Room to Grow - a Math Podcast
Room to Grow - a Math Podcast
What’s in a Grade?
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In this episode, we discuss grades in mathematics courses. Although we don’t claim to have a recommendation or even an opinion about what might be the right way to handle grades, we hope to bring up considerations for our listeners to talk about and think through as they reflect on their own grading practices.
We wonder if many grading practices are in place are just legacy practices, handed down and sustained by teacher teams and departments, or schools with prescribed grading requirements, and we recognize the challenges of balancing grades with academic performance as well as other classroom contributions that we value.
We wrestle with what grades communicate to different audiences. What does a grade tell a student? The student’s family? Other school personnel? The student’s next school? How does a student’s participation in the academic work of math class shift based on the value they put on their grade in math class? And we consider the guiding question of “what is the impact of…?” as educators consider the structure and components of their grading practice.
We wrap up by reflecting on the impact of COVID-19 on our educator friends. We believe that the last two years have brought incredible challenges to educators already giving everything they have to their students and communities. We are in awe of you, we admire you, and we thank you for all that you do each and every day.
Additional resources to explore:
- Blog Post: “Grading Is Due for an Overhaul” https://www.nais.org/magazine/independent-school/winter-2022/grading-is-due-for-an-overhaul/
Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com . Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy
You know, it's easy to say and put on paper, like, you know, there's a nice sound bite of saying, well, the grade should reflect your academic knowledge and progress towards the standards of this course. Um, and at the same time, like, we we teach humans. Welcome to Room to Grow. I'm Curtis Brown. And I'm Joni Funderberg. We work together at Texas Instruments, and we're glad you're here.
SPEAKER_01We're looking forward to continually improving our practice, and we understand that you are too.
SPEAKER_00We hope that you'll find this podcast as a room for you to grow along with us as we wrestle with and explore ideas about teaching math even better. In this episode of Room to Grow, Curtis and I consider the important topic of grading. Although we can't offer best practices or suggested grading methods, we discuss some of the questions and considerations around grading that we hope will spark thought, reflection, and discussion about grades for you, your colleagues, and your students. Let's get growing.
The grading process and what are we even doing here?
SPEAKER_01Well, Joni, I am really excited. We get to record another episode face-to-face uh here at the TI offices in Dallas. Um, and so thank you for making the trip out here from Colorado.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. It's great to see here, see you. Great to be in person, great to share the same space. Makes such a difference, I think, in our conversation.
SPEAKER_01For sure, for sure. Well, today we're going to be talking about a subject that's near and dear to our hearts and many teachers' hearts, but it kind of causes a little bit of nervousness, I think. Yeah. And that is the grading process, right? And what are we doing when we're assigning grades and kind of all of those questions uh that come up? And and we started looking and thinking about this uh a while ago, uh, looking at some articles that we that we read, we found a couple of things, and it was kind of one of these, oh, we should really talk about that. Yeah. Because there's some stuff here going on uh in the US, but I think worldwide probably, yeah. Uh when it comes to assigning grades and sort of the pressure uh around grades. And so maybe let's start the conversation off with what is a grade? What's in a grade, maybe even?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's a good place to start. And I also want to say, I mean, I know this is we echo this in every single um episode that we record, but I I think I just want to call out the thing that we've been saying to one another in anticipation of recording this session of like, boy, this one even more so than our previous topics. Neither of us is claiming to be an expert and know what, you know, what is best practices in terms of grading. Like this is a really, this is a really super complex issue. This is a super specific to a teacher, specific to, you know, local contexts. Yeah. There's so many complicating factors in this. So I just want to be sure we keep reminding ourselves and we keep reminding our listeners that we're not advocating for a certain grading scheme or you know, being critical of grading practices that we know have been around for decades. But both of us have actually engaged in the both of us have actually engaged in as teachers. But really, we picked this topic today because we think it's really intriguing. And we think that this is going to foster thought, reflection, and communication. And that's really one of our underlying goals of our room to grow.
SPEAKER_01That's that is the goal of today is to really give us something to just go home and think about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh, and and what are the implications? To our colleagues about and open the door for conversation.
SPEAKER_00Right. And and really think about what we're doing. So, so, okay, thank you. I just needed to kind of get that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I'm really glad you put that out there uh for us.
SPEAKER_00So, starting us out and thinking about what's in a grade, um, you know, I think we need to think about what grades represent. And I'm I kind of reflect back on when I first became a teacher. It's not really the thing I was thinking about. And, you know, for me, my career started in the middle of the semester. I did student teaching and then I was hired on in January to continue at my school. So, you know, I was kind of thrown into another teacher's classes with her grading scheme, her textbook selection, her sort of cadence. Like it wasn't really, you know, I came up with this. And then thinking back to the start of my first school year teaching, it was the teachers around me. You know, what are the other Algebra One teachers doing in terms of their weighted percentages of categories? And what are they grading and what does that look like? And how many tests are there gonna be, and how much more important is a test than a quiz? Um, so you know, just one of my reflections in preparing for this episode is I don't know that I ever really thought about my grades all that much. It was more like, okay, this is what we're gonna do. You have to assign a grade. And in my school, these are the categories of um, you know, work that we we value and that we want to assign points to. And this is, you know, how much the whole department gives credit for a semester exam. And, you know, all of those things were just kind of already structures in place and not things that, you know, I had some control, but not necessarily a lot of control. So really thinking about what does my grade represent was not a question I thought about early on in my career.
SPEAKER_01And I wonder if that's an experience that's common throughout, because I had a very similar experience. I came on in January. Um, the difference being I did get to kind of make many of my own decisions. Um, but I had a mentor teacher that was coming in, helping me. The the uh department head was, you know, working with me uh in in the classroom and helping me decide all of those things. And so I just naturally kind of did what she was doing already. Uh, and so kind of followed in her footsteps. And I too really didn't put a ton of thought process into it, really, maybe even until I started figuring out how I was gonna do my AP courses and what was I going to um use to reflect grades. And we had this conversation before as I was trying to recruit as many kids as I could to get in the door into my AP courses because I feel like it's an important thing for them to be exposed to that level of content. Um, at the same time, because of the way our grading system was, I didn't want to punish anyone for being brave enough to take my course and then not, you know, perform really well. And so there was kind of this, there was this pressure on me to try to figure out how can I help these students perform well, but also take an AP course and be exposed. And what am I, what do I do here? Right, right. Um was always a thought process in the back of my mind. And I think that exposes something. Um, you know, when we when we ask this question, what's in a grade? What does it represent? Um for something so critical to a student and to the families, to the school, to the school district, right? When we start talking about graduation rates and all these things. Um, I don't, I know I never got training.
SPEAKER_00No, I didn't either on that. I mean, maybe one year there was a workshop or something, but yeah, not not a significant unpacking of what this, what are different grading models and what why what do we value and how does our grading scheme reflect what we value, like never had that conversation. I I wonder though, I I'm curious, another opportunity to hear back from our listeners. I wonder how many people have. You know, I think for for me, Curtis, there was a shift. Um, it actually was uh as a result of my own kids being enrolled in school. Um, and it probably started when they were in elementary school, but I remember it most when they were in middle school and they went to schools that took a standards-based grading approach.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So their report cards were formatted so differently. It wasn't like um, you know, math class, Logan has an A, and science class, Logan has a B plus, and you know, language arts, he has a B or whatever. It wasn't that structure. It was under each course, there were a series of standards and then there was a number that, you know, was associated with that standard. And that was really um, you know, I don't remember at the time being super influential, but I reflect back then now and think, oh, wow, like that's very different than just giving a letter grade. And that tells me as a parent something very different than Logan has a B, right? Right. That that, you know, Logan's a a four on this standard, which is above the grade level expectation, but he's a two on this standard. And it helped me as a parent know better where his growth areas for growth were, where he was solid, you know, what do we need to pay attention to and and how might I support and bring that in? So that idea of wow, a grade can communicate something more than just you know a letter.
What is communicated in a grade? What's not?
SPEAKER_01When we assign grades, there are so many different things that are communicated. And I think that's place where we might want to take this conversation is to really think about um, okay, so what is it that is communicated when I assign a grade in my course? What do we want to be communicated? What is communicated, and what goes into that what's communicated piece, right? So there's so many things from a society space, right? Kids are kids are talked about as a straight A student. Yes, right? I mean, you talk about a straight A student. Well, what does that really mean? Does that conjure up a picture in your mind of a student who is academically performing really, really well? Uh does it perform, you know, is it a student who's got lots of high effort? Like they're putting in tons of effort into school? Uh, are they well behaved? Like all of these things are things that that are question marks, right? When we say straight A student or we talk about their grades. So talk a little bit about maybe um your thoughts behind what are we doing when we're assigning grades? Do we have like are there standard things or are there just a spectrum?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it it's it's really interesting because I think uh my own perspective from my days in the classroom, I thought carefully about the different audiences, right, that we're gonna be looking at report cards. So there's the student themselves, you know, what is what is the grade saying to the student themselves? Um, then of course the student's parent or caregivers. Um, you know, who what is that communicating to them? Uh, the school counselor, you know, what as we think about the student's overall academic record or placement in a future course, um, other teachers that are going to teach this student, you know, we I I I've taught in models where kids change teachers that semester, even if they're not changing course, like that grade is communicating something to me, or their grade last year is communicating something to me. And then, you know, with both of us having experience at the high school level, certainly transcripts that are sent off to college for admissions, or um, you know, even at the graduate school level, you know, what are what are those what do those things communicate? So I I think you're right that there's a lot of complexity in that. And the fact that um different audiences are using those grades for different reasons and different um action, follow-up actions, I guess, I think adds to that maybe stress or maybe responsibility on the teacher around having a grading scheme that effectively communicates that. And I think that might really be the crux of our conversation today is you know, how might we be miscommunicating? How might the way that we're setting up how the grade is computed actually work against um the student in some ways that we no doubt certainly didn't intend as a teacher.
SPEAKER_01For certain. For uh for okay, so let's let's think about that impact. So thinking about especially the way a grade maybe impacts the student directly. So, so I I remember very directly having some students come into my course, right? And especially in my AP courses, right? Um, students who grades were the end all be all. Yeah. That they were taking the course. I had a couple of students who took the course because they needed an extra grade. Honest to goodness, they weren't interested necessarily in statistics, they weren't um particularly.
SPEAKER_00It wasn't gonna need to be a good idea.
SPEAKER_01It was, hey, I'm I'm in competition to make sure that I'm in the top 10 in my class uh at my school because there's scholarship things that matter and there's things that matter. And so they came in with the expressed desire to make a very high A in my course. Yeah. And and that was why they were there was to make a very high A. And that, you know, that changes the way a grade impacts a a student. Uh it changes the way that they uh work on it. And are they completely responsible for that? Or is it society that's responsible for that?
SPEAKER_00Or is it there could be family pressures, any number of things.
SPEAKER_01Well, any number of things, right? It changes the way that that kid views the grade. And so when you have a student, and I had several, they came in and they were they made a 97 on a on an exam, right? Done beautifully, great work, and you know, little tiny thing that that cost them a few points here or a few points there. And they just are in tears because they can't, you know, I can't afford to make a 97 on this thing. Yeah, this this pressure to me, and I I'm gonna make this statement that I that pressure can't be good.
SPEAKER_00I agree.
SPEAKER_01The the pressure on on the student for their grades, I I it just can't be good. Um, at the same time, you know, we I one of the articles that we have referenced in uh our notes, the show notes for this session, talks about reflecting purely academic uh knowledge. Right. And and so I wonder, you know, I mean, that's what we hope that the grade represents, or at least that's what I think the grade should represent. But at the same time, when I do that, what am I going to put students out who came into my classroom with good intentions of really wanting to learn this content and tried really hard, but then struggled.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It puts me in a in a place of like, I feel bad giving you a D in this course because you tried so hard. Right. And we we work with that.
SPEAKER_00But this is where your knowledge is. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01So how do I mean there's a challenge?
SPEAKER_00It is for sure. And I think that brings out that, you know, we value more than academic knowledge from our students. And, you know, that's uh again why all of us go into teaching. But back to the impact on the student, I appreciate I've taught students like you described as well, where it's such a hyper focus on um, you know, I must have a good grade. And uh I agree that that level of pressure is unhealthy. But I think another way that students use and perceive their grades is how they compare to other students, right? And so I had um when I was teaching pre-calculus, this was actually my standard across the board, but I would, you know, give a test and grade it and hand it back and go over it so students could see how they did. Um, and I always told my students, if, you know, when I go over this, if you find a grading error, I'd really love for you to point that out to me. You know, I graded 90 of these last night. So it's quite possible I made a mistake. And I always told my students, if the grading error is in your favor, I'll always give you the points. And if it's um and if it's uh in my favor, I'll never take more points away from you. But I just like to know that I've made mistakes. And I had a student who was sitting next to his best buddy, um, and I had misgraded the buddy's paper. I had not marked something wrong that was wrong. And the student who approached me also made the same mistake and wanted the points back. Um, and for and for him, and I remember feeling really frustrated at the time, like, wait, I I have to give you points because I made a mistake on someone else's paper. Um, but I can see that that that was a result of him saying, Well, wait, in comparison to the person sitting next to me, I actually know as much. Um, but the grade didn't reflect that. Right. So, so thinking about, and that's maybe slightly different because that's not a result of my grading scheme. But I think, you know, this conversation is not just about the final grade at a quarter or semester or end of the year, but really how do we grade?
SPEAKER_01How do we assign points even within, right?
SPEAKER_00And how does that all go?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there was a it there was a compelling piece to one of these articles that that we wrote. And I wish I could even refer to it by name, but I it's uh I can't. But one of these, one of these articles that we read uh leading up to this was talking about um the the role of even averaging scores uh throughout a course. So if I give I don't know, three, five essays in a in a writing course or uh in a math course, maybe we give you know three or or four major tests through through the course of a of a quarter or a or a semester or whatever. Um, and a student shows uh progress, growth, right? So then maybe they struggled early on, but then by the end in our final exam, that's a cumulative, summative exam, uh, so it's got everything, uh, they they score really well and they demonstrate great knowledge of the whole course. How do if I average everything from the very beginning, now I'm striking against them where some where they made progress in my course, where someone else who came in who made A's all the way through, never really struggled, technically didn't really grow a whole lot. Right. Uh scores a whole lot better if I average all the way through. So you know, I had a professor in college that that didn't do that. He absolutely the the grade on the final was able to erase all of your mistakes that you that you made earlier on, because it if if on the final you demonstrated you knew the things in the course, then you knew the things in the course and he felt comfortable assigning the score that way. Now I also was pretty fair in saying, well, if you bomb the final or I'm gonna take into account the growth that you had through the through the year because more. Um yeah, the pressure on a a student that has test anxiety is Yeah, is massively high if all of a sudden we say this one day at this time is the only thing that reflects your grade. So I understand the the challenge in trying to balance those two things. But yeah, uh I thought that was a that was a compelling uh idea for me. It is to think about, okay, because I never really thought about the impact of averaging uh across a semester.
SPEAKER_00Right. And I think I I just want to stop on that because I never thought about the impact of is is so key in what you just said. And again, back to my comments as we started the podcast. Like this isn't about find the perfect grading scheme. I don't think there is one, Curtis. I really don't. Um, but I never realized the impact of is is the kind of thing that I think, you know, we're hoping to challenge here. And I think that it it is such an interesting idea of what is the impact of what you just described in terms of an averaging grading scheme, is the unintended impact of taking the time to learn. And why are we saying that, you know, a student who to your example that maybe never struggled, well, the learning came more quickly for them. Do they deserve a different measure of learning or a different reflection of their learning than the student who took longer to get there but still got there? Yeah. Right. So how does how does that weigh out? So even beyond the maybe obvious challenges with grading, like I've I've read tons of articles and even have been part of discussions around the impact of zeros. Sure. You know, that certainly is is one, you know, what does that do for student motivation? And the, you know, I'm sure we've both experienced a student who's just like shut down, like, oh, well, I made some bad decisions early on and now I can't salvage.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, right? There's a possibility.
SPEAKER_00But but it's even bigger than that.
SPEAKER_01And just thinking about what are what are other ways that our grading mechanisms impact
How can a grade impact a student?
SPEAKER_01I was thinking back to uh my students who came in um who were brave and I I described them as brave enough to come in and take my AP course, which you know that there's some things that I'm insinuating there, right? They came, they struggled through some other math courses and they chose to take this AP course because they thought that, you know, this was a good thing for them to learn, or maybe I encouraged them, hey, I think you can do this, you should really try. Um, and when they came in and they tried and they struggled and they and they didn't perform as well as they had hoped, I felt a level of responsibility to try to figure out ways I could help them along, right? Yeah. Like how do I how do I rightly represent their academic knowledge at the same time? How do I how do I boost them so that so that they can know a little bit better or they can perform a little bit better? Um, and that's a that's a massive struggle, I know, for for teachers. And so thinking about the impact, because I don't want that kid to quit. I don't want them to go away going, you know, I tried and I didn't make it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh yeah, and I think that's a great argument for, you know, it's easy to say and put on paper, like, you know, there's a nice sound bite of saying, well, the grade should reflect your academic knowledge and progress towards the standards of this course. Um, and at the same time, like, we we teach humans. We teach humans.
SPEAKER_01We've said we're gonna have to like print that on t shirts.
SPEAKER_00We teach humans. Um, and and you know, complete disregard for. Or you really tried, and I saw, you know, maybe the learning there was learning and it wasn't the learning of the course. Yeah. Maybe wow, you really learned perseverance, or you really learned um, you know, not giving up in the face of defeat or taking a risk, or um, you know, maybe you got better at sharing your thinking with another student. And and again, it's so hard because those pieces, like your academic knowledge and your progress towards the standards, it's fairly concrete, especially in math.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We can have a really solid description of what does it mean to know how to do this math. Right. We have these skills. We can measure these skills. We can do that. But, you know, your uh ability to work with others, your ability to collaborate, your ability to persevere, um, your strategic thinking and problem solving, like those are much, much harder to name, let alone measure.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. And you're bringing up a, I mean, how do you even But we value those things? We do. And and but we don't have a space to to rightly uh put those in a in a report out, right? Right? Like I I want to be able to give that same sort of thing to my student. And yet when we look at uh the way schools are measured, the way that my district is made, the way me as a teacher, uh the way I am measured, yeah. Uh when it when it comes down to how my students perform on the state level testing or the you know, whatever it is that that is my measurement, those those those things don't get measured. Right. Right. And and we so I guess that does go back to what we're asking at the very beginning of this is what what does that grade represent? Right. What does it represent? And what should it represent? What should it represent? And what do I want it to represent? Because I I think most teachers uh have at least some autonomy. Uh, I know I did, yeah, especially with my AP courses to at the high school level I would say that's to make that decision, right? At the high school level for sure. Um maybe less so uh as you move down into elementary and middle school uh areas, but uh I I know that at the high school level I had a pretty good amount of autonomy to decide what did that grade actually represent.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Uh was it pure academic knowledge? Um, and there are some nice things about that. It's clean cut. Uh it it I and I don't have to worry about um, you know, making some judgment calls. It's not subjective at all, it's pretty objective. Clear cut. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You can gather evidence to support it.
SPEAKER_01I can I can gather evidence to say this student knows this stuff at this level.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Uh and and and this student doesn't know this stuff at this level. Right. At the same time, the uh impact of those things, because I don't have autonomy to decide how their parents uh will judge that grade, or how their scholarships are gonna judge that grade, or how they themselves view themselves as a as a a part of that grade. I mean, there it's a factual thing, yeah, but that's gonna impact them because society, because we have decided what grades mean and what is valuable uh in a grade. And and we've assigned certain things that I don't know, it it makes it it makes it tough. It makes it really hard because there's implications well beyond academic knowledge. For sure.
COVID*
SPEAKER_00I just want to throw this in here. Uh, I don't want to start a whole nother 30-minute podcast conversation about this, but but I I think we'd be remiss not to call out the impact of COVID as well. Sure. Like when we talk about, you know, the ideal on paper scenario where a grade reflects academic knowledge, well, what does that mean in the COVID era?
SPEAKER_01Oh, wow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right? Like what we I I think everyone can agree we have to change the standard. Uh, you know, we have to think about what do we expect students to learn in a school year differently when they're not physically in the building. Yeah. When, you know, they're dealing with uh, we're all dealing with uh emotional impact of remote learning and you know, cases and all all of this, all of the stuff that we've all collectively been trying to manage. And I just think how how different I would think about my grading scheme and the things that I would grade and measure. You know, if I if I had just sort of stuck to this, nope, this is how it is, um, you know, what impact would that have had? I know in the is in some of the teacher leadership groups that I frequent and um organizations where I have opportunity to talk with teachers, like the D and F rates are outrageous at high school, right? And and it's perfectly understandable. And it doesn't, you know, we think of what D's and Fs typically represent. Uh like we started with, what does that reflect about the student? What do you think of a straight A student? Well, what do you think of a D and F student?
SPEAKER_01And and that's not maybe fair in the COVID era, or at least it um it needs to have an asterisk. Right, right. Uh it needs to with explanation. With some sign of yeah, with some sort of uh of explanation on that. And uh to that end, and I'm gonna say this for for both of us, so you can echo if you like, but uh we so greatly appreciate everything that every educator has gone through. Just remarkable and and what you have done to bring our students. I have two. I have two little boys that are uh going to school right now in this COVID era, and uh I so greatly appreciate the efforts and the trials and the uh things that everyone has gone through to make it the best that they possibly can for our kids. So um I know that's that might not be where we intended the final piece of this podcast to go, but I just I I want to um make sure that uh we put that out there, that we so greatly appreciate everything that you have done uh for our kids.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And and the fact that, you know, those folks are listening to us right now, that they're still continuing to engage in learning more about their craft and wanting to get better and consider ideas, you know, when they have been, you know, thrown in the trenches literally. Um yeah, I I can't echo enough. And although I don't have school-aged children anymore, I have a son and a daughter-in-law who are both educators and uh just to watch the tremendous amount of effort that they've put in, very early career teachers too. I think, oh my gosh, they are learning so much that is gonna that will translate into amazing educational practice down the road for them. So I also echo just a great thanks to our teachers and a great thanks, you know, in terms of grading. We know that everybody is wants their grades to reflect the best things for their students. And um, and I just thank people for that.
SPEAKER_01For sure, for sure. Well, Joni, you've given us uh several things to talk about, to think about uh in going forward for our grading practices. Um, so I think this is a good place for us to uh to get ready to go for our next session.
SPEAKER_00Yep, excited for that.
SPEAKER_01So I'll look forward to talking to you next time.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's it for this time. Be sure to check the show notes for the resources we mentioned and others you might want to explore. We would love to hear your feedback and your suggestions for future topics. And if you're enjoying learning with us, consider leaving a review to help others find us and share the podcast with a fellow math educator. See you next time.