Why should we do grading and reporting?

The purpose of a grading system is to give feedback to students so they can take charge of their learning
and to provide information to all who support these students—teachers, special educators, parents, and
others. The purpose of a reporting system is to communicate the students’ achievement to families,
post-secondary institutions, and employers. These systems must, above all, communicate clear
information about the skills a student has mastered or the areas where they need more support or
practice. This guide is intended to highlight the central practices that schools can use to ensure that their
grading and reporting systems help them build a nurturing, equitable, creative, and dynamic culture of
learning.

Which type of grading and reporting would you use in the teaching field?

I will use portfolio to grade my students and report the feedback that they need. Using this type of
grading and reporting, I can easily evaluate their works and communicate what they need to know
about their learning progress in which all learners should and must be accountable. It is very useful in
showing student’s strengths and weaknesses, illustrating range of student work, showing progress over
time or stages of a project and lastly, teaching students about objectives and standards they are to
meet.

What is the difference between Norm- Reference Grading and Criterion Reference Grading?

Norm-referenced tests compare individual performance with the performance of a group. College
entrance tests and the IQ tests are norm-referenced, because you can see how well one student scores
when compared to the group. Norm-referenced tests usually cover a broad range of content, but often
mismatch what is taught to what is tested. Criterion-referenced assessments measure how well a
student has mastered a specific learning goal (or objective). Student performance is judged by how
closely the performance matches specific criteria, not by how the student compares to others.

What are the misconceptions about grades?

When schools use grades to reward or punish students, or to sort students into levels, imbalances in
power and privilege will be magnified and the purposes of the grading and reporting systems will not be
achieved. Even when they don’t try to minimize their academic effort, many students base their sense of
self on academic achievement, often in the form of grades. When students obsess about grades, it is not
just annoying for teachers or unideal for students; it hurts their mental and physical health, limits their
ability to think broadly and originally, and affects their motivation for learning and working. Since so
much of identity formation happens during K-12 schooling, how students learn to interpret their grades
in relation to themselves really matters-- both in the moment and over the years. Because so much
depends upon high school grades, parents end up caring about them a lot too, which only increases the
stakes for students. Many parents, particularly in high-achieving, high-pressure schools, go directly to
teachers to try to get their children’s grades raised, and one 2014 survey found that 80% of kids thought
that their parents cared more about their achievement than their happiness or altruism. Some school
districts have even had to restrict the number of times per week that parents are allowed to access their
children’s grades online.