Chapter 8: Grading and Reporting Achievement

Grading is not about letters or checks and minuses, it is about giving appropriate, useful feedback to students so that they may progress and become better learners. A grade must represent a student’s ability to meet milestone goals set in place by standards that are clear to the student. Assessments and grades are two different things, and grades do not need to include assessments. Assessments are used for reporting student knowledge at a particular time and figuring out misconceptions a student has or how far long they are in learning, and there for should be used to help teacher see where to go next and not in the grade book. Using mean averages to calculate grades is a poor idea at best, because it doesn’t reflect what a student knows as an end result of their learning process. Bad grades at the beginning when understanding was weak shouldn’t weight down thoughtful understanding at the end of a unit. When I grade, I will need to do so by the school’s standards and procedures and while I may not agree with them, I can help my students to understand my grading system and what it means as well as how it must translate into the pre-set report card grades they must receive in the end.