work, and/or apathy, can’t reach my standards. I’m glad when someone’s effort clearly won’t be sophisticated enough to attain an A essay. I’m strangely okay with someone failing my exam because my statistics are sure to look better at next year’s meeting.
And I’m ashamed.
In the nineteenth century, education was a sorting process, a way of separating scholars from workers, but we like to think ourselves more enlightened now. If you don’t learn to ride a bicycle today, we don’t say, “Sorry, you aren’t a bicycle rider.” We offer another chance. At the end of each school year, I’m really saying, “This is where you are now, this year, in this class, with this teacher” and I’d love to be able to do so honestly, without a nagging voice telling me I’m being too generous.
I don’t like rounding down. I know everyone can’t get an A, and you can say it’s good for students—their B+’s or C+’s this year may inspire them next fall. However, for me, those arguments seem to make education into even more of game, a contest where some win and others lose by a nose.
Is learning a game? I don’t like to think so. In games someone must lose.
Filed under: Alfie Kohn, American Life, Confession, Doubt, Education, Essays, Ethics, Frustration, Grades, Human Nature, Identity, Knowledge, Musings, Opinion, Society, Statistics, Teaching, Thoughts, Work, Writing
Being a student, it’s interesting to hear a teacher say this. A lot of the time, I wonder how teachers are assigning my grades. This wouldn’t be considered overly generous, nor overly harsh in my mind.
Sometimes I may agonize over grades more than the recipients do. I’m often surprised when students are perfectly happy with grades I thought might make them angry or upset. Does that mean they’re used to being rounded down or that they’ve risen above grades? If it’s the latter, that’s great. If it’s the former, that’s sad. Thanks for visiting and commenting! —D
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I am a principal in a large HS–keep it up. Nothing at all wrong in letting them learn it again, giving second chances or letting them turn it in late. This is called helping kids. I have 90 teachers and so many are as rigid as heck–not the same as you know– as rigorous. We like to think we don’t sort kids–I have been fighting that for years–a hard battle to win as many talk out of both sides of their mouth.
Do you think teachers are confused by their own experiences? Teachers come from the sorting system and they all have one or two “We did overcome” stories in their pasts. My colleagues often say they are doing the kids a favor by being so tough. Others were tough on them, they say, and look where they are. There may be something to the school of hard-knocks if it involves a lot of work or challenging work, but many teachers are tough largely because they put weight on getting everything perfect the first time around or because they don’t reveal or communicate the standards they are using or change them capriciously to keep students from achieving.
You’re right that rigid is not rigorous. I freely admit I like making tests and assignments that require thinking, knowledge, and expertise, but the idea is to get better, and, if you really want students to learn, you have to give them opportunities to practice what gave them the most trouble. And you have to be person enough to give them credit when they DO succeed. Sometimes I think it’s ego. Some teachers simply seem too proud to give high marks because it’s a negative reflection on their rigor and will do anything—even uncharitable, educationally egregious things—to maintain that pride.
But I’m venting…—D
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you know part of it is where they come from–teaching like they were taught–I was a construction worker 15 years before finishing my first degree–so I came in with a different outlook maybe. I taught a poetry class this past fall–had all kinds from a 32 on the ACT to a few special ed kids. Did I expect them all to write well–no, but I did expect them to complete all assignments and read their work in front of the class. We wrote a poem everyday and most days we read. Some of the kids would not read the first two weeks–scared to death–I didn’t push them, throw a fit, or make an example of them–I nudged them and praised as much as I could. Some had never been praised. At the third week they all wanted to read first.
So the rigor was there, the expectations were there, but internally at different degrees. And I always had a few who turned in their work at the last second, but it was all turned in.
I can ask my staff why so and so flunked their class and the usual answer is “they didn’t turn in their homework” If they would visit some of their neighborhoods and homes they might figure it out…sorry, I could go on for hours
scot
Your class sounds wonderful. All the rewards simple and out there—you get the satisfaction of doing the work, of being heard, of making progress you recognize—and that’s the way it should be.
Like your teachers, I find some of my troubled students don’t do the work, and I always try to get at why and cajole them and beg them or do whatever it takes to give them a taste of success. Sometimes it just doesn’t work, even at a school where parents pay. To me, these students are another indication of grades’ ultimate failure. They aren’t enough to motivate students who most need motivating. —D
When I was a graduate student, I was a teaching fellow at a snooty Ivy League university famous for its grade inflation. Something like three quarters of each class graduated with straight A’s. All of the students there had been valedictorians of their high school classes. None ever received less than an A. Well, maybe the jocks and the “legacy” kids. But they all had very high aspirations, presidential even.
I taught a section of a large lecture course and was merciless. The quality of most of the final exams frankly stank, but I had a tiny handful of stars. Maybe one or two. I couldn’t see giving A’s to people who didn’t reach that level of performance. I figured if some could do it, they all could. So, I decided that I would grade all these privileged entitled kids on a normal curve, because that’s really how the quality varied. And I wrote a lot of comments so they might learn something.
Well, as you can imagine, there were a lot of very angry kids complaining to the head teaching fellow asking for a grade change with complaints like “but I need to keep up my average to get into medical school” or “this is my last semester and I need to graduate Summa.” Let me add that this also had a reputation as a “gut” course and they all thought they would sail through, with an A as a sure thing. The director sat down with me and the whiners as I reviewed each exam and she backed me up.
But they were transitory students for me, so perhaps my unattachment made it easier. And the topic was one I felt passionate about, moral dilemmas involving a historical event I thought they should all understand fully before moving on to rule the world.
I get grade disputes and say I don’t mind them because they can be another opportunity to show students what they might have done and might do to improve. It sounds like that’s what happened in your case. Good for the director who supported your convictions. Teachers shouldn’t give better grades than they feel students deserve—that will sell off your soul in no time.
When I have these grade talks, some students seem to find themselves defending the indefensible in a desperate (and, I think, pathetic) effort to save their grades.
But I have to say that I don’t like myself in those grade talks much either. The dispute can become a matter of pride, and I feel myself getting stubborn even when the student has a good point or when I missed something I shouldn’t have.
If they weren’t getting a grade, would they be willing to accept and learn from what went wrong, the consequence not being so (in their minds) dire? If I weren’t giving a grade, would I feel as though every point I gave them was a bloody sacrifice? I don’t know. The experiment hasn’t really been tried. But I’d like to. —D
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that is true–grades are not enough to motivate and in public school it’s way out of control. It may be relevance–does the content matter to the student–there are a number of factors–home life/struggles as one of them…like I always tell my staff we can’t control that time, but we can control the seven hours we have them…
and you are right, different methods work with different students and sometimes nothing works…sometimes you just gotta love them. My poetry class had every down and out kid that could be thrown in there with one normal kid–whew! Some had their own spelling–but in the end I wouldn’t have traded them for an honors class. They were the best their parents had to send—with the so called lemons–we made lemonade and celebrated. Were the grades inflated?–most likely, but who cares? Keep up the good work, I believe you are making a difference.
“They were the best their parents had to send”—that’s the best way to see it, I think. Thanks for your wisdom on this topic. —D