1: The Challenge of Failure

A Problem of Practice

In a traditional grading model, when a student fails or fails to complete an assignment, test, essay, or other graded work, the teacher enters the grade in his or her gradebook without the student being able to revise or redo the work. The grade was the grade, and the student simply had to live with it. Writing for Edutopia, high school English language arts (ELA) teacher and adjunct professor of education Monte Syrie (2016) argues that as much as teachers assess “under the pretense of validity, reliability, and infallibility,” most teachers “end up grading the way they were graded.” In my experience, teachers who are not part of a collaborative team seldom discuss their grading practices other than to explain them to their students when distributing the syllabus or classroom expectations at the start of the year. Such practices are typically inconsistent from teacher to teacher. According to Seth Gershenson (2020a), an associate professor of public policy at American University who conducted a series of interviews with secondary teachers:

Teachers may base their grades on a mix of both results and pupil effort, and the meaning of each letter grade is neither clear nor consistent for these teachers. Some hold onto the traditional view that “C is average,” while others indicate that a B is the new average. (p. 18)

Such unconstructive and inconsistent academic experiences can cause students to feel disheartened with the learning process and eventually put them on a path to dropping out before graduation. In “Why We Drop Out,” authors Deborah L. Feldman, Antony T. Smith, and Barbara L. Waxman (2017) write:

The overwhelming majority of interviewed youths experienced academic challenges that undermined their faith in themselves as learners, leading to a debilitating sense of helplessness and hopelessness, academic failure, and, ultimately, a rejection of school. (p. 2)

This finding is not surprising to experienced teachers, who can easily think of a student whose reaction to failing or falling behind amounted to, “Why should I keep trying? No matter how hard I work, I won’t be able to dig myself out of this hole.”

But here’s the part that no one wants to talk about—even the most successful among us have experienced educational disappointments. We remember the test score that was less than what we were hoping for and the group project where we did all the work for the presentation but suddenly couldn’t remember the topic when it was time to present. Instead of accepting that such educational interruptions happen and growing from them, many teachers errantly convey to students the idea that they

should never experience a lack of success by saying to both students and their parents the students will always achieve.

But can educators really make that promise?

In a world that continually reinforces the notion that failure is not an option, teachers and students alike feel the constant pressure of high expectations. But just having high expectations doesn’t mean anything if the learning process doesn’t support achieving them. Veteran education consultant and teacher Marie Amaro (2016) details the critical importance of the connection between high expectations and achievement, listing the following seven traits as essential for setting those expectations. 1. Believe in all your students. 2. Do not give up on students. 3. Do not make excuses for students or give them an easy way out. 4. Provide high levels of support and nurturing. 5. Show students you believe they can achieve. 6. Demonstrate high-level professionalism. 7. Use strategies that reduce students’ anxiety.

The Education Hub (n.d.) further connects the importance of acceleration to setting high expectations, noting the need for teachers to adopt practices that advance student performance beyond whatever their current proficiency level is. While it’s easy to accept the idea of teachers believing in students’ ability to achieve, the means of that achievement must be based on students’ individual abilities and not on a blanket belief that all students will be successful all of the time. Unfortunately, traditional grading based on points accumulation and obscure participation grades is not a pedagogically sound pathway to achievement (Townsley & Wear, 2020).

Authors Douglas Reeves, Lee Ann Jung, and Ken O’Connor (2017) explain:

Whether the issue is classroom scores on daily work or final report card grades with consequences for scholarship opportunities and university admissions, grading remains the wild west of school improvement, in which policy coherence is more apparent in claims than in practice and anyone armed with a red pen can make decisions with devastating instructional consequences.

This wild-west approach—red pens slung from their holsters ready to score at any time—can have devastating consequences for students and their academic-emotional health. Therefore, if educators cannot accept failure as the status quo—which they