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No matter how loftyour espoused educationgoals, our gradingpractices revealwhat we truly value.

Tony Winger

When I begananalyzing mygrading practicesseveral years ago, Iwas embarrassed by

what I found. Although I claimed Iwanted my students to think more criti-cally and engage with the world morefully, my grading practices communi-cated a different message. Studentsreceived so much credit for completingwork, meeting deadlines, and followingthrough with responsibilities that thesefactors could lift a student’s semestergrade to a B or an A, even as other indi-cators suggested that the student hadlearned little. My grading practicescommunicated clearly that, despite myclaims to the contrary, students’ willing-ness and ability to comply matteredmost.

I’ve observed that other teachersapproach grading similarly. Recently Iheard from a parent who, after home-schooling for several years, had enrolledher son in a public school. After justthree weeks, her son was failing hislanguage arts class because he had failed

to bring a book to read for the dailysustained silent reading time and toreturn a parent-signed course expecta-tions sheet. The message? Compliance isthe priority, and grades have little to dowith learning.

An incident in my high school

economics class confirms that studentshave internalized this message. A youngman assigned to write an essay onhealth care turned in a neatly typed, butcompletely incoherent paper. The intro-duction supported universal health care,but the conclusion argued against it. I

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told this student that the paper must beredone. He was incredulous. He pleadedhis case fervently, emphasizing that thepaper was typed, edited, and completedon time. I explained that although punc-tuality, neatness, and grammar areimportant, it was his understanding thatmattered most. Apparently 12 years ofeducation had taught him otherwise.

Parent concerns are added proof thatour unintended message has been deliv-ered. Time after time, parent inquiry intostudent performance focuses on missingassignments. Parents want to know whatmissing work their child can turn in forcredit, recognizing, quite accurately, thatgrades are primarily a reflection of effortrather than progress toward learninggoals.

What Do We Measure?As I reflected on this topic, I resolved torefocus myself and my students onlearning. This, of course, required that Iknow what exactly I meant by studentlearning. Once more I took a look at mypractice, and what I discovered wasdisturbing. I was not unlike the teacher I spoke with recently who hesitated totest her students after a three-dayweekend because she feared they wouldperform poorly. If we avoid assessing ourstudents after a long weekend, thenobviously we are not expecting, norattempting to assess, enduring under-standing in students. Grant Wiggins andJay McTighe (2005) agree that gradestend to measure students’ short-termrecall of information, rather than long-term, meaningful understanding.

If we focus predominately on meas-uring students’ compliance and theirability to recall facts, our practices willinterfere with our most significantpurposes as educators. If we are to shiftour focus to higher-level thinking, wemust shift our grading practices.

Fixing the Fixation on ComplianceOne key to making grades more mean-ingful is carefully distinguishing

academic achievement from what RobertMarzano (2000) labels nonacademicfactors. This strategy remains the impor-tant first step as we work to developgrading practices that support higher-level thinking (Winger, 2005).

As an instructional coach, I work withteachers to shift the focus of their gradesfrom compliance to learning. Someteachers point out that nonacademic

factors, such as the ability to meet dead-lines, are crucial to success in school andin life. I agree that teachers shouldemphasize, and maybe even measure,student responsibility. The issue is one offocus and priorities. Nonacademicfactors must be measured independentlyfrom learning and should never beallowed to dominate the overall grade.

To keep the focus on learning, wemust carefully reconsider what we aremeasuring. For example, a student’sperformance on small daily assignments,usually assigned for practice or as prepa-ration for the next class, is often moreindicative of responsibility than ofwhether he or she grasps an importantconcept. Therefore, I record most ofthese daily assignments in a section ofmy grade book reserved exclusively fornonacademic factors.

If an assignment done at home will beused to measure students’ academicachievement, I often give that piece ofwork a nonacademic as well as anacademic grade. This allows me, forexample, to lower the nonacademicgrade if the work is turned in late whileproviding accurate feedback and full

credit for the learning.It is important to teach and expect

responsibility. But it is also crucial thatwe value and accurately measureacademic achievement. This system ofseparating academic and nonacademicfactors in my grade book enables me todo both.

Assessing Our ExpectationsOnce we have distinguished non-academic factors from learning, we mustcarefully define the learning we aretargeting and ensure that the academicportion of the grade deliberately assessesstudent progress toward it.

The movement toward standards-based grading aims to make grades moremeaningful by connecting them tocurricular standards. As we beganrethinking grading in our district, ourteachers employed this approach. KendyBlake, a 6th grade science teacher, set upher grades around the topics of earthscience, life science, and physicalscience. She also assessed writing as aseparate skill category and separatednonacademic factors into a categorydealing with work habits. MikeMahoney used district standards to setup grades in his algebra class around thetopics of polynomials, quadratics, proba-bility, exponents, and systems of equa-tions. He also had a nonacademiccomponent that he labeled personalresponsibility.

We discovered, however, thatalthough this approach communicatedmore specific information about studentlearning, it did not address our tendencyto assess students’ recall of informationrather than higher-level thinking.

Mike Mahoney’s experience illustratedhow this standards-based approach fellshort. His math assessments typicallyincluded 15–20 questions that involvedusing algorithms to arrive at correctanswers. Then the assessment added oneor two story problems that requiredstudents to apply the mathematicalconcept to a new situation. Mr. Mahoneyexpected only his A students (perhaps

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10 percent of his students) to solve thestory problems that demonstratedhigher-level understanding. He realizedthat he was not expecting a majority ofhis students to understand mathematicsin a way that makes learning relevantand enduring.

Reorganizing Our ApproachAfter a year of meeting regularly torethink grading practices, our teachersdeveloped an alternative approach. Weadopted the language used by severaleducation experts, identifying knowledgeas that which students can simply recalland using the term understanding todenote higher-order thinking skills.Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005)emphasize that understanding must beour goal for our students because under-standing moves learning from short-term to long-term memory and makesthe learning meaningful and useful.

Just as we must distinguish learningfrom compliance, we must distinguishunderstanding from memorizing. Ifhigher-order thinking matters most, thenthat is what our grades must assess,record, report, and reward. To make ourgrades match our priorities, the teachersin our district began to separate skills,knowledge, understanding, and non-academic factors in their grade books.These categories match Wiggins andMcTighe’s thinking and are consistentwith the work of Richard Stiggins (2005),who identifies four types of learningtargets: skills, knowledge, reasoning, andthe ability to create products.

Restructuring her grades around theseprinciples, science teacher Kendy Blakeidentified the following categories andtheir relative weight:

� Content Knowledge: The ability tograsp the basic concepts in physicalscience, earth science, and life science.Assessed through selected-response testsand quizzes and portions of homeworkand labs. (30%)

� Enduring Understanding: The abilityto apply concepts to authentic situations.Evaluated through lab activities and

constructed-response portions of testsand quizzes. (25%)

� Science Skills: The ability to employinquiry, use the scientific method, andread charts and graphs. Assessedthrough lab activities. (25%)

� Writing Skills: The ability to useproper conventions, organization, andstyle to communicate scientific under-standing in projects, lab activities, andessays. (10%)

� Learning Support Factors: The abilityto follow directions, to be punctual, andto be prepared for class. (10%)

Mike Mahoney restructured hisapproach to grading his algebra studentsin a similar way:

� Understanding: The ability to fluentlyand flexibly apply algebra concepts.Assessed through story problems, expla-nations of solutions to problems, andidentification and explanation of errors.(50%)

� Computation Skill: The ability toaccurately use formulas, equations, andoperations to compute the correctanswer. (40%)

� Personal Responsibility: Behavior,effort, and attentiveness in class.Students self-assess in this area but mustbe able to defend their assessment.(10%)

With this system, these two teacherswill assess students’ work habits, knowl-edge, and skills. But more important,Ms. Blake and Mr. Mahoney will send aclear message that all students are

expected to develop the higher-levelthinking that is necessary for enduringunderstanding.

Reconnecting School and LifeLast May, I ran across a high schoolgraduation card that hit too close tohome. The front boldly stated “Grad-uate, you’ll be amazed at how much ofwhat you have learned in school will behandy in the real world.” Inside, the cardsaid, “Almost none.”

Far too often, there is a disconnectbetween school and life as students havebusied themselves jumping through thehoops of compliance and recall. Ofcourse, students must discover therewards of self-discipline and responsi-bility. But in the service of what ends?Do we not have grander goals? Do wenot want our students to becomethoughtful citizens of the world, todiscover and strengthen their voices, tothink more clearly, to speak and writemore powerfully?

If we are to have any chance ofaccomplishing these grander goals, wemust reconnect school and life by askingstudents to apply what they learn toreal-world situations. We must ask themnot only to be responsible and toremember, but also to understand—because it is understanding that makeslearning meaningful, relevant, andenduring. A standards-based approachdoes not go far enough. We must assessfor understanding.

ReferencesMarzano, R. J. (2000). Transforming classroom

grading. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.Stiggins, R. (2005). Student-involved assess-

ment for learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ:Pearson/Prentice-Hall.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Under-standing by design (2nd ed.). Alexandria,VA: ASCD.

Winger, T. (2005). Grading to communicate.Educational Leadership, 63(3), 61–65.

Tony Winger is a social studies teacherand instructional coach at Heritage HighSchool in Littleton, Colorado; twinger@lps.k12.co.us.

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If higher-orderthinking mattersmost, then that iswhat our gradesmust assess, record,report, and reward.

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