Overgraded

Once, I was asked the question “if you could change anything about law school, what would it be?” I think my answer at the time was that I wanted there to be more clear alignment between what we are supposed to get out of the classes, what we do in class, and what we do on assessments. And I stand by that as a solid answer. But after the end of this semester, I think my answer has changed to something new: get rid of grades. I am not just saying this because I didn’t do as well as I had hoped. I got a B+ in everything. That’s pretty good. But I was disappointed. And that’s where all this trouble begins.

I think a lot about education and have done some work on assessment of and for learning. In doing that work, I learned just how arbitrary a grade can be. There is no correlation between GPA and intelligence, or self-worth, or capacity to do great things in life. And pretty much everyone knows that. The arbitrariness of assessments mean that grades have a huge range of things that affect them, from the way questions are worded, to the limiting factors (such as time or word count), to the state of someone’s mental health while taking an assessment, to maybe a giant global pandemic occurring during those assessments. Grades, especially for large, cumulative assessments like final exams, are measuring your ability to answer one or two questions in one specific set of circumstances, but do not really measure learning. They don’t measure your growth, development, changes in thought process, or they way you wrestled with the new information and ideas you were presented with. The problem is that we use them as indicators of learning when that is not what they are.

Initially (as in, during much of my time working at the Taylor Institute), I wondered if that was a problem with what and how we grade. Maybe we need to do more smaller assignments, to be able to focus more specifically on different elements of the courses we take. Maybe we need to engage in more critical discussion earlier in the classes. Maybe we need to have more definitive rubrics to follow. But upon further thought, I think the problem is with the grades themselves. These niggly little letters that we see do more harm than good, in my opinion. And so more recently, my mind has been open to the idea of a post-grades education system. What if we straight up just didn’t use them anymore?

When I opened up my student centre and saw my row of B+s, I did not feel excited about having done above average across the board. I cried and was disappointed that I didn’t hit an “A” level for a single class. I am not proud of that reaction. In fact, I think it highlights a few areas that I need to work on in terms of personal growth. Maybe I need to tackle some perfectionism, even though I have never once considered myself a perfectionist. (Lots to unpack there, but this is not the time or the place.) I am disappointed. Disappointed in myself for not doing better, but also disappointed that there was nothing for me to learn from or do with those letters except be sad. I do not mean to discount the efforts and achievement of those who are proud of their grades. They worked hard and earned them and should absolutely be proud. But I think all students, regardless of their level of academic achievement, would benefit from a rejuvenated system.

What if, instead of being faced with a line of letters that indicate “slightly above average” in every class, I opened my student centre to feedback on my progress and achievement? These comments could go beyond just my performance on the exams but could also be about how I was in class or the things I did throughout the semester. For example, I think about the students who sometimes struggle to word things concisely on their exams but are super passionate and are constantly asking interesting and thought-provoking questions to professors. Nothing in a grade recognizes them for that. But if they got a comment that said “You have a high level of engagement with course materials and ask deep, thought-provoking questions, which shows a lot of dedication and interest for this area of study. You need to focus on reading questions carefully and staying on topic when dealing with a specific issue to better answer them”, that gives them a lot more to work with, while acknowledging both their strengths and their weaknesses. And it shows that just because they did not excel on the assessment as presented and need to improve in some respects, their learning is being recognized. Learning does not look the same for all students, and a narrative grading system addresses that far better than grades. For students like me, who are a lot quieter in class and may not do anything that stands out to professors, the comments could focus on what was done on the assessments. Comments would not be overly “coddling” or sensitive towards students who did not do well on assessments. And comments for students who excelled would not diminish their achievements. If anything, it would highlight what specifically they nailed and where there strengths lie. All I am suggesting is that all learning, including that which occurs outside of the confines of these assessments, be recognized in an official capacity.

I concede that this would increase the workload for instructors, particularly those who teach large classes. But it just seems like a better system for everyone involved. Instructors would not have to deal with fitting completely different work onto arbitrary scales and would likely face fewer grading complaints or appeals. Employers benefit, since they would get a more accurate depiction of how students do academically (though I feel this one might be faced with some resistance at first, especially from traditional firms that focus heavily on grades. Lots of systemic change needed for this one to be favoured). And of course, students get increased value from having their successes and failures presented more tangibly.

Comments could, of course, be given by any individual instructor in any individual course, as supplemental to grades. As students, we already are encouraged to seek out feedback and can discuss our performance on assessments with professors. This shows that they acknowledge the importance of personalized comments. But the full benefit of a comments-based system requires faculty (or even institution)- wide adoption to legitimize the process as a replacement for grades. And this type of thing is possible. Northeastern University in Boston has adopted a narrative grading scheme that has done away with GPAs while still providing academic rigour to their students.

But often, even the most innovative and anti-grade educators are left to deal with departmental or institutional policy that prevents them from attempting to implement these narrative grading systems. And to that I say, there are other options! I encourage any university instructors reading this to look into these as possibilities. There’s specifications grading, wherein students choose the level of grade they want at the start of the semester and do a corresponding number of assessments, all at an exemplary level (I’m not sure if my summary is particularly clear, so here’s another resource which explains it). Or ungrading, a fully reflective system based on self-evaluation and metacognition. If we have to do grades, why can’t we do them in a way that respects and trusts students and engages them as partners in the learning process? The one-time performance indicators that we currently get feels so surface-level compared to these methods. I can see both of these systems fitting excellently into our law school and would love to see our professors test them out for themselves, though again, they do require a great deal of initial planning for smooth implementation.

Given the way I started this post, you may be asking yourself the question: Is this just Ashley’s overreaction to being disappointed in her academic performance? Is she taking out her frustration in her own lack of excellence on “the system”? And that is a fair point. But I think I would still feel this way even if I was satisfied with my grades. After all, I’ve made reference to the arbitrariness of grading in previous posts, in discussions with my friends, and even on twitter. I know anyone who spoke with me about assessments within the past few years can vouch that I am generally anti-grade, even when I am okay with the grades I got. Of course, I may not have rushed to write this had I been overjoyed with my marks, but I think I still would have written it at some point, especially given the controversy over grading schemes due to coronavirus/online exams/everything. Even my peers who hadn’t given education and grading much thought in the past were considering the meaning of an A or a B or a C in days when our exams are different formats than usual. Students were grappling with the arbitrariness of grades in unprecedented circumstances, and most probably uncovered the difficult realization that they are always kind of arbitrary. Students know there is something missing from the way we are evaluated. We are ready for changes. And that probably means large systemic changes within our institutions. I don't have the answer for how changing grading throughout a whole university would affect it, but I still think it is something worth exploring and discussing.

So why do schools keep using grades? Because they are easy? Because they are “comfortable”? Because we are told to by someone with more authority than us? Because replacing them would make us challenge our notions about education and learning and deal with some uncomfortable truths? None of these seem compelling enough to me to keep our current system. If genuinely good grades could make someone with at least a baseline knowledge about the arbitrariness of higher education assessment feel upset and let down, what does that mean for those students who received lower grades? Or those who have been raised in grade-focused environments? I am not disregarding the need for me to work on my own issues with perfectionism and competitiveness, but surely there are also solutions to explore on an institutional level. And I am ready to see them in action beyond just theory.

Thank you for reading.

Current Mood: Me to current systems of grading:

Current Soundtrack: Among other things (Seinfeld), I am writing a bit of fiction for the first time in years. It will probably never see the light of day, but is more music based than I would have ever imagined, so I have been listening to a great deal of 70s and 80s music for it, including this first track from a great album.