The business model that is being promoted heavily on Twitter and other places, which will go unnamed out of respect, is calling itself an unconference. I have no doubt that the people behind it do care about education, but it shares none of the similarities mentioned above. It is a series of pre-recorded videos on professional development topics. They claim to have over 500 hours of on-demand professional development videos. Some of them look quite interesting actually and several are mad by people I consider friends. Since they are calling their businesss an unconference, all teachers can freely access the material, right? No, it costs $200. That does not sound like it shares the unconference philosophy of helping everyone to learn freely.

Second, I know from one of their blog posts, that several people got paid. I have no problem with people being paid for training or for conferences. I am being paid to speak in Las Vegas next week and am trying to start my own educational consulting firm. However, paying speakers defeats the point of an unconference. They are about educators coming together to share and support each other. The idea of payment in this situation, similar to the discussions I’ve been having recently about grades, takes the focus off of helping people learn and onto how to maximize one’s pay.

Third, what spontaneity and flexibility can there be with watching pre-recorded videos? Yes, there is value. But, when topics have to be approved and are selectively chosen by a small group, that severely limits the options of what can be learned about.

This is admittedly a bit of a rant. I just feel that this “unconference” is an insult to everyone who has worked so hard to help the educational community. This slanders the name of those who have spent so much of their time planning TeachMeets, EdCamps, BarCamps, NTCamp, etc…

This weekend I attended ntcamp, an unconference for both veteran and new teachers aimed at providing conversation for new teachers to learn from veteran teachers.  I sat in on a session facilitated by Jason Bedell about grades that proved to be a thought provoking one.

He created a collaborative document that holds a lot of the thoughts, reflections and reactions from the session. You can access it here.

It really got me thinking about my own grading practices, which I have always struggled with. Part of the struggle has been trying to give grades to almost 300 students that I see once a week for 45 minutes (if I’m lucky).  Part of it is just an underlying feeling that I’m not ‘doing it right.’

First of all, I’d like to thank Jason for inviting me to be a part of the summer guest blogging series on assessment practices.  In a way, it seems a bit out of my comfort zone to be asked to write somewhere other than my own blog, because I firmly believe that anyone can become an expert in today’s world of self-publishing.  The difference between me and many other educators interested in assessment reform isn’t knowledge – it’s context.  Assessment reform (a.k.a. “standards-based grading” or “SBG”) will look a bit different at different grade levels, with different students and in different disciplines.  No matter what it looks like, it should be more than a mere change in the way grades are reported out.

“…changing classroom assessment is the beginning of a revolution – a revolution in classroom practices of all kinds…Getting classroom assessment right is not a simplistic, either-or situation. It is a complex mix of challenging personal beliefs, rethinking instruction and learning new ways to assess for different purposes.” (Earl, 2003, pp. 15-16)

In my reading and six years of experience, I’ve found a few core beliefs of assessment worth hanging on to – the “tenets of assessment/grading reform,” if you will and I’d like to share them with you.  Without further ado…

Allow new evidence of achievement to replace old evidence.

“Classroom assessments and grading should focus on how well – not on when – the student mastered the designated knowledge and skill” (McTighe & O’Connor, 2005)

Consider the following example. Assume that homework is graded on completion and quizzes/tests on content mastery.
Bobby: Homework: 50% Quiz: 60% Test: 100%
Suzy: Homework: 100% Quiz 100% Test: 100%

Bobby did not understand the concepts and therefore did not complete the homework. Somewhere between the “quiz” and the “test” Bobby came in for extra help and finally “understood” the concept which explains his/her sudden improvement on the “test.”

In the traditional grading system, which student earns a better grade? Suzy, of course. A traditional points system penalizes “later learners.” On the “test,” both students demonstrated the same level of understanding, but Bobby is penalized for initially struggling. Do we have a realistic expectation that students will “get it” the first day we teach concepts to them? If so, then why not have daily tests?

Some educators, in their standards-based grading implementation plans, have mentioned assessing a single skill twice and then averaging the two scores or adding them up before entering the scores into the grade book.  I question whether these tweaks to the grade book truly serve the Bobby’s in our classrooms – the ones who learn later.  Priority of “what” a student knows should take precedence over “when” he/she learns it.

Traditional assessment and grading schemes tell students…

You must learn (insert big idea) by Thursday.  If it took you until Friday, too bad!

Sure, we all have grading deadlines pre-determined by our schools, but if students are permitted to ask questions about daily/homework/practice assignments during or outside of class, what can’t they do the same for “tests,” too?  Students only see “tests” as final, because our traditional grading systems treat them that way.

New assessments and grading schemes tell students…

Learning on Thursday is just as important as learning on Friday.  In fact, opportunities exist for you to learn the essential concepts and skills, even if it is a week or two later.

We’re in the business of helping kids “get it,” right?  Our assessment and grading schemes should encourage and reward students who understand the essential concepts and skills throughout the course, not just on our firm and rigid time lines.

Feedback trumps grades, numbers and percentages.

“Assessment always has more to do with helping students grow than with cataloging their mistakes” (Carol Tomlinson in Fisher & Frey, 2007, p. 119)

“The most powerful single modification that enhances achievement is feedback.” (John Hattie in Marzano, 2006, p. 5)

I used to think I was providing feedback to students by writing scores on their homework, quizzes and tests.  I assumed that a 15/20 on a quiz was sending the message “you need to work on some of this stuff before the test.”  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Instead the message I was sending was “get our your calculator…congratulations, you just earned a 75% in the grade book!”  As much as I hoped students would examine the quiz questions and the correct answers I wrote in, they weren’t.  Ask your students what they do when a quiz lands in their hands.  I’m fairly confident the super-majority of them will respond “I look at the score and then recycle it/throw it away/put it in my folder.”

“To be effective, feedback needs to cause thinking. Grades don’t do that. Scores don’t do that. And comments like ‘Good job’ don’t do that either. What does cause thinking is a comment that addresses what the student needs to do to improve” – Nov. 2005 Ed. Leadership article.

One strategy I found to be very helpful in making this shift in my classroom was going from number/score feedback on quizzes to a lykert scale/narrative feedback based on specific learning targets.

Quiz lykert scale

This subtle change provided clear descriptive feedback to students where they are in a learning progression.  In some instances, students were asked to first complete the lykert scale themselves in pencil.  Under each learning target narrative, the problems numbers associated are listed.  After writing in correct answers and providing written feedback on individual problems, I circled in pen where I felt each student was on the continuum, too.  When large gaps existed, it created some much needed conversation between the student and myself.  A follow-up class activity involved matching Students with relative strengths and weaknesses for 5-10 minutes to ask questions of each other or me for the sake of learning from their mistakes.  These quizzes are not entered into the grade book – they are intended to be structured feedback opportunities before the unit assessment takes place.

Grades, because they’re necessary, must have meaning.

“When grades are not deliberately connected to learning, they provide little valuable feedback regarding students’ academic strengths and weaknesses, and can even be counterproductive.”  (Winger, 2005, p. 62)

I’d enjoy eliminating grades if it was possible, but for the past six years that decision hasn’t been mine to make.  Grades are a reality in most of the secondary schools in America, so making the most of them is the best many of us can do.  In workshops I’ve conducted, I usually ask questions such as “What does an 85%, B, mean in your classroom?”

• Does it indicate a student understands 85% of the material?
• Does it mean a student understands 100% of the material, but didn’t turn in 15% of the assignments?
• Is this B a result of a student who understands 90% of the material, but turned in an assignment late?
• Did this student understand 75% of the material, but turned in a few extra crossword puzzles raising his/her grade to an 85%?

Homework, extra credit and late work penalties vary from classroom to classroom.  In my opinion, these factors only contribute to the points game and something I call grading pollution.  If you’ve taught secondary school for any length of time, you’ve probably received emails like this one…

actual parent email

Point accumulation without knowing where these points are coming from is the norm in the minds of our parents and students.  Low grades should communicate gaps in learning, not factors too difficult to synthesize from the list of assignments and points in the grade book.  I am a firm believer in standards-based grading.  Rather than reporting homework, quizzes and tests separately, points are assigned solely based on a students’ ability to demonstrate an understanding of essential concepts and skills.

standards-based grade book

Notice the different categories along the top. The learning targets are the only area of focus.  When parents and students click on the learning targets in the student information system, the target description such as “Define and classify special types of quadrilaterals” is displayed. I’ve found success using a four-point scale correlating to key phrases:

4 – demonstrates thorough understanding
3.5 – high level of understanding, but with small errors
3 – demonstrates understanding, but with significant gaps
2 – shows some understanding, but insufficient for a passing grade
1 – Attempts the problem

Grades now have meaning.  A 100% indicates a student has a thorough understanding of the learning targets assessed up until that point in the course.  Grades communicate one thing (learning) rather than leaving the percentage-to-understanding conversion up for grabs.  Parents and students gain a clearer picture of the learning goals for the course and how closely the individual student is to mastering those concepts and ideas.  That’s a good thing, right?

Conclusion:

Assessment and grading reform isn’t a simple task.  Many of us grew up playing the points game and for some of us, we played it very well.  We earned A’s in courses we knew very little about because we completed worksheets and turned them in on time.  We earned B’s in courses in which we were bored silly – we were sleeping through lectures of seemingly little importance and forgot to turn in an assignment or two.  We also earned C’s in courses we knew very little about, but because we knew more than our peers, the curve permitted us to pass.  Sadly, we also earned A’s in courses because we caught on to content “by the test” while our slower learning peers were punished for learning the same content a few days or weeks later.  We could rarely distinguish between As and Bs because the game was played with different rules in different classrooms.  Each and every one of us has an opportunity to change the culture of our classrooms and our buildings by taking a careful look at our assessment and grading practices.  Do grades reflect the speed of learning or learning itself?  Are the majority of our assessments feedback-driven or do they seem terminal to the students?  Finally, are the grades we communicate polluted or do they represent learning?

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

Works Cited:

• Earl, L. M. (2003). Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximize Student Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
• Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2007). Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for your Classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
• Marzano, R. J. (2006). Classroom Assessment & Grading that Work. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
• McTighe, J., & O’Connor, K. (2005). Seven Practices for Effective Learning. Educational Leadership, 63(3), 10-17.
• Winger, T. (2005). Grading to Communicate. Educational Leadership, 63(3), 61-65.

At what stage of the abolish grading game are you?
Last year, I was a teacher-librarian. I was in a situation where I still taught daily, but did not have my own students. I was able to focus just on helping them learn without having to worry about grading them. This was immensely liberating.  A few days ago, after conversations with like minded educators Chad Sansing and Alfonso Gonzalez I approached my administrators. I am blessed to have a very supportive administration in my current school and after I explained my reasoning, I was given permission to stop using grades. So, compared to Joe’s six years, I am a relative novice. I do, though, believe strongly that it will be for the betterment of my students.

Why do you want to or why did you abolish grading?
My first two years of teaching were miserable. If I hadn’t been rejuvenated through both my PLN on Twitter and through becoming a library media specialist, there is a good chance that I would not be in education.

A large part of that is due to the ridiculous amount of paperwork I had to do to document and justify grades, fighting with students to improve their grades (or else), and arguing with parents over how their child could have possibly achieved the grade they did. To top it all off, it never reflected what my kids really knew. I had smart but lazy kids who failed because they didn’t do the work (Which, if I can assess that they already know it, they should not have it.). I had kids who never demonstrated mastery barely passing by turning in a giant stack of work they did not try on the day grades were do. The system was a mess; beyond that, I was a mess because I was abiding by a broken system.
Also, I noticed that grades had almost completely overtaken learning as a primary motivator of students. It was much worse with my juniors than my freshman, which reflects my belief that the longer a person is in the system of school, the more he/she is affected by it. I was the students to learn because they want to learn. I cannot inspire them to do so when I am setting a grade on a pedestal as what is most important in my class.

What do you do in replace of grading?
There is a slight but important difference to me between grading and assessing. Grading is the process of documenting and symbolically representing what students know. Assessing is determining what students currently know and taking action based on that information to help them grow.
I still very much assess. I assess by giving individual feedback. I differentiate for my students. I differentiate instruction because they are not all doing the same assignment. Often, 30 kids will be doing 30 different but related things. This is time-consuming, but very worthwhile. If we differentiate our assessment, then we also need to differentiate our assessment.
My current plan (which may change in the details, but not in the vision) is to use Google Spreadsheets. Each student will have his or her own spreadsheet, which I will share with the student, the student’s guardians, the guidance counselor, and the administration. We are all a team and all need access to best help the students. In the spreadsheet, I will include a standard (For example: Students will be able to write a basic website in HTML.) and a narrative explanation that includes what the student has learned, how the student has or has not demonstrated mastery of the standard, and where the student needs to grow. I believe this will be infinitely more useful to everyone, especially the students, than a B- or a 78.

How do you establish a grade if you have no grades?
The short answer is that I don’t. My class is going to be setup as a pass/fail class. I will be teaching 6th graders for the first time and an elective class for the first time. GPA is not nearly as vital for these students as it is for high school juniors and seniors.
The long answer is slightly more involved. When you get in the habit of giving individual feedback, you are constantly having discussions and conferences with the students. This is a two-way street where you also are listening to the student and attending to the student’s needs. During the course of the year, you should have built a good rapport and a trusting relationship. Therefore, when that trust is in place, it is perfectly reasonable to have another conference with the student and discuss his/her work and what he/she deserves. In my experience, students almost universally give themselves lower grades than teachers when they are being honest and if you have invested time in building trust, there is no reason that they will no be honest.

What fears did you have about abolishing grading?
Honestly, I did not have any once I really realized that it was best for the students. I did address some common fears here, but my personality tends to be one that enjoys risk. I thrive in that environment. That does not mean that I take unnecessary risks with my students; I am more responsible than that.
What is does signify is that I would rather take a risk to do something great with my students than settle for mediocrity. There is so much mediocrity in education because we don’t take the time to reflect on what we are doing. To do things as they have always been done, without thought, is to accept mediocrity. I did that for the better part of two years and I vowed that I would never do so again when I started my third year. I have not looked back from that decision. I have failed and made mistakes, but more importantly, I have made strides with students that I did not know were possible in my first two years of education.

What challenges did you encounter with abolishing grading?
The biggest challenge for me was coming to the realization that this was even possible. I had been advocating standards-based grading, which is a very important movement in its own right, but it took a push from some great educators to make me realize that if I wanted to focus my assessment around authentic feedback, then I should just abandon grades altogether.

Are you willing to speak with others who are interested in abolishing grading?
Of course. I feel that dialogue between educators is one of the most important methods that we all can grow. You can contact me on my blog (Make sure you check out the summer guest blog series on assessment. It is relevant to this conversation.), by email, by phone (Just leave a message and I’ll call you back.), on Skype, or on Twitter.

Thank you, Jason, for having this summer guest blogging on grading and assessment. I’m honored to write a post on your blog (this is my first guest blog!). I teach middle school Science in a small, rural school in Chimacum, WA. My school of grades 6-8, ages 11-14, has about 250 students. I teach about half of those students each year. In the fall I will begin my 20th year teaching most subjects in grades 4 through 8 and in the previous 19 years I’ve only gone grade-less for one trimester. Why did I change? The short answer is that I have been disillusioned with grades. They just weren’t doing what I needed them to do.

For 19 years I assessed and graded my students pretty much the same way I was always assessed and graded. It was the way I was expected to do it and it was the only way I knew how to do it. It was very satisfying at first to know that I was doing my job right. How proud I was of those report cards knowing that parents would be looking them over talking with their children about their education. You know, I never realized how vague report cards were until I started looking over my son’s report cards. At least in elementary there are many more detailed categories so I can tell if my child can read or not, can do basic math or not, and has learned some social studies and science, and knows how to behave in a classroom environment. By middle school report cards get much less useful.

Our middle school report cards list each class your child has followed by a final letter grade and some canned comments. That’s all you have to go on. When we were switched to an online grading system we were able to write our own comments but it was limited to only a certain number of characters. I found, as other fellow teachers, that the ability to write our own comments was what we liked the most of this new online gradebook. It started to dawn on me that the letter grades and percentages were the least informative on the report card yet they were the high lights. That’s what people focused on.

I’ve been using Easy Grade Pro for years to keep track of my grades and print out progress reports and post them online. Easy Grade Pro, in my humble opinion and experience, has been the best gradebook I have ever used. It made keeping track of assignments, changing grades, choosing between letter grade, points, or percentages, and printing out progress and other great reports a breeze. It really is the easiest gradebook program I’ve ever used. But no matter how much I tracked my student’s points and grades I just wasn’t giving the information they needed. I spent a great deal of time, first of all, inputting all the points into the gradebook. And then I had to spend even more time explaining to students and parents what it all meant. It just seemed so subjective. I mean, reading over 130 to 150 papers and trying to boil down what they did to 10/10 or 8/10 or 53/100 or 77/100 varied from student to student and paper to paper. Frankly it was when I explained to students and/or parents why I graded it as I did that I was giving them the information they needed.

So why not go straight to that information that students and parents need? Feedback needs to inform our students so they know what they need to continue learning! I wrote about feedback in a blog post about assessment for learning or AfL. When I first started a Twitter account I began to learn about other teachers who felt the same way. I came across this one teacher who had gone grade-less for years and blogged about it. Joe Bower helped me get started on the path I’m currently on when I read his blogs on Abolishing Grades. I began to talk through Twitter with other teachers who were considering going grade-less or had gone grade-less too. Who knew this was such a tough thing to do! But after 19 years of doing something one way it did require some thought and planning to change. I wrote a few blogs for parents to read and sent a letter home to inform them of my change.

So for the last trimester of the 2009-10 school year I taught my five Science classes with about 150 students and didn’t give out any letters, marks, checks, or number grades. I informed all my students that if they worked and learned they would all of course pass my class. How could they not? They enthusiastically agreed. So on their online grading I gave everyone a Pass for the midterm and a Pass for their final grade. I did have a few families that still preferred a letter grade so I gave those students A’s on their final grade. That was not the purpose of my going grade-less. That was just a formality. I was focused on what was going on in my classroom.

Before going grade-less I had students who would get F’s and pretty much give up on trying to raise their grade. Learning was not halted. Those students still learned and did stuff, but they were burdened by their low grades. Students who got passing grades weren’t necessarily happy with B’s and C’s but they trudged along. Those who got A’s and B’s consistently were really focused on what they needed to do to get those A’s. Not more, just what they needed to get the A. It was wonderful not having to worry about or deal with any of that. I would just give them feedback. I didn’t have to score every single piece of work. I focused my written feedback to some well placed formative assessments along the way of whatever project or lab we were working on. We had class discussions to debrief and reflect on labs and I wandered the room talking to teams and individual students as they worked on projects. It was a very positive experience for me and for most of my students. In retrospect it was the A students who struggled the most. Now they just had to keep on working and learning because there was no A to stop them! I thought that was a great experience for them.

What I did was share the standards that they would be learning. Then I gave them essential questions to answer to see how well they understood the standards. I then used my trusted gradebook Easy Grade Pro program because it has a standards-based reporting section! I was still able to print progress reports and post them online but this time, instead of points for individual assignments, it showed the standards and how well the child understood the standards. In words, not numbers because students focus all their attention on the numbers. Next year I will add comments to the progress report so that parents can see how their child is understanding the Science standards. I also added a standard for behavior because most parents want to know how their child is behaving in school. I want to give feedback and effort and work ethic because I think those are important qualities to improve. I can and did easily either conference with a parent or share with them via email the work their child is doing. Looking through a notebook and checking blogs I can see what assignments any student could do some more work on or complete. Everyone benefits from this method of NOT grading!

So for the 2010-11 school year I will continue where I left off with no grades and standards-based assessment. I will have some of the 7th graders I had last year again in 8th grade so for them it will be business as usual. I will also get all the incoming 6th graders and they were assessed with standards in elementary so they are used to it. The only difference is that the elementary gives 1′s, 2′s, 3′s, and 4′s while I use words. I want to see if that makes a more positive impact so they aren’t using the numbers to compare and rate themselves. I’m excited and hopeful that my students will enjoy Science, work hard, and love learning. That is my goal with going grade-less.

Alfonso (Al) Gonzalez

Some ideas to think about:

1. What is the purpose of grading/assessment?
2. How are you planning to assess your students next year? (teachers)
3. How have you seen grades effect your students? (teachers)
4. What are you guidelines/expectations/vision for how your teachers should grade? (administrators)
5. How do you assess your teachers?  Is this indicative of best practices we should use with students?(administrators)
6. As a parent, what purpose do you feel grades should serve? Are you happy with how most teachers grade?
7. What is standards-based grading and is this a shift we need to adopt to help our students?
8. What would be the effects of getting rid of grades completely and just giving individual feedback to students?
9. What advice would you give to new teachers?
10. Any other idea that you have within the realm of assessment.

Last time, I waited until everyone else wrote to share my own views. I have been thinking a lot about this lately and 3 of my last 7 posts have been about it. I have learned and grown a lot, but I believe that is always room to improve and I want to think deeply about this issue before we actually have to start assessing students again soon.

Update

The following great educators have agreed to write guest posts on this blog. If you decide to join us, you will definitely be in good company.

Joan Young – @flourishingkids
Philip Cummings – @Philip_Cummings
Patrick Larkin – @bhsprincipal
Alfonso Gonzalez – @educatoral
Matt Guthrie – @mattguthrie
Matt Townsley – @mctownsley
Gregory Thompson – @akamrt
Stephen Davis – @rushtheiceberg
Jeremy Macdonald – @MrMacnology
Chad Sansing – @chadsansing
Joe Bower – @joe_bower
Luke Miles – @Lhmiles2
Russ Goerend – @russgoerend
Tony Baldasaro – @baldy7
Elizabeth Horner
Tamara Hagen of the Digital Bluestocking

I don’t value compliance. I never follow directions that don’t make sense. Yes, it has gotten me into hot water more than a few times, but I would much rather make a well-informed decision and accept the consequences, than just accept things the way they are because that is how they have always been.

What does this say about teachers?

Fear of change is normal. I understand that. I also understand that for true progress to occur, we cannot let our fears dictate our actions, especially when our hearts and minds reflect something different than our current practice. To not act out of fear of being unable to motivate students without grades, shows a few things.

1. We have lost our way. No one goes into teaching saying, “I’m so excited to get kids to behave.” There are two primary motivations that drive people into the teaching profession: love of children and love of content. Remember your first love and keep that in the front of your mind as you design your class for this upcoming year.
2. We have no real idea of what our students know. The current grading model, whether you give a certain point value to each assignment or a percentage to each category (i.e. Homework is 20%.), does not show any student’s current level of proficiency on any standard. It shows how many assignments they have done (If we are lucky, some teachers have correlated those assignments to standards somewhere.) and what score they received, but how can we know what they have really learned and what they can do with it?
3. There is little opportunity for authentic learning in our classrooms. It is not impossible, but it is difficult to make authentic learning happen regularly when what we are assessing and telling the students we care about is the final grade, not the learning, not the doing, not the service.
4. We need to retire. This line is going to sound much more harsh than I mean it to. The most important part of my job is inspiring children to want to learn. If I can’t do that anymore, or if I never could, then I really need to step aside because I am then hindering the children in my classes.

What does this say about students?

If students care about the work only because of the grade or some other reward, then they do not really care about the work. This is a system of reward and punish that is really not that much different that dangling a carrot in front of a horse; then, if the horse still does not walk, we have to hit it with a stick. This, to me, is dangerous. For the record, I graded this way for my first two years teaching. They were also my two most miserable years in the profession. We cannot blame students because the system is acting upon them. However, we can look at what kind of effects our grading system does have on them.

1. Most students care more about their grade than the content itself. When I was teaching junior English (16 and 17 year olds), I handed back their first mini-research paper with a lot of feedback and no grade. They were angry. They would ask. “How did I do?” I would respond by telling them what they did well and what needed work. Then, they looked like they were thinking for a moment, and said, “But what did I get? It is hard to break students of that model.
2. The longer that students have been a part of the system, the more work you as the teacher will have to do to change their outlook. Many of my juniors were consumed by GPA concerns because they needed a certain number to get into college or to get a scholarship. That problem still remains, but it we can change their focus to learning, they will probably do even better and they will get scores that reflect their levels of proficiency and what they have learned.

What are our options?

There are two viable options that I can see.

1. Stop grading. This will depend somewhat on your position. Non-core classes can often achieve this more easily. You building administrator, contract, or state may prevent you from going completely gradeless. However, I do recommend that you talk to Alfonso Gonzalez, who has some really great ideas in this area and only gives proficiency grades at the last moment he is required to, and Joe Bower, who is a great advocate of abolishing grades and will be presenting on it at the online Reform Symposium next weekend. We need to focus on giving individual, constructive feedback to all of our students. Numbers and letters are just extra distractions that get in the way.
2. Look into standards-based grading. I was going to utilize standards-based grading before I got permission to not grade. It involves grading based on how well the students understand a standard or achieve an objective. It is not grading based on assignment or compliance. I have written about it recently here, here (under Evaluation), and here. I also recommend you talk to Matt Townsley. While he doesn’t want to be the poster child for standards-based grading, he is one of the most articulate and knowledgeable proponents; his blog is also a wealth of resources.

My resolution

So after all this, what am I actually going to do? I have the luxury of having a supportive administration, so I received permission to abolish grades for my class. You can view the first draft of my syllabus if you are curious. I am teaching 6^th grade computer science, which is wonderful because they are old enough to be skilled with computers while being young enough that they are not yet jaded by the system. I am going to do a couple of things that I think will help motivate the students:

1. Each student is going to have a public blog on my WordPress MU. It uses BuddyPress, so it is also a social network where students can support each other and leave comments. I will be relying on #comments4kids to help give my students an authentic, worldwide audience for their work.
2. I will be emphasizing community a lot, even if it appears as though it is to the detriment of learning time at first. For students to really do assignments without grades, they have to trust me. We have to have a relationship where they believe that I will only do what is best for them. Furthermore, for them to help and work with each other, they have to have trusting relationships with each other. Community will be vital.
3. I will be giving the students choice in terms of what they want to learn and how to apply it to their own passions. They will be able to learn concepts and skills very deeply, and then both publish to a worldwide audience and use it to help their peers and their community.
4. Authentic projects will be the norm. Students need a base of skills, then they will use those skills to help others. The impact that they make will be more motivation than any grade.
5. I will continue to blog about the experience and see feedback and help.

This is my grading manifesto. What do you think? What would you change?

As an example, I just made this signature, which is also on my blog sidebar.