Dealing with Pushback on Minimum Grades

(Originally titled “The Unwinnable Battle Over Minimum Grades”) 

            In this Educational Leadership article, Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) and Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (San Diego State University) say grading reform has been a “lightning rod for controversy,” especially the idea of minimum grades – giving a student a 50 or 60 instead of a zero for work not turned in. The rationale: preventing a single grade from drastically pulling down overall performance and undermining students’ incentive to keep trying. 

            The pushback: minimum grades “offer unfair and unearned assistance to low-performing students,” say the authors, giving students credit for incomplete or failing work and not teaching them responsibility. This criticism has led some districts to reverse course on minimum grading. 

            But the real problem isn’t zeroes, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. It’s the 100-point grading scale and the time-honored practice of averaging grades. On the first: 

• A percentage scale has 101 possible levels of performance, allowing teachers to assess student work in a super-precise manner. 
• But tests and assignments are not exact measures, and subjectivity and other variables introduce distortions. 
• The wide range of possible grades compounds those distortions (even with minimum grading, teachers must discern 51 levels), which increases unreliability. 
• Errors and distortions have been especially harmful to students of color. 

            The solution? Using a five-level integer grading scale (4 3 2 1 0 or A B C D E) like most colleges and universities, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. This approach aligns with the four-point scale used by most state tests (Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic) and the classroom rubrics used by many teachers. Zeroes can still be given, but they have much less sting: students must improve only one level to pass, compared with moving from zero to 50 or 60 on a percentage scale. And grades can be converted to GPAs with several decimal points. 

            Integer grading systems, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey, “make grading much more consistent and reliable. Teachers with comparable knowledge and experience find it easier to agree on distinctions between an A level versus a B level of performance than when asked to distinguish a 90 from an 89 using a percentage grading scale. Clear and well-defined scoring criteria, coupled with a limited number of grading categories, are essential in implementing grading reforms that prioritize fairness, accuracy, and equity.” 

    The second design flaw in traditional grading, say the authors, is averaging all scores across a grading period. The problems: 

• Averaging accentuates the devasting influence of zeroes. 
• Averaging says that everything students do counts equally. 
• Averaging makes students less likely to take risks and try new approaches. 
• Averaging doesn’t show student growth – the final grade may indicate mastery. 
• If effort and behavior are averaged in, feedback on academic learning is diluted. 

“The primary purpose of grading is to effectively communicate student achievement toward specified standards, at this point in time,” says the American School of Paris’s purpose statement. Well said! say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. 

 “The Unwinnable Battle Over Minimum Grades” by Thomas Guskey, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey in Educational Leadership, October 2024 (Vol. 82, #2, pp. 68-72); the authors can be reached at guskey@uky.edu, dfisher@mail.sdsu.edu, and nfrey@mail.sdsu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1056 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Recommended Books on Middle School Relationships

        In this School Library Journal feature, Laura Dooley-Taylor recommends books about tween relationships, in all their drama and complexity: 

• The Science of Friendship by Tanita Davis, grade 3-7 
• Honey and Me by Meira Drazin, grade 5-8 
• Maya Plays the Part by Calyssa Erb, grade 3-7 
• Other Side of Perfect by Melanie Florence and Richard Scrimger, grade 4-8 
• Match Point! by Maddie Gallegos, grade 4-7 
• Table Titans Club by Scott Kurtz, grade 5-8 
• Walkin’ the Dog by Chris Lynch, grade 5-8 
• Blue to the Sky by Sylvia McNicoll, grade 5-7 
• Running in Flip-Flops from the End of the World by Justin Reynolds, grade 3-7 
• Grounded by Aisha Saeed, Huda Al-Marashi, & Jamila Thompkins-Bigelow, grade 5-8 
• Eli Over Easy by Phil Stamper, grade 5-8 
• Free Period by Ali Terese, grade 4-7 
• The Braid Girls by Sherri Winston, grade 3-7 
• Summer At Squee by Andrea Wang, grade 3-7 

 “Break-Ups and Make-Ups: 14 Books That Tackle Tween Friendships” by Laura Dooley-Taylor in School Library Journal, August 2024 (Vol. 70, #8, pp. 48-51)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1049 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Spotting Fake News Stories

•  Check the URL of the story: abcnews.com is a legitimate news source. abcnews.com.co is not. Anything that ends with something other than .com is likely to be a spoof.

• If someone important is quoted, google the quote. It can be tracked back to an event or a statement if it is legit.

• Reverse search the questionable image on google. Right click the image and copy the URL.  Go to images.google.com and paste the URL to find out where it came from.

Check with these tools:

• Politics - Factcheck.org and Politifact.com
• General Scams - Snopes.com 
• Email and Facebook Hoaxes - Truthorfiction.com and Hoaxslayer.com

David Brooks on the Unique Qualities of Late Bloomers

         In this article in The Atlantic, David Brooks lists people who flourished late in their lives, among them Paul Cézanne, Charles Darwin, Julia Child, Morgan Freeman, Isak Dinesen, Morris Chang, Alfred Hitchcock, and Copernicus. Why didn’t these people (and many others) excel earlier? What traits or skills enabled them to achieve great things well past what was supposedly their prime? “It turns out that late bloomers are not simply early bloomers on a delayed timetable,” says Brooks. “Late bloomers tend to be qualitatively different, possessing a different set of abilities that are mostly invisible to, or discouraged by, our current education system.” He suggests some traits that parents and educators might watch for and encourage with kids who seem to be off to a slow start: 

• Intrinsic motivation – Late bloomers often don’t care about the kinds of extrinsic rewards built into schools and the workplace – grades, prizes, money, and other goodies designed to get people to adopt a “merit-badge mentality” and keep working on inherently unpleasant tasks, complying with other people’s methods and goals. Winston Churchill was a bad student because he needed something that his schools rarely offered. “Where my reason, imagination, or interest were not engaged,” he said, “I would not or could not learn.” 
• Early screw-ups – Brooks names several later-famous people who in their 20s and 30s were fired, got in fistfights, or couldn’t get along with colleagues. They weren’t good at following rules and adhering to the conventional rules of success, but they survived and eventually got their act together. 
• Wide-ranging curiosity – “Many late bloomers endure a brutal wandering period,” says Brooks, “as they cast about for a vocation. Julia Child made hats, worked for U.S. intelligence… and thought about trying to become a novelist before enrolling in a French cooking school at 37.” Diverse interests and years of exploration finally led to a true avocation. 
• The ability to self-teach – “Late bloomers don’t find their calling until they are too old for traditional education systems,” says Brooks, so they figure out other ways of acquiring the knowledge and skills they need. 
• An explorer’s mind – After years of false starts and mistakes, when late bloomers come into their own, they are freer of the ties and associations of early bloomers and more able to change their minds and update what they’re working on. 
• Wisdom – “After a lifetime of experimentation,” says Brooks, “some late bloomers transcend their craft or career and achieve a kind of comprehensive wisdom… the ability to see things from multiple points of view, the ability to aggregate perspectives and rest in the tensions between them.” 
• Unstoppable energy – “I’ve noticed this pattern again and again,” says Brooks describing two mentors who were driven and productive at the very end of their lives: “Slow at the start, late bloomers are still sprinting during that final lap – they do not slow down as age brings its decay. They are seeking. They are striving. They are in it with all their heart.” 

“You Might Be a Late Bloomer” by David Brooks in The Atlantic, June 26, 2024

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1047 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Using Open-Ended Math Questions to Differentiate Instruction

          In this Mathematics Teacher article, teacher/consultant/author Marian Small says “too many students sit in a mathematics class where the material being taught is just not quite at the right level for them” – either too easy or too difficult. The best way to engage all students, Small believes, is asking open-ended questions. Some examples: 

• Instead of asking fifth graders to multiply 42 x 37, pose this problem: You multiply two numbers that are 5 apart. What could the product be? I hope some of you use small numbers and some larger numbers. Some students might multiply 3 x 8 while others multiply 92 x 97. 
• There are ___ students in one school and ___ in another school. Choose values that make sense to you for both blanks and tell how many there are in both schools together. 
• You multiply two numbers and the tens digit of the product is 8. What could you be multiplying? One student might multiply 40 x 2 while another multiplies 140 x 2 and the class discusses the connections. 
• A number is a lot like 50. What might it be? What’s a number that you think is very different from 50? The teacher follows up by asking what 25 and 50, for example, have in common, or how 49 and 50 are different. 
• You evaluate an algebraic expression. If you increase the value of the variable just a little, the value of the expression increases a lot. What might the expression be? 
• The answer to a question is the word quadratic. What could the question be? 

Small says there are at least four benefits to posing open-ended rather than right-answer questions: 

• More students are engaged because there will be a variety of unique answers. - Because it’s easier to be right, students’ confidence increases. 
• A variety of responses produces a richer mathematical conversation. 
• There’s the potential to change students’ beliefs about the nature of mathematics. 

 “The Power of Open-Ended Questions” by Marian Small in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, July 2024 (Vol. 117, #7, pp. 528-529)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1046 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

A Rookie Teacher Responds to Critical Feedback

          In this Mathematics Teacher article, Georgia middle-school teacher Corey Gray describes getting some blunt feedback from his principal in October of his first year. Gray thought he had taught an excellent lesson as the principal sat with her laptop at the back of the room: a clear explanation of the distributive property, students turning and talking about their strategies, then using manipulatives. But when Gray nervously took a seat in the principal’s office that afternoon, she said, “You are an amazing math teacher. However, your expectations for a one-size-fits-all type of perfection leads to your own frustration in the classroom and clouds your vision of your students’ mathematical genius.” She used the analogy of trying to put square pegs into round holes. 

          Gray was taken aback but soon realized the principal was right. His very structured classroom management and one-right-answer approach to math procedures “was creating an environment riddled with fear and fraught with comparison,” he says. “I asked for answers, rather than asking for pathways to solutions. I confirmed correct answers only, rather than affirming thinking and productive struggle. I did not take the time to truly understand, appreciate, and value my students for who they were…” Students were doing math rather than thinking about math, resulting in disappointing and inequitable outcomes. Gray’s takeaway from the conversation boiled down to three lessons: 

•  Know that you are on a journey. “This journey is not easy,” he says, “but it is necessary to develop our teaching abilities and character… Embracing this truth allows you to welcome and seek out community…” 
• No one knows everything, but surround yourself with educators who know a lot. Collectively, you and your fellow teachers need to take risks, seek out the best methods and materials, and figure out what works best for which students. 
• Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good. “For me,” says Gray, “my desire to create the perfect educational environment for my students, anchored in problem-solving and student choice, fuels me, but at times it can become a burden because I often feel alone and burnt out… I remind myself daily to give myself grace, as I am not alone in this quest.” 

 “Teaching Is a Journey: Square Pegs, Round Holes” by Corey Gray in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, July 2024 (Vol. 117, #7, pp. 530-532); Gray can be reached at corey.gray@uga.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1046 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Tom Guskey on Solving the Problem of Inconsistent Grading

            In this Kappan article, Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) says the main reason for parent pushback on standards-based grading is inconsistency among teachers. Within the same school, he says, “What counts as part of the grade, what doesn’t count, and how different aspects of students’ performance are weighted in determining grades – all can be different.” Such variations in grading policies from classroom to classroom, says Guskey, are unfair and inequitable because: 

• Some students game the system, calculating and manipulating points for good grades. 
• For other students, the grading game is a mysterious puzzle they must figure out in every class, and their grades don’t reflect their actual learning. 
• When parents ask their children what grades they expect, kids often have no clue. 

“Before standards-based or competency-based grading reforms can be implemented,” says Guskey, “this inconsistency in grading must be addressed.” Here are three steps he believes schools and districts need to take: 

• Reach consensus on the purpose of grading and report cards. This involves deciding what information grades will communicate, the primary audience, and the purpose. Guskey shares these exemplars: 
• Elementary: The purpose of this report card is to describe students’ learning progress to parents and families, based on our school’s learning goals for each grade level. It is intended to inform parents and families about learning successes and to guide improvements when needed. 
• Middle/high: The purpose of this report card is to communicate with parents, families, and students about the achievement of specific learning goals. It identifies students’ current levels of performance regarding those goals, areas of strength, and areas where additional time and effort are needed. 
• The American School of Paris: The primary purpose of grading is to effectively communicate student achievement toward specific standards, at this point in time. A grade should reflect what a student knows and is able to do. Students will receive separate feedback and evaluation on their learning habits, which will not be included in the academic achievement grades. 

In the Paris school’s statement, Guskey highlights the importance of grades reporting mastery of standards, not averages (which allow early stumbles to unfairly pull down students’ grades), and separating students’ academic achievement from other areas of performance. 

• Use grading scales with 4-7 levels of performance. Guskey believes that 100-point grading scales offer “the illusion of precision” but are actually more vulnerable to teacher subjectivity and unreliability. Researchers have found that using fewer grading levels increases inter-rater reliability and reduces teacher subjectivity and variability from class to class. “Teachers with comparable knowledge and experience,” says Guskey, “are far more likely to agree when distinguishing an A level from a B level of performance than when distinguishing a 90 from an 89 using the percentage scale. The use of clear and well-defined scoring criteria, along with a limited number of grading categories, helps ensure a shared understanding among teachers and promotes more-consistent grading practices.”

• Separately report academic and non-academic student performance. “Hodgepodge” grades that combine academic attainment, progress/improvement, and other areas (effort, class participation, collaboration, responsibility, initiative, organization, self-regulation, low-stakes assessments, homework) make report cards “a confusing amalgamation that is impossible to interpret clearly and accurately,” says Guskey. He advocates separate reporting of these three categories on report cards and transcripts, which produces a more-accurate picture of academic performance, progress, and other areas. What’s more, he says, it’s less work for teachers since they don’t have to calculate an amalgam of student performance in the different domains. 

            “These steps,” Guskey concludes, “address the greatest concerns of parents and families, facilitate better communication between school and home, and ensure greater honesty, accuracy, and equity in grading.” 

“Addressing Inconsistencies in Grading Practices” by Thomas Guskey in Kappan, May 2024 (Vol. 105, #8, pp. 52-57); Guskey can be reached at Guskey@uky.edu. See Marshall Memo 962 for another Guskey article on grading.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1035 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.