Mark Barnes: 7 Reasons teachers should stop grading their students forever

[xcriteria]

Excerpt:

"For the naysayers, who may have opened this post out of sheer curiosity, let me begin by saying that for more than a decade as a teacher, I used traditional grading practices in my middle and high school classes.

Activities and projects were assigned an arbitrary point value. Then, I’d judge the work and decide what score it should receive. One summer, I reflected on a particularly difficult school year, in which many of my students failed, and decided I needed to rebuild myself.

The following year, I changed everything, and I completely eliminated grades. During that transformational summer, I researched many outdated, traditional teaching practices and discovered how to help students learn in much more engaging ways. Most important, though, was the new knowledge that measuring learning with numbers, percentages and letters is not only impractical, it is potentially harmful to learners."

Read the rest: 7 Reasons Teachers Should Stop Grading Their Students Forever

What do you think? Barnes is leading a movement of Teachers Throwing Out Grades, and it's gaining a lot of popularity, despite most people's initial shock at the idea. Yes, it's possible, and yes, true learning doesn't benefit from grades... the things so many here are punished and yelled at over as if they're the most important thing in the world.

So, here's a challenge for all of you: why not print out or otherwise share this article with your teachers, parents, and other students?

See what they say, and share your experience here. Things can change, but they will never change if nobody is even exposed to the growing numbers of experts who have changed their views from what they were taught to do, to what true learning and teaching requires.

School systems themselves may still require end-of-term grades and report cards, but if teachers and parents learn about how flawed they are, they can take steps to mitigate their use, and find creative ways to produce a final grade, instead of using graded assignments along the way.

And, more and more, school districts are re-examining the entire way they do grading and award diplomas, often based on focusing on standards, rather than caring about grades. That has flaws, if it still drags people through ill-fitting one-size-fits-all curriculum, but it's a step forward when it comes to the toxic effects of chasing grades, rather than learning itself.

[MrAnonymous]

(I'm playing Devil's advocate here) But students won't do anything assigned if they don't get punished/rewarded for doing work.

[Aureate]

“This idea that children won't learn without outside rewards and penalties, or in the debased jargon of the behaviorists, "positive and negative reinforcements," usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we treat children long enough as if that were true, they will come to believe it is true. So many people have said to me, "If we didn't make children do things, they wouldn't do anything." Even worse, they say, "If I weren't made to do things, I wouldn't do anything."

It is the creed of a slave.”


-John Holt

[craxyguy562]

You think I should print this out and show this to my parents... I'm not sure I should do that.

I am just going to sit back and read the the debate that is starting up.

As for my opnion I do agree that the grading system is a little messed up. It is like a videogame. "Do this and you will get 10 pts so you can get closer to A+ and graduation." Beep beep bop.