What We Know About Grading: What Works, What Doesn't, and What's Next

by Thomas R Guskey, Susan M. Brookhart

Grading is one of the most hotly debated topics in education, and grading practices themselves are largely based on tradition, instinct, or personal history or philosophy. But to be effective, grading policies and practices must be based on trustworthy research evidence. Enter this a review of 100-plus years of grading research that presents the broadest and most comprehensive summary of research on grading and reporting available to date, with clear takeaways for learning and teaching. Edited by Thomas R. Guskey and Susan M. Brookhart, this indispensable guide features thoughtful, thorough dives into the research from a distinguished team of scholars, geared to a broad range of stakeholders, including teachers, school leaders, policymakers, and researchers. Each chapter addresses a different area of grading research and describes how the major findings in that area might be leveraged to improve grading policy and practice. Ultimately, Guskey and Brookhart identify four themes emerging from the research that can guide these

- Start with clear learning goals,
- Focus on the feedback function of grades,
- Limit the number of grade categories, and
- Provide multiple grades that reflect product, process, and progress criteria. By distilling the vast body of research evidence into meaningful, actionable findings and strategies, this book is the jump-start all stakeholders need to build a better understanding of what works—and where to go from here.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Nonfiction

236 pages, Paperback

Published February 4, 2019

Reviews

[Heidi Harrison]

This book is not so much about grading strategies as it is a set of meta-analyses of what works and doesn't work in implementing grading reform. It is important reading, I think, for two audiences: leaders who are tasked with planning, implementing, and evaluating grading reform, and teachers who want/need to see research that undergirds or challenges different grading practices.

[Sarah]

This was very dry. But it was also clearly organized, which made it easier to get through.

Chapter 1: Reliability in Grading and Grading Scales
- Grading reliability matters when decisions about someone's future depend on those grades.
- Tips for grading: have clear criteria, take steps to ensure consistency, use grading scales that don't have too fine distinctions.

Chapter 2: Report Card Grades and Educational Outcomes
- Grades have a correlation of ~0.5 with standardized test scores. (This isn't necessarily bad.)
- Grades predict dropout rates and college acceptance, which are useful indicators.

Chapter 3: The Composition of Grades: Cognitive and Noncognitive Factors
- Grades primarily reflect academic achievement.
- Academic-enabling practices boost or lower grades, especially in non-academic subjects like PE and music.
- The authors recommend standards-based grading (SBG) without a behavior grade.
- Schools must support teachers with student behavior in order for this to work.
- Non-academic factors are probably not measured with validity, so should not be included as formal grades.

Chapter 4: Surveys of Teachers' Grading Practices and Perceptions
- It's not standardized.
- It's important to be fair and also grade in a manner that is beneficial for students (which sometimes means padding or lowering grades to motivate student effort).
- At different grade levels, grades serve different purposes (communication with families in primary school, control and management in secondary school).
- The authors do not disparage the "hodgepodge" method of grading. But they do encourage more collaboration among teachers.

Chapter 5: Standards-Based Grading
- We don't really know the best way to implement SBG.
- Teachers need regular opportunities to reflect on what it means to be at grade level and whether their assessments are valid measures of that.

Chapter 6: Grading Students with Learning Differences
- Accommodations should allow students to reach the same academic goals as other students.
- Modifications are changes in the academic goals.
- Artificially boosting grades is seen as unfair to students and teachers and may negatively impact student motivation.

Chapter 7: Leadership for Grading Reform
- Principals need to communicate with teachers and parents the why, how, and best practices of SBG.
- Teachers need training on evidence-based grading practices.
- Teachers need collaboration time.

Chapter 8: Grading in Higher Education
- The 2000s have seen grade inflation. (How much? I don't know because they never quantify this.)
- It's unclear what is causing the inflation. Could it be a desire for better teaching evaluations? The move away from grading on a scale?
- In the 1970s there was grade inflation, which is believe to be a response to low grades meaning students could potential lose their four-year draft deferment for college.

I'm wondering...
- Why is there a push to ensure that grades only measure learning if we have standardized tests to do that?
- At my school, why don't we use the MCAS descriptors of performance?
- Why do the authors support SBG? In my opinion, they don't build a strong case that current grading policies (beyond grading on a forced curve) are detrimental.

[Tomas Nilsson]

I didn’t finish this book. It wasn’t for me.

[Kate]

A passable summary of the current state of literature on grading and standards-based evaluation.

[Rachel Miller Wright]

Quick read and good summary of research up to 2019. This a collection of edited chapters on the theme, but are commissioned on these topics so it reads like one book.