Grade

June 7, 2002

TEACHERS SHOULD NOT BE THE ONLY ONE TO GRADE

I have both benefited from and have withstood the worst of teachers not grading my actual work fairly. While I benefited more often with better grades than what I had earned, it was getting the lower grades or missing out on opportunities to further my education that were much harder to accept. While teachers are an important part to judging the progress a student makes, they should not be the only person who has input. Students should be involved in the grading process, which will not only even out any bias held by teachers, but they will also learn more from the opportunity of being involved in the evaluation process.

While teachers have their pet students and they are more likely going to give these students the benefits of better grades; when teacher's scamps become the receiver of lower grades and lost opportunities for advancement, they will not only suffer from academic failure, but also emotional failures. By dividing the role of being the sole evaluators of the students' progress, this will take a lot of pressure off teachers; they will be able to concentrate more on teaching concepts and processes. When students are given the responsibility to grade their fellow student work, they will take more time on their own work because they will understand more fully what is the expected criteria for the assignment. Students will learn how to organize and create better projects to represent their progress. When teachers and students agree on what would represent an excellent project the students will only benefit from that knowledge and the process of creating excellent projects.

In my eighth grade math class, other students were given the chance to start learning algebra as long as they showed their knowledge of the prescribed eight-grade math curriculum. When the decision was made and I was left in the regular eight-grade class, I went to my teacher and asked him why. His response to me was that he wanted to make sure there was someone in the class who knew the answers and would get their work done everyday. Even though this event happened over twenty years ago, it still sticks in my mind as a prime example that teachers do have personal biases and that this bias does affect the students.

Students who are victims of a teacher's bias are helpless; when the student and teachers are questions the teacher is more likely to blame the student for misunderstanding, lying or just trying to create problems. (Eccles:par 11) Teachers have been given the power and the authority over students to the point that when it is the teacher's word against the student's, the teacher is more likely to prevail. Teachers have a responsibility to teach and mold children to become well-adjusted adults, but when teacher's actions speak louder than their words the results can be devastating to the child.

"Most of our schools convey to children a very powerful message - that they are stupid, worthless, untrustworthy, unfit to make even the smallest decisions about their own lives and learning. The message is all the more powerful and effective because it is not said in words. Indeed the schools may well be saying all the time how much they like and respect children, how much they value their individual differences, how committed they are to democratic and human values, and so on. If I tell you that you are wise, but treat you like a fool; tell you that you are good, but treat you like a dangerous criminal, you will feel what I feel more strongly than if I said it directly. Furthermore, if I deny that there is any contradiction, and say further that if you even think there may be such a contradiction it proves that you are not worthy of my loving attention, my message about your badness becomes all the stronger, and I am pushing you well along the road to craziness as well." (Eccles:par 13, qtd)

I never asked him as to why he chose me and not another student and as I am writing a part of me wonder why. When taking placement exams for high school math at the end of the school year, I was able to get satisfaction for my feelings when I received one of the highest score of my class. Since this point in time, there have been many times when I have gotten grades, which I did not earn; this did not alleviate the bitter taste of being the teacher's scamp. The only way to create a fair a grading system is to keep teacher's bias out of the grades.

How often have students gone to their teachers and said "why did you give me this grade?" Even after reading comments from teachers, I have not always understood why they though my paper was an "A", "B" or heaven help me a "C" paper. "Did Students actually learn the kinds of writing strategies that would make them more effective writers, or did they merely learn how to give to us, the instructors, another version of the answer? Did our comments actually invite them to contemplate the intricate weighing of rhetorical and cognitive possibilities, or rather, did they merely add to or subtract from their paper what they interpreted to be words and sentences we prescribed?" (Blumner:234) This is a prime example of why criteria of evaluation should be decided and agreed upon by both the students and the teachers with the final criteria written down for everyone to use as a reference.

One alternative grading system that has been adopted by several teachers, schools and school districts is called rubrics. "Rubrics can be defined as a set of guidelines for distinguishing between performances or products of different quality. Rubrics should be based on the results of stated performance standards and be composed on scaled descriptive levels of progress towards the result." (Burke:9) Teachers who have adopted this method of teaching have not only seen the learning of new processes and applications improved, but also the students have report that they have more confidence. Teachers have reported that they like not having all the pressure of evaluations resting squarely on their shoulders. Using rubrics means there are less ambiguous variations from one student's grade to the next.

Gail M. Young, a teacher from Hillsboro High School has used in her classroom a multidimensional scoring guide, or more widely known as rubrics. In her classroom, she and all of her students are involved in the grading process Before each project, they all agree on the criteria that it will be judged on. In "Using a Multidimensional Scoring Guide: A Win-Win Situation" Young shows an example of scoring guide for a Poetry project. The whole class agreed upon these three categories before they began their project. In the years, since Young began using this grading system she has received comments from several of her student that they now understood what was expected for each of their projects and they were able to organize their projects better. (Young:226). From some of the students that had struggled Young has heard "It (the grading guide) told me what needed to be done to get a better grade." (Young:229) The grading guide consists of three to five categories on which the project is grading. Young uses a rating scale of four points with four being excellent and one being inadequate. For each of the category she and her students list what they expect to find in an excellent project and then subtract items as they go down the scale. When the students evaluate other student's projects they look for all the items listed on the score sheet.  Each student evaluator decides on the score for each category. Then they not only list the score, but they also give the reason for any score less than four by noting the missing elements listed in the evaluation criteria. Young has never had a complaint about the grades given using this system.

Having students evaluate other student's work not only creates more than just the teacher's feedback on a paper, but also will also teach the students to look more closely at their own writing and decide if their paper is organized, states the meaning in clear fashion, and judge its quality.  (Blumner:235) The more critical students are in their evaluations the more critical they are when evaluating their own writing.

This process has shown to take the teacher's bias out of grading, which will not only benefit the students with more accurate evaluation of their work, but this process gives the students a more beneficial feedback on how they should improve. When students are involved in the grading process, there can only be a positive effect on the students' own learning. Whether that learning is how to get their thought process written in a cohesive, organized manor or finally understanding a complicated scientific process. Teachers should not be the only judges as to the performance of the student; this puts added pressure on the teachers and leaves student vulnerable to biases, whether positive or negative. The grades earned will vary less from teacher to teacher, because the teacher's personal judgment has been taken out of the grading process. Therefore, when this process is implemented, not only will students' work improve, but also the grades will more accurately reflect the students' progress.

Works Cited

Blumner, Jacob S. and Francis Fritz. "Students Using Evaluation in Their Writing Process" Tchudi. 1997

Burke, Kay. How to Assess Authentic Learning third Ed.. Arlington Heights, IL:SkyLight Professional Development. 1999

Eccles, Connie. "The Killing of Self/Good Teacher or Bad Teacher". 2001. http://www.comportone.com/connie/articles/killself.htm May 30, 2002

Tchudi, Stephen ed. Alternatives To Grading Student Writing. United States of America: National Council of Teachers of English. 1997

Young, Gail M. "Using a Multidimensional Scoring Guide: A Win-Win Situation". Tchudi. 1997

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