Threads: 'Grading for Equity' Sucks, Chapter 1

These threads were originally posted on Twitter as live-responses to reading the book Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman. You can also read threads for chapter 2.

Thread 1: Sunday, 02 January 2022

Petition to ban former principals and administrators of schools from writing hypothetical scenarios as fact and as if they aren't responsible for establishing or changing school-wide policies.

I have read enough PD [professional development] books to see this trend, and it's such garbage.

The same applies to current principals and administrators, honestly.

Stop writing books about system-wide policy that many of you can change or refuse and then blaming teachers for its implementation. It's so disingenuous.

(In all honesty, the sentence could just finish at "stop writing books" because there are already far too many supporting and "reforming" harmful policies we should be questioning. While also blaming teachers for implementing policies they largely didn't ask for.)

Like, I'm not saying this shit isn't true, but this is the most garbage framing in a hypothetical situation about a "poor, clueless principal" who apparently had "no idea" teachers brought implicit bias to the classroom.

(From 'Grading for Equity'.)

When she talked about these grading problems with principals of other schools, Mallory was surpised and dismayed to learn that grading varied by teacher in every school. This phenomenon was widespread, even the norm. Teachers thoughtfully and intentionally were creating policies that they believed, in their most thoughtful professional judgment, would promote learning. Yet they were doing so independently and often contradicting each other, yielding in each school a patchwork of well-intentioned but ultimately idiosyncratic approaches to evaluating and reporting student performance. Even when a department or a group of teachers made agreements—for example, to have homework count for no more than 40 percent of a grade—teachers’ other unique policies and practices, such as whether homework would be accepted after the due date, made their attempts at consistency seem half-hearted and ineffectual.

Same book, trash framing.

Would love to see mentions of how principals and administrators have *actively encouraged* these behaviours. Because I have been in more places where that's true than these hapless admin.

What’s more, even though every principal had the same problems and frustrations with inconsistent grading, no one had any success in addressing it. Other principals had tried to raise the topic of grading and had met the same kind of resistance Mallory had experienced, sometimes even with vitriol and formal allegations of attempted infringement upon teachers’ academic freedom.

What I have, as a teacher, run into more frequently has been: - teachers *trying* to find ways to consistently mark students (and often failing because we understand arbitrary systems in subjective ways); - teachers being denied time by admin to collaborate in this manner.

Like, I don't want to support schools because abolish them entirely.

But the impetus of these charter-running dweebs from Harvard (the author, Feldman, is) to attack teachers they directly impact with policies while "promoting equity?" Astounding.

Literally hate this book, and I'm still in the prologue. All of this should've started a "why do we do this?" or "the system is harmful" conversation, but he's decided to write it as "teachers are to blame for these contradictory uses."

It wasn’t until I read a few articles—including “The Case Against the Zero” by Doug Reeves (2004), “The Case Against Percentage Grades” by Thomas Guskey (2013), and A Repair Kit for Grading by Ken O’Connor (2010)—that I began to see that teachers use grading for many different, and contradictory, purposes: 1. To communicate the achievement status of students to parents or guardians and others 2. To provide information that students can use for self- evaluation 3. To select, identify, or group students for certain educational paths or programs 4. To provide incentives for students to learn 5. To inform instructional decisions 6. To provide evidence of students’ lack of effort or inappropriate responsibility. No wonder that grading practices vary so widely. The teacher who grades to sort students into programs will use grading practices incompatible with the teacher who grades to incentivize students to learn.

Instead of blaming teachers, why not look at the system for treating grading as such? Why not stop to go "If this is what everyone sees grading as 'being used for', what should we do instead?"

But I guess it's easier to start from a place of assumptions that we "need" something.

Thread 2: Monday, 03 January 2022

Just want to also add to this [the previous thread] ban:

Administrators and principals who write these PD books pretending their ideas are great need to stop obscuring their positions, pretending they're teachers.

Especially because they do that to shit on teachers and create further division.

Again, in the long-term, we need to abolish schools and replace them with healthy learning communities.

But in the short-term, we need to throw all of these divisive admin dweebs in a fucking bin so they can stop pretending they're Oh So Wise about everything.

Thread 3: Monday, 03 January 2022

Here's a hint: Maybe it's because grading is a completely useless exercise that doesn't actually do anything of value and could be thrown out tomorrow with no real impact.

Goddamnit, this book sucks.

Maybe we struggle with discussing grading because we have very little experience doing so. Grading and measurement is rarely if ever included in teacher preparation programs or in-school professional development. As a result, the majority of teachers are left on their own to decide how to grade and why and are unaware of the research on effective grading practices.

I'm basically cataloguing my frustration with this book here. I meant to read it as research, but now I just want to throw it out the window.

Someone, quick. What's the definition of 'arbitrary' again?

Despite this complete lack of training and support with how to grade, teachers’ grading policies and practices aren’t arbitrary. We apply our professional expertise and experiences and carefully deliberate over what assignments and behaviors we include in the grade and what we exclude, the relative weight of those assignments and behaviors, and the magnitude of consequences, rewards, incentives, and disincentives. And yet, each teacher makes very different choices. If we choose to award points to students for being on time, raising their hands to contribute ideas, for working collaboratively, or for turning in work by the deadline, we believe that these skills are important in life and that a grade should reflect performance in these skills. If we instead prioritize that students learn the academic content, perhaps we deemphasize or exclude those “soft skills” from the grade. If we want students to learn responsibility, we allocate a large portion of the grade to students' homework. If we believe that our grades are an important way to distinguish the top students, we grade on a curve.

This dude went to fucking Harvard, was a school admin, opened a charter school... But he can't fucking recognise 'arbitrary' when he sees it.

I hate PD books so much. This is why.

Let me finish this paragraph about how grades "aren't arbitrary."

So... grading is based on a perceived relationship to students. And beliefs about students...

Which, idk, indicates... something is arbitrary?

Teachers can even disagree on what makes a grade “fair.” Most teachers believe that students who try should not fail regardless of whether they actually learn (Brookhart et al., 2016), but other teachers believe the opposite: that fairness is honestly reporting academic performance regardless of effort. Because each teacher’s grading system is virtually unregulated and unconstrained, a teacher’s grading policies and practices reveal how she defines and envisions her relationship to students, what she predicts best prepares them for success, her beliefs about students, and her self-concept as a teacher. That’s why challenges to our grading practices don’t just offend our professional judgment; they can invoke an emotional and psychological threat.

I'm really stuck at YOU JUST DEFINED ARBITRARY. HOW IS IT NOT ARBITRARY. ALL OF THAT IS ARBITRARY.

Can we please just throw away the Education section of uni press houses until they learn what words mean and actually start critiquing themselves. I just can't.

Just to put up, this is the author of Grading for Equity.

And a fun thing to note is how close Harvard is to a lot of the major problematic elements of the US's charter school movement.

Including researching the one Zuckerberg did in Newark. Funded with his own money.

Joe Feldman has worked in education at the local and national levels for over twenty years in both charter and district school contexts, and as a teacher, principal, and district administrator. He began his career as a high school English and American history teacher in Atlanta Public Schools and was the founding principal of a charter high school in Washington, DC. He has been the Director of Charter Schools for New York City Department of Education, the Director of K-12 Instruction in Union City, California, and was a Fellow to the Chief of Staff for U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. Joe is currently CEO of Crescendo Education Group (crescendoedgroup.org), a consulting organization that partners with schools and districts to help teachers use improved and more equitable grading and assessment practices. Joe graduated from Stanford, Harvard Graduate School of Education; and NYU Law School. He is the author of several articles on grading, assessment, and equity, and the author of Teaching Without Bells: What We Can Learn from Powerful Practice in Small Schools (Paradigm). He lives in Oakland, California with his wife and two children.

Anyway, back to reading this obtuse mess of a book that will occasionally ask a useful question but run as fast as possible towards "reform the tradition" instead of "question the system."

This is also a huge issue I have with teaching PD books.

As I researched and learned more about the equitable practices in this book, I had the same experience as Jillian: feelings of guilt, shame, and anger. How could I have not seen the faults in our traditional system, the ways many of our current grading and assessment practices harm the most vulnerable students? Throughout my teaching career, I created the best curriculum I could, built the most positive relationships with students possible, but were my efforts compromised, or even undermined, when I graded? That can’t be, can it?

Okay, so the book is trying to be all "sometimes the truth is hard to swallow" and "we all have webs of belief."

Yet he hasn't even tried to consider that grading itself is a problem and something to get rid of. It's so weird. (This passage is followed by Alice in Wonderland.)

When the concepts in this book challenge you in uncomfortable ways, stay open to new evidence and possibilities, imagine what could be, and be less conservative in your web of belief. Consider equitable approaches to grading that you may have previously believed were impossible:

Something else I hate about this book is that, when he talks shit about teachers, he likes using "we" to show that "he's one of us" (a teacher).

And then he swaps to "they" when he's talking about what teachers should do.

This is such a common rhetoric among admin, though.

I don't inherently have a problem with the issues he claims he wants to solve with "more equitable grading," but I still maintain that grading is going to perpetuate those systems regardless of how you do it.

And that there are *systemic issues* he's refusing to address.

Finally, with the stubborn persistence of the achievement gap, we can no longer implement equitable practices in some areas of our schools—responsive classrooms, alternative disciplinary procedures, diverse curriculum—but meanwhile preserve our inequitable grading. Although a handful of authors have addressed grading, there hasn’t been discussion of grading through an equity lens—how grading is a critical element to affirmatively promote equity, to stop rewarding students because of their wealth, privilege, environment, or caregivers’ education and to prevent us from punishing students for their poverty, gaps in education, or environment. Traditional grading practices perpetuate our achievement and opportunity gaps and improved grading practices promote objective assessment of academic mastery, transparent expectations, growth mindsets, a focus on learning instead of points, and student agency—all key ingredients to serve diverse learners and create culturally responsive classrooms.

Grading practices are going to perpetuate injustice, regardless of what we choose to do. It'll perpetuate hegemonic cultural practices, leaving out everyone else.

It'll still rank importance of skills, which are still going to be based largely in whiteness.

It's also still going to perpetuate patriarchy. It's going to continue marginalising people. Even if we do select criteria that are culturally relevant to marginalised peoples? It's still going to largely be the dominant culture *making those choices*.

Grading is Just Bad.

ALSO, it'll still uphold ableism in a lot of ways because non-disabled people often do not see the world in the same way we do.

Like. IT'S SO OBVIOUS, HOW ARE YOU MISSING THIS. (I know how he's missing it. It's rhetorical.)

There are questions to consider at the end of the chapters. This'll be fun.

Answer: They are people who deserve to be included far more than society includes them; they have every right to participate in the development of things that involve them as anyone else.

1. What are some deep beliefs you have about teenagers? What motivates and demotivates them? Are they more concerned with learning or their grade?

I think schools demotivate them, and I think it's largely because we silo them into spaces and force them to really only interact with people their own age (along with "approved" adults outside the family).

I think schools alienate them from society, honestly.

I think grading systems force them to pay attention to their grade more than what they could learn, but I also don't pretend that schools are for learning! Because they're most certainly not.

So abolish school!

(Yeah, I shouldn't answer all the questions he asks at the end.)

Grading is a pointless exercise, and I don't think it's worth considering. We should just throw it away.

That was much easier because the rest of the question set is irrelevant if you already disagree with the premise.

2. What is your vision for grading? What do you wish grading could be for students, particularly for the most vulnerable populations? What do you wish grading could be for you? In which ways do current grading practices most those expectations, and in which ways do they not?

Well, I'm putting a pause on this nonsensical book for today. That was Chapter 1. The prologue is linked somewhere earlier in the thread, and I've put together a 'research' page for that's also linked earlier in the thread.

Welcome to why I try to avoid PD books.