Joe Feldman

“Unfortunately, in most classrooms teachers penalize students for mistakes they make during the learning process, for assignments that prepare them for the test. Students lose points for errors (and for answers they don’t complete) on homework, classwork, and on any task that the teacher designs to help students learn content. Those scores are entered into the gradebook and included in the overall calculation of a student’s grade. With this grading approach, student mistakes are penalized during the very stage of learning when students should be making mistakes. If mistakes on any work—homework assignments, tests, quizzes, in-class worksheets, discussions—are always penalized with a score that is incorporated into a grade no matter whether those mistakes occur at the beginning, middle, or end of learning, then the message is that mistakes aren’t ever acceptable, much less desired, and they certainly aren’t ever valuable. Students will be discouraged, not encouraged, to take risks and be vulnerable.”
― Joe Feldman, Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms

“Rather than say, “In the real world you only get one chance,” perhaps our most truthful and most helpful message should be “In the real world, retakes are often available; you just might have to ask for them and put in some additional work.”
― Joe Feldman, Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms