Fearless Grading

INTRODUCTION: HOW FEARLESS GRADING AND FEEDBACK DRIVE STUDENT PERFORMANCE  What is Fearless Feedback?  Fearless Feedback for Students  The Emotional Context of Grading Reform Grading is only one form of feedback. It is therefore essential to put grading policy in the context of feedback. The purpose of feedback is not merely to render an evaluation; it also should provide information that will improve student performance. We know what effective feedback looks like. Watch a student—whose parents and teachers swear that the child is incapable of focus and concentration—play a video game for hours on end. With every hand movement the student receives feedback and immediately responds to that feedback in order to improve performance. Watch a great music teacher who provides feedback to students with every breath, and the casual observer without musical training can hear students improve in a matter of minutes. Watch a great athletic coach who might think of fifty ways to improve the performance of a student but withholds that torrent of advice in order to give clear and specific feedback, and see the students improve their performance within the space of a single practice session. In sum, it is not that we do not know what good feedback is, but rather that we fail to transfer these observations into effective grading policies and classroom practices. WHAT IS FEARLESS FEEDBACK? Ask your colleagues about the best and most constructive feedback they have ever received—as a student, teacher, leader, or on a job outside of education. The answers to this question are consistent. “We want feedback that is fair. The same performance should get the same feedback,” they say. “We want feedback that is accurate—no ambiguities—just give it to us straight,” they add. “We want feedback that is specific—let us know how to get better,” they conclude. “And we want feedback that is timely. Let me know the feedback in time for me to use it to improve.” Fearless feedback, therefore, is fair, accurate, specific, and timely. In this book we will use the acronym FAST to remind readers of the imperatives for fair, accurate, specific, and timely feedback. If that is what adults expect when they are receiving feedback, then we have a moral obligation to apply the same criteria to the feedback and grading we provide to students. Unfortunately, the feedback that we give to students and teachers is often inconsistent, inaccurate, ambiguous, and late. For school leaders, the situation is even worse, with many leaders failing to receive any sort of systematic feedback until the end of the year or, in the case of senior leaders, the end of their contract. As baseball great Mickey Mantle once said to a UPI reporter in 1978, “If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” To put a fine point on it, when we give feedback that is delivered long after it’s too late for the student, teacher, or leader to act on that feedback, we are performing the educational equivalent of an autopsy. It may be an interesting and complex procedure, but the patient on whom the autopsy is performed is unlikely to improve. This book argues for grading systems and feedback that have an immediate and positive impact on the performance of students, teachers, and leaders. Grading policies are not merely about student performance but about what teachers and leaders do. If there are high failure rates on report cards, that is not just a student issue. That is a clarion call for a reflection on teaching practices and leadership decisions. When great teachers work in collaborative teams, they routinely ask one another, “How is it that ninety percent of your students succeeded in our last test on fractions and decimals? What are you doing that can help the rest of us?” There is no embarrassment about asking for help nor is there any sin of pride in sharing effective practices. It’s just what great professionals do. In the context of grading, I routinely see classes in which student backgrounds are the same, but one class has a 50% failure rate and another class in the same grade and same subject has a 10% failure rate. Effective teacher teams and educational leaders ask why this is so. It’s not an accusation—just an inquiry. Almost always, the difference is not in the performance of the students but in the grading policies of the teachers. What makes feedback fearless? When students and adults are fearful, they cannot learn. If students fear making mistakes, they remain silent and disengaged (Reeves, Frey, & Fisher, 2022). When there is a fearless environment, then it is safe to make mistakes and receive feedback on those mistakes, secure in the knowledge that mistakes are never a source of shame, embarrassment, or humiliation. Observe toddlers learning to walk. They fall down, run into walls, and invariably pick themselves up and persist with enthusiasm as their parents cheer every step. Can you imagine a high-school algebra class in which mistakes were never criticized but regarded as a step toward learning? How about the middle school English class in which the first drafts of an essay, like the toddler’s first steps, were regarded as steps toward success rather than encountering a sea of red ink? Or consider the new teacher, staying one page ahead of students in the curriculum guide, cussed out by a parent the previous evening, scared to death of an administrative walk-through, and devastated with every critical remark. Compare that to teachers who, after every observation, worked collaboratively with observers to identify what worked well and what can be changed the next day. Or consider the building and district administrator for whom every governing board meeting and public comment period is not an opportunity for objective feedback on organizational goals but for unpredictable criticism or affirmation that is more related to the local rumor mill than to the previously agreed-upon school and district goals. Let us return to the student playing the video game. If the rules for feedback, success, and failure changed with every iteration of the game, what do you think students would do? Readers who have pulled playground duty, as your author has, have heard the plaintive cry, “That’s not fair!” And what do students do when they think a game is unfair? They stop playing the game. That is precisely what students are doing who leave school, and what teachers and administrators do who are exiting the profession. The national crises in education include record drop-out rates, teacher attrition, and administrator turnover—and much of these actions are related to toxic and ineffective feedback.