Traditional Grading Is Objective, and Other Myths

Tim Westerberg, as heard at the School Administrators of Iowa Conference August 2014

Only 31% of 2011 ACT tested students meet all four benchmarks of success in college.

89% of high school instructors claim their students are college-ready; 26% of college instructors claim their students arrived in a state of college-readiness.

Highly questionable grading practices:

1. The practice of giving zeroes (in the 100 point system) for work not turned in. (At N-K, we are implementing W.I.N. time as one method to ensure students complete and submit all assigned work; we are also implementing a re-do/re-take policy that allows students to re-assess for a better grade.)
2. The practice of giving extra credit.
1. This is typically used to mitigate the negative effect of incomplete work or low grades on regularly assigned work.
3. The practice of combining academic understanding with citizenship and work habits.
1. Doing so destroys the validity of the assessments/assignments
4. The practice of averaging.
1. By definition, this means the combining of unlike elements.  In N-K's new system that eliminates the averaging of two quarter grades and a semester test grade, if a teacher continues averaging grades at the classroom level this produces equally inaccurate measures of learning and mastery.
5. The "Semester Killer".
6. Homework policies that discourage the completion of late/missing work.
1. This happens when a student earns a zero for late/missing work, and life moves on.
2. Instead, if all work that teachers assign was important enough to assign, then it's important for all students to do it.  Therefore, when a student does NOT turn in work, there must be an immediate response (which is one of the main goals of N-K's W.I.N. time)

Our current system of grading is definitely NOT objective, due to the varying practices from teacher to teacher.