grading

As teachers, we’ve all faced the challenge of aligning our grading practices with school policies and our colleagues’ approaches. In my own school, for instance, we’ve settled on a grading system that is 80% summative (quizzes, tests, labs) and 20% formative (everyday classwork and homework).

Grades should provide feedback to students, parents, and teachers as to the progress students are making toward learning targets. Meaningful grades require good assessment practices. Erica Posthuma presented a ChemEd X Talk on May 11th, 2021, providing an overview of effective assessment design.

• Grades are not good incentive or effective feedback • Grades are not good markers of learning • Grades encourage competitiveness over collaboration • Grades pit students and teachers against each other • Grades are mechanisms of institutional control • Grades aren’t fair

There are many things I love about teaching. I love helping students grow in their understanding of science and have “aha” moments.  I love helping students find their passion and I love it when my students make me laugh. One thing I don’t love? Grading. It piles up and takes away my time with my family.

An educational reform that has been gaining a large amount of popularity in the last decade is standards-based grading (SBG). The heart of the SBG movement is truly rooted in one very important question, “what do you want your grades mean?”