Student Learning vs. Student Earning

I’m just old enough that I never kept a paper gradebook. When I was a student in school, my grades were on paper and arrived in the mail. As a teacher, my grades have always been entered into the computer and sent off to the world with a click of a button. Parents and students know the grade as soon as I share it. 

The advantages of keeping families up to date on performance have come with the negative consequences of shortening the time until a student’s learning turns a number. The grade for the Calculus test is updated while the student is in Chemistry class. The notification vibrates in their pocket, and they navigate to PowerSchool (our digital gradebook) as soon as the day’s activities allow.

They don’t know which parts they got right or wrong. They don’t know which skills they struggled with. But they know the number and that number’s impact on their semester grade. They compare with peers. They hear rumors about how other classmates did. They start an informal petition for a curve. All of this happens before they see the results of their hard work and the feedback from the teacher who carefully marked the right and wrong parts.

In the past, the following conversation was a regular occurrence with my students…

Mr. Morse: How did you do on the Calculus test?

Student: I think I did pretty well. There were a few things I got stuck on, but I felt okay. I think we’ll look at it in a few days.

Now, the exact same question yields a very different response…

Mr. Morse: How did you do on the Calculus test?

Student: I don’t know. The grade isn’t in.

This is the same question; the student has the same Calculus teacher (she is experienced enough that she did have a paper gradebook). There is no willingness to reflect on performance. In the student's minde, the grade is the result.

After an assessment becomes a number, the number is all that matters.

I am lucky to be surrounded by a great team of teachers and instructional coaches at my school, and I have learned from many teachers from other schools through sources like this! One suggestion that came up repeatedly, but I didn’t know what to do with it, was: If you don’t want them to focus on the grade, don’t write the grade on their paper.

Both obvious and confusing. 

So… It’s not for a grade? …or… Do they grade it themselves? …or… They trade-and-grade (is that even legal?)? 

After some discussions and a little reading, I came up with this process:

1. Students take quizzes (or test or “quest” or CFA or whatever we call it) 
2. Teacher grades quiz without writing the score on the student’s paper
   1. Teacher records the score for each part on a separate paper, like the paper gradebooks of yesteryear (or in a spreadsheet, maybe with conditional formatting… like a good, nerdy teacher)
   2. The teacher keeps that score to themselves
3. The teacher returns the quiz just as mark-free as they turned it in
4. In class, go through the grading rubric with the class as a whole
   1. Explain what does/doesn’t earn points
      1. Here we are teaching what makes an answer not just correct but good!
      2. We are focusing on correct answers, not lost points.
   2. Explain partial credit
      1. Or the point-by-point details you used (a rubric or scoring guideline?)
   3. Give generic examples of things you saw while grading
5. Students decide whether they earned the point or not
   1. They grade each part themselves
   2. They ask you whether they got the point or not, and you get to say, “I don’t know. Look at your answer and compare it to the rubric.” (They love this) They learn to stop asking.
   3. They record the score on your version/variation of this nifty scoring sheet 
      

      quiz_scoring_form.pdf

      quiz_scoring_form.pdf
   4. They give the quiz and scoring sheet back to you
6. After they score their quiz, you compare their grading to yours
   1. A perfectly scored quiz (their grade matches your grade), earns some amount of bonus points
   2. A well-scored quiz (their grade is ± your grade), earns ___ bonus points
   3. A poorly/incorrectly-scored quiz gets the grade they earned to begin with
7. Now that they have thought about… 
   1. their answers,
   2. what makes the right answers right, 
   3. and how good their answers were…
      …their performance becomes a grade and a number sent off to students and parents alike.

It takes longer than passing back a paper with a number and moving on. However, many of us take the time to review a quiz while the students are only looking at the number, barely listening. And how often do we get asked about why they missed a point WHEN WE JUST SPENT TIME EXPLAINING THAT VERY THING?

This process takes more class time, is often more time-consuming when grading, and we have to look back at the scores twice… 

BUT students think about their performance, not just their grades. They look at their answers, not just red X’s. They don’t “zone out” during our reteaching because they need to be locked in to get the thing they have been trained to want: the bonus points. And everyone gets better with practice, so it goes faster/better each time.

For extra, added metacognitive extension, I tried extending the process by giving a follow-up assignment with each quiz score sheet. They have to think about it AGAIN! 

8. BONUS (in case the 7 steps weren’t enough):
   1. Extra points (or an additional minor, required assignment) for reflection and extension.
   2. I have tried asking students 
      1. What skills do you need to improve?
      2. What topics do you need to study?
      3. What was most confusing?
      4. What were you most confident about?

And when I was extra bold or their quizzes were extra bad…

5. A new question with different versions of the material they missed to try again right away!

Like all things, this is still a work in progress, but it has helped students pay attention to the little things:

• Showing work, labels, and units on calculations
  • Because they are forced to take points off THEIR OWN QUIZ for missing them
• Using the correct vocabulary in explanations
  • Because the rubric says you must say “___” 
• Completing all parts of an explanation
  • Because they see all the parts that are needed
  • It’s not just a 0/1… it’s a “I was that close to getting the point” awakening
• Getting to the point
  • They don’t want to re-read their long explanations any more than we want to read them, and they definitely don’t want to decide if they talked themselves out of a point

The best part is the flexibility. 

• You can try it on tests, too. 
• Students can go home with a rubric and their quiz to grade for homework.  
• Do you not have enough time to complete the whole process at once? Grade it normally and give it back full of red ink. They have learned to think about it from a feedback perspective and more ready to engage mentally.

Unless you are in a unique school/situation, you would have to undo 10 or more years of grade chasing to get students to want feedback. The win-win compromise is making them be a part of the grading process to build in more meaningful reflection and feedback for your formative assessments.

RESOURCES:

1. Louden, K. (2019, November 17). Delaying the grade: How to get students to read feedback. Cult of Pedagogy. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/delayed-grade/(link is external)
2. Pollock, J. E. (2012). Feedback: The hinge that joins teaching and learning. Corwin Press.
3. Roediger, H. L. (2019, May 1). The importance of testing as a learning strategy. AASA. https://www.aasa.org/resources/resource/importance-testing-learning-strategy(link is external)