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By Michelle Gunderson with Katie Osgood.

Who in the world believes there is justice in telling a six year old that they are average – are a C? The whole definition of being six is to be someone who is extraordinary.

When you ask first graders if they can dance – they say yes. If you ask first graders if they can paint – they say yes. If you ask first graders if they can sing – they say yes. The answer to life when you are six is YES.

Then how could there be any reasoning in giving letter grades to children? In our experiences of working with young children in the Chicago schools letter grades are a way of shouting NO at a child.

Katie Osgood, a fellow Chicago activist and blogger, and I meet several times a year to discuss education topics. The last time we got together we talked about the grading system required in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Katie is returning to teaching for CPS and wanted to explore ways that progressive educators handle the tension between what we know is right for children and what our system is asking us to do. We both wondered how we survive assigning grades as ethically as we can within the stringent and restrictive grading policies placed upon us.

While we were talking we said we should be writing this down. So we did.

To start, readers will need background on the grading system used in Chicago elementary schools. And yes, you will be horrified. Our system uses the same report card from first to eighth grade, using letter grades for each subject area. The letter grades are based on standards. We are supposed to be using Common Core standards in Reading and Math, but the report cards have not been changed to reflect this.

According to Chicago Public Schools’ scale an A indicates that a child is significantly exceeding standards, a B is exceeding standards, and a C is meeting standards.

The first questions that Katie and I have are, what does “grade level” mean and who gets to decide? And if learning to read and mathematical understandings are achieved on a wide continuum, are we labeling children as failures when they have just started their schooling?

We have also informally polled educators around the country, and we find that large urban schools seem to be the holdouts when it comes to letter grade report cards for elementary students. It is not a system of reporting student progress with student learning or justice in mind.

My framework in building a philosophy of grading comes from being an early childhood educator; and Katie’s from a special education standpoint. As you can tell from the opening scenario, we both feel assigning letter grades to young children is ridiculous. But if our school system requires teachers to grade young children, what purpose could these grades hold?

First of all, we believe grades should be a communication between teacher and parent of a child’s progress, not a comparison of one child to another. We strongly agree that parents should not share letter grades with their children. Our goal is to teach children to learn, not to form judgments about themselves based on an arbitrary standards.

So, in this context, what do we grade? We are determined to do this well, and that requires justification for the grades we assign.

Most learning in younger grades does not take place on paper. Children in the early years are building understandings through games, activities, and social learning. In fact, it is very hard to give individual children credit for the work being done – the knowledge is built collectively. That is why we try to use as much observational data as possible. Not an easy task and all the efforts in the world to use checklists or a continuum of skills fall short of truly describing what we see. And then there are times when the learning just needs to come to a halt and we need to administer a quick, short check in to see how everyone is doing. This being said, we refuse to be grading machines, and want to spend most of our time joyously directing children’s learning. We have yet to develop a system that works seamlessly for us.

The next salient question is – how would we change this if we could?

When we peel away all the issues, on a fundamental basis we do not believe in grades at all, but do think feedback is extremely important. And we are very clear that grades and feedback are two different animals. One solution that many of Chicago’s suburban schools use is a narrative report card, but this more than likely would be cumbersome for Chicago teachers. Most of us are teaching more than 30 children in a class, and our special education instructors already produce a narrative report card based on IEP goals in addition to mountains of paperwork. We also have misgivings about a checklist based on the Common Core Standards, in that we do not believe the standards reflect true developmental learning in the early grades.

So, we were left at a dead end. We agree that teachers should provide parents and children with usable feedback, but what should this look like?

Our friend and child advocate, Karen Fraid came up with the best answer we have had yet:

You know what I have always found interesting? Nobody has ever devised a system (to my knowledge) that works backwards from the sorts of questions parents actually have about how their kids are doing. I hear from parents everywhere, no matter whether they have grades or some other system that they have to translate the report into language that they understand. A report card needs to work backwards from parent concerns. Survey the concerns parents have and find a way to build a system around answering those questions clearly and constructively. Survey teachers to find ideas to streamline the system and make it as un-stressful as possible. And leave the bureaucrats out of it. That last one will be the tough one.

Karen is always so level-headed and justice minded. Her solution makes too much sense, and this is a process that I will try in my first grade classroom (in addition to the regular report cards for now). Imagine simply asking parents, what do you want to know?

In the end, we believe that the ultimate goal of this process is to develop something that serves children’s learning and that puts our energies in the right place. One of the biggest stresses of teaching is that you know that there are many things you have to do for your kids, but you are pulled in many different directions. As progressive educators we also try to help others re-imagine what we do as teachers, and grading is a small part of this work, yet the effects are so pervasive.

We feel this is just the beginning of an arduous, but worthwhile task. We are asking that you truly engage in the process for which Living in Dialogue was built as a resource for educators. How are you grappling with grades? What would your perfect educational world look like when it comes to reporting student progress?

Author

Anthony Cody

Anthony Cody worked in the high poverty schools of Oakland, California, for 24 years, 18 of them as a middle school science teacher. He was one of the organizers of the Save Our Schools March in Washington, DC in 2011 and he is a founding member of The Network for Public Education. A graduate of UC Berkeley and San Jose State University, he now lives in Mendocino County, California.

Comments

  1. howardat58    

    “According to Chicago Public Schools’ scale an A indicates that a child is significantly exceeding standards, a B is exceeding standards, and a C is meeting standards.”
    I don’t know about reading, but in math it seems to me that this scale is fairly useless. The CCSS standards in math at any grade level state everything that is to be achieved, so “meeting state standards” is quite an achievement in itself. I very much doubt that more than 1 in 20 kids at any level can “meet the state standards”.
    Where does that leave the teacher with the Chicago system?

    1. Michelle Strater Gunderson    

      It’s an absolutely arbitrary measure with no guidelines whatsoever. Some schools have grading scales 93% – A 85% – B on so on. What in the heck does that mean when a child is six? There are times when we are working on totally new concepts that being 50% right is actually a good step on the road to learning. Does that mean a child is an F anyway? It makes no sense, in my mind.

  2. Diana    

    Parents of course want to know what their children need to learn and if that learning has happened. But really they want to know if their children are happy, if their children have friends, if you know their children.

    At a parent conference present a report that begins with a narrative paragraph for each content area, describing what has been covered since the last reporting period. Explain what mastery of the content looks like and how it is assessed. This is the boilerplate for each report card.

    Then add a few sentences under each paragraph tailored to the individual child. This may include a strength, a process of learning, a strategy with peers, a challenge overcome, evidence of growth, a struggle remaining (I find parents always want to know how they can help their child), and what comes next.

    Throughout the grading period a teacher can maintain this document for each child, making notes and referencing accompanying documentation as needed. When preparing for conferences, it shouldn’t take much more time than filling out a traditional report card.

    However, while this would be a process for giving parents information they seek, it does not produce crunchable bits of data. So the question becomes, what is the actual underlying purpose of report cards.

    1. Michelle Strater Gunderson    

      I love your last sentence. Should we challenge the need for report cards? Has anyone ever said – I opt my child out of grades, but still want to be in the public school system?

  3. Jane    

    I teach Prek and use parent conferences to discuss students. The problem is there isn’t enough time. What if we had 2 days for conferences? Teachers in my school get 10 minutes for each conference. What if we put more emphasis on these, including phone calls to get parents there, and less on report cards?
    Tutoring a 2nd grader whose first language is Spanish. She has strong social English but very weak academic English and English vocabulary and no ESL. She is bright, especiAlly in math, but got D’s this week in reading and math. Her mom is devastated! She works with her daughter every night, is active in the school, does everything she knows to support her in school. The teacher had no idea how hard it is for this child to follow directions because of the language difference. Perfect example of why letter grades for young children are destructive.

    1. Michelle Strater Gunderson    

      We are really struggling with the injustice of this system with our language learners as well. How wrong to make parents anxious about their children when they are doing a great job learning the language. I agree with you that letter grades can make both parents and teachers put undue pressure on children.

  4. Bev    

    Grades are evidence that the empower has no clothes.

  5. Bev    

    Empower? Auto correct fail. It should read EMPEROR. The EMPEROR has no clothes. Speak the truth to EMPOWER parents, students and teachers. Grades are widely believed to be objective measures, but they are arbitrary.

    1. Michelle Strater Gunderson    

      Exactly. And some of that power is used to manipulate students. Think of the stories we tell children about grades. They are usually about compliance.

      1. Gloria M    

        This reminds me of once overhearing a teacher lecture a student about his report card. He had a good grade in math, which was a subject she said must come “easily” to him, and a bad grade in ELA, so she harangued him about how his lack of effort wouldn’t be acceptable in high school. She did not praise the student for doing well in math, only told him how bad his performance was in reading. How can good grade = innate talent but bad grade = lack of effort?

        1. Michelle Strater Gunderson    

          Your comment makes me think of what Alfie Kohn says about grades and intrinsic motivation. Many times when we try to use grades as a motivator it backfires on us. Don’t you wonder what eventually happened to this student? I also wonder if the student remembers this event as vividly as you do, or if it is was just one in a series of harangues.

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