What Does a Grade Really Mean?
What Does a Grade Really Mean?

In many schools today a child's grade reflects not only a grasp of academic subjects, but also a variety of other factors such as behavior, attendance, and effort. Do traditional grading systems tell us what we really want to know about a child's learning?

Extra credit, late work, class participation, and non-academic assignments (i.e. returning a signed syllabus) can influence a student's score. These factors represent life skills. While these skills may be important, they don't necessarily reflect a students' content knowledge.

Attaining good grades can be a game that often the winners are those students who do the most work. Most grading systems reward students for their behavior, not whether they mastered the material. Is this right?

Many of our teachers at New Prague Middle School understand this issue and have changed to a more standard-based grading system. They clarify the specific standards students are expected to achieve and the degree to which an individual student is proficient. In the majority of our science and math classes, summative assessments and mastering course objectives account for 70%-95% of a student's grade. These teachers administer high quality assessments that have been designed or written by a team of teachers that includes questions that push students to think critically.

Grades based on learning and not behavior is beginning to have an immediate positive impact on our school. Teachers are able to focus on learning while providing meaningful feedback. Grades need to support learning.

Students and parents need to understand that achieving in school is not about only "doing the work" or accumulating points. When teachers assign a point value to simply turning in work, or put a mark or number on everything students do, and use every number when calculating a grade, the message sent to students is clear – success lies in the quantity of points earned. Valuing the quality of the learning is not.

Students need to understand that school is about learning. Grades are artifacts of learning. They should reflect student achievement. The test of any grading policy is if the grade accurately represents what the student knows, the policy works.