Ben Yanowitch
Recently, teachers at The Field school have decided to reform their class evaluation of students’ skills to reflect a more equitable system in their evaluation of students. Some of these ideas around grading are inspired by Joe Feldman’s book, Grading for Equity. Feldman has worked in education for over 20 years and worked as a Chief Of Staff in the Department of Education. Feldman presents an argument that traditional grading “denies opportunity” and inscribes fixed mindsets upon students. This “equitable grading” eliminates grading assignments on a 0-100 scale, does not penalize students for turning in their assignments late, and encourages teachers to not count previous assignments that show a lower skill level if students can demonstrate “subject mastery” in their skills later in the semester– even if the students need to retake tests and redo assignments. Feldman believes that no matter when a student masters a skill during a semester, it should still be reflected as mastery.
Students’ assignments are graded on a four point scale. The four levels are a high level of skill, skills proficiency demonstrated, skills developing and more evidence needed. A four is equivalent to an A, a three is equivalent to a B, a two is equivalent to a C and a one is equivalent to a D on the traditional grading scale.
Charles Cleveland,a Field sophomore, mentioned that it can be confusing to get grades on a four point scale because they do not translate well to letter grades. Charles’s main concern with the system is that “you do not quite get a gauge of where you are in the class.”
Charles sees room for improvement in the grading system is transparency. He feels that the school should at least acknowledge that the system can be confusing for students. He feels that this can be addressed by creating “some sort of rubric or idea of how to translate the four points into a letter grade” could be beneficial for students in the future. Charles used the 4 point system in elementary school, and remarked on the positive aspects of the system. He said “it helps with your GPA a little bit, you can get a better idea of your GPA with a four point grading system.” He concluded that he felt it would make more sense for students to transfer back to a letter grading system because students are generally more familiar with that system and it is well understood.
Journalism Teacher Nick Mott feels the experience has gone ”fine” for him,In his classes. He uses what he calls a “more holistic grading process.” This process includes lots of feedback to students throughout the semester and offers students numerous opportunities to revise and improve their work. Nick usually does not traditionally take points off for things, as he believes that a traditional grading system on a 0-100 scale takes off points for “minor mistakes that aren’t explicitly what the teacher is trying to teach.” For Nick, the four point scale is “liberating” and allows him “get a more general idea of a student’s learning”, which he has enjoyed. For Nick, any improvements to the system would be ineffective, because of his thoughts on grading itself. Nick is “philosophically disinclined to give grades at all, as opposed to giving lots of comments and guiding learning.” An art teacher though and though, his ideas around the teaching of art are very progressive and he believes that “The quantification of teaching art, or teaching writing, is detrimental to creativity and progress in your own form so I think giving numerical grades, even if they are one through four, is an imposition, but I think changing it from one hundred to four points absolutely a step in the right direction.”
Page Stites, Field upper school head, made it clear that the school has not made the four point system the school’s official grading system, and that grading at field is more on a “teacher by teacher basis”, rather than the school requiring teachers to use the four point grading system.
He said that it originated with teachers “experimenting” with different systems and figuring out how they can best share their feedback to students. He added that the school faculty has done extensive research around what the best practices are for grading and what issues are in a more traditional system.
Page believes one the issues with a traditional grading system is that many assignments are averaged into a “single grade.” Page believes that the issue with having a “single grade” is that having only one grade can be confusing for students. “Depending on what went into it, it can mean all kinds of things.” Because different teachers deduct and reward points for different stuff, a system that focuses on feedback and provides opportunity for revision makes it more clear what went into the grade.
He believes that one of the reasons teachers have decided to switch into a system which has an emphasis on feedback and revisions is that it is able to reflect a student’s best demonstration of skills, rather than an average of all the assignments that helped a student grow to that level. Most teachers that use this type of grading system feel that if a student is struggling with a skill in the beginning of a semester, but they are able to demonstrate proficiency in that skill at the end of the semester, their final grade should reflect the students proficiency in that skill.
He believes that a system which emphasizes feedback and revision is better for student development because it “reflects the student’s interpretation of the skill.” Page also felt that one of the things that is tricky about the system is that snapshots grades were “probably low across the board”, and that he would not expect his students to be “working at A level with some of these skills by late October, but by January I would.”
He acknowledged that this can cause confusion because many students are still “in the early stages of developing those skills.” When asked about how the system can be improved, Page replied “helping people understand how it works better and doing a better job of communicating about it is important.”