May 19, 2008

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Grading 

Here we are at the end of the 2008 school year!  Final exams are being taken and report cards are going out and everyone’s curiosity is focused on what grade did I get?  It is like the air we breathe, we expect and anticipate grades in our classes.  We are all very aware of grades.  By the way (and this is true), I graduated in the top 75% of my high school class!

 

Where did grades come from?  When did they begin?  What is the history of grading?  There has always been assessment in schools.  Neil Postman in his book ’Technopoly’ points out that the first institution of learning to use numeric grades was at Cambridge University in 1792’s.  The first US institution to use numeric grades was West Point in 1817.  Prior to this there were no numeric grades, just anecdotal reports.  Students either proved they knew it or they kept working on it until they did prove it.  Mastery was the goal, not the grade.  In 1877 Harvard set up the percentage (90% -100%, 80%-89% etc) system and in 1883 Harvard was the first to use a letter grade.[1]  So grading as we know it is a new phenomenon

The modernist idea that anything can be measured is behind our use of grades.  Grading is a form of measurement.  But what are we measuring?  Grades supposedly (as currently thought) show how much a student knows of a particular subject.  So a student receiving a B+ or 88% for an English class supposedly knows 88% of English. 

 

We live in a day where we think that people who know lots of facts must be really smart.  That guy who was on Jepordy for several weeks and won lots of money we think must be very smart.  Yet, what is the difference between wisdom and knowledge?  Which is better to possess?  How do you measure wisdom?  We can measure a persons’ knowledge of a set of facts at a particular point in time, but who says those facts are important or meaningful.  To answer that question one must have wisdom.

 

I spoke with a child of a long time friend who took AP US Government at a public high school.  I asked this student what grade they received.  They told me they received an A and passed the AP exam.  I asked if they had read or studied the Declaration of Independence or Constitution.  They said they had studied a few parts of the Constitution but nothing of the Declaration.  Their grade says they have an excellent knowledge of Government but they knew next to nothing about the founding documents for the United States.  So what does that grade tell you?

 

There needs to be assessment in education.  Students, parents and teachers need to know what their student has accomplished.  I do not believe numeric or alpha grades effectively represent the accomplishments of a student nor do they really tell us anything worthwhile about their knowledge of the subject.  I believe an anecdotal report from the teacher on the character, skills and mastery of parts of the subject by a student would be a truer reflection than a letter grade on a report card.

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