If You Want a Pure Measure of Learning, Use Standardized Tests — Let Grades Keep Students Accountable
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that grades and standardized tests serve different purposes, and trying to make grades a pure learning measure strips them of their motivational power.
Key Takeaways
- Grades and tests serve different purposes - Standardized tests measure learning; grades should motivate the behaviors that produce learning
- Let grades include effort and completion - Grades that reflect the full picture of student engagement are more useful than mastery-only scores
- Don't confuse the tools - Trying to make grades do what tests do better leaves schools without either an accountability tool or a learning measure
Transcript
Here's what I like about traditional grades on report cards.
They measure what ultimately matters.
They measure what society cares about in a way that standardized tests don't.
And a lot of the advocates of grading reform who freak out about zeros and who think giving a student a zero on an assignment because they didn't do it is the worst thing in the world, are missing the fact that what they're really calling for, when they say we want grades to reflect learning, they don't realize that we already have a perfect way to measure learning, or not perfect, but an ideal way to measure learning, and that is standardized tests.
And I don't know about you, but I don't really want to give any more weight to standardized tests.
I think we do standardized testing.
Maybe we could do a little bit more to measure learning.
throughout the school year.
But this idea that grades should only measure learning, like that seems like a way of doing the job of standardized testing with grades.
When what grades really do is grades keep students on track, right?
The accountability that comes from having to turn in assignments, turn them in on time, show your learning, do your work, earn your credit, like all of those actually produce the learning that we're produce learning, they can only measure learning.
So when I hear these calls to convert report card grades from all the jobs that they've been doing this whole time into just the job of reporting on learning, I have to wonder what is going to get students to actually do that learning.
I don't think we have adequate replacements for all of those other jobs that grading currently does, you know, as grading is traditionally conceived.
So I got to push back against the grading gurus on this and say, like, there is value in giving students a zero.
There is value in requiring students to turn in their work on time.
If we care about all the things that students actually do to learn, if we care about all the outcomes that that get created by that accountability and that process of actually earning your grades and earning your diploma.
I just think we need to not give up on that and not replace grades with just measures of like pure learning.
Let standardized tests do their jobs, but let grades do their job as well.
Let me know what you think.