Grades Should Include the Behaviors That Produce Learning
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that effort, participation, and work completion deserve a place in grades because these behaviors are essential to the learning process.
Key Takeaways
- Behavior and learning are connected - The habits of effort, participation, and completion are what produce academic mastery
- Pure standards-based grading misses something - Grading only for mastery ignores the process that leads to mastery
- Students need feedback on their habits - Grades that include behavioral components give students information about what they need to change
Transcript
I actually like it that traditional grades include things other than pure measures of learning.
There's this idea from a lot of grading reformers who write books or who give presentations and trainings that grades should only be measures of learning.
And my question to them is, why would that be the case if we already have assessment?
See, to me, grades and assessment are not exactly the same thing, right?
Grades can incorporate things like participation, effort, completion.
And if we only care about mastery, why would we not just look at assessments to figure out which students have mastered the content?
Why do we need to separately report standards-based grades when we already have mastery information in assessments whether those are classroom-based assessments or standardized assessments we have lots of tools in our toolbox for reporting on mastery what we give up when we limit grades to information about mastery is information for parents that is actionable information like is my kid trying hard enough is my kid putting in enough effort are they participating how are they doing on their classwork and a lot of parents who have had kids in standards-based grading schools have told me that their kids don't see the value of their work in the short term because they don't get graded for it, right?
Why would I do my homework if I don't have to?
If it doesn't affect my grade, I'll just do fine on the test.
And if I don't do fine on the test, I can just retake it.
Well, what ends up happening when you allow kids to kick the can down the road and assume that they'll get to their learning later is they don't.
and then they fall behind.
And that doesn't seem like a big deal once.
Maybe a kid can put in some extra effort after they fall behind and catch up.
But if we have all students perpetually putting off the work that it takes to learn, then we're constantly going to be playing catch up and we're never going to get through everything that we need to.
And at some point, kids are going to hit a breaking point and teachers are going to hit a breaking point because there's too much work to do and too much work to grade.
So this idea that we can just kind of kick the can down the road and hope that kids learn and only report on when they actually learn and not pay any attention in grades to the work that produces learning just does not make a lot of sense to me.
See, I think grades should reflect what produces learning as well as the learning itself.
If you are trying in class, if you are turning your assignments in, if you are participating, if you are doing all the things that you are supposed to be doing in class, that should be reflected in your grade.
Let me know what you think.