Why Our Grading System is Failing Our Kids

"Mommy, I have a stomach ache because I got a 90."

 That is one of the last things my first grader said to me before she went to sleep tonight. I've never written a post from the parent perspective before. This is new territory and I've avoided it until now because my expertise and experience lies in secondary education. I didn't feel it was my place to comment on elementary education without studying and experiencing it.
The thing is, I have an expertise at being a mother of two little girls who are just starting school–one is in first grade and the other is in preschool. My daughters’ game of choice is "playing school" with a little easel and some books and paper and a class made up of dolls and stuffed animals. They teach through singing, drawing, and encouragement. They build in rest time and quick chats with the pretend parents who pick up their stuffed animal students at the end of the day. It's funny how my 4 and 7 year olds have intuitively picked up the parts of a learner's day that have the greatest impact. They know that music, hands-on activities, and positive interpersonal connections help create an environment where learners can thrive.
When do we lose that?
For my child, it started to happen today at age 7 and in first grade. She has a great teacher who has not emphasized test scores at all. Today they went over an assessment together and each student figured out how he/she did. As a teaching practice, I definitely see the value. But my daughter somehow interpreted that she did something "wrong" and it followed her all day until she said something to me at bedtime. She even narrowed it down to a score. She gave herself a 90. That 90 made her stomach ache. It isn't her teacher's fault. Maybe it is my fault. I'm her mom and I knew how to play the grades game in school. She's got my genes, for sure. I'm also an educator who talks education...a lot, and she hears some of it. Or maybe she's learned about grades from the chatter of the older kids on her school bus in the morning. More likely she's learned it from all of these sources combined. It isn't really about fault or blame. It's about what I learned about learning tonight.

A teeny tiny part of my little girl started to understand that number ratings will somehow shape how others measure her success. Eventually they might shape how she measures her own success. I'll do everything I can to make sure they are only one factor, one of many, and not THE factor. I'll make sure those numbers pale in comparison to the importance of her actions and intentions. In fact, she and I had this discussion last night. It might have been the first time, but I know it will not be the last.
Maybe it is idealistic to expect the education machine to transition to a gradeless, learner-driven, standards-based place where our children understand that iteration is a part of the learning process. Iteration is not the same as getting something "wrong" or "failing" and then trying again. Iteration is what motivates us to start over and over when we are playing video games, or when we don't instantly solve a puzzle at first glance, or when we are learning the words to a new song we like. Iteration is how our little ones learn to read: they try to sound out, decode, and apply meaning to words. They are not successful with every word, but they are not told they are wrong. They are told to try again and are given encouragement. Why does that mindset change in first grade? Sixth grade? High school? College? The workforce? Ever?
If my preschooler and first grader are aware of the elements needed to help a learner thrive, why are those elements deemphasized as children grow and rise through the grade levels? The way formal schooling is structured now–around grades and percentages–is failing our kids.


Should we change it?
Can we change it?
Will we do something to change it?
______________________________________________
Hack Learning Podcast
Thank you to Mark Barnes for welcoming me as a guest on his Hack Learning podcast after reading this post. We got to talk about this topic, my experience with my daughter, and provide some ideas for parents and educators facing this same situation. You can listen to the podcast here.

Comments

  1. Betting IDMonday, December 16, 2024 6:08:00 AM


    The current grading system often fails to account for individual learning styles and potential, putting unnecessary pressure on students. This creates a system where performance is judged solely by a number rather than overall growth. It's time to rethink education, just like how a betting id offers more tailored experiences for its users, personalization is key.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Three Social Media Starter Tips

Image
Note: This post was recently  published on the St. John's Prep GOOD to Go blog . Chad Konecky interviewed me and wrote the post based on our discussion. Demonstrating and reinforcing common-sense social media engagement is important, especially when it comes to adolescents and teens. Kerry Gallagher, St. John’s assistant principal for teaching and learning, is leading the Prep’s emphasis on developing best practices when using social media. “Mentoring healthy guidelines like ‘Think before you post,’ ‘be kind and respectful’ and ‘be mindful of who you friend’ are key, but we need to foster—and the boys need to hone—an even keener sense of their life online.” Interestingly, the challenges of building an online identity can become even more difficult if students and their parents choose not to use social media, explains Gallagher. Alternatively, when students do create an online presence, it can become an opportunity to learn how to act appropriately and with accountability....
Read more

Guest Post: Digital + Traditional = Teaching at Its Best

Image
Rachel Salinger is a high school English teacher at my school, St. John's Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts. She is passionate about literature and about giving her students learning experiences that arm them with the skills they need to be thoughtful and good stewards of our future. I asked her to share her recent project on my blog because I think it is a stellar example of how traditional teaching and learning strategies can be effectively combined with digital tools for a deeper student learning experience. I referenced this project briefly in my recent EdSurge column and wanted to be sure to highlight it in detail on my blog. Introduction In my CP sophomore classes, we read Macbeth over the course of a few weeks. The students really enjoyed the play (surprisingly!) and I wanted to do a more creative assessment at the end instead of a typical paper or test. In the past, I’ve done an iMovie project with Macbeth but really wanted to do something different this year. I met...
Read more

Teaching 19th Century Ideologies with 21st Century Technologies

Image
Some concepts are just hard.  They're hard to teach and hard to learn.  Every year that I've taught the History 10 curriculum to sophomores, one of those concepts has been 19th century European political ideologies.  Conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism have never really been pulled together into a lesson that excited me or my students.  We would work through it and we'd both be OK, but never enthralled.  This year I wanted to change that. Part 1: What Do They Already Know? I asked students to define and give examples of each term: conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism.  They used their understandings from a modern American perspective.  We talked it out and they wrote their examples on the Smart Board. Part 2: How Was 19th Century Europe Different? It was REALLY different.  Before going there, though, I wanted them to know what an ideology is. The next step was to help them understand what these ideologies mean to 19th century ...
Read more