Grading system gets an ‘incomplete’
Educational psychologist Paul Dressel wrote in 1957: “A grade is an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material.”
This startling quote may raise hackles, particularly of some teachers and parents. However, I suspect many students would agree. That this quote was made 63 years ago does not detract from the truth of the statement. I acknowledge that over this period there have been efforts for reform and some improvements in the “art” of grading.
In 32 years of teaching, my colleagues and I faced many challenges, but never one so great as trying to teach and assess students during a pandemic. One of the positives of this situation is that many have expressed newfound respect and admiration for teachers, which I hope carries over when times return to “normal.”
Assessment and grading have long been problematic for educators. We all would like to think we know what A-F grades mean, but other than a general range from “excellent” to “failing,” do we?
Say you want to hire a writer and the applicant shows you a transcript with several “A” grades for writing courses. Would you say, “Oh, good,” and hire the person, or would you ask for a sample to be written in your presence?
Long ago, we assigned numbers to correlate with A-F grades. Numbers, yeah. They are precise and give us a more accurate rating, right? Numbers are good for many measurements — but when one digs down through the numbers to assess what someone knows or can do, they can get slippery and fuzzy. For example, if 100 is the highest amount, equal to 100 percent, how can a student earn a grade of 102, which sometimes occurs in determining the class valedictorian? Don’t ask me. I was even told by math people there are such things as “imaginary” numbers.
In Texas, teachers grade students, administrators grade teachers, and the state grades administrators, schools and school districts. Over the
years, a veritable plethora of acronyms have been devised to name these rating regimens. I recall in my later teaching years a new teacher evaluation was implemented to much fanfare for its accuracy and objectivity.
We were given training in the new system. There were some objective measures, but under questioning about how certain decisions were made, the presenters would fall back to “by the judgment of the observer.”
Much student evaluation is based on standardized testing that has long been the subject of debate as to its effectiveness. Standardized testing started gaining momentum in the early 20th century for use in college admissions and by the Army in World War I. Much of the testing and grading we do is for sorting and ranking.
Some observers have noted that the new Texas school ratings of A-F have a strong correlation to a community’s level of wealth. If you are battling insomnia, try checking out the Texas system showing how the A-F grade is calculated.
So, what to do? Many educators advocate for authentic or alternative assessments, in which students demonstrate by a variety of methods what they know and can do. Of course, this takes a lot of time and can be messy, so I’m just going to give you an 80. Be glad you got that much.