Teaching vs. Sorting

If a student’s intellect can’t be measured with a number—or a letter—then what can grades do? What are they for? Clearly they are an attempt to account for something—how well a student has completed an assigned task; how much information they have successfully regurgitated on demand; how well they have been able to apply equations or theorems or analytical tools to unfamiliar data.  The student performs, and the teacher assesses. End of grading story.

Except we all know that it’s not the end of the story, but rather the beginning of the way in which grades begin to iron out individuality and sort students into categories, a process with negative consequences for teaching and learning.  What happens after the grade has been applied and digested by the teacher and by the student?

When a student receives a grade, their reaction to it will depend in part on how the assessment fits into or diverges from their prior experiences.  If the student is accustomed to receiving high grades and gets an A, great. Sort of. All is as it should be and the student continues to do whatever he or she has always done to succeed, not reflecting on the process until years later (if they happen to become a teacher) or perhaps never reflecting upon it at all. If a student accustomed to lackluster grades gets yet another, what would inspire them to think they might be capable of more? A student used to high marks can find a low mark so upsetting that the grade itself is all they can remember from the course (I’m guilty of this one in my own student life). A student used to low marks who receives a higher-than-expected grade may feel either that it’s anomalous, that the teacher has made a mistake or, indeed, that the teacher him or herself is not smart enough to know what kind of (bad) student he or she is dealing with.

As a teaching assistant in graduate school, I can remember being told in an early TA training session not to be afraid that students would get upset about earning, say, a C on a composition essay. “You all,” the trainer told us, “are A students. You’re used to getting As. Believe me, a C for them isn’t nearly as upsetting as a C would be for you.”  Sadly, she was at least a little bit right.

But the trainer’s comment points to the bigger problem I’ve found with grading individual assignments: grading tends to make me sort students into types. A students, B students, C students, the hopeless—even from very early assignments.  This gets back to an issue I’ve discussed before: the A students already know how to succeed in the work of the class, yet the classroom should still be a place where they are challenged to learn and grow. The others get lumped in groups from which, mathematically, they may never emerge, no matter how amazing their later work becomes.

When I am grading a big stack of papers and come across one from a student that I already know will write a terrific paper, I will slide it lower in the stack as something to look forward to as I slog through the pile. But my favorite grading moments are when I stumble upon a terrific response from an unexpected voice—one I had previously classified as unlikely to produce much of interest. Philosophically, I believe that most people are capable of producing excellent work, but practically, I confess that grading seems to make even the possibility of growth all the more elusive.