5

Introduction

It was the end of the school year and my teaching partner and I were sitting in our office
with a student, Anthony. Two weeks earlier we made the final call to fail Anthony in our
classes. He struggled all semester to keep his grades up and had not done the make-up
work that we asked him to complete. This meant that he was not going to graduate from
our school and was at risk of losing his place at a college he had been accepted to. Since
then, Anthony had continued to come to class but was obviously dispirited. We called him
into our office to check-in, to see how he was coping with not passing. It was worse than I
had expected. Not only was Anthony upset about not graduating, but his perception of self-
worth was non-existent. He had failed so many classes and was resigned on the fact that he
was incapable of achievement. I could not have disagreed more. That year I had seen so
much strength in Anthonys work and he had grown in many wayshe was creative in his
designs, he collaborated well with his group membersyet, I was failing him.

Did Anthony deserve that failing grade? With how I had the system set up, he had clearly
not met the requirements. There were several assignments that he never completed, which
meant zeros in the gradebook. He struggled with material, meaning his quizzes were
nothing but Fs, dragging down his grade. I could easily use the numbers to defend my
decision to fail Anthony, but I still questioned myself. I had decided before the semester
had beganbefore I had ever met Anthonyhow I was going to calculate final grades.
30% of the grade was non-project related assignments, 20% was quizzes and tests, 10%
was participation, leaving 40% for project work. These numbers reflected what I thought
was important in the class without thinking about how the point distribution may favor
one student over another. Anthony created some beautiful work in my class that year, work
that demonstrated care, refinement, and an engineering mind, but what showed up in the
gradebook did not demonstrate that. Had Anthonys grades ever represented his worth?
How many times had Anthony received a report card filled with Cs and Ds instead of
highlighting his strengths?

This familiar system of letter grades, clearly outlining grade weights at the beginning of the
year, had resulted in Anthony not valuing himself. No matter what he had achieved in a
class, his areas of weakness dragged down his grade. Yet, these grades are almost artificial.
I look back at my years of teaching and remember so many times looking at grades in the
yearbook and thinking how badly they had represented the students. There were even
times when I added a few extra credit points to push a student from a C to a B. These
students go home though and all there is to show for their work is the letter grade. One
student may get extra allowance for straight As. Another may get grounded for getting a D.
These grades are also what colleges use to decide if they will admit a student, whether they
should get a scholarship. For such a poor representation of a students worth, there sure
are a lot of serious consequences related to GPA.

I believe that the current system of letter grades is broken. Grades define the haves and
have-nots and are therefore greatly valued by students. It becomes a competition. Grades
are valued so much that students stress over getting As. They go from caring about doing
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well on an assignment to feel proud of their work, to doing well enough to get 90%. They
judge themselves based on their grades and, in the case of Anthony, bad grades can
completely destroy self-esteem. Parents judge their childs performance on the report card
rather than their successes in the classroom. What if assessments in classrooms better
reflected the nuances of student work? What if students were motivated by the content
rather than the final grade? Through my action research I have hoped to show that it is
possible to transform a classroom through how we assess our students. The change to how
students view themselves and their work is why every teacher should rethink how they
assess in their own classroom.

In this action research I try to answer the question, what happens when I replace letter
grades with assessments grounded in Core Growth Areas? How we assess our students
reflects what we value as educators. I believe that teachers are doing a disservice to their
students by basing the outcomes of their classes primarily on completion of assignments
and understanding of concepts. Do we truly think that the decision to accept a student to
college should be based on how well they can factor a binomial or how well they can
memorize historical dates? Shouldnt we be pushing our students to master twenty-first
century skills that are needed in the real world? By removing grades in my classroom and
refocusing on broader competencies I hope to better align my assessment system with
qualities that I value. I hope to better understand my students. I hope to motivate them
with the work rather than the grade. Most of all, through pushing them to grow, I hope to
show students their worth instead of showing them their deficits.