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A grading system is the most common way to assess a student’s skill these days. Generally, a grading system is a process by which educators evaluate the performance of the students in exams on the standard particular scales which is based on the points completely and it consists of the grades such as A-F or range such as 1-10; generally, letters or numbers are used to describe the grades of the students. In past times, marks and percentages were the only ways of assessing the students in their exams but today, almost all the nations adopted grading systems for marking the students in the exams.
Nowadays, every field of work has become advanced, so has the educational sector. The educational field has witnessed diverse changes as compared to the past. Everyday advancement is happening and new techniques are introduced into the education system regularly.
It can’t be denied that grades are an important element of schools, but the problem is that the current systems used to evaluate and assign grades are mostly ineffective. These are the four largest issues with our current education grading system:
1) Promotes rote learning method
Grading system promotes rote learning method. The compulsive desire of getting good grades inculcates the habit of rote learning in many students. They just memorize the whole syllabus to get good grades without caring to understand it. Expectations of parents also play a major role in this. The more they expect their child to bring good grades, the more it promotes rote learning because the focus gets distracted from understanding the concepts, but the focus is to get good grades.
2) Inaccurate measure of skills
The grading system cannot measure the understanding skills of a student. Any student with a little understanding can bring good grades by rote learning and performing well in their subjects. The focus should be more on understanding concepts deeply so that students can develop a skill in a better way.
3) Dependency on teachers
Grading system is predominantly dependent on teachers. Grades can be manipulated by teachers if they want to. Teachers can sometimes also consider non-academic factors when computing an academic grade. These factors include personal terms of relation, attendance, behaviour, and a long list of many other things.
4) Using a single grade to demonstrate performance is problematic –
Using a single letter grade to summarize a student’s performance in one content area does not accurately translate a student’s performance, skills, and achievement over a quarter, semester, or year. Suppose, at the end of the grading period one of the students got a C in reading, then it’s not sure if it was his reading fluency, his inability to understand cause and effect, or if he wasn’t accurately constructing the sentences. The roots of students’ struggles are not being identified when a singular letter grade is used.
So, the problem lies in grading practices, not the grading scales. So whether the usual methods of grading should be reformed or replaced with something completely different—So reform and improvement would be a better choice. There exist two realities in debating this:
(1) grading practices are at least partly rooted in teachers’ foundational beliefs about learning and assessment, and
(2) grading is associated with important institutional practices, such as admission into higher education institutions. Since it is not possible to erase and replace teachers’ beliefs and prior experiences or immediately alter institutional practices, grading will have to be reformed, not changed suddenly at once.
Hence, Deep-rooted reforms can help our grading systems fulfill their purpose. If done properly, grading can become a useful source of information in a comprehensive and balanced assessment system. Effectively determining grades properly in a fair manner can help students, parents, teachers, and administrators understand what has been learned and select more appropriate next steps in teaching, planning, and resourcing.
To that end, seven practices should be employed to improve grading practices so these practices are most effective in communicating student progress.
- Mentioning purpose – Teachers, parents, and students should know the purpose of their grading and reporting system like what it should communicate, what it should not communicate, and what additional information should be available to them.
- Clarity about goals – Clear learning goals, instruction, and assessment are the basis of a fair grading system. When teachers have clarity about learning goals, they can provide appropriate instruction and use assessments that enable valid inferences about a student’s learning. When students are clear about goals, they’re able to regulate their learning in a better way; they can set a goal and work toward it, monitoring their understandings and adjusting their work as they go. Hence, the assessment of a student’s performance should be closely aligned to targeted goals.
- Fair grades on the basis of the evidence-The quality of the evidence make a great deal of difference. So, the evidence should not be manipulated. Each piece of evidence- a student’s work on an assignment or teacher’s observation of what a student does or says, should support valid conclusions about whatever learning outcome or skill it’s being used to rate and should be interpreted accurately and without any bias. A fair process should be followed by teachers in the evaluation and by students in their learning. Grading practice should be such that it discourages cheating and encourages students to understand the concepts honestly.
- Reflecting current achievement–Grades should be based on a synthesis of evidence that reflects students‘ current level of learning or accomplishment, not an average of performance over a period of time. The status of students at the beginning or halfway through a learning sequence shouldn’t matter. How many times they fell short during that sequence shouldn’t matter. What matters the most is what they have learned and whether they are able to use acquired skills properly. Hence the practice of giving one final grade at the end of a year should be replaced by continuous evaluations.
- Setting conditions for the opportunity to learn—including feedback– Students should be given proper opportunities to practice and receive feedback before their work is graded. Students should be provided with opportunities to apply new learning and receive feedback before they’re evaluated. For that, the ongoing formative assessments can provide feedback, and the results of such assessments should not be graded. The feedback students receive on ongoing work should be based on similar criteria as will be used for grading summative assessments. Such effective feedback fuels the learning cycle that guides students in self-regulation of learning and helps them connect the practice and learning work they do with the grades they receive. Regular feedback helps students to figure out their mistakes and improve them from time to time.
- Reporting achievement separately– The main grades on a report card should mention only students’ current status on achieving intended learning outcomes, represented by the quality of work on well-designed evaluations, performances, or demonstrations. Other things, like SEL skills, or work habits (completing homework on time, attention in the classroom), collaboration, behaviour, and attendance should be reported in a separate section on the report card (sometimes called Learning Skills). Reporting and rating such factors should be done using a different scale from the achievement grades so that the measurement areas aren’t confused.
- Using scales with fewer gradations– For report cards, scales with fewer categories (A, B, C, D, E), as opposed to more categories (like 0–100), should be used. Fewer is better here because as the number of categories rises, inter-rater reliability goes down meaning that different teachers looking at the same type of answer (in case of a subjective evaluation) are less likely to assign the same grade.
Also read: Online Classes vs. Traditional Classroom Learning
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it possible to implement all the changes in grading practices mentioned above?
Yes, it is possible. Above mentioned reforms might be difficult to implement but not impossible. But it is not possible to replace traditional grading practices completely at once, but reforms are possible. Since we can't erase and replace teachers' beliefs and prior experiences or immediately alter institutional practices, grading will have to be reformed, not changed at once.
As no practice is ideal, so is it possible to build a fair grading practice?
No practice is perfect, because it is not possible to have perfect execution. But above proposed practices ensure a better grading system than before and if executed properly by universities, teachers, and students, it will come out as an unbiased, fair grading practice.
Since these changes will take a lot of time, what improvements should be made by teachers and students on a personal level?
Students should focus more on understanding concepts deeply instead of rote learning just for the sake of examination. They should be honest in their exams and not indulge in any cheating practices. Getting good knowledge should be the goal and not just getting good grades should be the goal. On the other hand, teachers should not do the evaluation in a biased manner. They should give feedback to their students regularly and guide them throughout.
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