The cult of the grade

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Grading is a remnant of the Industrial Age. A grade on an essay has essentially the same function as an approval stamp on factory produce. It says 'this product meets the requirements.' Grades first appeared, according to Mary Lovett Smallwood, in 1813 at Yale University as a measure of student progress. The idea was derived from earlier writings in 1785.

Grading is practiced today from primary school through to higher education. Score consistently at 70% or above and you will be awarded a first class degree. 60%-69% and you have landed an upper second class degree, and so on .... down the scale. Schools use the lettering system - from A (the top students) to F (fail). It's simple to manage because it fits neatly into the criterion referenced mode of assessment.

It seems strange that the education community is willing to adopt new technologies and develop new theories and methods of education, but it can't arrive at a way to get rid of grading. Assessment drives pedagogy, so if assessment doesn't change, it's difficult to teach in new ways. The way teachers teach is defined by the way they assess learning. If the end result of assessment is a grade, and teachers are judged by the average grade of their classes, then it's no surprise that they will teach to the test.

Assigning a number or letter to a student's work can be counterproductive because students tend to be more interested in the grade than they are in their learning. 'Is this information in the test?' they ask. If it's not, they can disregard it. Grading says nothing about the other skills they have acquired that are not represented in the test. All a grade tells us is how well they have learnt to play the game - that is, how good their memory is at recalling facts when prompted. As John Holt believed, external motivation such as grading reinforces children's fears of failing exams and receiving disapproval from adults. Children learn how to avoid embarrassment instead of learning the content of lessons. The atmosphere of fear not only restricts their love for learning and suppresses their natural curiosity, it also makes them afraid of taking chances and risks which is a necessary ingredient for true learning (Holt, 1982). Reducing a student's work to a number/letter reduces their efforts to a statistic. They become defined by their grades. It's bad pedagogy, and needs to be challenged.

However, most formal education is still rooted in the past because 'that's the way we've always done things', or 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' It is difficult, when leaders resist, for institutions to break out of old, traditional thinking about pedagogy. It is even harder when there is constant pressure from above (the government and funding bodies) and from the side (parents and other stakeholders) to keep faith with the 'cult of the grade'. 

In school we cram their heads full of facts and assess the capacity of their memories. We award a grade that shows where they have measured up in terms of the 'expected' standards. They will then be ready to take up their place in a standardised world, where everyone is the same, and where uniformity and synchronisation are regulation. They become a number in the telephone directory, on a National Insurance card, on a driver's licence, in a passport. Reduce a student to a set of numbers, and this prepares them for a world in which that principle is perpetuated. 

But the world has changed, and in most cases the workplace is no longer static, standardised, uniform. If we continue to teach and assess in the old tradition, we fail to prepare young people for tomorrow. A grade won't do them much good when they come to apply for a new job, or pitch their business idea in front of a panel of investors, but it will look good on their school report, and the funding bodies will be satisfied. A grade will have no relevance when they begin work and have to negotiate with their colleagues, solve problems that could be life-changing, or think critically about the choices they must make, but it will keep their parents happy.

What would happen if businesses changed their approach to recruiting, and instead of focusing on what grades students achieved at school, concentrated instead on the skills and aptitude they brought to the workplace? Assessment would have to change quickly to meet these new needs of industry. Finally, for those who ask for alternatives, here's a great piece by Terry Heick on 12 alternatives to grading in schools. What would you do to run the cult of the grade out of your school?

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Reference
Holt, J. (1982) How Children Fail. New York: Perseus Books.

The cult of the grade by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.