“Nothing beats building relationships. If you follow this blog regularly, you might reasonably think that I’ve run out of ideas. That’s because I just wrote at some length about the importance of building relationships with students. There, I wrote about how building solid relationships with students is the best way to deal with the ever-shifting […]
“In the ongoing debate about whether American history classes should lean more toward presenting the country as a “good, special place” or as a “fundamentally imperfect place,” he added, the framework clearly comes down on one side. “This is a very explicit attempt to frame it as the former,” he said. Here are some of […]
“Rigor can mean so many things to different people that it ends up meaning almost nothing. But not quite nothing. The word “rigor” in itself has no fixed meaning, but rather it serves as a symbol or an icon for… something else. And that “something else” tends not to be objective or factual, but something […]
“The older I get and the longer I spend as a professor, the more focus I have on radically simplifying everything that is around me. Over the last few years as I continue to learn how to grade alternatively, I have been specifically focusing on what I can take out of my practice rather than […]
“For most of the twentieth century, assessment worked on a simple assumption: completing the task required doing the thinking. If a student submitted an essay, they probably wrote it. If a job applicant submitted a polished cover letter, they probably had the writing skills it demonstrated. The act of production and the act of understanding […]
“Having clearly defined standards is the first of the Four Pillars of Alternative Grading, and in my view it’s the “floor” on which the other pillars stand… First, a review: Let’s recap a few things that have been said here before, starting with the definition of a “standard”. A standard is a clear and observable […]
“The students were broadly receiving good grades, too: More than a quarter of the students needing remedial math had a 4.0 grade point average in math. The average was 3.7. In fact, the report found that on average, student grades in 2025 rose compared to those of students admitted in 2020. Instead, here is the […]
“Clearly Defined Standards… Helpful Feedback… Marks Indicate Progress… Reattempts Without Penalty”
“In short, it doesn’t make mathematical sense to add and average grades in the way often done in a traditional grading system. That might get too deep into the mathematical weeds for some.1 So when I give talks about alternative grading, I often begin with a concrete example to illustrate how traditional grades can badly […]
“I’ll be honest. This collaborative grading model took more time and required more trust – from me and my students. I spent more time on feedback and I gave up complete control over grading. Students spent more time revising responses and reflecting on their learning. They also began to notice that the learning cycle didn’t […]
“This shift to collaborative grading had two main unexpected outcomes. The first was the ability to course-correct mid-semester… The second was an enormous increase in the completion of low-stakes work.”
“I started high school in 2003… The SAT had analogies then. Since topics trickled down, these exercises were everywhere. (I actually enjoying them!) But the College Board eliminated SAT’s in 2005, converting “verbal reasoning” to “critical reading.” Since this was the year before I took the test, I was none the wiser. I had already […]
“Overall, research suggests that students benefit from preparing for college admissions exams and that individual tutoring or coaching is likely to be more effective than other approaches such as classes, online programs, or self-study. However, the effects of test prep are generally modest, especially compared to the claims of some test prep programs. Notably, there […]
“The Karpman Drama Triangle is a framework from relationship psychology which describes three unproductive roles we tend to fall into in states of stress: persecutor, rescuer, and victim. We might assume different corners of the triangle in different contexts with different people… Alternatively, the corresponding Empowerment Dynamic roles we can move into with alternative grading […]
“Children learn when they are engaged and interested, when they want to learn, and engagement in the classroom cannot be legislated or coerced; it never results from drill. When engagement occurs, it results from the intelligence, creativity, and sensitivity of teachers who feel empowered to innovate, which power was stripped away by state mandates. Moreover, […]
“I’m still standing by your desk. How could I have possibly graded your paper in thirty seconds? Do you think it’s all magic?”
“Decades of research, at all levels of education, has demonstrated that grades can promote short-term performance rather than long-term understanding, encourage both superficial studying and outright cheating, and can undermine a student’s intrinsic interest in the material.”
“Adam Grant’s essay highlights the importance of accountability but goes too far in dismissing effort. While effort doesn’t guarantee success, it’s the foundation for becoming the best student or colleague we can be. Effort is the one thing we can control. Instead of panning it, let’s revere it as the key to growth and resilience.”
“When you resort to deception to try and catch students cheating, you’ve compromised the values of honesty and transparency that come implicitly attached to our profession… Faculty are decent people. Students are as well. Both are in the wilderness now trying to navigate how to use or resist AI.”
“On Election Day, Massachusetts voters will have a chance to get rid of the state’s high school exit exam, which involves standards-based tests in math, sciences and English… Before the MCAS requirements were put in place, the business community and community college administrators were telling Driscoll, “Kids were graduating from high school without basic skills,” […]
“I have a reputation among my bandmates for taking notes. I bring a little notepad and a pen with me to gigs and rehearsals as part of my gear and keep them next to me. If we’re playing in a bar, in between sets while everyone else is getting a beer, I’m frantically scribbling notes […]
“Twenty-eight Advanced Placement exams will go digital as early as May 2025 in response to an increased number of cheating attempts this past May, the nonprofit announced on Wednesday.”
“On Tuesday, I talked with Tim Knowles, the CEO of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, about replacing the century-old Carnegie unit of seat time with a mastery-based measurement of learning. It was a fascinating conversation that left me with more questions than answers. The thing I was most curious to ask Tim […]
“We finally have a chance to move courses and grades into the background and foreground powerful personalized learning experiences and capture and communicate the resulting capabilities in much more descriptive ways—and do it at scale.”
“The study, which analyzed more than 30 million assessment records from the Wolverine State’s flagship from 2014 to 2022, shows that students whose last names start with W, X,Y and Z received grades that were approximately 0.6 points lower than their peers whose names begin with A, B and C. Researchers attribute the discrepancy to unconscious […]
“For these reasons and more, many of us believe that standardized tests deserve a place in the current admissions process. Reasonable people can disagree with any of the above conclusions, but we should be able to have that debate without misrepresenting opposing views… Let’s return to the principle that we should understand opposing views before […]
“The effect of a thoughtful test scores policy ought to be exactly what Yale described when it announced its recent decision: The students across racial and socioeconomic groups most likely to excel become those most likely to be admitted. Diversity, meanwhile, doesn’t suffer. Such an outcome is possible: Most research on the past years’ test-optional […]
“There are a few points that are incontestable about Stiles’s four categories of achievement. First, they together comprise what is almost certainly the first documented grading system in the history of American education… Second, the clear purpose of this mode of evaluation was to publicly rank and sort students according to their achievement, not to […]
“Three Dartmouth economists and a sociologist then dug into the numbers. One of their main findings did not surprise them: Test scores were a better predictor than high school grades — or student essays and teacher recommendations — of how well students would fare at Dartmouth… A second finding was more surprising. During the pandemic, […]
“This is NOT a “martyr” post about how much I graded… More than anything, I wanted to fully capture something that I know is a reality for countless teachers, and to share a bit about what this looks like for me in the current moment.”
“Kim has spent the past few years developing playful assessments for the classroom, originally with teachers, teacher trainees and game designers at MIT. Where Shute, her mentor at Florida State University, called it “stealth assessment,” Kim prefers the term “playful assessment.””
“Without test scores, admissions officers sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between applicants who are likely to do well at elite colleges and those who are likely to struggle. Researchers who have studied the issue say that test scores can be particularly helpful in identifying lower-income students and underrepresented minorities who will thrive. These students […]
“To successfully implement reassessment options, educators must have in-depth knowledge of the theory and research that justifies the reassessment process, along with clear notions of the elements that must be in place to ensure it works.”
“Many commenters said, in no uncertain terms, that students need to be held accountable for their academics and behavior… They said policies like the 50 percent rule were unfair… And that leniency didn’t prepare young people for post-high school success… But some saw the benefits of a “grade floor” in certain situations… While others suggested […]
“What all this means is that human thinking can be made explicitly visible if we invite students to do work complex enough to be worthy of our unique, organic cognitive capacities. Based on this research, I recommend the following indicators as a way to verify and evaluate an assessment or performance task’s level of complexity:”
“The course will launch for credit next fall, and is currently being taught as a pilot program in 700 schools across 40 states… African American studies is an interdisciplinary field, melding history with the study of contemporary politics, culture and law.”
“Digital storytelling projects—like those I’ve used with my students—can help teachers connect the curriculum to their communities, and help students make connections across disciplines and to their own lives. At a time when artificial intelligence has everyone wondering about the future of writing instruction, digital storytelling projects like those outlined here and discussed in my […]
“In the traditional education system there is a strong tendency to focus on hard skills (knowledge) like reading, writing, maths, languages, science and technology. However, when we know that 65% of students will be doing jobs that do not exist, soft skills development is a critical part of being ready for job success.”
“These test takers were high school freshmen when the coronavirus pandemic interrupted their educations, sending many of them into months of online learning. The achievement declines on the ACT are broadly in line with pandemic-era trends from other national exams… And yet, it is difficult to interpret the scores because of sweeping changes in college […]
“Just passing students on without ensuring that they’ve learned what they need to learn is obviously not just demoralizing for teachers, but potentially has devastating consequences for our society.”
“Historically, the SAT gave students “too much to cover and not enough time to do it,” the College Board’s chief executive officer, David Coleman, told me. But developing a digital version gave them the opportunity to experiment. And the results were so impressive they decided to stick with them. Starting next year, the test is […]
“Combating grade inflation, however difficult in practice, is actually the easier of the two existing problems ChatGPT has exacerbated. More difficult is coming to agreement on what exactly we are evaluating in student papers. It seems to me that every discipline will have to engage in their own process of discerning what they want from […]
“Essentially, you enter in a question and a chart is created that shows what supports, opposes, or could go either way in terms of values, rights, and duties. The researchers made clear that the goal was not to help people make decisions, but rather to explore and unpack how ethical choices are made and categorized.”
“The movement for high academic standards—determinations of what students should know and be able to do across subjects and grade levels—promised to center teaching and learning on common themes across schools and raise expectations for all students. Standards have shaped the teaching and learning landscape in American schools, dictating everything from curriculum content to assessment […]
““Grading is evaluation, putting a value on something,” says Denise Pope, Ed.M.’89, a senior lecturer at Stanford who runs a project called Challenge Success. Pope stresses, however, that grades are not the same as assessment, and to really talk about grading, we have to make the distinction between the two terms.”
“While both low- and high-stakes group assessments offer broad accountability and transparency, parents can still get a sense of their child’s learning if they know what to look at.”
“The College Board has steered its signature test, the SAT, through celebrity bribery scandals, international cheating rings, rain-induced Scantron malfunctions, the rise of the rival ACT, and a steady onslaught of bad P.R. But the covid-19 pandemic presented a new kind of crisis.”
“The office’s research had shown that the university “cannot reliably predict students will do well at MIT unless we consider standardized test results alongside grades, coursework, and other factors.”
“When teachers evaluated student writing using a general grade-level scale, they were 4.7 percentage points more likely to consider the white child’s writing at or above grade level compared to the identical writing from a Black child. However, when teachers used a grading rubric with specific criteria, the grades were essentially the same.”
“Framing excellence in these competitive terms doesn’t lead to improvements in performance. Indeed, a consistent body of social science research shows that competition tends to hold us back from doing our best. It creates an adversarial mentality that makes productive collaboration less likely, encourages gaming of the system and leads all concerned to focus not on meaningful […]
“The dehumanizing message of the new adversity index is that America’s young people are nothing but interchangeable sociological points of data — and the jagged complexity of an individual life somehow can be sanded down, quantified and fairly contrasted.”
Just as feeding more people more efficiently has led us into a feedback loop in which we constantly erode our own global supply of fish, educating more children more efficiently has yielded a shell game of metrics that have allowed us to falsely claim success (or failure), when in fact all we have been doing […]
“We do have a little bit of a Wild West situation right now with alternative credentials,” said Alana Dunagan… Thousands of credentials classes aimed at improving specific skills have cropped up outside of traditional colleges. Some classes are boot camps, including those popular with computer coders. Others are even more narrowly focused, such as courses on factory […]
“Applicants to Vista companies, from the entry to the senior-executive levels, are subjected to a timed standardized test. Testing, Smith says, helps his companies find talented people—people the competition has overlooked because their résumé lacked certain credentials or because of the inherent biases of managers.”
“The trend toward impact measurement is mostly positive, but the push to demonstrate impact has also wasted resources, compromised monitoring efforts in favor of impact evaluation, and contributed to a rise in poor and even misleading methods of demonstrating impact.”
In education, decision makers are often motivated by the desire to improve student outcomes and increase educational equity. Yet both “student outcomes” and “equity” are vague terms… Without more precise understandings of which outcomes we care about and which distributions of those outcomes are fair, decision makers lack orientation. Their decisions may end up relying […]
The country is a noteworthy case study for thinking about the shortcomings of a theoretically meritocratic system in which rote memorization is prized above critical-thinking skills and resilience, oftentimes taking a severe toll on students’ mental health.”
How do we know whether School X is living up to its values? The answer is surprisingly simple, and yet many schools fail to do it: Ask the students.”
To level the playing field and maintain validity, it should end the pretense that the SAT is timed, throw away the clocks, hire more proctors, and give all students as much time as they want or need. If timing is essential, the College Board better get to work to protect the validity of its prize […]
That many scientific discoveries were stumbled upon by accident is no accident at all. We all need time and space to get ever so slightly lost, to dream our way into creative thought, and to develop our richest insights. This is true of all learners, expert or novice.”
From 1998 to 2016, the average high school GPA went up from 3.27 to 3.38. Notably, the gains were unequal among high schools, and the differences appear to favor students from wealthier (and whiter) high schools than average.”
While some include the traits on traditional report cards, others include them on progress reports they send home periodically. Most schools ask teachers to craft the student ratings using a variety of questionnaires.”
“When we say CBE, we’re typically refer to three different things,” says Fisher: philosophy, policy and practice. There are debates within each of those lenses—and aligning all three may well be impossible.”