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.

Rubrics - the predetermined space

When school becomes more about following instructions and less about intellectual discovery, kids feel like this little girl on the bike.

Rubrics do this too.

We may like how rubrics provide students with such a clear and concise vision for what we expect, but it is rather ironic that their strength is also their weakness.

The dangerous thing about taping a square on the floor, providing students with a detailed rubric or giving explicit instructions is the kids might actually only do what they are told and simply follow what we ask them to do.

Do you create or remove predetermined spaces?

The Folly of Rubrics and Grades

Before I abolished grades, I went through my rubrics stage. I was convinced I could solve my assessment problems if I could just fine-tune my rubric production. I struggled for months trying to create 'student-proof' rubrics that would allow me to consistantly assess their learning. I can't say that the time I spent on rubrics was a waste - because I learned a lot - but what I learned is that rubrics have little to no place in the classroom.

Here is a sample rubric that I would have used years ago to assess writing:

Something about the numbers always bothered me. I found that making the choice for what something would be out of was a huge deal, as it very much affected the grade my students ended up with.

I struggled with what each category should be scored out of. I knew that I wanted to keep the number small. For example, I certainly didn't want to have each category out of 100. I was not interested in trying to differentiate between a 67 and a 68.

For some reason, making these categories out of 4 or 5 or 10 seemed to be a popular way to go. But to this day, I have not reconciled some of the problems that developed from choosing the 4, 5 or 10 scale.

Take a look:

Do you have a preference? If you do, I'm dying to know which one you prefer and why.

As far as I'm concerned there is no choice and here's why:

• 
  
  If I pick the four scale, there is nothing in between 75% and 100% which means that in order to get 'honors' (over 80%), I have to assign a perfect grade.
• 
  
  If I pick the four scale, there is nothing in between barely passing 50% and 75%. That's a large leap.
•  If I pick the five scale, it is awfully tempting to just pick 60% as it is a pretty average grade that lots of kids might fit.
• 
  
  If I pick the five scale, there is nothing between 40% and 60%, so someone who I'm not comfortable with getting 80% will get the same 3/5 mark as someone I was not comfortable with giving a 40% failing grade.

I guess I could give half marks with these 4 and 5 scales. But where do I draw the line. Would it ever be appropriate to give quarter marks?

And if I give half marks on the 5 point scale, I might as well use the 10 point scale. 7/10 is more aesthetically pleasing than 3.5/5.But if I start to go to a larger scale like the 10 or 100 point scale, can I really say with any certainty what is the difference between a 6/10 and 7/10 or a 67/100 or 68/100?

And if you don't like number or letter grades, there is no shortage of teachers who would rather use word descriptors such as: (read the scales from left to right)

You'll notice that even when teachers move away from numbers or letters, the kids or parents may not. Above, the first choice shows a two point scale - a pass or fail kind of scale. The second choice shows a three point scale and the last option a four point scale. Even though teachers might not be thinking percentages anymore, the kids and parents may do the conversions themselves. A PROFICIENT to them may mean 75%.

Symantics become the largest problem with written judgements like these. For example, some people would rather see the lowest option to say NOT YET inorder to imply optimism and hope, while others may still want more than EXCELLENT in order to really differentiate the students who are the very best.

There is no doubt that there are plenty of people who would love to discuss which scale is better. Teachers could spend the rest of their careers attending professional development sessions where we discuss, argue, bicker and nit-pick over which reductionist scale is better. Some teachers may like numbers, some letters, while others prefer happy faces or words. There may be small, almost indistinguishable differences between these scales, but keep in mind they all have one common characteristic - they are all reductionist in nature. They all attempt to take something as messy and beautiful as learning and reduce it all to a single or double digit.


Alfie Kohn speaks to the false sense of objectivity marks and how so marks and rubrics have misled so many for so long, and how grading can in fact be so degrading.

There is a kind of educational malpractice going on when teachers profess to be able to reduce a child's learning to a symbol.

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

There is absolutely nothing objective about grading, and 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.

A more profound or practical statement on the subject is hard to imagine.
Grades and rubrics are a solution in search of a problem that will further destroy learning for its own sake.

Rather than spending time asking how can we grade better, we really need to be asking why are we grading.

If we can agree that reducing learning to a symbol is a kind of malpractice then we can start to discuss how we can replace grading with something far better. And then we need to stop talking about grading altogether and focus our real efforts on real learning.

It's been five years since I used a rubric. I simply don't need them, nor do my students.

For more on abolishing grades, check out this page.

Replacing Grading

Years ago, I struggled with the idea of dispensing with summative assessment as much as professionally possible. My reasons are extinsive, and you can read about them in a previous blog post of mine called The Museum of Education.

Here, my purpose is to show how I replaced summative assessment, things like rubrics, grades, averages, decimal points and judgements.

My discontent with grades runs long and deep, but I became fully conscious of my disgust for them when I read Alfie Kohn's article The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement. I then developed an idea of how to not only abolish grades but how to replace them with formative feedback when I read Kohn's book The Schools Our Children Deserve. It was here that I first read about something Kohn has come to call Bruner's Law:
So I set out to develop a replacement for grading.

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

I used www.prezi.com to explain the three categories I use to provide feedback for students.

Formative Assessment on Prezi

I use these three categories for not only my written feedback, but also my two-way conversations. I guide the way I speak to my students by providing what I see, suggestions and questions. Remember though, that my ultimate goal is still to provide information for children to improve while avoiding rewards and punishments that reflect a behaviourists approach. (For more on how the great coach John Wooden also followed this approach, read my blog post Information vs Reward and Punishment.)

But remember, even the best forms of assessment can be over done. I remember when I first started using this kind of assessment and how I started to use the formal written version far too often. Any kind of reflection, no matter how valuable, should only be done sparingly. It makes sense to only stop and reflect occasionally - while the rest of the time we should just be doing whatever it is we are learning.

You have to understand that to replace grades means that we have to abolish them and replace them with something entirely different - and that means we need to stop mistaking measuring students with helping them improve.

It is important to point out that I am still required to put a grade on my students report card. The School Act in Alberta demands it. And so I oblige. But no where does it say that I have to have a collection of grades that I average in order to come up with a final grade. In fact, my school district's policy for reporting pupil progress writes:

Information relating to student progress must be substantiated by a carefully kept set of records, as well as samples of student work.

You'll notice that no where does it say that we must reduce learning to a number or letter in order to come up with a number or letter. I challenge you to look at your district's reporting policy to find out exactly what it says the teacher must do when reporting pupil progress.

We can't measure our way to learning. If we really want to 'close the achievement gap' while we 'leave no child left behind' as we strive for 'life-long learning', then we have to stop judging, ranking, sorting and measuring - and we have to start listening, learning, teaching, guiding and observing.

In otherwords, we have to stop confusing doing things to children with working with children.

For more on abolishing grading, check out this page.