but... what's my grade?

It’s the fourth week of school. I’m in the middle of handing back student quizzes, running all over the classroom trying to get them all back under 5 minutes. Teachers definitely get their steps in.

I graded these quizzes a bit differently and am anxiously awaiting the student responses. On the quizzes, I simply circled the problems that needed reworking. No corrections, no points, no grade. I get no more than 5 quizzes back to students when the uproar begins. “Ms. G, I don’t see my grade!”, “Miss, my dad needs to know my points!”, “Ms. G, you forgot the grades!” I continued to pass back the quizzes while I observed the student responses. One student thought the lack of points on the quiz meant he got a zero and was borderline in tears. Finally, all quizzes were returned and the room was the quietest it has ever been as they awaited my response.

I run after school study groups three days a week in my classroom. Sometimes students come for math help and many come to sit in the comfy chairs in the library corner (thanks Target!). The number of students coming for math help ranges from 0 to 30 and is completely dependent on whether they recently received a grade on something. I would input quiz grades in the grading system the day before handing them back, students would see said grade in the grading system, and I would bet on ~30 students coming to that day’s after school session. The bell rings at 3:15 and by 3:16 I have the first 5 students barging into the classroom frantically asking “Why did I get a C?” or “How do I change by D to an A in the next 20 minutes?”. I had never heard one student ask “What did I miss on the quiz?” or “How can I understand this material better?”.

When I first began teaching and desperately seeking every bit of advice I could get from veteran teachers, one of the most common things I would hear is something along the lines of: “Always be very transparent about your grading procedure. Students should always know where they are at.” Of course, I know exactly where these teachers are coming from. This is the system our students have grown up with, what they know. Grades are a motivator and are interpretable. Students know what they mean and often know what to do to get the points. The problem was that students had so much practice with the system that they could get an A in a class and not have mastered the material.

Everything I would assign to students in class- from formal tests to a partner practice problem- had to have a grade attached to it. There had to be points. Or else, I thought, motivation would be lost. The activities, however small, were no longer about the learning. They weren’t about the process. Students saw them only as a means to a grade. So, desperately, I tried something new.

“Grades and points are getting in the way of your learning and starting to affect our learning environment,” I began to explain. Then, I used the rest of the class period to explain and discuss our new mastery-based grading system. For all the non-teachers, this is a grading system on a scale from 0-4, 0 representing “not mastered” and 4 representing “above mastery level.” There would be no more points for participation or simple completion of exercises. No more As or Fs. Everything we do in class is a chance for the students to either work towards mastery or display mastery. The motivation of classroom activities was now to understand the material on a mastery level. The mastery level of students was continuously updated throughout a given unit and students watched themselves go from a 0 to a 3 or even a 4. And this mastery was being captured during group work, number talks, poster making, online activities, in after school sessions, etc. It allowed students to work towards and display mastery at their own pace and in their own way.

There was also a new policy for after school sessions. The only question allowed was “How can I work towards mastery on this skill?”. There would be many times a student would walk into the classroom, begin to ask “What’s my gra-”, and then walk back outside, reenter, and ask “How can I work towards mastery on __?” without me saying a word.

Of course, this new system was not without bumps in the road. Trust me, there were plenty of bumps. It was much more difficult to run a classroom with a more ambiguous grading system. The classroom turned into a more unpredictable environment for students, which came with more anxiety and fears. But, throughout the school year, these fears lessened and the anxiety faded. There was an unprecedented level of engagement and genuine inquiry.

A lot of times, I think data transparency in the classroom is associated with students tracking their own grades and being able to take the initiative to fix them. Of course, data transparency is partly about students tracking and owning their progress. However, the measure of progress is what needed tweaking in our classroom.

“The measure of progress is what needed tweaking in our classroom.”