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It seems ridiculous, but it’s not. Grades are an invalidated assessment framework: 1. They don’t do what they say they do (assess retained learning, track pro

It seems ridiculous, but it’s not. Grades are an invalidated assessment framework: 1. They don’t do what they say they do (assess retained learning, track progress) 2. They create perverse incentives that diminish students desire to learn 3. They emphasize evaluation over iteration. Iteration is by far the more important skill - both pragmatically, for building knowledge, and for emotional development (grit). I’ll zero in on “track progress” since you mention that. Start with a simple question: What is progress in learning? You’ll quickly uncover two things: * progress is non-linear & child specific * learning isn’t about task completion Here’s another teacher’s view: https://www.jessestommel.com/why-i-dont-grade/ https://www.jessestommel.com/why-i-dont-grade/ Grade do serve one specific kind of student persona - those who optimize getting tasks done & getting good grades for it. Task completion is an important skill, but it is currently being taught at the expense of much more important & valuable skills. The justification for that is that task completion is hard, difficult for children to learn. Only it’s not. It turns out that children generally complete many tasks when they are engaged in an open, iterative learning process. They’ll even generate & complete their own! Can you name one student who invented homework for themselves after they already knew they are getting an A+?! “Most likely to succeed” by Harvard professor Tony Wagner is a great introduction to the academic research behind the above. There really is a better, child-friendly way to learn.

yupper32 5y ago
You're missing one key point that I meant to touch on in the original post: This professor is still living in the bad system you describe. They just pretend it doesn't exist until the very end. If they were some private school that lived outside of the GPA system, or were apart of some tutoring company, then sure it'd probably work well. But they don't. So when I say "track progress", I mean track progress in the current system using the main thing I am (or, was) measured on: GPA.
- sjg007 5y ago
  There are private schools including home schools that live outside the GPA requirement. A few colleges remain that do not grade. We like GPAs because they reduce evaluation to a summary statistic. But guess what? GPA does not predict a good Googler. Some of the best programmers never had a formal CS education. We fool ourselves and do our children a great disservice by creating artificial ranking mechanisms for the sake of convenience.
  - rat9988 5y ago
    > GPA does not predict a good Googler. Some of the best programmers never had a formal CS education. These two statements are independant
    - sjg007 5y ago
      Yes, that is why they are separate sentences. Some great programmers never went to college!
qiskit 5y ago
> 1. They don’t do what they say they do (assess retained learning, track progress) So getting an A or a C in arithmetic doesn't reveal anything about retained learning or track progress? > 2. They create perverse incentives that diminish students desire to learn No. They create incentives where none exists. The perversion is not the grade, testing, etc. The perversion is the system itself. Where kids are taken from their families to given to stranger to educate in an educational factory. > 3. They emphasize evaluation over iteration. Iteration is by far the more important skill - both pragmatically, for building knowledge, and for emotional development (grit). How do you determine the need for iteration unless you get some sort of feedback ( aka grade ). If you get a C in a test, that should indicate to the parent/student/teacher that the student needs to go over the material. > * progress is non-linear & child specific * learning isn’t about task completion I agree with the former. But task completion is most definitely part of learning. > Grade do serve one specific kind of student persona - those who optimize getting tasks done & getting good grades for it. You conveniently left out "learning". Those who optimize getting tasks done and learning and therefore getting good grades. How do you get good grades? By learning the subject matter.
- alexvoda 5y ago
  > So getting an A or a C in arithmetic doesn't reveal anything about retained learning or track progress? Yes, because Goodhart's law is applied. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Many of those getting an A in arithmetics will have learned "how to get an A" instead of "how to practice and use arithmetics". In Romania, where school is very focused on grades at all levels, pupils really do actually learn how to get the grade instead of how to think. And the actual content is forgotten after a week or a month.
  - qiskit 5y ago
    > Yes, because Goodhart's law is applied. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". It depends on whether the grade is the ends or not. But here the grades aren't the ends. It's just a means to achieve the ends - learning the material. > Many of those getting an A in arithmetics will have learned "how to get an A" instead of "how to practice and use arithmetics". That's just a reflection of corruption in the system and not grading itself. > In Romania, where school is very focused on grades at all levels, pupils really do actually learn how to get the grade instead of how to think. No school anywhere exists to teach you how to think. But that's besides the point. Does the grade reflect the student's understanding of the material? > And the actual content is forgotten after a week or a month. Most content is forgotten regardless of the education system. So how do kids in romania learn to get good grades? Bribery? That doesn't show that grades are bad, but that the corruption is bad.
StanislavPetrov 5y ago
Pretending that there is no place for objective metrics in school is just as silly as pretending there is no place for objective metrics in society at large. Grading may not be the perfect way to measure learning, but it is far superior than no objective metric at all. The fact is that schools exist to instill certain basic minimums of competency. We must have a way to measure whether or not those basic minimums are being met.
- EricE 5y ago
  >We must have a way to measure whether or not those basic minimums are being met. The teacher tells them. In written feedback. Far more nuanced and helpful than just a letter grade.
  - StanislavPetrov 5y ago
    Perhaps you missed the "objective" part of "objective metric". If, for example, we want to determine a student's proficiency in algebra, it is far less useful to compare feedback from teachers with different standards, different abilities and different objectives than it is to compare the results from an objective test that is given to all students in all classes. Unlike standardized tests, teachers (and their assessments) vary wildly. The goals, expectations and abilities of an algebra teacher in Scranton, Ohio may (and often do) vary wildly from the goals, expectations and abilities of an algebra teacher in Juno, Alaska. Take ten different teachers and ask them to write an assessment of the same student, based on the same coursework, and you will get ten wildly different assessments. Teacher assessments may be useful for student feedback, but they are not useful for comparing the relative grasp of course information by different students.
    - zem 5y ago
      if (as people are claiming here) grades don't accurately measure proficiency, their being objective won't magically make them a better measure.
      - 5y ago

yupper32 5y ago

You're missing one key point that I meant to touch on in the original post: This professor is still living in the bad system you describe. They just pretend it doesn't exist until the very end. If they were some private school that lived outside of the GPA system, or were apart of some tutoring company, then sure it'd probably work well. But they don't. So when I say "track progress", I mean track progress in the current system using the main thing I am (or, was) measured on: GPA.

sjg007 5y ago
There are private schools including home schools that live outside the GPA requirement. A few colleges remain that do not grade. We like GPAs because they reduce evaluation to a summary statistic. But guess what? GPA does not predict a good Googler. Some of the best programmers never had a formal CS education. We fool ourselves and do our children a great disservice by creating artificial ranking mechanisms for the sake of convenience.
- rat9988 5y ago
  > GPA does not predict a good Googler. Some of the best programmers never had a formal CS education. These two statements are independant
  - sjg007 5y ago
    Yes, that is why they are separate sentences. Some great programmers never went to college!

qiskit 5y ago

> 1. They don’t do what they say they do (assess retained learning, track progress) So getting an A or a C in arithmetic doesn't reveal anything about retained learning or track progress? > 2. They create perverse incentives that diminish students desire to learn No. They create incentives where none exists. The perversion is not the grade, testing, etc. The perversion is the system itself. Where kids are taken from their families to given to stranger to educate in an educational factory. > 3. They emphasize evaluation over iteration. Iteration is by far the more important skill - both pragmatically, for building knowledge, and for emotional development (grit). How do you determine the need for iteration unless you get some sort of feedback ( aka grade ). If you get a C in a test, that should indicate to the parent/student/teacher that the student needs to go over the material. > * progress is non-linear & child specific * learning isn’t about task completion I agree with the former. But task completion is most definitely part of learning. > Grade do serve one specific kind of student persona - those who optimize getting tasks done & getting good grades for it. You conveniently left out "learning". Those who optimize getting tasks done and learning and therefore getting good grades. How do you get good grades? By learning the subject matter.

alexvoda 5y ago
> So getting an A or a C in arithmetic doesn't reveal anything about retained learning or track progress? Yes, because Goodhart's law is applied. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Many of those getting an A in arithmetics will have learned "how to get an A" instead of "how to practice and use arithmetics". In Romania, where school is very focused on grades at all levels, pupils really do actually learn how to get the grade instead of how to think. And the actual content is forgotten after a week or a month.
- qiskit 5y ago
  > Yes, because Goodhart's law is applied. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". It depends on whether the grade is the ends or not. But here the grades aren't the ends. It's just a means to achieve the ends - learning the material. > Many of those getting an A in arithmetics will have learned "how to get an A" instead of "how to practice and use arithmetics". That's just a reflection of corruption in the system and not grading itself. > In Romania, where school is very focused on grades at all levels, pupils really do actually learn how to get the grade instead of how to think. No school anywhere exists to teach you how to think. But that's besides the point. Does the grade reflect the student's understanding of the material? > And the actual content is forgotten after a week or a month. Most content is forgotten regardless of the education system. So how do kids in romania learn to get good grades? Bribery? That doesn't show that grades are bad, but that the corruption is bad.

StanislavPetrov 5y ago

Pretending that there is no place for objective metrics in school is just as silly as pretending there is no place for objective metrics in society at large. Grading may not be the perfect way to measure learning, but it is far superior than no objective metric at all. The fact is that schools exist to instill certain basic minimums of competency. We must have a way to measure whether or not those basic minimums are being met.

EricE 5y ago
>We must have a way to measure whether or not those basic minimums are being met. The teacher tells them. In written feedback. Far more nuanced and helpful than just a letter grade.
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  Perhaps you missed the "objective" part of "objective metric". If, for example, we want to determine a student's proficiency in algebra, it is far less useful to compare feedback from teachers with different standards, different abilities and different objectives than it is to compare the results from an objective test that is given to all students in all classes. Unlike standardized tests, teachers (and their assessments) vary wildly. The goals, expectations and abilities of an algebra teacher in Scranton, Ohio may (and often do) vary wildly from the goals, expectations and abilities of an algebra teacher in Juno, Alaska. Take ten different teachers and ask them to write an assessment of the same student, based on the same coursework, and you will get ten wildly different assessments. Teacher assessments may be useful for student feedback, but they are not useful for comparing the relative grasp of course information by different students.
  - zem 5y ago
    if (as people are claiming here) grades don't accurately measure proficiency, their being objective won't magically make them a better measure.
    - 5y ago