Museum of Education

When museum curators of the future assemble an exhibit on American schooling in the twentieth century, they'll have many artifacts to choose from - chunky textbooks, dusty blackboards, one-piece injection-moldied desks with waraparound writing surfaces. But one item deserves special consideration. I recommend that in the center of the exhibition, enclosed in a sparkling glass case, the curators display a well sharpened No.2 pencil.

When Dan Pink wrote this in his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, I enjoyed the thought of what parts of school will become (if they haven't already) become obsolete and archaic.

My addition to this Museum would be:

GRADES

Here are some reasons why grades should be abolished. Each is a different article by Alfie Kohn:

• grades can only really be experienced as a reward or a punishment
• grades provide little to no information for students to use in order to actually improve
• grades distract everyone from our true objective: learning
• grades encourage competition rather than collaboration
• grades encourage students to regard learning as a chore
• grades discourage risk-taking
• grades encourage students to think less deeply
• grades encourage students to fall apart when they fail
• grades encourage students to focus on their ability rather than their effort
• grades encourage students to cheat
• grades encourage teachers to cheat
• grades are a poor predictor of the future
• grades encourage ranking and sorting rather than instruction and improvement

In 1976, Paul Dressel wrote a brilliant summary of what a grade actually means:

A mark or grade is an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an indefinite amount of material.

In my classroom, students only ever recieve a grade on the report card. For the rest of the year, my students only ever receive formative feedback that is either written or spoken.

When I share this with people, I inevitably get asked the question "If you don't give grades, how do you come up with a report card grade?"

For this I have three answers.

• My students collect the evidence of their learning in their paper an electronic portfolios. The paper one is nothing fancy - just a file folder and the electronic one takes the form of a discussion forum that I created using www.freeforums.org, or a class Ning at www.ning.com or class wiki at www.wikispaces.com.

• I am a professional. I spend 2 hours a day (or more) with each of my students for 10 months of the year. I get to know them quite well, so my professional judgement and intuitive thinking count for a lot - and have proven to be quite accurate (there is a wealth of evidence to support that teachers assessment of their students may be the most accurate form of assessment we can depend on)

• I ask the students to self-assess. It is amazing how close they come to picking the same grade that I would pick. Interestingly enough, when there is disagreement between me and them, they are usually too hard on themselves - and the odd time a kid over-inflates their grade, I either to decide to let it go or have I have a conversation with the student and make the adjustment.

For more on the abolishment of grades take a look at some of Alfie Kohn's books:

The Schools Our Children Deserve

Punshed by Rewards

For more on abolishing grading, check out this page.

To learn more about teachers who have or are abolishing grading, see the Grading Moratorium.