Zeroes and Grading

John Scammell is a math teacher turned Field Services Facilitator for the Alberta Assessment Consortium. This post first appeared on his blog here.

by John Scammell

I used to punish students with grades. I taught high school mathematics, and I believed I was holding my students accountable and preparing them for the real world by giving them zeros when they didn’t do something I wanted them to do. I was wrong.

About ten years ago, my principal told me to stop giving zeros. I didn’t understand why she had removed something I was using to control kids. I spent the next few years trying to figure out why I shouldn’t give zeros. Because I did the research, I became a better teacher.

There seems to be a perception that giving zeros means a teacher has high standards. This notion is incorrect for two reasons. First of all, the only standards that are assessable are the ones outlined in our curricula. A student’s grade should reflect level of performance against these standards. Secondly, this perception of high standards is based on some arbitrary standard of behavior and accountability. I would contend that giving zeros to students actually lowers this standard.

I no longer give zeros, and I believe that my standards of accountability are higher than they were before. Giving a zero is equivalent to letting the student quit. Students will say to me, “Just give me the zero. I don’t feel like doing the work.” Letting students quit does not teach them responsibility or prepare them for the real world. Making them do the work does. Letting them off the hook effectively lowers the standards of accountability.

The message I give my students is that they must finish what they start. Responsible adults finish what they start. I want my students to turn into responsible adults. When students are missing something I absolutely must grade, I make them do it. If students won’t, I involve their parents and the school administration. The message I am sending is that I expect students to complete their tasks. That’s accountability. That’s responsibility. That’s life. My standards of accountability are high because I do not let my students opt out of their work.

As I see it, teaching involves two main jobs. I need to teach the curriculum to the best of my ability. Then I need to accurately assess and report the progress of my students. Good assessment practice dictates that the grade I assign should reflect what the student knows compared to the curriculum. Nothing else is gradable. The student who comes to class smiling every day with the proper materials and homework done is a joy to teach. If that student, however, cannot demonstrate adequate performance compared to the curricular standards, he/she fails. I am in no way suggesting that we pass students who can’t meet the curricular standards. We do, however, need to ensure we have accurate and meaningful evidence before we judge.

Some students are difficult. Some students frequently skip class, are disruptive, unpleasant, and unprepared. Difficult children that can demonstrate that they meet the curricular standards, though, should pass the class even if they are missing an assignment or two. If a student has missed so many assessments that I can’t evaluate accurately, then I shouldn’t assess by guessing. Such students will either have to make up missing work in a timely manner, or they may have to repeat or extend the course. I will not randomly choose to give a grade of zero, or any other number unsupported by evidence. It wouldn’t be an accurate reflection of what the child knows compared to the curriculum.

We need to remember that the vast majority of our students do everything we ask of them. Only a handful of students consistently fail to do the assessments we need them to do. We shouldn’t punish those students with a grade of zero any more than we would punish them with the strap. We all agree that the strap is archaic and has no place in schools, don’t we? A zero is no different than the strap. It’s an inappropriate response to a behavior.

We can do better. We can raise our standards of accountability by insisting that students finish what they start. We can insist they improve on substandard work. We can ask them to put in extra hours to make up what they have missed. In fact, we owe it to them. These expectations are the things their employers and post-secondary teachers should be asking of them, too.

My interview on the Simi Sara Show about no zeroes

Here is my interview on the Simi Sara Show where we talked about no zero policies and assessment. (audio only).

What a zero really says

Here is a guest post by Cherra-Lynne Olthof. She teaches middle school math, language arts and social studies. She tweets here and blogs at Teaching on Purpose. This post was originally seen here.

by Cherra-Lynne Olthof

A story was recently reported about an Edmonton teacher being suspended for giving his students zero’s in class in a school that has a no zero policy. (Incidentally, this article is located in the “news” tab and should be moved to the “opinion” tab. I always taught my kids that reporters should refrain from putting their personal bias into a news article. So if you read it, read it with a grain of salt.)

Many of my friends have had conversations about this controversial subject and I have stayed out of it. I have not written anything back on Facebook as people have made comments (mostly in support of the teacher) but in the past 24 hours as I have stood in groups of people who know me, many have turned to me and said, “You’re a teacher. What do you think?”

Oh boy. Deep breath in.

Ok, just remember… you asked for this people. My response is long so you might want to grab something to drink and a snack before you settle in to read this. My response comes in four stages. If you think this is a simple issue, it’s not. It’s very complex. And it’s about far more than giving a 0. I wrote a blog post back in February about Lates, Deductions, and 0′s but I obviously need to elaborate in my response to this difficult issue.

Issue #1: School Should Be Like The World Of Work

I get it, I really do. Many people equate school to having a job. If I don’t do my job I get fired. So a kid should get a 0. This works great if it’s not YOUR kid and it’s not HIS zero, doesn’t it? I caution you to think about this a little further before making such a snap decision. There are many things about school that have no equivalency to the world of work.

a) If you don’t do your job, you get fired. This doesn’t happen to kids. As a teacher I cannot “fire” a student. So many people say that the 0 is the punishment then. Well be careful here. As a worker someone has hired you. You applied for a job you thought you wanted and someone hired you because they believe you offered a skill set that would make you a valuable employee for the position. As a teacher I have not hired anyone to be in my classroom. You gave birth thirteen years ago and that’s why your child is in my classroom along with the other 26 kids I have. There was no choice involved.

b) Grades are like earning money. To anyone who says this, you clearly don’t understand my legal and professional obligation as a teacher. Grades are not money. John Scammel wrote an excellent blog post that says in the world of work effort is often related to increase in pay or promotion. As much as I would like to say that it’s the same for school, it isn’t. I have kids that do pretty much nothing in class but on the final project they show me they know their stuff. I have to give them a mark that reflects that. Consequently, I have students that put in ridiculous amounts of effort but still haven’t grasped the concept. As much as I would love to give them a high grade for their effort, that isn’t a true reflection of what they are capable of. As a teacher my job is to assess what your child knows about the content the Alberta Education Curriculum has set down for me.

c) If you don’t like your job, you can quit. Kids don’t have this option. They are LEGALLY obligated to attend until they are 16 (this will be changing to 17 in the near future). You job involves choice, attending school does not.

d) My job is to prepare them for the world of work? No. My job is to teach them how to think, how to learn, and how to problem solve. I am preparing them to be a responsible and contributing citizen to their country. This doesn’t always involve work. Ask a stay-at-home mom. She’s not working (in the traditional sense of the word that everyone seems to be talking about). Does this mean school was a pointless waste of her time? Not everyone goes on to “work” in the traditional sense. Not everyone will have a “job” after school. If this were the case, high school would separate kids into vocational classes and start training them right then and there. Why don’t we do that? Because your kids get to make that choice AFTER they graduate, when I’ve given them (hopefully) the skill set they need to make such a huge decision.

Issue #2: The Suspension Itself

This is a dicey one because I only know the details that have been reported in the newspaper. So I’m going to make a couple of assumptions here. It appears to me that the principal/administrator of the building has set down a policy of not giving out 0′s. The teacher violated this policy. This is an issue all by itself, forget WHY he was suspended.

For those of you so quick to equate school to the world of work…..if you work for a company that used to start at 10:00 am in the morning and you get a new change in leadership that says work will now start at 8:00 am but you basically ignore that and continue coming in at 10:00, what would you expect to have happen? Exactly.

As teachers we always have a choice. I remember several years ago I got a new principal and he laid out his vision of how the school was going to be. Right behind it he said, you can either support it or you can leave and find a new school to work in. And we did indeed have a teacher leave. That’s reality. You don’t like your job requirements? No one is forcing you to stay. If the school’s policy was to not give out 0′s and he knew this then he had a choice. He chose to stay and keep giving out 0′s.

According to the article, this teacher has repeatedly refused to abide by the policy. He was reprimanded several times. He knew the deal and he opted to stay and buck the system instead of finding a school that fit into his own personal beliefs. Well, there are consequences for that.

If it hadn’t been a school policy then I would have completely disagreed with the suspension. While I don’t like the way certain teachers teach, it is NOT my place to tell them how to do their job. At least not as a colleague. As an administrator it is their job to run their school as they see fit and set down policies and procedure to benefit their students. But policies apply to EVERYONE, not just to those who “choose” to follow them.

Issue #3: What a 0 really says…..

Dorval says he thinks the policy is linked to a self-esteem factor. That somehow a student will give up if they get a 0. But make no mistake, getting the 0 doesn’t cause them to give up. They choose to take the 0 because they’ve already given up. I’ve found that in my experience a student would rather get a 0 then a 23%. There’s an old saying that it’s better to be thought a fool then to say something and prove it. Well, for some kids they would rather be THOUGHT a failure then do the assignment and prove it. A 0 is easy to take and it’s easy to defend. That’s not the crushing blow. The crushing blow is actually doing the assignment and failing it. So what’s the alternative? I’m just not going to do it. I’m going to fail it anyways so why bother?

GIVE ME THESE KIDS! PLEASE! Give me the kids who think they are failures and so have chosen to not do the work. Because that’s really what a 0 means for a lot of them. The 0 says, “I’m scared of doing this and finding out I’m a failure.”

My husband and I are both teachers. We discuss this on a regular basis. I have a legal obligation to report what your child knows about the content of the curriculum. This is all I can do. How much I like your child can’t factor in. How many hours your kid puts into their assignment can’t factor in. How many assignments your child turned in out of the ten I assigned can’t factor in. All that matters is what your child has proven to me about his knowledge.

Sometimes a kid earns a true and honest 0. After doing the project or writing the test they have actually scored a real 0. I think I can count on 1 hand the number of times I’ve ever had this happen in my 11 year teaching career but if this is the case, then yes a 0 is justified. You know 0% of this content and I can prove it. I have evidence.

My husband and I also admit that giving 0′s is often a tracking system to report back to parents what the child has and has not done. Ok, fair enough. I don’t really agree with it but if this is a tracking system then that’s fine and even as a parent I don’t have an issue with that. HOWEVER….if a kid does none of the assignments I have given and he writes a 98% on the unit exam, I’m giving him a 98% in the course. If I start averaging in those 0′s and now suddenly he’s at a 42% I am reporting false information about what your child knows. I am saying he only knows 42% of the content when in fact he knows 98% of it.

I’m not a fan of averaging. I never have been. Ask anyone who failed their drivers test the first three times (I know people who have, seriously). Should those marks be averaged out? If so some people would never get their license. Do I get a golden license because I passed my test the first time? Of course not. Does your license look different because you took three chances? Or if you failed it the first time should that be it? Your chance is over. You failed. No license for you……EVER! Should I give you a zero because you missed your bus on the way to your test and failed to show up for it on time?

We have to ask ourselves, what is the purpose of giving assignments? I give assignments along the way to check up on the learning that I’m hoping is taking place. It’s actually more for me then for my students. It tells me if I’m doing my job. It tells me if the kids are getting it or if I need to stop and go back. A kid fails to do the assignment? Well I have no way to know where his learning is then, and that will have it’s own natural consequences later on when he writes the test of does the project. I don’t need to give him a zero now. Especially if the kid understands what the purpose of an assignment is. They are check points to see how you are doing as you work your way along. You miss the check point? Well, I can’t help you much then. Especially if you keep missing them. I’m awfully busy with the kids that are stopping at the check points and asking for help. And to be honest, some kids don’t need the check points. They cruise right along. We often refer to these kids as the “independent learners” and I’m ok with that.

What it ultimately comes down to is their final proof of knowledge. I give an assignment/project/test designed to assess what they really know. And if a kid misses that…..?

How do I deal with kids who don’t do their work? I give out something called an Insufficient. People have told me this is a fancy way of saying 0 but it really isn’t. When I write INS on an outcome what I’m saying is, “I have no idea if your child can do this or not. I have no evidence with which to make this judgement.” That is much different then giving out a 0 which says, “Your child knows 0% of the content of this subject.” But what a statement to make!

All kids learn. They learn at different rates and at different times, but they all learn. You have to really try hard to get an honest 0 in my classroom.

Issue #4: We Need More Information

I know this teacher looks like some kind of hero. He’s standing up for himself and his ideas and I give him kudos for that. I don’t agree with his policies but that doesn’t make him any less of a teacher in my eyes. We just have different pedagogy when it comes to teaching students. I don’t think any less of him for that. But before you go and string the rest of us who don’t give 0′s up by our toes, ask yourself…..how much do I really know about this situation? You are looking through the key hole of a door that looks into an entire house. You don’t know what the back story is. You don’t know the history. You are responding only to what you have been told and sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I’d love to have a conversation with this teacher as a matter of fact. I have questions. Like….what kinds of assignments are the kids not turning in? Why aren’t they turning them in? What background do your students have? What home life are they living with?

If the teacher was assigning assignments where your child had to answer 150 textbook problems every night, suddenly that turns things around doesn’t it? You would cry out, “That’s crazy!” Or what if he was an English teacher and the assignment was to copy out 2 pages of text from Romeo and Juliet in perfect handwriting. You would cry out, “But that’s pointless!” What if you found out the assignment was given the day half the class was on a ski trip and when the student failed to turn it in the next day he was given a 0. You would cry out, “That’s not fair!”

My point here is that we all need to ask questions before coming up with our opinions. But I have to admit….I am about to launch into a unit where I am teaching my Grade 8′s about what it mean to have an INFORMED OPINION vs. POPULAR OPINION. This news article and the people who responded to it with their comments couldn’t have come at a better time.

So in spite of everything I say, “Thanks for helping me plan my Monday English lesson.” I can’t wait to see what my Grade 8′s have to say about this.

Here's what really happens when you give a zero

If a student doesn't hand in their assignment, conventional wisdom tells us to give the student a zero. After the zero is assigned there are two possibilities:

1. The student will do the assignment and hand it in for a mark other than zero. 

or 

2. The student will not do the assignment and will keep the zero.

The threat of a zero will only extrinsically motivate the students that think they have a chance of doing well in the rest of the course -- but these students are not typically the kinds of students we are really having trouble with.

The students who are the hardest to educate and the hardest to like, are the ones that already get a steady diet of zeroes, and yet they are the ones who need us the most. For these students, they quit long before the zero was even assigned, and now the zero is doubling down on all the reasons why the assignment will never get done. For these kids, there is no such thing as a temporary zero -- zeroes are permanent. If the student had reasons to not do the assignment before, (whether they be real, perceived or excuses) the zero is the nail in the coffin.

Let's think about this for a minute.

It is very likely that dropouts are the kids we have the most trouble with in the real world, and yet they are the ones who get the most zeroes. If giving zeroes helped prepare dropouts for the real world, why is that they are the ones who have the most trouble living in the real world? Alberta does a good enough job giving kids zeroes and failing kids. About 1 in 4 kids don't graduate. Is anyone really prepared to argue that this number is too low?

I find it sadly ironic that people who support assigning zeroes to children do so by claiming it's for the children it hurts the most.

My second interview with CBC Radio on giving kids zeroes

Here is a second short interview I had on CBC Radio. My first was with CBC Calgary, and this one with CBC Edmonton. We talked briefly about no zero grading policies.

Zeroes for students and Suspensions for teachers

Consider these two scenarios and let's see if there's a connection.

Scenario A

Let's pretend I'm a teacher who believes in grading students work and when they don't hand things in on time I deduct marks each day until the assignment is handed in. When kids don't believe that my assignments are a good use of their time or effort, I give them a zero.

I believe I am holding kids accountable and responsible for doing their job. I believe I am upholding high standards.

Scenario B

I am that same teacher who works in a school district where there is a no zero grading policy. Because I don't agree that this policy is a good use of my time and effort, I refuse to follow the district's no zero grading policy and am suspended from teaching.

The school district believes they are holding me accountable and responsible for doing my job. They believe they are upholding high standards.

Conclusion

The threat of a zero is the equivalent to the threat of a suspension. These are instruments of control between the powerful and powerless. Zeroes for students and suspensions for teachers have less to do with learning, accountability and responsibility and more to do with compliance and punishment.

How we feel about zeroes and suspensions all depends on whether we are dispensing or receiving them. The kid getting the zero is likely to feel the same way as the teacher getting the suspension.

This is why I cashed in my reward and punishment tool box a long time ago and found a better way to work with people, regardless of whether they have more or less power than me.

My interview on CBC Radio on assigning kids zeroes

Here is the short interview I had on CBC Radio Calgary. We talked briefly about no zero grading policies.




Here is the post I wrote on how Giving kids a zero teaches them a lesson, and you can find all of my posts on the folly of grades and other assessment topics here.

You can also read about The Case Against Grades here.

Giving a student a zero teaches them a lesson

Here is some of the common sense around giving kids zeroes that doesn't make a lot of sense and is far too common.

Giving a kid a zero teaches them a lesson.

Yes, zeroes do teach lessons, but they are not the lessons you might be thinking. 

When we say things like "teach them a lesson" or "hold them accountable" it's important to note that these phrases mean nothing more than "punish children". Punishment teaches an important lesson: 

You can get your way with people who are weaker than you are by hurting them. 

One problem with this strategy is that the more you use power to control someone the less real influence you will have on their lives. As a parent and an educator, the prospect of reducing my influence with my children and students is unacceptable. 

This is why I've come to believe that children should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information. To do this, we need to move away from a "doing things to" children mindset and move towards a "working with children" mindset. If done properly, this means that teachers are less like judges-in-waiting who have an adversarial relationship with kids to being more like a safe and caring ally.

We need to move away from thinking "when kids do something bad, we must do something bad to them" and move towards "we have a problem here; how are we going to solve it together?"

It takes courage not to punish students with zeroes, and it takes real effort to see problems as an opportunity for the teacher to teach and the student to learn. If a child doesn't know how to read, we teach them how to read, and yet when a child doesn't hand things in on time or behave, we punish them. See the difference?

To those who support the use of zeroes, I ask this: "After you've assigned all those zeroes and things are still no better, then what?"

Zeroes motivate kids.

Yes, zeroes motivate kids -- they motivate them to quit.

Assigning students zeroes to make them accountable works well on bumper stickers and it allows many teachers to look good by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far from improving education, assigning zeroes marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy and from quality. (I stole this from Senator Paul Wellstone)

Failing students, fails them more than they could ever fail us. When children come to school well-behaved and academically inclined, it makes a teacher's job easier; and when they don't, it makes a teacher's job more important. We can give a child a zero or we can help them learn -- but we can't do both.

When children have trouble learning this should be seen not as a problem with the child, but a problem for the curriculum to solve. The practice of assigning grades (including zeroes) prevents this from ever happening.

If a student does nothing, they should get nothing.

The children who are the hardest to like and the hardest to teach, need us the most. Those who support giving students zeroes will say that we've got a choice: Either we hold kids accountable by giving them a zero or we let them get away with bloody murder. False dichotomies make choosing easy. If these were truly our only two choices, I might even choose giving zeroes over anarchy. Thankfully, social promotion and grade retention are not our only two choices. The alternative is to properly support children so they can learn.

On the surface, all this discussion about no zeroes appears to be about grading and credit. But it's not. What we really need to talk about are the long-term goals we have for our children.

When we stop and think about our long-term goals for our children we say we want them to be caring, competent, responsible, ethical, empathetic, happy and intelligent. We also want our children to be intrinsically motivated to learn. 

Yes, we want to make sure that we have high standards for our future drivers, welders, pilots, doctors, and engineers - both for their safety and ours. But we also want drivers, welders, doctors and engineers who are passionate and caring about what they do for its own sake. 

Grades, including zeroes, are at best unhelpful and at worst harmful in pursuing our long term goals. I have as much of a problem with assigning a student a zero, as I do with assigning them any other grade, including 100%.

The case against grades may be an inconvenient truth that we can no longer ignore.

Let me explain.

You see, I could not care less how motivated my children or students are. What I care about is how they are motivated. Motivation is not this single entity that you either have a lot or little of. There are two kinds: intrinsic and extrinsic. If you are intrinsically motivated than you are doing something for its own sake; if you are extrinsically motivated, you are driven to do something or not do something based on a reward or punishment that may be waiting for you. There's a big difference between a teacher who teaches because she wants to artfully guide children to becoming better people, and the teacher who teaches for the summer holidays. And there's a big difference between a student who completes an assignment because they want to learn and a student who completes an assignment because they don't want to get a zero.

But that's not even the catchy part - the real catch is that these two kinds of motivation tend to be inversely related. When you pry on a student's extrinsic motivation by bribing them with high grades or threatening them with a zero, you run the risk of growing their extrinsic motivation while their intrinsic love for whatever it is you want them to do shrivels.

Do you want your doctor to be a grade grubber or someone who actually cares about their profession and you? What's scary is that grading can often make these two kinds of people indistinguishable. We should be truly outraged that most members of our species have come to believe that collecting As is the whole point of school.

Here's an example from my own teaching career.

I was teaching grade 8 science, and we were learning about life. We were examining animal cells, plant cells, human body systems, diseases and anything else the students felt like learning about. With my guidance, they have a lot of autonomy and choice in selecting what they want to learn.

Some students were learning about Leukaemia while others learned about the organelles that make up the cell. Sarah approached me and asked if she could do a poster project showing what she can learn about breast cancer. I said, "that's up to you."

She began her research and poster during class, and come lunch she asked me if she could work on her project during lunch hour. Again, I said, "that's up to you."

As she continued to glue new information on her poster, she turned to me and asked something very peculiar. "Mr. Bower, will I get an A on this?"

This was very odd because it was March, which means she hadn't received a grade from me on any project for six months. (Other than the report card, I never grade students)

Another student overheard Sarah's question and replied, "Why are you asking Mr. Bower that? You know nothing is for grades!"

I too looked at her in confusion and said, "Why are you asking me if your project will get an A? You know I won't grade it."

I asked, "Why are you doing this poster?"

She looked perplexed and said, "I want to get an A."

I had her to stop working on her poster and asked, "Sarah, why are you really doing this poster?"

She stopped and looked at me. She started to tear up a little, and said, "my aunty has breast cancer."

I was moved by her honesty and sincerity. It was very clear to me that she cared deeply for her aunty. I said, "Sarah, I couldn't think of a better reason for you to do this poster project. You do this poster and share it with your aunty."

Two days later, Sarah and her mom came in for student-led portfolios. I started to share this story with Sarah's mom when she started to cry. Then Sarah cried. I didn't cry, but I was close. Her mom shared with me that Sarah was reading more at home and showed more interest in learning than in past years.

Honestly, I can not think of a better reason for Sarah to learn about breast cancer. And yet, if I graded students, this whole experience might have ended when she said she was doing this poster to get an A. Another teacher might have smiled and thought to themselves good for you, Sarah. You are such a good little student.

Can you see how ultimately distracting grades can be? They run interference on our motivation and learning all the time. We owe it to our students and our own learning to abolish grading as much as we possibly can so all students can find more authentic reasons to learn.

If you give grades, and your students are uninterested or disengaged, might it be because they are searching for a more intrinsically motivating reason to give-a-shit? It's easy to blame the kids, but it takes more than a little guts to look at our own practices and make changes to how we have done things for so long.

I could use grades to artificially induce my student's learning, but to be honest, I'd rather help them find a real reason to learn. Grades seem so utterly uninspiring compared to Sarah's reasoning.

Some people might respond to this story with, "well that's nice for Sarah, but she was already coming to school and wanted to learn. I have children or students who do neither." To this I say, "you're right, but giving zeroes to students who have either mentally or physically dropped out of school won't help. If giving zeroes to the children who are the hardest to educate worked, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Since teaching Sarah in a conventional middle school, I have moved on to teaching in a children's psychiatric assessment unit. Guess how many children come to my program with a love for school. Not many. Too many of these children find themselves on school's discard pile. They've had a steady diet of zeroes for years. I find it sadly ironic that people who support assigning zeroes to children do so by claiming it's for the children it hurts the most.

Until we stop selling 'more of the same' as a daring departure from what we've always done, the status quo will continue to gain more and more momentum. Real change will require school to look a lot less like school - and to do that would require a whole lot less zeroes.