Sweeping Grading Changes Capture Frustration but Create New Problems
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how dramatic grading policy changes appeal to people's frustration with the current system but often create problems worse than the ones they solve.
Key Takeaways
- Frustration drives adoption - Sweeping grading changes get adopted because people are legitimately frustrated with current practices
- New problems replace old ones - Eliminating zeros, removing deadlines, and grading only for mastery each create their own set of issues
- Incremental change is more sustainable - Careful, evidence-based adjustments to grading produce better results than wholesale overhauls
Transcript
I think what's going on with a lot of ill-conceived grading reforms is that people are taking all of their frustrations with the status quo and all of their hopes for what education could be, and they're pinning them on one thing.
And in this case, it's like standards-based grading or not giving zeros or equity-based grading, equitable grading.
There are all these different kind of related and bundled initiatives that promise the moon and explain people's frustration with the status quo.
And inevitably, they don't deliver, right?
They can't deliver.
They're making impossible promises.
And as a result, instead of doing the scientific thing, which would be to test one thing at a time and say, okay, here's what we expect to happen.
Did it actually happen?
This is something that we expect will improve X, Y, Z result.
Do we get that result?
Yes or no?
Like, it's obvious that we should improve organizations in a scientific way.
But when this is really just a way of kind of capturing people's frustrations and dreams and trying to solve them in one fell swoop that gets somebody paid...
Like this kind of thing is inevitable.
So I think if we want to improve student learning through the vehicle of improving grading, I think there are some promising things we could do, but we have to test them, right?
We have to make a hypothesis and test it.
We can't just say, this is going to be great.
Everything's going to be different.
We can't just pin all of our hopes and all of our frustrations on one change and expect that to actually pan out.
Let me know what you think.