4 ms·

I feel like we are kind of doing a disservice to children by even having grades K-8. I don't really see what the value is in having them. Parents over focus on

by notus 8y ago

I feel like we are kind of doing a disservice to children by even having grades K-8. I don't really see what the value is in having them. Parents over focus on it and seem to measure their own child's worth based on grades and children also seem to measure their own self worth based on grades. IMO there is no case where a child that young should be failing anything, if they are failing a class that young there is something seriously wrong going on with the child which needs to be addressed ASAP or there is something wrong with the teacher. (I'll also add that it could be something wrong with the pedagogy if the majority of the grade is determined by homework assignments but I still think that falls in the category of something going on with the child)

Aloha 8y ago
I think some feedback system is important, you need a mechanism to let the parents know Johnny is struggling and need something to help them. That said, letter grades are useless to gradeschoolers (K-5).
- notus 8y ago
  I think if the feedback was more along the lines of the teacher getting in touch with the parent to discuss decline in performance or something it might go better for the child. There is something just really indifferent and also ambiguous about letter grades and more specifically the Unsatisfactory/Satisfactory/Outstanding rating system for younger children. I believe the age range they measured was children 5-11 so pretty young in this context.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  Letter grades are largely useless as an educational tool, even in high school – they provide delayed, coarse, not very actionable feedback, while inflicting a lot of unnecessary emotional stress/pain which directly interferes with learning. The real purpose of letter grades is largely bureaucratic and they are designed for the convenience of teachers and school administrators. What they are good for is sorting and labeling the students, though as a side effect they are also quite effective at directing student effort toward gaming them rather than caring about the quality of their work. My primary school eschewed grades in favor of detailed written progress reports. These took a whole lot more work for the teachers to prepare, but were much more valuable. (In particular, knowing that they would need to write them caused teachers to pay attention to the progress of every student and take notes about it on a regular basis.)
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    The argument for grades is "Well, I suffered through them, so should you". We can look at engineering disciplines, medical at all levels, and many more. "Since I suffered, you should have to as well." When we finally kill that idea, we can move forward with what real education is, and how to better measure it. Right now, we measure compliance and rule adherence, and we should instead be measuring understanding.
  - freeopinion 8y ago
    Our school district administers SBAC tests. Students are given a general score, but nothing specific. Nobody is allowed to know which questions a student was given, let alone which ones they got right or wrong. The tests are completely adaptive, so every student gets a different set of questions. The school district uses cumulative results to assess students, teachers, and entire schools. But it's all meaningless. You don't know which areas a student struggles in. You don't know what topics a teacher doesn't explain well. You don't know where the specific holes are in a school's curriculum. You fire teachers, shuffle classes, and fund schools without useful information. There is no way to take a teacher and make them better. You can only replace them and hope for the best, shooting in the dark. You can make a student feel generally bad about themselves, or good about themselves, but not help them assess their specific strengths and weaknesses. It all seems so pointless to me that I specifically pull my children out of testing days. If an entire day or three has no educational value, there's no point in attending.
    - geomark 8y ago
      That sounds a bit like the InCAS assessment[1] used in the UK and some international schools that follow the British system. In my experience, the teachers are a bit reluctant to share the results because it takes some effort to get reports out that are parent-friendly, and it takes a bit of explaining what the reports mean. But I have been able to get them upon request. Perhaps it is the same issue with SBAC tests, too much effort for the teachers to provide meaningful reports. 1. https://www.cem.org/incas https://www.cem.org/incas
  - throwaway-hn123 8y ago
gizmo686 8y ago
I assume that you mean having grades in grades K-8, and not that schooling should not start until 9th grade. I went to a K-12 school for high school (transferred in at grade 9); and they didn't give any grades in K-8 [0]. Having said that, I do not think the concept of grades for younger students is inherantly bad, it is just that parents and students are terrible at receiving them. I assume you do see the value in report cards in general. The problem with gradeless report cards, is that it is easy to misunderstand them. For instance, if a teacher says "Johny should improve in X", it is not clear if there is a problem, or if Johny is actually doing amazing, and X is just the place where there is the most room for growth. Ideally, the teacher would be able to communicate this information perfectly; but having a simple grading system can be a valuable to to accurate communication. [0] And their reasoning for giving any in 9-12 was primarily for college applications.
- r00fus 8y ago
  Wow I had no idea K-12s still existed. What was the profile / location of your school?
  - gizmo686 8y ago
    Private school in Maryland; about 50 students/grade in K-8 and 80 in 9-12
freeopinion 8y ago
I think it is a shame to give a student a D or F in some building-block subject, then pass them on to the next level. There should be two grades: "ready for the next step" and "not ready". If a student struggles identifying nouns and verbs, it's probably not useful to push them on to prepositions or all the forms of participles. If you haven't memorized times tables up to 5x5, moving on to 12x12 might not be wise. On the other hand, struggling with subject/object shouldn't prevent you from taking a turn at haiku. So it would be helpful to have a decent graph of dependencies. But letting everybody progress along the graph of their proficiency would make instruction and administration very challenging. Especially when you throw in social aspects. Having a 10-year-old in the same welding class as the 17-year-olds could be problematic regardless of welding aptitude. And repeatedly putting a 17-year-old with the 12-year-olds studying geometry is also questionable. But in the end, a grade should mean something useful. It should lead to some useful action that facilitates better education. If it does not, then it is only useful to signal potential employers. And that use is indeed dubious for 8-year-olds. But not so dubious for 18-year-olds who did not progress past their 8-year-old level of proficiency. So I say grade everyone, then make the grades matter. If a 17-year old wants to take one more shot at geometry, let them. If they want to quit after the third try when they are 15-yo, let them. If they want to quit after the first try, let them. But once you quit, you can't move along the dependency graph for that subject. Of course, "geometry" is much too broad. You could get stuck on one small concept. You take as much time as you need to go back over it again and again until you get it well enough to be able to study the next concept that depends upon it. This might take one hour or it might take 2 hours per day for 3 days. It doesn't have to set you back 15 weeks or half a school year. But again, that level of individualized instruction is expensive. Edit: spelling
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  It is expensive but not doing it seems expensive as well, just not in the education budget. One of the promises of IT in the classroom was to help with these sort of problems but it doesn't seem to have delivered.
nearbuy 8y ago
1. Grades are a strong motivator for many students. 2. Grades help you gauge how well you did, which can be useful for self-improvement. 3. Grades in early years can help train you to gain the study habits to get good grades in later years. Suddenly being expected to study in grade 9 might be harder. In my university we were allowed to take some classes pass/fail instead of graded. I can tell you exactly how much effort students would put into those classes: enough to pass. Even the way students would take about these classes would emphasize this. We'd say things like, "yeah, I have 4 courses this semester, and econ, but it's pass/fail". Yes, I often hated the stress of homework and grades in school. But the unfortunate truth is if nothing were at stake (i.e. bad grades), I would have much rather spent my energy playing video games than learning. Which is exactly what I did when I didn't have homework or a test (and often even when I did).
- hopler 8y ago
  Is it grades specifically that mattered? If the consequence for not learning algebra was to repeat lessons until you learned it, wouldn't you get bored and want to score well and move on? Isn't level of progress as motivating as a grade in terms of competitive motivation?
  - nearbuy 8y ago
    Yes, just like with the pass/fail courses at my university, students would want to pass. Also like those pass/fail courses, most students would put the minimum effort required to pass. If you're proposing a system where each student gets to progress at their own pace, then: 1. I would have loved to have that in my school. 2. But it demands more resources from schools and creates logistical problems. Every student now graduates with different knowledge. 3. You've recreated the problems problems we were trying to solve by eliminating grades to begin with. Parents will still be angry if their kid has only completed 4 levels of progress when all the good students have completed 10. They'll say they aren't applying themselves. Kids will be under stress to complete as many levels as possible each year. And of course, if each level is pass/fail, it encourages superficial learning of each level. What have we accomplished by eliminating grades? To answer your first question, grades are not the only possible motivator. Anything that can be measured could be used to motivate. But if you measure the wrong thing, you encourage the wrong behaviour.
Intermernet 8y ago
This week I had 2 assessments. Firstly I did my HR truck licence (large trucks, non articulated) and secondly I upgraded my industrial rope access certification. Neither of these have a grade on the official record other than pass or fail. On both examinations I actually had much finer grained assessment, and specific feedback on areas that could be improved. I'm not sure why adult assessment works this way but school doesn't.

by notus 8y ago

Aloha 8y ago

I think some feedback system is important, you need a mechanism to let the parents know Johnny is struggling and need something to help them. That said, letter grades are useless to gradeschoolers (K-5).

notus 8y ago
I think if the feedback was more along the lines of the teacher getting in touch with the parent to discuss decline in performance or something it might go better for the child. There is something just really indifferent and also ambiguous about letter grades and more specifically the Unsatisfactory/Satisfactory/Outstanding rating system for younger children. I believe the age range they measured was children 5-11 so pretty young in this context.
jacobolus 8y ago
Letter grades are largely useless as an educational tool, even in high school – they provide delayed, coarse, not very actionable feedback, while inflicting a lot of unnecessary emotional stress/pain which directly interferes with learning. The real purpose of letter grades is largely bureaucratic and they are designed for the convenience of teachers and school administrators. What they are good for is sorting and labeling the students, though as a side effect they are also quite effective at directing student effort toward gaming them rather than caring about the quality of their work. My primary school eschewed grades in favor of detailed written progress reports. These took a whole lot more work for the teachers to prepare, but were much more valuable. (In particular, knowing that they would need to write them caused teachers to pay attention to the progress of every student and take notes about it on a regular basis.)
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  The argument for grades is "Well, I suffered through them, so should you". We can look at engineering disciplines, medical at all levels, and many more. "Since I suffered, you should have to as well." When we finally kill that idea, we can move forward with what real education is, and how to better measure it. Right now, we measure compliance and rule adherence, and we should instead be measuring understanding.
- freeopinion 8y ago
  Our school district administers SBAC tests. Students are given a general score, but nothing specific. Nobody is allowed to know which questions a student was given, let alone which ones they got right or wrong. The tests are completely adaptive, so every student gets a different set of questions. The school district uses cumulative results to assess students, teachers, and entire schools. But it's all meaningless. You don't know which areas a student struggles in. You don't know what topics a teacher doesn't explain well. You don't know where the specific holes are in a school's curriculum. You fire teachers, shuffle classes, and fund schools without useful information. There is no way to take a teacher and make them better. You can only replace them and hope for the best, shooting in the dark. You can make a student feel generally bad about themselves, or good about themselves, but not help them assess their specific strengths and weaknesses. It all seems so pointless to me that I specifically pull my children out of testing days. If an entire day or three has no educational value, there's no point in attending.
  - geomark 8y ago
    That sounds a bit like the InCAS assessment[1] used in the UK and some international schools that follow the British system. In my experience, the teachers are a bit reluctant to share the results because it takes some effort to get reports out that are parent-friendly, and it takes a bit of explaining what the reports mean. But I have been able to get them upon request. Perhaps it is the same issue with SBAC tests, too much effort for the teachers to provide meaningful reports. 1. https://www.cem.org/incas https://www.cem.org/incas
- throwaway-hn123 8y ago

gizmo686 8y ago

I assume that you mean having grades in grades K-8, and not that schooling should not start until 9th grade. I went to a K-12 school for high school (transferred in at grade 9); and they didn't give any grades in K-8 [0]. Having said that, I do not think the concept of grades for younger students is inherantly bad, it is just that parents and students are terrible at receiving them. I assume you do see the value in report cards in general. The problem with gradeless report cards, is that it is easy to misunderstand them. For instance, if a teacher says "Johny should improve in X", it is not clear if there is a problem, or if Johny is actually doing amazing, and X is just the place where there is the most room for growth. Ideally, the teacher would be able to communicate this information perfectly; but having a simple grading system can be a valuable to to accurate communication. [0] And their reasoning for giving any in 9-12 was primarily for college applications.

r00fus 8y ago
Wow I had no idea K-12s still existed. What was the profile / location of your school?
- gizmo686 8y ago
  Private school in Maryland; about 50 students/grade in K-8 and 80 in 9-12

freeopinion 8y ago

I think it is a shame to give a student a D or F in some building-block subject, then pass them on to the next level. There should be two grades: "ready for the next step" and "not ready". If a student struggles identifying nouns and verbs, it's probably not useful to push them on to prepositions or all the forms of participles. If you haven't memorized times tables up to 5x5, moving on to 12x12 might not be wise. On the other hand, struggling with subject/object shouldn't prevent you from taking a turn at haiku. So it would be helpful to have a decent graph of dependencies. But letting everybody progress along the graph of their proficiency would make instruction and administration very challenging. Especially when you throw in social aspects. Having a 10-year-old in the same welding class as the 17-year-olds could be problematic regardless of welding aptitude. And repeatedly putting a 17-year-old with the 12-year-olds studying geometry is also questionable. But in the end, a grade should mean something useful. It should lead to some useful action that facilitates better education. If it does not, then it is only useful to signal potential employers. And that use is indeed dubious for 8-year-olds. But not so dubious for 18-year-olds who did not progress past their 8-year-old level of proficiency. So I say grade everyone, then make the grades matter. If a 17-year old wants to take one more shot at geometry, let them. If they want to quit after the third try when they are 15-yo, let them. If they want to quit after the first try, let them. But once you quit, you can't move along the dependency graph for that subject. Of course, "geometry" is much too broad. You could get stuck on one small concept. You take as much time as you need to go back over it again and again until you get it well enough to be able to study the next concept that depends upon it. This might take one hour or it might take 2 hours per day for 3 days. It doesn't have to set you back 15 weeks or half a school year. But again, that level of individualized instruction is expensive. Edit: spelling

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
It is expensive but not doing it seems expensive as well, just not in the education budget. One of the promises of IT in the classroom was to help with these sort of problems but it doesn't seem to have delivered.

nearbuy 8y ago

1. Grades are a strong motivator for many students. 2. Grades help you gauge how well you did, which can be useful for self-improvement. 3. Grades in early years can help train you to gain the study habits to get good grades in later years. Suddenly being expected to study in grade 9 might be harder. In my university we were allowed to take some classes pass/fail instead of graded. I can tell you exactly how much effort students would put into those classes: enough to pass. Even the way students would take about these classes would emphasize this. We'd say things like, "yeah, I have 4 courses this semester, and econ, but it's pass/fail". Yes, I often hated the stress of homework and grades in school. But the unfortunate truth is if nothing were at stake (i.e. bad grades), I would have much rather spent my energy playing video games than learning. Which is exactly what I did when I didn't have homework or a test (and often even when I did).

hopler 8y ago
Is it grades specifically that mattered? If the consequence for not learning algebra was to repeat lessons until you learned it, wouldn't you get bored and want to score well and move on? Isn't level of progress as motivating as a grade in terms of competitive motivation?
- nearbuy 8y ago
  Yes, just like with the pass/fail courses at my university, students would want to pass. Also like those pass/fail courses, most students would put the minimum effort required to pass. If you're proposing a system where each student gets to progress at their own pace, then: 1. I would have loved to have that in my school. 2. But it demands more resources from schools and creates logistical problems. Every student now graduates with different knowledge. 3. You've recreated the problems problems we were trying to solve by eliminating grades to begin with. Parents will still be angry if their kid has only completed 4 levels of progress when all the good students have completed 10. They'll say they aren't applying themselves. Kids will be under stress to complete as many levels as possible each year. And of course, if each level is pass/fail, it encourages superficial learning of each level. What have we accomplished by eliminating grades? To answer your first question, grades are not the only possible motivator. Anything that can be measured could be used to motivate. But if you measure the wrong thing, you encourage the wrong behaviour.

Intermernet 8y ago

This week I had 2 assessments. Firstly I did my HR truck licence (large trucks, non articulated) and secondly I upgraded my industrial rope access certification. Neither of these have a grade on the official record other than pass or fail. On both examinations I actually had much finer grained assessment, and specific feedback on areas that could be improved. I'm not sure why adult assessment works this way but school doesn't.