Teachers in the PKS Middle School assess students frequently in a variety of ways, from 1:1 check ins, to rubrics, to tests and quizzes, to marginalia on their essays. We are a feedback rich program, and believe communicating clearly and directly with students about their work is the best way to help them grow. Some of the tools we use for assessment are standardized and used all around the world, others are program-specific and designed by our faculty.
One thing we never do is reduce feedback to a letter or number grade. Our commitment to eschew letter/number grades in favor of more nuanced forms of feedback is, in fact, a foundation of our approach to teaching and learning. And we are proud to be leading a broad movement of 21st century schools approaching assessment from a researched-based, holistic perspective.
Why don’t we grade?
First, grades are crude and opaque where feedback should be personalized, rich, actionable, and transparent. Teachers should have the skill and the time to explain clearly to students what they are doing well and what they need to improve. An “82” doesn’t do that. In fact, research shows that no matter the quality of feedback, if it is attached to a grade it is largely ignored. Students flip to the back of an essay to look at the grade and don’t read the comments, or see the number at the top of a math test and don’t analyze what they have mastered and what they must improve. Grades are reductive symbols and a shortcut around the hard work of responding individually to the work of each student, celebrating what they have achieved, and explaining to each student how his or her work can continue to progress and develop.
Second, we want a feedback system that encourages students to pursue academic rigor. Why attempt a difficult project if the result might be a B when you can do an easy project and get an A? Schools that grade see students making the rational choice to avoid academic rigor and pursue the “easy A.” Middle schoolers are like bloodhounds for hypocrisy, and they immediately sense it when a teacher or parent says, “challenge yourself!” while also saying, “keep your grades up.” Schools that do not grade can more honestly coach students to work at the edge of their stretch zone.
Third, we believe feedback should encourage a growth mindset, and grades irrevocably move students towards a fixed mindset. The “C” in 6th grade English becomes the story the child tells herself (“I’m a bad writer”). The “A” in science tells a student he needn’t strive for more (“my work is done”). When teachers do not grade and instead tell ALL students how to meet the next challenge, and do so without labels, there is no danger of a student settling on a fixed belief so early in their exploration of the world and of their cognitive development.
Fourth, grades introduce an authoritarian element into the classroom. In the Dewian tradition, we believe our work is to train our students to become engaged, effective, passionate citizens. It is the job of a citizen to think critically, to question authority, and to be suspicious of hierarchy. We believe the consequences of living the most formative years of your life in systems that normalizes hierarchy is a threat to democratic values. We will not participate in this paradigm. Our teachers are respected by students because of their humanity, their inspiring lessons, and their care, not because they have the power to reward and punish.
Fifth, grades tend to encourage a misguided adjudication of assessment: “Why did I receive a B when I deserved a B+?” Students and parents sense the alchemy in any grading system, the inevitable arbitrary and capricious nature of a grade. Teachers who are forced to grade must pour their most precious resource - time - into defending the indefensible. We want 100% of our teachers’ energies going into challenging each student, learning more about them, and engaging with them on a joyful journey. We do not want one moment wasted on questions of semantics.
Sixth, since grades communicate to students that some things matter and others don't, schools that grade end up with warped programs. Math gets graded in most schools, communicating that math is important (which it is). But the way you treat your peers is not graded, communicating that whatever lip service is paid to this value, it isn’t very important. Students get it: you grade me on the things you actually want me to care about. At PKS, we actually care about student health, their moral development, their mindfulness, their ability to self-assess and choose to stretch themselves.
Seventh, there are metacognitive benefits for students when we do not coddle them by telling them exactly what to do and how to do it. At PKS, students are asked to name what they need to accomplish and receive 1:1 coaching to help them develop independent habits of passionate, creative work. We want our students to receive an assignment, head off to work, and return with gorgeous, unexpected results. Grades undermine intrinsic motivation and self-regulation and are part of what has created an army of bright but timid graduates who need bosses to tell them exactly what to do and how to do it. PKS graduates will leap over this millennial malaise.
Finally, perhaps most importantly, we believe that grades distract from the joy of learning. Our classrooms are celebrations of creativity, of grit, of tinkering, of struggle, of offering complex responses to challenging cross-cultural problems. We want our learning community to be one in which passionate teachers challenge, support, and inspire their students. And we want our students striving to be their best selves unencumbered by fear of (shudder!) a “B.”
Selected Resources
Alli Klapp (2015) Does grading affect educational attainment? A longitudinal study, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 22:3, 302-323, DOI: 10.1080/0969594X.2014.988121
Björn Högberg, Joakim Lindgren, Klara Johansson, Mattias Strandh & Solveig Petersen (2021) Consequences of school grading systems on adolescent health: evidence from a Swedish school reform, Journal of Education Policy, 36:1, 84-106, DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2019.1686540
Gardner, H. (1991). The unschooled mind: How children think and how schools should teach. New York: Basic Books.
Pulfrey, C., Buchs, C., & Butera, F. (2011). Why grades engender performance-avoidance goals: The mediating role of autonomous motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(3), 683–700. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023911
Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “When Rewards Compete with Nature: The Undermining of Intrinsic Motivation and Self Regulation,” in Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation, Sansone and Harackiewicz, eds. (Educational Psychology, 2000).
Jack Schneider & Ethan Hutt (2014) Making the grade: a history of the A–F marking scheme, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46:2, 201-224, DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2013.790480
Schinske J, Tanner K. Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently). CBE Life Sci Educ. 2014;13(2):159-166. doi:10.1187/cbe.cbe-14-03-0054
Grant Wiggins, “The Case for Authentic Assessment,” Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation: Vol 2, Article 2(1990).