Problems in American Education - Part 7: Misconceptions about Grades and a Few Other Matters
I almost quit writing this series last night because I am feeling a bit uneasy about a few things. Very few people are reading it, and that’s one reservation; but it’s not really a big deal to me. Part of me just wants to get this stuff out there; and, if few read it, so be it. My soul is mixed in with the words, so the activity in itself does offer some satisfaction.
The biggest reservation, the one that gives me caution, is that I don’t feel too comfortable biting the hand that fed me and my family for so many years. I was part of the system and, as an American, I loved most of it and was proud of most of it during all the years of my career. The issues you see here are more a matter of a spat between lovers than they are an attack on the core of what still is an American system. I love my country and what it respresents and hope that no one interprets my words in any other way. I am still writing today because I do love what we are trying to do and feel that I have a responsibility to explain the serious reservations I have about what I saw over those many years. If I am nothing else, I like to see myself as an advocate for children, the most innocent and most vulnerable people in our civilization. Whether I am accurate in my admonitions or misguided, I believe advocacy is my motivation. I want to see change, and my options for promoting that change are now very limited.
The topic for this morning is our systems of grading or evaluating student performance. Maybe it’s because I taught social studies and English, subjects that dealt with more conceptual content, but I never understood how we can so emphatically evaluate student performance numerically. The amazing thing to me is to observe how seriously people accept those numerical results and look at them as a way to make schools accountable. It’s like we try to measure human beings like you would measure the distance between New York and Chicago - like human intelligence can be represented by discrete sequential numbers. To put it another way, it’s like trying to measure the effect of an explosion with a yardstick.
At least when we use letter grades there is some recognition of the fact that we are simply incapable of measuring the complexity of human progess to any precise degree, but I have always been amazed at the pressure educators feel to produce exact number grades. I see this as a problem in national standardized testing, state standardized testing and even with individual class evaluations and I suspect that the problem is more political than it is a question of accurate evaluation.
Who among us feels qualified to say, for instance, that 70% or 60% mastery of any subject is connected in some way to success in life. As a friend of mine once said when I was in high school, if you had a kidney problem, would you want to go to a doctor who had a great reputation, a great percentage of success, but who flunked kidneys when he was in medical school. I suppose that doesn’t quite match up with my issue here, but it does call attention to what a misconception it is to believe that grades mean a great deal.
To my way of thinking, the problem is compounded even more in its imprecision the further down you go in grade level and age. The younger the child, the more unpredicatable they are and the more difficult it is to evaluate their progress at any particular point. Granted, you can calculate the percentage of material they have mastered. But what does that mean? What if their mental capacities and developmental maturity are about to take a quantum leap next month and they are not scheduled for testing again in a certain area for another year? Does that mean that we should make important decisions about their programs based on what we see today? These things do happen. My hypothetical example is not far fetched. Actually, it happens quite often.
Another reason why I have been feeling uncomfortable about my writing over the past couple of days is that I feel I am running the risk of a “glass half-empty” approach that indicates there are problems; but an approach that offers precious few solutions. My solution for this problem is to ask educators and parents to not take themselves and their tools so seriously. Why attempt to precisely measure what is unmeasurebable? Why do we need to place kids, especially little kids, into categories with fences they can never climb over once they are perceived to be certain “kinds” of students? Once again I am calling for flexibility and inclusion for all children. Understanding learning disabilities is important reasons to study student progress, but most of those disabilities, if serious, are profound and easily recognizable. We need to address them, but we cannot and should not try to make a science out of what is an art.
The biggest reservation, the one that gives me caution, is that I don’t feel too comfortable biting the hand that fed me and my family for so many years. I was part of the system and, as an American, I loved most of it and was proud of most of it during all the years of my career. The issues you see here are more a matter of a spat between lovers than they are an attack on the core of what still is an American system. I love my country and what it respresents and hope that no one interprets my words in any other way. I am still writing today because I do love what we are trying to do and feel that I have a responsibility to explain the serious reservations I have about what I saw over those many years. If I am nothing else, I like to see myself as an advocate for children, the most innocent and most vulnerable people in our civilization. Whether I am accurate in my admonitions or misguided, I believe advocacy is my motivation. I want to see change, and my options for promoting that change are now very limited.
The topic for this morning is our systems of grading or evaluating student performance. Maybe it’s because I taught social studies and English, subjects that dealt with more conceptual content, but I never understood how we can so emphatically evaluate student performance numerically. The amazing thing to me is to observe how seriously people accept those numerical results and look at them as a way to make schools accountable. It’s like we try to measure human beings like you would measure the distance between New York and Chicago - like human intelligence can be represented by discrete sequential numbers. To put it another way, it’s like trying to measure the effect of an explosion with a yardstick.
At least when we use letter grades there is some recognition of the fact that we are simply incapable of measuring the complexity of human progess to any precise degree, but I have always been amazed at the pressure educators feel to produce exact number grades. I see this as a problem in national standardized testing, state standardized testing and even with individual class evaluations and I suspect that the problem is more political than it is a question of accurate evaluation.
Who among us feels qualified to say, for instance, that 70% or 60% mastery of any subject is connected in some way to success in life. As a friend of mine once said when I was in high school, if you had a kidney problem, would you want to go to a doctor who had a great reputation, a great percentage of success, but who flunked kidneys when he was in medical school. I suppose that doesn’t quite match up with my issue here, but it does call attention to what a misconception it is to believe that grades mean a great deal.
To my way of thinking, the problem is compounded even more in its imprecision the further down you go in grade level and age. The younger the child, the more unpredicatable they are and the more difficult it is to evaluate their progress at any particular point. Granted, you can calculate the percentage of material they have mastered. But what does that mean? What if their mental capacities and developmental maturity are about to take a quantum leap next month and they are not scheduled for testing again in a certain area for another year? Does that mean that we should make important decisions about their programs based on what we see today? These things do happen. My hypothetical example is not far fetched. Actually, it happens quite often.
Another reason why I have been feeling uncomfortable about my writing over the past couple of days is that I feel I am running the risk of a “glass half-empty” approach that indicates there are problems; but an approach that offers precious few solutions. My solution for this problem is to ask educators and parents to not take themselves and their tools so seriously. Why attempt to precisely measure what is unmeasurebable? Why do we need to place kids, especially little kids, into categories with fences they can never climb over once they are perceived to be certain “kinds” of students? Once again I am calling for flexibility and inclusion for all children. Understanding learning disabilities is important reasons to study student progress, but most of those disabilities, if serious, are profound and easily recognizable. We need to address them, but we cannot and should not try to make a science out of what is an art.
posted by Friar4 at 6:09 AM
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