Real assessment for learning

Most educators have come to differentiate between assessment OF learning and assessment FOR learning. (I actually don't - I differentiate only between supportive and unsupportive assessment, but that's a different post)

Assessment OF learning is typically defined as a summative evaluation that usually takes the form of a grade that judges a student after they are done learning.

Assessment FOR learning is typically defined as a time for formative feedback that helps students learn from their successes, failures, mistakes and misconceptions. This feedback is timely and informative in nature rather than judgemental or evaluative.

While it is true that the prospect of abolishing grading from school entirely may be controversial, the idea that we should never grade or judge students during formative evaluation is not up for debate. The point here is that grading practices have no place while students are still learning.

Some forms of conventional wisdom have teachers using rubrics to provide students with feedback during the assessment FOR learning process. As a classroom teacher, I have come across a lot of different rubric designs; yet, despite their differences, there is always one common denominator:

Every rubric I have ever seen involves the use of a fixed measurement scale. 

By definition, a grade is any attempt to reduce learning to a symbol. While it's true that these scales can be represented in a number of different ways (numbers, letters, descriptors, smiley faces, stickers, stars, etc) these reductionist scales are inevitably experienced by the student as a judgment. It's important to note that 75%, B-, and "proficient" have distinctions without a difference. A grade by any other name is still a grade.

While it may seem counterintuitive to suggest that we should not evaluate and judge students while they are still learning, this is precisely what the research has been showing us. We often seriously overestimate the effectiveness of judgement and evaluation as a precondition of learning.

Assessment guru Dylan Wiliam puts it this way:

Grades cause an emotional reaction – either positive or negative. Feedback causes you to think and engage, which is reflective learning.

Alfie Kohn suggests:

Never grade students while they are still learning something and, even more important, do not reward them for their performance at that point.

Paul Dressel explains:

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

Jerome Bruner proclaims:

Students should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information.

A more profound statement than Bruner's about how children should be assessed is hard to imagine. Bruner's law provides us with both what we should not be doing while simultaneously suggesting a superior alternative to grading and manipulating students. Because learners can only experience grading and other fixed measurement scales as a reward or a punishment, they have no constructive role to play in the learning process. This is precisely why rubrics and their fixed measurement scales have no place place in assessing children while they are still learning.

In other words, we need to fight back the urge to marinate children in our praise, disapproval, bribes, threats, rewards and punishments and dedicate ourselves to providing children with nothing more than the information they need to improve.

Here is a Prezi that explains the three-step process I use as an alternative to grading and judging students in an effort to provide them with information they need to learn.

Formative Assessment on Prezi

While it is true that I use this to guide both my written and verbal interactions, the majority of the feedback that I relay to children is done verbally. The two-way nature of a conversation almost always trumps the one-way nature of written comments.

Assessment's latin root is assidere, which means "to sit beside". This is why it is critical we remember that assessment is not a spreadsheet or a judgement - it's a conversation.

Assessment: Timing is everything

How often are our assessments affected by nothing more or less than timing?

This comic made me think of my two favorite quotes in regards to grading:

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

What grades offer is spurious precision, a subjective rating masquerading as an objective assessment. (Alfie Kohn)

Grading Inequalities

Some time ago, I blogged about the unintended consequences that occur when teachers grade student effort. Essentially I made the case that a student who receives a high grade for their effort but a low grade on their learning may come to think that they are still really dumb even when they try really hard, and that a student who receives a low grade on their effort but a high grade on their learning may come to believe that they can succeed without any effort at all.

Essentially, I am concerned that kids will come to devalue the role their effort plays in achieving excellence. I fear that they may attribute their success on external sources such as luck, difficulty or natural ability.

I want to talk about a comment Anonymous left today on my Grading Effort: Unintended Consequences post:

If Johnny is not a smart child, and Carol is...

Johnny's crappy project gets an A because he's not that smart?

Carol get's an A because it's a good project?

Carol looks at Johnny's crappy project with an A, and says "Hey what the?"

Next time she doesn't put that much effort in because why? Crappy gets an A if your "just not that smart"

If I was Carol....I would be PISSED

Anonymous is right...

...but not the way they would like to believe. If school is really just an exercise in collecting A's, and the point of it all is to compete against one another - then kids are right to focus on the grading inequities. If this is the case, then Carol is right to be pissed off when others succeed... she's right to be pissed off when she has to work with someone less intelligent than herself... she's right to be pissed off when doing the right thing doesn't reap the rewards she deserves.

After all, why would anyone ever willingly learn something if the promise of an A isn't waiting for you?

But is this really the kind of learning environment we wish provide for children? Would you want to learn under such tension?

A classroom that focuses on grading is not a classroom about real learning; in other words, rather than compete for grades, kids should collaborate over their learning.

The tone of the comment above from Anonymous leads me to believe they have fallen victim to a classic distraction inherent to traditional education - that is, they still believe that grades are meaningful and objective. Unfortunately, many people don't understand what Paul Dressel meant when he said:

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.

And Alfie Kohn puts it this way:

What grades offer is spurious precision, a subjective rating masquerading as an objective assessment.

I am also bothered by how Anonymous condones Carol's anger. 

With grades, Carol and other students are encouraged to focus on the wrong inequalities in school - grades force kids to see the credit inequality rather than the learning inequality. If we want to make kids into little narcissists who only look out for their own skin - their own grades - then I can think of no better way of doing so than implementing a rigorous grading system; however, if we truly understand how collaboration trumps competition, we would never pit students against each other. 

Remove grades altogether, and we improve the chances that students like Carol will see students like Johnny as human beings they can help rather than someone to hate because they are garnishing undeserved credit.

I think Harry S. Truman summed up much of this discussion when he said:

It's amazing what you can get done when you don't care who gets the credit.

Maybe, just maybe, we could stop wasting our time being pissed at each other and spend our time learning. After all, it's hard to be serious about striving for excellence, inspiring learning and nurturing hope for all when we distract students from real learning with something as arbitrary and contrived as grading.