Grades Are Terrible

Neil deGrasse Tyson nails it, as per usual.

I've been planning this post for a while, but as I've been researching and writing it I realised there was way more to it than what would fit in a single post. So I've decided to split it up, and cover different aspects of the issue in separate posts. This one is about the fundamental problems with classic grading practices, and a short introduction to how tech could begin to solve those problems.

One of the two primary problems with grades is that they are fundamentally demotivating. In the best case scenario, a student will start out with an A (or its local equivalent; in Norway it would be a 6). The best outcome from the next grading would then be another A. Can you spot the progression here? No? Good, because there is no clear progression. Going from an A to an A is in reality an indicator of excellent progress, but it is illustrated through stagnation. The worst case is a student that starts out at an F level, and never goes much beyond that (if at all). They will possibly get some E's (or D's, depending on the system) from teachers who want to give them a bit of motivation, but this will probably demotivate further. Basically, any slight improvement runs the risk of being seen as "pity points" and any dramatic improvements are in danger of being shrugged off as anomalous.

This is a terrible state of affairs. I don't think it's a stretch to declare that students learn best when they are motivated to do so, and from this it follows that we need a feedback system that actively motivates learners. Traditional grades clearly don't. But as I said, this is just one of the two primary problems with them. The other? Grades just don't do what they are supposed to do.

The idea behind grades, if you distill it down to its core, is that they should be indicators of skill and knowledge at the end of a term, and progress during the term. I've already covered how they don't show progress, but to the outside world - outside of school - the indication of skill and knowledge is the primary function of the grade. An A student should be an excellent student. A B student should be a great student who is probably hard working (or in some cases an excellent student who is maybe a bit lazy). But realistically, grades tell you nothing about this. In a perfect, standardised grading system, a grade will tell you a student's level relative to a set of goals. It says nothing about work ethic, intelligence, learning ability, specific skills or strengths and weaknesses in the field to which the grade applies. Grades are an oversimplified metric of ability only understood in the context in which the grade was determined - information not always available or understood by those who read them - and even then they are not particularly useful.

Grades demotivate, and they don't fulfil their function. Why do we still insist on using them? In a word: Tradition. We've "always" used grades, and tradtionally they've been simple to both determine and read. They are less so now, but it is difficult to change tradition. Particularly in areas where teachers are actually required by law to use grades for feedback. Grades are, and have been for a very long time, all but synonymous with education.

All of this is hugely problematic. When a core component of a system designed to educate is both actively hindering learning and making learning outcomes opaque while pretending it isn't, that represents a fundamental flaw that permeates the entire system. The worst thing is that it is completely unnecessary, because we have a lot of systems for feedback and progress tracking that are inherently motivating and far more useful by pretty much any given metric. And most of these systems are found in video games.

In the next post, which should be out by the end of the week or before, I will cover some possible solutions to these problems. And big surprise: Technology plays a huge part.