Resolving My Grading Crisis – For This Year, at Least

My grading problem has been bugging me all summer, and now that August is half over, I need a plan. It’s not going to be perfect, but I can’t go back to pretending my point system and rubrics lead to fair and honest assessments of student writing. If my grading system is to promote my values as both a teacher and a writer, something needs to change.

My new grading system must:

1. Provide some basis of merit-based grading at the end of each trimester. At my school, the assumption is that grades reflect the quality of student work. (This assumption is flawed, but it’s what I’m working with.)

2. Look more like real-life writing assessment. Any time I read—an article, an email, a recipe—I’m assessing. Am I convinced? Intrigued? Disturbed? Encouraged? With rubrics, instead of thinking about what the writing says, I’m simply deciding the extent to which the work measures up to prescribed categories. My comments merely show students what they did wrong. Why not use comments to show what they did right: inspiring thoughts, ideas, feelings, and associations?

3. Encourage (or at least maintain) students’ intellectual risk-taking, deep thinking, love of learning, interest, and self-esteem. If I have to grade, I want my policy to minimize the damage of grading.

4. Honor diversity, both of the writing itself and of people’s reactions to it. What if the writing moves others but doesn’t move me? Am I the ultimate arbiter of good writing? I sure hope not.

So here’s what I’m thinking.

Each trimester, there are two major writing projects and lots of little writing assignments. For major writing projects, like the vignette collections or the Steinbeck essays, students go though an elaborate revision process. They get feedback from several readers, make sense of what the different readers said, and make choices about what to cut, keep, change, rearrange, and add. By having different people read the papers, students get to see a variety of reactions—and from people other than me.

Then, students turn in their work on a due date. When I read, I make, in the words of Peter Elbow, “a binary decision: acceptable or not.” Pass or fail. Satisfactory or unsatisfactory. The publishing industry does it: accept or reject. I expect quality writing and high effort, and if I don’t think a student is meeting those expectations, I reject his or her submission—and there’s my merit-based grading. I write S (satisfactory) or U (unsatisfactory) on every paper. Students don’t have to feel bad about their B- papers because there are no B- papers.

Instead of “justification comments,” written to prove that the grade I’ve given is fair, I’ll write what I think about as I read—the kinds of comments I would write on any other text. I’ll also write one suggestion for future writing on every single paper and have students refer back to the suggestions the next time they write. Every writer, even Pulitzer winners, can grow.

And the U papers? If a student’s writing doesn’t pass muster, I expect him or her to give me a plan for revising or redoing the assignment, along with a due date. Maybe students feel bad if they write unsatisfactory papers, but they can redo them. And then they can feel good knowing they improved.

More importantly, now that students don’t have to find a magic formula to satisfy me (or my rubric), their writing doesn’t have to be formulaic! They can take more risks in their writing. They can enjoy and personalize the assignments. I’m leaving more room for diverse interpretations of the assignment and multiple paths to excellent writing. I can still use rubrics, but as writing guidelines instead of grading yardsticks. I can point to them when students do unsatisfactory work, but I no longer have to pretend they’re some sort of scientific measuring device.

At the end of the trimester, students compile their writing (and feedback), and they write a reflection on what they’ve learned as a writer. Where did they start out? Where did they end up? Where are they going next? Each student also proposes and defends a trimester grade. Those grades and comments, along with my own observations and suggestions, form the basis of my home reports.

Because this system raises the danger of students taking advantage, I need some checks and balances. I probably need more, but here are the two I have so far.

1. Lateness is not tolerated. If an assignment is going to be late, the student must talk to me in advance, at least the night before a minor assignment and two nights before a major assignment is due. The student must tell me when s/he will turn in the assignment and how s/he will make sure it’s done by then. If a student misses school the day an assignment is due, s/he’s expected to turn in the assignment either beforehand or electronically, except in cases of illness or family emergency. And, students have to inform me themselves—not through their parents. I’m so sick of their dodging responsibility. And I’m sick of their technology excuses. How often does your toner run out, your internet go down, and your flash drive break all on the same day? A student who doesn’t follow my lateness policy doesn’t get higher than an A-. And the more unexcused late assignments there are, the lower the grade goes. Fair?

2. If a student has any never-revised “U” assignments or never-done work, that student can’t get higher than a B. Basically, “U” means the student didn’t follow the assignment, didn’t (as one of my colleagues puts it on her rubric) demonstrate evidence of my teaching, didn’t respond thoughtfully to feedback, didn’t think too hard, didn’t learn too much. The more outstanding U papers or missed work, the lower the grade. Again, this is merit-based grading.

And what are the potential problems?

· Kids like who work really hard, learn a lot, grow a lot as writers—but still are doing less-than-stellar writing—now get As. I can live with that.

· Kids who don’t work that hard or think that hard but write “satisfactory” (but not great) papers also get As. I have a problem with that, but a lower grade isn’t going to motivate those kids to do any better. If a kid is underperforming in my class, I need to figure out how to get that kid to open up and take some risks. I can do that without, in the mean time, docking her or his grade.

· Kids who do poor work inflating their own grades. I think my checks and balances take care of that problem. If their work is really that bad, they’ll get a U. And if they go back and rework the paper to do better, why shouldn’t they end up with a better grade?

· Kids who are being modest and lowball themselves. Well, that’s why it’s a proposed grade. I can always make it higher.

· Complaining parents. Too bad for them. I will need administrative support, though, if this is going to work.

So, is this going to work? Is it going to get me in trouble? What will students think? What problems am I not thinking of? And are they worth the risk?