A's For Good Behavior: A massive exercise in missing the point

I came across an article in the New York Times called A's for Good Behavior and found myself quite bothered by the whole thing. At first I couldn't quite place why I was so uncomfortable with the premise of the article - after all, the article was trying address the subjectivity of grading. And then it hit me.

Despite some of their good intentions, this article tries to resolve the issues of grading by, in effect, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The second paragraph epitomizes the wrongheadedness of the entire article.

But after poring over four years of data comparing semester grades with end-of-the-year test scores on state subject exams, the teachers at Ellis began to question whether they really knew who the smartest students were.

If you look carefully, you'll see that four years was spent...

...poring over data... 

In some industries, this might be exemplary practice - heck, it might even be best practice - but we aren't talking about assembling widgets.

We are talking about educating children.

The student body is not simply a transportation device for their number two pencils, and yet, you'd think that's exactly all they are good for when you see how much emphasis tests and grades are given.

If you read the article carefully, you can start to see how the premise of the entire article is: teacher grades bad - standardized test scores good:

As test scores fast become the single and most powerful measurement by which educational outcomes are being judged, more schools might find themselves engaged in what has become a pivotal debate: Should students be rewarded for being friendly, prepared, compliant, a good school citizen, well organized and hard-working? Or should good grades represent exclusively a student’s mastery of the material?

First of all, the prevalent use of test scores to assess schools is not like the weather - it's not this thing that we just have to get used to. In fact, I argue that it is every educators professional obligation to save kids from these tests. 

Secondly, the real debate should revolve around real learning and good teaching, not about how to best reward students with grades. That this article claims the real "pivotal debate" in education is really around how to grade is an indictment of how clueless many people are about what really matters in a good education system. To spend all of our time focusing on how to grade while ignoring why we should do so in the first place is a massive exercise in missing the point.

To be honest, I don't care if students are achieving high grades or low grades. I don't care if students are achieving high test scores or low test scores.

The best educators understand what Marilyn French meant when she said:

"Only extraordinary eduction is concerned with learning; most is concerned with achieving: and for young minds, these two are very nearly opposite."

It would also appear that most adults have a hard time differentiating between student achievement (read as test scores and grades) and students' achievements (read as real learning that is in a context and for a purpose).

Note that the former is great at preparing kids for a life of tests where as the former focuses on preparing them for tests in life.