The Problem with Grading
The problem with grading is that we have to work hard as educators to produce a number that means very little to a student's overall education. I don't just mean that the students themselves are not really motivated by numbers anymore, I mean that the numbers themselves are completely useless in describing student learning. I am sure that the minutiae are different across the globe, but here in Ontario, grading has been automatically rendered useless because of the complexity of residual and competing political systems. We have curricula for our subject areas which proposes that we grade based on specific examples of that curriculum being met. We are then given the further lens of running our grading through the four categories of Knowledge, Thinking, Communication, and Application. The result is a hodge-podge of mashing these systems together or -worse- completely ignoring them and basing grades strictly on performative tasks. Add to that another layer of well-intentioned docu...
