Grading

Viewpoints on Grades

Faculties tend to be very homogeneous in their view of what grades (the isolated artifacts A-, D, or B+ given at the completion of an assignment or course) represent. Faculty members acknowledge that grading criteria and methods of grade calculations may differ among their colleagues, but they all view grades as constructs that recognize and reward various levels of achievement. On the other hand, student life studies suggest that early career students commonly perceive grades as a reward for effort. Effort is important, but it does not directly correlate with academic success. Realistically, students begin classes with different entry-level skills and unique scholastic aptitudes. In any given course, some students will have to put forth a huge amount of sustained effort just to make a C, whereas others will only have to exert a minimal amount of concerted effort to earn a B. Naive views of the role of effort in a competency-based grading system may explain why many students with a 57% cumulative test and assignment average doggedly persist in believing that they will surely get a C in the course if they come to class “almost every time.” Obviously, it is imperative that teachers communicate with students early in the academic term about the nature and structure of the grading process.

Grading in a New Paradigm

Intuitively, teachers begin shaping a course by asking themselves, “What am I going to cover in class this semester?” Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson, who have led over 300 grading and assessment workshops in the United States and abroad since 1995, encourage faculty to start by asking a very different question: “What will my students be able to know and do at the end of the semester?” Their student-centered approach to planning and grading was indicative of the major educational paradigm shift of the 1990s—a shift from an emphasis on teaching to an emphasis on student learning. U.S. schools, colleges, and universities had long been evaluated by how well-qualified they were to deliver an educational product—for example, number of state-certified teachers in the [Page 451]system, percentage of faculty holding a Ph.D., or annual number of scholarly articles published per institution. But by the late 1990s, national education shareholders were asking for direct evidence of student learning—for example, student licensure exam pass rates, writing portfolios, employer ratings of recent graduate skills—to document that students were learning.

...