At the suggestion of former NAIS President Pat Bassett, who signed off his blog in June with several recommendations for summer reads, I picked up “On Grades and Grading” by Timothy Quinn. I was not disappointed. Quinn, Assistant Head
At the suggestion of former NAIS President Pat Bassett, who signed off his blog in June with several recommendations for summer reads, I picked up “On Grades and Grading” by Timothy Quinn. I was not disappointed. Quinn, Assistant Head of the Upper School at the University School of Milwaukee, has produced a tidy volume of 121 pages that strives to create a single conversation out of some cacophony.
We educators certainly have many arguments to make about grades. We also have many opinions — usually negative — about grading itself. As Quinn pointed out in a post related to the book, the problem may stem from fundamental disagreement about what we are trying to accomplish:
Consider all the things grades can do: They can quantify, they can symbolize, they can describe, they can evaluate, and they can rank. Those are all transitive verbs, so they need objects. Here are some options: a student’s learning, a student’s skill level, a student’s performance, and a student’s progress. (Keep in mind that most of these can be measured either at a given time or over a period of time.) What’s more, is that each of these potential definitions of a grade need some sort of context — are they relative to a standard, to a student’s peers in a class, school, or grade level, or to all other possible outcomes?
Ultimately, grades will only begin to have meaning when teachers and schools define their grades clearly by answering these questions.
Quinn’s work offers a path for educators. He begins by asking why we grade at all (a question he raises repeatedly). In the introduction, he posits three essential reasons:
1. Grades can provide data upon which to base decisions.
2. Grades can have a tremendous impact on student motivation.
3. Grades can provide students with important feedback on their work. (xiii)
Notably absent from this list is the use of grades to rank and sort students for non-pedagogical purposes — namely, college admissions. Quinn states matter-of-factly that our purpose as teachers is to educate, not act as intelligence agents for higher ed (my phrasing). However, he also acknowledges that we cannot simply ignore what happens to our college-bound students. To resolve this problem, he argues that we must ensure fairness in our grading, for pedagogical r