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I think our schools are trying to move away from letter and number grades, as it moves further and further into extreme cosntructivism.
At least that's how it appeared last week.
My third grader had worked long and hard on his ocean animal project. He was assigned the tiger shark. He wrote a terrific report, and brought in a small model of the tiger shark. He was so proud.
Then he brought home the report, and I found out it wasn't graded. Just a "nicely done" kind of comment written on it by the teacher.
No grade? Even getting a C would have told us that the teacher expects more of my son. Even a grade of C would have been better than no grade at all.
We were both disappointed. Poor kid. He's only 8 years old.
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No grade? Even getting a C would have told us that the teacher expects more of my son.
I'm not sure, but I think that this is the point. The teacher doesn't want your child looking to the teacher for a sense of accomplishment. The idea is that your child will feel an internal sense of accomplishment and thus won't grow dependent on external validation.
I think...
Not that I agree that this is a good idea ...
-Mark R.
My daughter spent 6 weeks on a math project for her gifted enrichment class. She had to learn to do a goodwor deal of above grade level math to complete the project (it was a very open-ended assignment, so I turned it into an acceleration project). The final product was to be a display for a math fair. The projects were displayed for 1 hour, then sent home without any grade or feedback beyond "nice job."
that should read "good deal of above grade level math"
Anonymous said "The idea is that your child will feel an internal sense of accomplishment and thus won't grow dependent on external validation."
I don't want a grade for validation - my child needs feedback. How can anyone be expected to improve performance without meaningful, constructive feedback? We expect it from our kid's sports coaches, why can't we get it from their teachers?
"The teacher doesn't want your child looking to the teacher for a sense of accomplishment. The idea is that your child will feel an internal sense of accomplishment and thus won't grow dependent on external validation."
And my boss doesn't want me to look to my paycheck for a sense of accomplishment either. I should just feel an internal sense of accomplishment, right?
If even adults need external rewards, how can we expect children to do better than that?
How utterly ridiculous. I say give kids whatever motivator they need. Some need approval, some need grades, some need a sense of pleasing the teacher. They're all different.
Once again, the schools are trying to take away a useful tool. When will it ever end?
An 8 year old doesn't recognize his own potential as well as an adult teacher can. Isn't that one of the reasons for teachers? To challenge students? Why CAN'T he try and please his teacher? I think it's wonderful. But I guess that's quaint, huh?
My kid was disappointed. He wanted more specifics on what he did well and what could use improvement in the future.
I guess THAT'S my job now, too. I guess I have to scrutinize every last one of his projects and give him a grade.
That used to be the teacher's job.
I understand what Mark is saying and I think he is characterizing the Alfie Kohen take on academics. My take: If writing a report about Tiger Sharks was so wonderfully internally validating the kids would do that sort of activity on their own without it being assigned. I don't have to assign video games, bike riding, swimming.
The more I think about this, the more it hits me that the schools are going through an idealistic phase. Learning for learning's sake, don't need grades, everything can be discovered because everybody is eager to learn...ya da ya da ya da.
Idealism is always misguided, and eventually comes crashing down.
Many schools just grade effort in the early grades. It doesn't sound like even that happened in this case. The times this happened with my son, I always felt that the teacher didn't have a clue about how much work was done at home. My son felt letdown, and that was not because he didn't get a numerical or letter grade. Even without a grade, the teacher should put in the effort to provide proper feedback.
However, I think that grading matters even in the earliest grades. It doesn't have to be a big deal, but kids need to know that many things have right and wrong answers. They need adults giving them feedback on whether they're on the right track for their grade level.
In our area, it seems to be a phase. They use rubrics [1 (worst) - 4 (best)] even up through 8th grade. They allowed kids to hand in homework whenever they got it done. Then they had to establish "sunset laws" for homework to make sure it got done sometime. They gave out 4's only for lots of effort and not quality of results. Many kids and parents complained. They had lots of kids give up because it was impossible to get a 4 and very easy to get a 3. So they increased the range from 1 to 5 and are trying to base it more on grades than effort. It's a phase, but they will never come out of it completely.
I understand what Mark is saying and I think he is characterizing the Alfie Kohen take on academics.
My take: If writing a report about Tiger Sharks was so wonderfully internally validating the kids would do that sort of activity on their own without it being assigned.
There is a difference between needing external motivation to DO something and needing external validation to know you did a good job on something. Kohn would argue that both need to be internal, but one doesn't necessitate the other.
Even a grade of C would have been better than no grade at all.
Why is that? Why is "nicely done" so inferior to an A? It's not as if it was returned with no comment whatsoever (that would be very disappointing, indeed); the teacher clearly thought he did a good job - it just didn't have a letter grade.
Now, if the teacher told *everyone* "nicely done" regardless of the quality of work, that would be bad. Likewise, not offering constructive criticism when justified would be bad. However, it seems that if the teacher had given it an A with no further comments, that would have been fine.
I just don't understand what makes an A inherently *better* than a "nicely done".
I don't want a grade for validation - my child needs feedback. How can anyone be expected to improve performance without meaningful, constructive feedback? We expect it from our kid's sports coaches, why can't we get it from their teachers?
It's VERY difficult not to see constructivism as one big rationale for shirking.
My favorite story, thus far, is the middle school ELA teacher here who returned a paper with the words "Not bad" on top.
It's very disappointing to K-5 kids not to get any response from the teacher. My friend K. has said that about both her children.
"My take: If writing a report about Tiger Sharks was so wonderfully internally validating the kids would do that sort of activity on their own without it being assigned. I don't have to assign video games, bike riding, swimming."
But they might not be very good at swimming or bike riding. And what if a child doesn't like to swim? What if a child doesn't like math? Education isn't just about the easy stuff. When I was coaching my son's FIRST Lego League Robotics team (the kids chose to do this), MANY times, the kids would have given up if they had a chance. It was only afterwards that they felt anything like internal validation.
Even though my son loves to play the piano, his teacher sets high standards. It takes more than liking what you are doing. It takes hard work, good teaching, and proper feedback. I always remember one comment his piano teacher gave him. He held his hand low and told my son that he is trying to have too much fun at this level. He then raised his hand high and said that he has to work hard to get up here, and then he will really have a lot of fun.
The goal is not just to enjoy learning for its own sake. The goal is to get somewhere specific in a certain amount of time. Algebra in 8th grade, not whenever and only for those who like math.
if writing a report about Tiger Sharks was so wonderfully internally validating the kids would do that sort of activity on their own without it being assigned
damn straight
They're doing it for the teacher, not for themselves.
The teacher should provide feedback AND REINFORCEMENT.
My son felt letdown, and that was not because he didn't get a numerical or letter grade. Even without a grade, the teacher should put in the effort to provide proper feedback.
right
her kids feel let down
An A is definitely better than "nicely done"!
I always remember one comment his piano teacher gave him. He held his hand low and told my son that he is trying to have too much fun at this level. He then raised his hand high and said that he has to work hard to get up here, and then he will really have a lot of fun.
I love that!
The goal is not just to enjoy learning for its own sake.
The Different Drummer report shows that ed school profssors believe overwhelmingly that the goal is to enjoy learning for its own sake.
"I just don't understand what makes an A inherently *better* than a 'nicely done'."
An 'A' is calibrated. "Nicely done" is not.
When I was in elementary school (grades K-5), we didn't get grades. At the end of each marking period, we received multi-page progress reports where each skill was rated on a scale of 1-4 (needs improvement, satisfactory, good, excellent). So you might get a 4 in multiplication and a 3 in division and a 3 in able to identify the subject of a sentence or whatever. (Or, as my mother complained about: I always got a 2 in handwriting.)
Our math tests and quizzes were graded based on the percent of questions that we got correct, but we were never told what "grade" went with each percentage. Spelling tests were also graded (no partial credit in spelling), and I think that some years our results were tallied on a bulletin board. No one ever said that an 80% is a B, and that's good enough.
The nice thing about this was in social studies. In 2nd grade we spent a large part of the year learning about the history of Niskayuna (our town), chronologically. For each part of the unit, we had to make a "project." We started in February learning about the Mohawk indians settling Niska-Isle. My mom and my grandfather made an extremely accurate model of an Iroquios long house. They spent hours on it. They wouldn't let me help. Dutifully, I brought this in as my "project." Headstrong seven-year-old that I was, I didn't tell my mom about the rest of the projects for the unit, and I made them myself. I made a model of a dutch house out of legos (used shutters for the double doors and was sure to put chimneys on both sides of the house), made my own project on the Shakers, etc. Because we didn't receive grades, I never felt penalized by any of my projects -- not for having a clearly adult-made project nor for having clearly seven-year-old-working-alone-made porjects for the rest of the units.
Once I got to middle school, some subjects (like math and science and, oddly, gym) had letter grades, while English and Social Studies still had the long report cards in which we were evaluated on assorted subskills, like ability to write the topic sentence of a paragraph and whatnot.
If I taught small classes, I'd love to be able to evaluate my students with the sorts of rubrics that we had in elementary school. There's a world of difference between a solid C student and someone who alternates between As and Fs.
"If I taught small classes, I'd love to be able to evaluate my students with the sorts of rubrics that we had in elementary school."
No matter whether feedback is in letter grade or rubric form, teachers have to give the student proper guidance, feedback, and rating. I'm not a fan of rubrics for report cards because they're more fuzzy. They make me think of yearly job reviews - so much talk and so little information. You have to read between the lines to find the true meaning. By then, it's too late to do anything about it, and often, rubrics heavily weight what was most recently done.
I like rubrics for class assignments (especially for projects) because it forces the teacher to be very specific about exactly what is to be done. There have been many cases where I have gone over the exact wording on my son's project rubrics. The downside of rubrics is that they seem to emphasize effort over quality. This is not a requirement of rubrics, but it seems to go with the territory.
The key ingredient is whether the rubric is used to give more specific information and rating, or less. Assignment rubrics can be very good, but I have seen long-term or report card rubrics that give very little information. Numerical (or letter) report card grades are nice because they should directly (and mathematically) correlate with the grades on each assignment. There is nothing stopping a rubric method from working this way, but there always seems to be some sort of fuzzy disconnect between the assignment rubric grades and the report card rubric grades.
It always strikes me that rubrics seem to end up providing less information with more words.
Some of the schools here are moving to report cards like the one Rudbeckia describes - offhand, I love the sound of it.
I would LOVE to know EXACTLY which skills & concepts C. is strong versus weak in.
And my boss doesn't want me to look to my paycheck for a sense of accomplishment either. I should just feel an internal sense of accomplishment, right?
If even adults need external rewards, how can we expect children to do better than that?
It's not just external rewards. I just chased down a client to get his feedback on some work I'd done for him in editing a document to remove the emotion, without that feedback I didn't know if the work I had done was the right sort of work. We have a contract that means I get paid for my time, but if he doesn't like one piece of work then he won't ask me for the next piece.
We have a contract that means I get paid for my time, but if he doesn't like one piece of work then he won't ask me for the next piece.
right
The word "withholding" comes to mind.
My son receives check marks. I think one check mark means you did okay, a check mark and a plus sign means you did well, but a check and two plus signs means you did excellent or at least that is what I think it means.
It is truly bizzaro!!
I don't mind the check / check-plus / check-minus thing..... I'm trying to think whether Ed used that at first in his Nationalism class last year???
He did use grades as a motivator.
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