The Superintendent of Public Instruction has released the grades for all the schools in Indiana. On an A through F scale, each school has received its grade, and now communities must deal with the aftermath.
The superintendent of the school district in which I teach sent out an email to all our families explaining the absurdity of the whole thing. It includes a four-page document, complete with research from Butler University professors, itself complete with bibliography, detailing the flaws in a system of school evaluation based on high-stakes standardized testing and a process of data analysis so complex that few if any schools or communities understand it.
This whole scenario raises some interesting questions. While I agree that the system of evaluation is flawed, to say the least, I am amused to see grown adults scrambling to offer an explanation for a poor grade. Now hear me. I think that most, if not all, of the evaluation is bogus and the results vitiated by a host factors. That said, is the response of the school districts not similar to the reaction of students who receive poor grades? "But mom, dad, the test wasn't fair! I don't know what the teacher wants from me! It wasn't clear what I was expected to do! I wasn't at my best that day! I didn't get to bed until late because of team practice the night before!"
The challenges that my superintendent, and most others, have made are valid, yet I wonder. If the grading system of the schools is so flawed, is it possible that all grading systems are flawed, including the ones we impose on our students?
Consider this. According to almost fifty years of documented research, only 7-10% of variability in student performance on standardized tests in attributable to teacher and school level factors. That means 90% or more of standardized test score performance is attributable to factors that are not related to schools and teachers.
If that is true of standardized tests, then is it not true of the 4th grade chapter 3 spelling test and the 10th grade chapter 7 math test? Every teacher with whom I have discussed this issue over more than two decades in education has said the same thing. Success and failure in the classroom are derivative of, if not wholly determined by, factors beyond our control and most often beyond our awareness.
When it came to grades, I got good ones. From Kindergarten through the fall semester of my freshman year in college, I got exactly two Bs. One was in 5th grade cursive writing, because the teacher gave no As. The other was in one semester of 7th grade health. Yet I, this great-grade-making machine, will tell you that grades are among the least important things in life. What matters is that a student be curious and pursue knowledge of the magnificent, infinitely mysterious and complex world that God has created. There is a place for testing, of course. Both teacher and student should want to know how well a student has grasped the material. This, however, has nothing to do with the current system of grades, which, no matter what anyone says, are the equivalent of pay for a job. Just as with money, a student is out to gain as many points as possible to cash in on ever higher grades. This approach has nothing to do with learning and everything to do with preparing children for a life of materialistic keeping-up-with-the-Joneses.
Perhaps the absurd grading of schools will do some good after all, good completely unintended by the educrats who put it into place. Maybe, just maybe, it will prompt all of us to take a serious look at what we are doing with grades, testing, and the whole enterprise of education.
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Money and grades are like democracy: terrible systems except for the others. And nowadays with so much college money riding on grades, grades are money.
ReplyDeleteAt least they killed Socrates for something meaningful, corrupting the youth with a question-based approach to truth seeking, and Socrates willingly submitted to the punishment, even though it was unjust. Can you imagine his reaction to the present state of absurdity?
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting, Magister. The longer I've taught as a homeschooling mom, the less value I put into grades as a measure of scholastic achievement.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing: as the mother of three children with very different interests, ideas, and talents, I know that a "B" in math from one child would be the equivalent of an A-triple-plus from another, because one of them is very consistently good in math, while another struggles with math. However, when my "good math" student starts getting Bs or Cs, it doesn't necessarily mean that she's being lazy or not applying herself: mostly it just means that *this* concept (out of the dozen or so she's studied so far in the school year) is hard for her personally.
But I can only know that about three students whom I know very well. What is a teacher with hundreds of students going to do?
I wish there were simply a way to measure concept mastery and then move on without penalizing those students whose mastery is only average (as opposed to A or B level work) or passing along those who truly have failed to master the concept.
Red, you touch on a key issue here. Some of this grading business is derivative of an assembly-line approach to education that sees schools with enrollments in the thousands and teachers with enormous class lists.
ReplyDeleteImagine, though, even in such a scenario that the Latin teacher gives a vocabulary quiz. After assessing the rights and wrongs, he passes it back to the students, but with no grade. Student A knows that she has gotten X number of words right, and Student B knows that he has gotten Y number of words right. One of these numbers may suggest the need for more studying, but what, exactly, is served by slapping the letter grade of B- or D+ on a paper? What is served by publishing that grade to parents? If a parent wants to know how a child is doing, he should look at the homework and exam papers. A lot of corrections means there is something more the child needs to understand. How is this determination helped by a letter grade?
Admittedly, colleges and universities must have some shorthand way of dealing with the vast number of applicants, and grades do help in that. Again, it is enrollment size that is dictating the practice.
Thinking of my 5 kids, when they were willing to learn and do the work, they made good grades. When they were not- they did not. My mother, wife and daughter in law are career teachers. I can't recall a single occasion when any of them expressed dissatisfaction with the system of grading students' work.
ReplyDelete"Can you imagine his reaction to the present state of absurdity?"
ReplyDeleteMaybe he'd say if the horse doesn't want to drink he shouldn't be taking up space at the trough.
"Maybe he'd say if the horse doesn't want to drink he shouldn't be taking up space at the trough." Well said.
ReplyDeleteMy parents used to tell the story that when I was a baby, my dad would stick a suction cup jiggly thing on his forehead and dance around to get me to laugh. When I did, my mom would pop in a bite of food. I cannot tell you how many times this has come back to me as a metaphor for what I do as a teacher.
When I was a kid I'd stick a toilet plunger on my stomach, put coathangers on it, and walk around the house looking resourceful.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it helped anyone to eat.
I find those who complain the most about grades given to schools are those whose schools get the worst ones; the same with students (or parents). The real question is what happens to the student who misses 5/10 words on your test, or can't read a book that is normally able to be read by students his/her age. As long as the answer is "nothing", other than a bad grade, then grades don't have a lot of utility in and of themselves. If the bad grade meant that the student got extra help, or that the school did, then the grade has utility as determiner of consequences
ReplyDeleteRAnn, I am not so sure about that. Almost universely in our state, the grading system for schools has been condemned as both unintelligble regarding its process and as misguided philosophically in the parts that are understood. In short, almost everyone opposes the high-stakes standardized testing that seems to form the core of the grading. Furthermore, until our state superintendent was ousted on Tuesday, that office seemed inappropriately linked with for-profit educational think-tanks and testing agencies.
ReplyDeleteAs for whether student grades are a motivator for better performance, that seems to be a function of the value the child puts on education, a value itself instilled or negated by parents. When one of my A students, I can see her face as I type this, receives a C on a test, she is at my desk wanting to know how to improve. I have too many, an increasing number in fact, who, upon receiving a single- or barely double-digit percentage correct on an exam, could not care less. The low grade tells me something, but it seems to tell the student and the parents little if anything.