EQUITABLE GRADING

GRAPHIC BY AL AMUNDSON

G Grading practices, standardized testing, and educational ranking systems serve only to preserve the hierarchy of privilege that thrives in America. The evaluational systems that we have in place embolden students with access to resources, supportive home environments, and favorable circumstances while actively disenfranchising students without. In other words, wealthy white students with college educated parents who have all the right experience and connections end up as national merit scholars while students of color from high poverty communities consistently underperform.

As Eden Prairie–alongside many other districts nationwide–inches towards reformed grading practices such as a balanced grading scale and “incompletes” instead of “fails,” district leadership is scrambling to account for the inherent inequities of the competitive system.In reality, we should be revolutionizing the way that students are assessed completely. While 100% summative grades help allow students to progress and make mistakes during the process of learning while only assessing the final destination, the quantitative approach still categorizes students as statistics rather than humans. Any lettered or numbered grading scale will disproportionately advantage students who demonstrate their learning the way the dominant culture would like them to.

Alternatively, experiential learning allows students to dictate the terms of their assessment and plays to the strengths of the individual student as opposed to an objective view of standardized testing. Students who are given the chance to demonstrate their own learning can choose the trajectory of their impacts. Community based initiatives, student portfolios, written work, and meaningful discussion can all be born of student choice. With advisors to assist students in their decision making for learning demonstration, we are able to motivate our discovery and engage with the content in a way that each individual finds to be meaningful. Those who are at an advantage in our current system are still given the opportunity to write essays or take tests. Those who find it difficult to engage without hands-on experience or some connection to their personal passions have an equal opportunity to express their development. This model also serves to frame content from a real-world view. Students learn how to apply the content to their adult lives and gain respect for the value of what they are learning.

Lucy Laney Elementary in North Minneapolis has been on a path to reform grading practices and teach cultural proficiency for years now. By taking actions such as acknowledging African American Vernacular English as a separate but not incorrect or informal dialect, teachers at Lucy Laney empower students to learn and grow without demeaning students’ culture or putting students of color at a disadvantage compared to their white counterparts. Despite their unparalleled work to build community, create meaningful relationships with students, and provide accessible opportunity, schools like Lucy Laney are handicapped by single-measurement systems like standardized testing. No Child Left Behind demands that students be judged on a single set of standards and punishes schools where those standards are being met by reducing funding. Those underperforming communities consistently lack access to the resources, support, and training necessary to build up performance and empower their students, but with a system modeled to reduce access to each of those things from the get go when student populations are largely disadvantaged, it becomes near impossible to improve statistics. Moreso, the tiered nature of No Child Left Behind blackballs communities with no way out and further hurts schools who have lower enrollment and teacher interest.

When grading is set against universal standards and only accepts success as modeled quantitatively, education is inequitable, inaccessible, and detrimental to the progress of meaningful learning for students. As schools like Eden Prairie look into reforming their grading scales, the changes that need to be made are much more large-scale than what we are seeing.

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BY KATHERINE KREGNESS